How To Use System Emoji With Webfonts?

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on · · 650 words · read ~7,450 times.

tl;dr - If a mobile web browser recognises an Emoji, it should display it natively. If not, it should fall back to a supplied web font. Is this possible? When Android and iOS find Emoji in text, rather than display them as black-and-white fonts, they show them off in gorgeous colour. For example, the unicode […]

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Do All Google Employees Have Perfect Eyesight?

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on · · 15 comments · 900 words · read ~71,732 times.

I can only assume that on their first day at Google, new employees are given their Android phone, a ChromeBook, a self-driving car, and complementary Laser Eye Surgery. That's my theory on some of the problems besetting Android's Lollipop release. I've ranted about Lollipop before, and now I'd like to point out two particular problems. […]

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Lollipop UI Inconsistencies Represents Google's Failure Of QA

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on · · 6 comments · 600 words · read ~4,409 times.

I don't get Google. I really don't. Some of my smartest friends work there - and yet, as an organisation, Google continually demonstrates an imbecilic attitude to quality. I've already shared some of my thoughts on Android 5.0 Lollipop - it's slow, buggy, and shows that Google either doesn't bother with testing, or simply doesn't […]

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A Year Of Solar Panels - Open Data

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on · · 3 comments · 850 words · read ~1,792 times.

It's been a full year since we had solar panels installed on our semi-detached house in Oxford, UK. By coincidence, the panels were switched on during the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. So, how have they performed? Tracking Solar Performance - The Easy Way The solar panels have a generation meter. […]

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Episode 20: @PipWillcox and the Digital First Folio of Shakespeare's Works

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on · · 150 words
A pixelated Shakespeare.

Oxford's Bodleian library makes high resolution scans of Shakespeare's First Folio available under a Creative Commons licence. Pip Willcox tells us more. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes reviews. You get to listen to an interesting […]

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Episode 19: Ancient Japanese

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on · · 150 words

Talking to Kerri Russell about the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes reviews. You get to listen to an interesting person chat for about a minute - that's it! Get About […]

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Shakespeare's Honor

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on · · 300 words · read ~205 times.

As part of the Shakespeare Hackday I attended a few weeks ago, we discussed some interesting analysis which can be done on the text. Certain forms of analysis are hampered due to the archaic and inconsistent spelling. I wondered if that could be mined for anything interesting. For example, in modern UK English we use […]

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Episode 18: @Kerpowla and @InspireWIT

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on · · 100 words

Student Paula Clerkin has just run a successful conference for Women In Technology. Read about how she organised the conference, check out her blog, and follow her code on GitHub. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes Intro […]

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Introducing @1st_Folio_Scans - Shakespeare's First Folio on Twitter

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on · · 250 words

As part of the Shakespeare Hackday I attended a few weeks ago, we discussed some creative uses of social media. Could we find people tweeting rhyming couplets from the sonnets, for example? I decided, in the limited time available, to create something much simpler. Because the Bodleian Library's scans of the First Folio are under […]

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Episode 17: The @AmySharrocks Sea-fall Experience

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on · · 1 comment · 200 words

Once again I'm joined by Rosie Clarke. Today we talk about the artist Amy Sharrocks. To learn more about Amy Sharrocks' work, visit the Museum of Water and follow her on Twitter. And, as a special bonus, here's Rosie talking in a bit more detail about the Sea-fall. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for […]

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