Two years ago to the day, I built Twistory - a service for seeing what you posted on Twitter on this day in previous years. If you've ever used Facebook, you'll know how it is supposed to work. You see posts which show that exactly 5 years ago you were starting a new job, 6 years ago you were at a wedding, etc. The Twitter version never really worked properly because the Twitter API doesn't…
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I'm a huge fan of the US Braille Institute's Atkinson Hyperlegible font. This blog is typeset in it, and I think it looks gorgeous. It's also specifically designed to be readable to people with visual impairments: Atkinson Hyperlegible differentiates common misinterpreted letters and numbers using various design techniques: There's only one problem, the font was released a few years ago and…
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Over the last 20 years, open source software has undergone a significant shift—from providing an optimistic model for public collaboration to undergoing constant maintenance by the often unseen solo operators who write and publish the code that millions of users rely on every day. In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution o…
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Much like a Tesla, all analogies break down eventually. As many many many people have said - free software is free, in much the same way as a free puppy is free. I prefer to think of it as being free just like being given a free house is free. Imagine that! Being given a free house would solve so many immediate problems. You'd have shelter, warmth, an administrative address, and a stake in the …
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The fashion industry has the concept of "prêt-à-porter" - ready to wear. You pick a thing off the rack and off you go. No tailoring needed. Similarly, the food industry has "prêt-à-manger" - ready to eat. No telling l'artiste du pain how much mayo you want, just grab a boxed sandwich and start munching. What's the equivalent for Open Source Software? (I know it is facile to say "There are two …
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Last year, I blogged about why I make my work calendar public. It is useful to have a public website where people can see if I'm free or busy. But the version I created relied on Google Calendar which, sadly, isn't that great. It doesn't look wonderful, especially on small screens, and is limited to only one calendar feed. So I used the mighty power of Open Source to build my own! …
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Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." Edent's 7th Law (My blog; my rules!) states "the best way to get an open source project to fix an issue is to send a slightly wrong Pull Request." Let me explain... Two years ago, I noticed an annoying bug in the markdown parser of WordPress's JetPack plugin. …
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One of the things I loved about Facebook was its "On This Day" feature. There's something delightful about seeing what nonsense you were talking about on this day a decade ago. Twitter doesn't have anything like that. So I built it. Introducing - Twistory.ml Note: Twitter's recent changes means this no longer works. Stick your @ name in, hit the big button, and you'll get a list of everything…
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A few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email inviting me to try out an exciting new "quantum resistant" cryptography app called Cyph. Because I hate myself, I signed up. Of particular interest to me was the fact that the homepage loudly proclaimed that it was "Open Source" - and had a public GitHub repo. That was handy, because there were some glaring usability flaws on the sign-up screen.…
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A question to the void. Are you entitled to get the source history of open source projects? Lots of Open Source licences give the consumer of software the right to a copy of the source code. For example, GPLv3 says that distributors of software have to: give anyone who possesses the object code ... a copy of the Corresponding Source What is "Corresponding Source"? The "Corresponding Source"…
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If you have the Akismet spam plugin for WordPress, you'll be familiar with this problem. When your mouse pointer goes over any URL, you get a large website preview taking over parts of your screen. I asked for a way to turn this off and I'm happy to say the developers listened! Sadly, there's no tickbox option, only a WordPress filter so you'll have to add the following scrap of code to your…
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This a rant, written at midnight, after battling software errors. Set your profanity filters accordingly. I despair over the state of software engineering - specifically, stability. We seem to have lost the understanding that computers are there to do the hard work for us. And I don't think we ever believed in a user-centred approach to developer tools. The last time I developed an Android app…
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