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Berci Mesko posted a link

The Myths of Innovation

Monday at 7:30 am - Link

Duncan Hull and Pawel Szczesny liked this

...bestselling author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at innovation history, including the software and Internet Age, to reveal how ideas truly become successful innovations-truths that people can apply to today's challenges. - Berci Mesko

Definitely worth reading. - Andrew Walkingshaw

Just dug this out from the bookshelf, where its been languishing for a year unread. Its really very good, going on the first two chapters I've read so far. See also http://www.mythsofinnovation.c... and http://www.scottberkun.com/abo... - Duncan Hull

Just ordered it in pdf. :) - Berci Mesko

Andrew Walkingshaw shared an item on Google Reader

Service Advertising

Sunday at 8:13 am - Link

"How long before the volumes of geo-tagged spam render certain spatial overlays of the city essentially worthless?" - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Seth's Blog: Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college

Saturday at 5:42 pm - Link

Firefox users are way more likely to be power users than non-Firefox users. Not so surprising but still an important insight... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Win Lose Charts - English Premier League 2007 - 2008 | More Information per Pixel

Saturday at 5:38 pm - Link

"Statistics are like miniskirts; they give you good ideas but hide the important things." - Ebbe Skovdahl Nice viz of sports scores. - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Simple Top-Down Parsing in Python

Saturday at 5:07 pm - Link

I should read this. Understanding it might be a bit much, but... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Will the CFTC “Do the right thing?”

July 17 at 3:03 pm - Link

Company for the Iowa Electronic markets? Gambling by the back door? Anyway, gambling and the derivatives markets - if anyone can point out a real difference... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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RSS-CB - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

July 15 at 4:23 pm - Link

Central bank data (and a format for it) - Andrew Walkingshaw

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YouTube - simonscat's Channel

July 15 at 2:33 pm - Link

Thank you, Culture Show, for having one of these on! Anyone who's ever, ever lived with a cat, watch this... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Re: RDFa + RDF/XML Considered Harmful? (was RE: Ordnance Survey data as Linked Data) from Dan Brickley on 2008-07-14 (semantic-web@w3.org from July 2008)

July 15 at 3:22 am - Link

Dan Brickley with some cogent criticism of RDF for RDF's sake - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Doors of Perception weblog: Eating Spin

July 14 at 3:51 am - Link

Smallholding 2.0 - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Why Analytical Applications Fail: Juice Analytics

July 12 at 9:24 am - Link

Some quality food-for-thought here; what do people want to do with data, and how can we help them? - Andrew Walkingshaw

Pawel Szczesny posted a message on Twitter

“Django seems to me much more intuitive than Rails, despite I like Ruby much more than Python”

July 9 at 6:10 am - Link

Tom Morris, Chris Lasher, Timothy Driscoll and David Vasileff liked this

Genuinely curious about why you prefer Ruby. - Chris Lasher

I really like Perl's magic and Ruby inherited a little of it :) But seriously, I still cannot get around regular expressions (which I use all the time) in Python - Perl/Ruby equivalent is way more powerful and easy to use. - Pawel Szczesny

Show 11 more comments

That's interesting. I thought the same thing going from Perl to Python, at first, but now I much prefer Python's method of doing regular expressions; in the end I find them much more comprehensible in Python. AMK wrote a fantastic Python regex tutorial, which, if you haven't been through, I highly recommend doing so: http://www.amk.ca/python/howto... - Chris Lasher

Thanks Chris, I know that tutorial (it's number one in Google). Maybe when I get more experience with Python, I will appreciate pythonish regexps - I have barely touched the language. - Pawel Szczesny

There is a fair amount of work learning Rails' conventions - but once you're there, I suspect development time in lower for Rails. Then again I would say that. ; ) - Matt Wood

It's also worth mentioning that Python's string methods can do matching and replacement for which one might tend to use a regex by instinct. See http://docs.python.org/lib/str.... Then there's beautiful things like checking the existence of a string in another simply by using "in", e.g. `'AZY10000' in 'ACCESSION AZY10000'` returns `True`. I'm definitely of the "'I know, I'll use regular expressions'--and now you have *two* problems" camp, so this suits me well. - Chris Lasher

That's a great tutorial on Python's regex. And I was going to mention what Chris did regarding Python strings. - PauloNuin

