"And, when you free programming from the requirement to be general and professional and SCALABLE, it becomes a different activity altogether, just as cooking at home is really nothing like cooking in a commercial kitchen. I can report to you: not only is this different activity rewarding in almost exactly the same way that cooking for someone you love is rewarding, there’s another feeling, one that persists as you use the app together."

This is great. I am always bewildered by the direct equivalence of learning-to-code and learning-to-make-money. Instead, learning to cook for yourself – just well enough for you and the few people who need you – is a nice metaphor, as is cookery itself.

Also: oh for something like "Hypercard for iOS", and oh for an end to code-signing and developer accounts and professionalisation-with-no-meaningful-alternative.

"In this context, Google+ is not the company’s most strategic project. That distinction goes to Glass, to the self-driving cars, and to Google Maps, Street View, and Earth—Google’s model of the real, physical world. Maybe in twenty years we’ll think of Google primarily as a vision company—augmenting our vision, helping us share it—and, oh wow, did you realize they once, long ago, sold ads?" This is good. I like the distinction between pictures and vision a lot.

""And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand." Well put. Well done, Sam. Well done, Phil.

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." Both the letters described, and Robin's point, are beautiful.

"Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist. Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.

I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril." This is good.

And yet: this just explains how, and shirks any understanding of what the presentation of that information might signify, and instead, essentially, says "there was information, so I made an app, and everybody likes a league table, so I added league tables". It's data visualisation as technical endeavour, when, of course, it is far more than that; the moment you start presenting any information, you're making a statement about it, and nowhere does Gilfelt talk about what he feels the app signifies, or whether its editorial stance is appropriate, which makes me a bit sad.

"Holga D is a digital camera inspired from the extremely popular cult of Holga and other toy cameras of its kind. Even though it's a digital camera, it retains the qualities and simplicity of the original Holga camera and brings back the joy and delayed gratification associated with good old analog photography." I like this not because it's a digital version of a Holga, but what a digital camera might be like if it took the same approach as a Holga. I also really like the reversible top panel.

"Hybrids are smooth and neat. Interdisciplinary thinking is diplomatic; it thrives in a bucolic university setting. Chimeras, though? Man, chimeras are weird. They’re just a bunch of different things bolted together. They’re abrupt. They’re discontinuous. They’re impolitic. They’re not plausible; you look at a chimera and you go, “yeah right.” And I like that! Chimeras are on the very edge of the recombinatory possible. Actually — they’re over the edge."

Just in case you needed instructions.

Composite keys for Rails/ActiveRecord. Really does appear to work, too, which is nice.

Grandpa Wiggly rules perhaps more than it is possible to rule. Highlights: Mayonnaise the cat, general levels of tolerance, Six Feet Under fan, the whole conversation with 420Manda420, utterly charming Reddit manner. Sometimes, the world is awesome.

"Craig Raine’s Heartbreak is a novel in the sense in which Eton is a school near Slough. The description is true but misleading. It is really a collection of short stories, loosely linked by the topic announced in the title; but perhaps because the English are said to be averse to buying such volumes, the publishers have represented it as a novel, rather as Jedward are represented as singers." Yes, this has got a lot of coverage (mainly for that opening sentence) but it's still a powerful piece of criticism from Eagleton.

"Henrietta was an African American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Before she died some of her cancerous tissue was taken – without her permission – and the cells have been reproducing in laboratories around the world ever since.<br />
<br />
Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They are known as the HeLa cell line, and they have become deeply involved in all sorts of medical and genetic research – sometimes in the most unexpected ways."

"What else could we apply crash-only thinking to? Imagine a crash-only government, where the transition between administrations is always a small revolution. In a system like that, you’d optimize for revolution—build buffers around it—and as a result, when a “real” revolution finally came, it’d be no big deal."

Cosplaying not only appearance, but also UI. Lovely.