Jeremy Cherfas

Lifetime achievement award for the man who invented the webcam

So interesting to see this, not only as a piece of history but also as a personal reminder.

Back when the web was young and shiny, an otherwise extremely intelligent BBC television producer, a friend at the time, asked my help in understanding the promise of the new shinyness, especially in visual terms. I told him about the famous coffee pot web cam (and maybe, also, about the link to the Coke machine).

"Isn't that great," I said, "that you can see whether there's coffee in the pot without having to leave your computer."

"But you could just get up and look."

"Well yes, but the coffee pot could be anywhere in the world."

"What's the point of that? You can't go and get a cup of coffee there."

"True. But it doesn't have to be a coffee pot. It could be, oh, anything."

"I just don't see the point."

Of couse he went on to produce a highly acclaimed series, and much else besides.

Language Log: Just press Pay

The simplest way to describe the attitude of software engineers and companies to linguistic interfacing with their customers would be to say that they do not give a monkey's fart about such matters. Not only do they never have a linguist check the use of language in the programs they expect us to use (that'll be the day), they don't have anybody at all checking it.
If they program interfaces this carelessly, just how likely is it that robots are going to respect the Three Laws of Robotics?

Not just software engineers.

Practical Ways To Use QR Codes

This is just so astonishingly cool and Jetson-like.

Aquaponics, high-tech swill, GMOs and robots: context is all

Sunk costs rears its ugly head again:

Little Boy cost, well, a bomb. It seemed a shame after all that effort not to drop on somebody.

It is odd how [John’ prizewinning post](http://johnjohnston.info/blog/wordpress-wild-and-freehe-though-that-he-knew-what-love-wa/) gives too many redirects when I first go there, and is fine if I reload. @c

Audiosear.ch is shutting down

Can't say I am too surprised. But I wish I were.

The ongoing saga of attempting to connect micro.blog to Known

2 min read

More good help from Manton, cleverdevil and others, but alas no nearer (although I may have eliminated some possibilities).

I was allowing both HTTP and HTTPS. There could have been some kind of mismatch, I suppose, but after editing .htaccess to force SSL, it made no difference to micro.blog's OS X app.
Then thought that possibly a different endpoint would help (despite the fact that I know all the same details are on the home page).
Pointed micro.blog first at /profile and then at /profile/jeremy; still no good.

At this stage, given that Manton managed to get everything working from a clean install of Known out of the box, I think I need to try the same. If that works, well, if nothing else, it works.

I had been fretting about losing data, but if I install into a new sub-domain and it works there, I can always edit the config.ini to point back at the old database. It will be a good opportunity to see how good the instructions are to install at Dreamhost. Last time I managed without any instructions, and I also didn't write up my experiences. This could be an opportunity to pay back.

#indieweb

Google’s early warning of the rise of Trump | CultureBy – Grant McCracken

Effectively, Google’s autocomplete function is working as my “desktop dashboard,” a flow of messages from the deep space of the Google data sphere.

Note to Self: Transcribing Podcasts – India, Ink.

Just by accident found this piece on transcribing podcasts with IBM's Watson. I wonder how it compares with SwiftScribe? Need to give it a try, because as I attempt more complex stories it certainly helps to have a bit of text in addition to notes and markers on the audio.