I know Python, don't really know Ruby; but I suspect that Matt's intuition is off (I can't see there being much of a difference in development time either way). One advantage Python has, though - as far as I can tell - is the libraries; numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pycairo, PIL, lxml, rdflib. - Andrew Walkingshaw

I definitely grok Ruby more easily than Python, which was the driver to go the Rails route. - Deepak

I do like frameworks but I've become less interested in "full-stack" frameworks like Rails/Django since they tend to include the kitchen-sink only to break down in those important 20% cases. I would much rather cherry-pick the parts of a framework I find useful and leave the rest. There's plenty of alternative frameworks emerging in both Ruby and Python that are arguably better than the mainstream (Merb and Pylons come to mind) - Adam Kraut

Turbogears seems nice too. - PauloNuin

Re: development time: true, for experienced users, there may not be a big difference, but most aren't experienced users (or Ruby or Python users, for that matter). - Matt Wood

Excellent point, Matt. I don't have any data to support your statement, but I, too, would posit that most users are inexperienced. - Chris Lasher

Agree with @adamk about kitchen sink. I recommend Ramaze and Sinatra as even smaller Ruby frameworks. Ruby also has mod_rails too. - Michael Barton

I'm newbie in both languages (for example I didn't know that "in string" Python trick) and both frameworks, so maybe in my case it's an effect of visual simplicity of Django (it doesn't have MVC written all over the place, like Rails has). Adam, thanks for suggesting other frameworks. As soon as I'm done with Django (end of this month), I will have a look at both. - Pawel Szczesny

There are two types of inexperience: inexperience with the framework (but experience elsewhere), and inexperience with the language or specific implementation (for example, those learning Python or Ruby as they go). Rails' dependence on best practices and design patterns helps those from column A, whilst the conventions help those in column B. - Matt Wood

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Handwritten Typographers

July 9 at 7:40 am - Link

Serendipity/synchronicity: I've got bad handwriting (bad close coordination, really), but even so I can look back+see it changing over time; and I wondered if the typefaces I spend my days with have been shaping that. Here's the flip side of that idea... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Matt Blodgett's Dev Blog: Peopleware

July 9 at 7:32 am - Link

If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark street and looks for them on the adjacent street because, as he explains, "The light is better there." - Andrew Walkingshaw

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BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Group seeks Bush sewage 'tribute'

July 8 at 8:58 am - Link

'"It's important to remember our leaders in the right historical context," said petition organiser Brian McConnell. ' - Andrew Walkingshaw

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DivmodEpsilon - Divmod - Trac

July 8 at 6:48 am - Link

"A powerful date/time formatting and import/export class (ExtimeDotTime), for exchanging date and time information between all Python's various ways to interpret objects as times or time deltas." - Andrew Walkingshaw

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DPAR is Dead

July 7 at 2:42 pm - Link

The thing is: this has more rigour than half of the statistical analyses we see in papers, doesn't it... - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Apache Mahout

July 7 at 6:23 am - Link

Distributed machine-learning on Hadoop - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Musing about Information and Long Tail and Publish-Subscribe

July 7 at 1:39 am - Link

JP Rangaswami: "Capillary conversations are here to stay. Niches will speak to each other in shorthand. Enabling technologies will get more and more robust. People will learn more about the use of publish-subscribe models." - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Segway CTO Leaves for Apple as Product Design VP - O'Reilly Radar

July 6 at 6:02 pm - Link

"Moore's law, coupled with the rise of software above the level of a single device means that smaller and smaller devices can flex computing muscle. As a result, computing functionality is migrating from computers per se into the world of stuff." - Andrew Walkingshaw

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0xDECAFBAD » Queue everything and delight everyone

July 5 at 7:27 pm - Link

Queue-based service design - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Twitter: User Co-Creating or User Co-Opting? - O'Reilly Radar

July 4 at 2:10 pm - Link

Lessons here for plenty of people in science. (Including me...) - Andrew Walkingshaw

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5 Days Off: Frozen - a set on Flickr

July 4 at 11:44 am - Link

Laser-cut visualizations (via aardvark179) - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Scaling a facebook application on Rails

July 4 at 8:06 am - Link

"Talking to spindles is bad". - Andrew Walkingshaw

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plainview : software : the barbarian group

July 4 at 7:18 am - Link

Useful! A full-screen, no-chrome web browser for demoes and presentations - Andrew Walkingshaw

Mr. Gunn posted a link

THE FILTER » Blog Archive » Choose research.

