On the web | Keys Corner

Cat- or butter-side up?

By John, on January 18th, 2005

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on its feet.

But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat’s back and toss . . . → Read More: Cat- or butter-side up?

How to learn a language in a year

By John, on January 17th, 2005

Following up a previous article at kuro5hin, Konstantin Ryabitsev has posted an article on how he learnt French to a reasonable level of fluency in just twelve months. I am impressed – he certainly is making more progress than Ruth and I are with our Spanish.

Pinhole photographs

By John, on December 25th, 2004

Take a look at R. Gardiner’s blog nyclondon.com/blog for some great pictures taken with a pinhole camera shooting on polaroid film. They need long exposures: typically 2-25 minutes.

As well as the polaroid pinhole pictures, there are excellent conventional photographs and this interesting picture of the London Underground lines superimposed on . . . → Read More: Pinhole photographs

Choose how links here open

By John, on December 22nd, 2004

One thing which everyone seems to have a preference about, is whether links on a site open in the same window or in an new window.

I have always opened external links in a new window. If this drives you crazy, you can now choose how all links on the main blog page . . . → Read More: Choose how links here open

Tiny P2P – the world’s smallest P2P application

By John, on December 16th, 2004

Peer to peer (P2P) applications are used to allow users to share information in a network. Some, such as Napster, need centralized servers to maintain an index of who is offering what data where, others are more decentralised. Ed Felton has written a P2P application in only 15 lines code, each containing eighty characters . . . → Read More: Tiny P2P – the world’s smallest P2P application

WordPress bug

By John, on December 4th, 2004

If you are using WordPress 1.2x or 1.3x to run your blog, you really need to delete a line in the login script, otherwise it is possible to unintentionally bring your site down.

See weblog.burningbird.net for more details.

Advent calendar

By John, on December 2nd, 2004

Better late than never: here’s an online advent calendar which offers more than just a pretty picture every day. Click on the image above to visit.

(via MetaFilter)

Learning a language

By John, on November 18th, 2004

Ruth and I enroled a couple of months ago in Spanish evening classes – as you might have guessed, if you spotted the link we added in our general links section (on the right) – and are struggling to keep on top of the homework and learning all those new words. So these tips . . . → Read More: Learning a language

Help the other 49% – marry an American

By John, on November 6th, 2004

Hundreds of Canadians are taking pity on the Americans who didn’t vote for Bush – there is a site where they can offer to marry an American so that they can move across the border to escape another 4 more years of cowboy conservatism in the USA.

Phishers getting better all the time

By John, on November 4th, 2004

The Register has a report on a new, dangerous type of phishing attack that has just emerged:

Fraudsters have developed phishing emails capable of automatically stealing bank log-in details without requiring users to click on a website link, email filtering firm MessageLabs warns.

Over the last two weeks, MessageLabs has monitored a small . . . → Read More: Phishers getting better all the time