The Postlude Blog

Asking the wrong questions

Every so often, someone will ask me 'is Linux ready for the desktop?'. The implication of this is that there is some consensus that whilst GNU/Linux has established credentials in the server market, it isn't suitable for desktop use.

Fixing *nix blunders (Pt 1)

Yesterday, I made one of those classic command-line blunders that anyone with root access to a *nix shell makes from time-to-time. Basically, instead of doing:

Not just a jazzer!

I don't usually watch the BBC proms, but this evening I was at a loose end looking after my 3 month old son, and it just happened to be the most interesting thing on the television. I had no idea about the piece being performed other than its composer was also playing the piano part.

OKFN visualisation workshop

I'm writing this from the train journey back from the Open Knowledge Foundation's first visualisation workshop held at Trampoline System's offices in The Foundry, London.

Decentralisation and the wisdom of crowds

I've recently been reading The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. It's an interesting book, and despite many America-centric examples the author uses (which I quickly started to skim over),I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the notion of 'crowd' intelligence. As a user and writer of Free Software, I was particularly keen to read the chapter on decentralisation, which uses GNU/Linux as an example of where decentralisation has been successful. On this subject Surowiecki writes:

Links for 2008-10-04 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page
User interfaces occupy an important part of software development. This page provides a comprehensive reference on toolkits for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs), with emphasis on resources for Free Software (Open Source). This page focuses on personal computers but also references some offerings for embedded products.

Links for 2008-10-03 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Oblique Strategies
Classic Eno and Schmidt oblique strategies

Links for 2008-09-28 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Phil Stone
Phil Stone is one of the six original members of the ground-breaking computer network band The Hub, and has played in venues throughout the United States and Europe with them since 1987. He also regularly accompanies the Laura Pawel Dance Company of New York with live electronic music.

Links for 2008-09-13 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

intelligent digital effects
this blog keeps track of the progress in the research on intelligent digital audio effects. It shows the trail the team has taken to investigate it. intelligent digital audio effects are audio effects that listen to the music to adjust their effectparameters

Links for 2008-09-11 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

flight404
Awesome visualisation with Processing (cf. latest iTunes visualizations)
the barbarian group
Digital services and creation company aka very good designers
Ruin & Wesen
Welcome to Ruin & Wesen! We are a small but growing company creating digital and analog musical instruments. We build high-quality handmade MIDI controllers, sequencers, analog and digital synthesizers, drum machines and custom creations. We believe that creativity is best served by mixing the analog and the digital worlds. Analog for its humanity, its vivid sonic richness, its hands-on approach. Digital for the ease of use, the reproducibility, its beautiful algorithmic depth and its ease of programming.
BKNR - home
Lisp (!!!) web framework
EasyGui
EasyGUI is a module for very simple, very easy GUI programming in Python. Experienced Pythonistas need support for quick and dirty GUI features. New Python programmers need GUI capabilities that don't require any knowledge of Tkinter, frames, widgets, callbacks or lambda. This is what EasyGUI provides. Using EasyGUI, all GUI interactions are invoked by simple function calls.
Tracktion 3

Links for 2008-09-09 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Infovis: Home

Links for 2008-09-08 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Hz #12
Online magazine dedicated to new media arts