CBC News has an interesting article on Whitelist security vs. Blacklist security, and whether a change to a Whitelist security model would make more sense. I tend to favor the Whitelist approach but I can see some stumbling blocks that would need to be overcome before it would be a workable solution. LINK→
An interesting article about the fluctuation in population of lefties over the decades. LINK→
I’ve passed on Opera several times for different reasons: it cost money (used to), the UI felt bulky, no extensions. This time around I took more time to dig into the powerful configuration options and ended up with a browser that makes me cringe to use Firefox.
I’m seeing more and more articles/reviews like this and, while it is gratifying to see Opera get the recognition it deserves from more quarters, it dismays me a bit to see how quickly people—even “professional” reviewers—will dismiss a product without a decent trial period. I’m glad to see the author of this article realize what a gem Opera is but why didn’t he give it a decent shakedown the first “several times” around? LINK→
From Vandelay Website Design comes 77 resources to simplify your life as a web designer. Lots of good tools and resources. LINK→
A kilogram isn’t what it used to be. LINK→
If you’ve read even a little on this blog, you know that I have a love of clocks—from the elegant and well-made to the curious and unusual. Roger Wood is my kind of artist. He builds “handmade, one-of-a-kind, whimsical timepieces” that are straight out of a Victorian timewarp. Lovely mechanical assemblages of both found and manufactured objects, his clocks are works of art. As Roger Wood himself says in a video interview available on CBC television, his works are “sculpture disguised as clocks.” One in particular that I fancy is the Jules Verne clock—maybe some day when I have a spare $700 burning a hole in my pocket. LINK→
In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is its antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points which are antipodal to one another are connected by a straight line through the centre of the Earth.
A nifty little site that uses Google Maps to allow you to “stick a pin” in a map to pinpoint your location, and then automatically shows you your antipodes—that is, the point on the far side of the Earth that is directly opposite from you. For example, the antipodes for Cumberland, MD (where I live) is a few thousand miles off the southwestern coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean. LINK→
The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that the Arctic icecap has “shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago.” This has ironically opened up the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time in recorded history. LINK→
Here’s a very interesting article about the effect of fonts on readers. A college student noticed that he started getting better grades when he switched from using Times New Roman and Trebuchet to Georgia in his school essays and term papers. The comments on the article are well worth a read, too. Typographers have long been saying that presentation affects comprehension and assimilation of ideas and concepts. This article, although by no means a scientific study, lends a little more credence to the thought that professors might be grading higher (unconsciously) when the papers look more “academic, polished and publish-worthy.”
Conclusion? Use serif fonts like Georgia, Book Antiqua, Palatino Linotype, Perpetua and Garamond in your paperwork if you want to be taken “seriously,” and stay away from sans-serif fonts like Arial and Verdana and Trebuchet. However, if you’re coding websites and want text to look good and be easily readable on the screen (as opposed to in print) san-serif fonts are the way to go. LINK→