July 2 at 1:23 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Daniel Jurczak, Bill Hooker, Neil Saunders and Eva liked this

Oh, that's brilliant. - Neil Saunders

Made my day, that did. Does anyone here have a Scots accent? Someone should podcast that. - Bill Hooker

Well, I'm a Scot, but ten years in Cambridge has done a number on my accent; used to be very mild Edinburgh... - Andrew Walkingshaw

Finally a real use for a video comment! Have a little whisky and give it a crack, Andrew! - Mr. Gunn

Attila Csordas posted a message on Twitter

“I would strictly limit the length of presentations on every conference up to say 15 minutes if I had a chance to do so.”

June 29 at 7:22 pm - Link

Thomas Brox Røst, Pedro Beltrao, Konrad Förstner, Jean-Claude Bradley and 2 other people liked this

Reminds of of the time so many people at ACS were whining that talk time had been reduced from 45->30 minutes - Deepak

Now the only thing is making people respect the 15 min. - PauloNuin

Show 12 more comments

I think 20 mins at 1-2 slides/minute is about the perfect presentation time. Forces speakers to be concise; a talk is only a summary, not a detailed explanation of every single little point. 45 mins is about as long as most people can concentrate at a stretch. I never understand these 100+ slides presentations that I see at Slideshare. - Neil Saunders

I'd like to try all kinds of things at conferences and even routine labmeetings -- brainstorming, speedgeeking, pecha kucha -- but every time I suggest anything remotely new I get shut down. - Bill Hooker

I used to have the same idea (1-2 slides/minute), until I heard Larry Lessig talk. He uses a lot of slides, often with just one word on them, and can go through them quickly. But then not everyone is Larry Lessig :) - Deepak

I actually just spent a fair bit of this past weekend attempting to fix my death by powerpoint habit. I have done pretty well. Neil - Apparently it is about 10 minutes one can concentrate effectively during a powerpoint presentation. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

Lessig -> They call that video, not? - Egon Willighagen

It feels like I always have about fifty slides. Doesn't matter how long the talk is. Ten minutes? Fifty slides. :) - Andrew Walkingshaw

I've seen presentations where they basically cut the figures out of their paper and made a slide out of each. It was way too busy and hard to follow. I don't know if that means that their figures were too busy to start with or what, but it was so boring. I felt like they didn't even need to be up there, and everyone was reading the figure legend instead of listening to the presenter. On the other hard, for a scientific presentation, you do have to show actual data, so you can't go too minimalistic. - Mr. Gunn

I also like a lot Lessig's style. I tried it once in a talk about open science. I think it works best for presenting one concept but I don't think it works so well for detailed scientific results (although some try to flash a lot of westerns at you but it is not the same ;) Dick Hardt's talk on Identity 2.0 is another good example of this style (http://identity20.com/media/OS...). - Pedro Beltrao

from an audience point of view, the best is to end it quick and see other angles during the discussion, it is just not 'polite' to talk too much without interaction - Attila Csordas

I learned in teaching class that people only have a 10 minute attention span, and if you need to give a talk that's longer than 10 minutes, you need to do something (anything!) after every ten minutes to recharge the audience. In our examples they were mostly little exercises, but that was for students. I guess a mid-talk question round would work too. - Eva

Something I like about Lessig's style is that it demands attention from the audience. There's a new chunk of information every few seconds, and as an audience member you always know exactly where your attention ought to be. It's almost flow-inducing, although it can be a bit draining (agree with Eva - a break every 10 minutes is good). Tough to pull off a talk in this style, though. - Michael Nielsen

Hey, I know that Lessig is cool and can handle the remote well but we need scientific presenter heroes, who and where are they? - Attila Csordas

Jaenisch is a very effective presenter. I saw him at the NIH and ISSCR a previous year. - Mr. Gunn

Nipam Patel is engaging, entertaining and scary smart. - Bill Hooker

Evan Snyder, stem cell guy: I am not sure about his science, but as a presenter he is good. His trick is being very enthusiastic about the topic. - Attila Csordas

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ratproxy - Google Code

July 3 at 7:43 am - Link

CSS/XSRF-detecting proxy - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Graphite: Graphite - Enterprise Scalable Realtime Graphing

July 3 at 4:03 am - Link

Oh *hello* there. - Andrew Walkingshaw

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Show Us a Better Way

July 2 at 8:10 am - Link

Time to get our infoviz boots on. Gigs of govt data... - Andrew Walkingshaw