Intertubes

• World Question Center: How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?

  Hugely interesting replies from a long list of eminent luminaries, thinkers, and gasbags.

Code

• The Total Growth of Open Source

  In some ways the Internet is just a side-effect of the really important event of the late 20th century: the rise of Open Source. This slightly dated but excellent paper analyses data from Ohloh to show that the total amount of Open Source code out there doubles every 12-14 months. Five years ago, there were many big commercial software projects with no Open Source components, today I know of none. Dirk Riehle's other work is also worth looking at.

• A More Readable (Pythonic) Javascript Syntax?

  Fixing Javascript's syntax to make the reasonably pretty structure beneath easier to perceive. I wonder how many other languages could benefit from the same treatment? Combine this with Sass or CleverCSS, and one can see a glimmer of a more pleasant, humane web app development environment.

• smallpt: a global illumination renderer in 99 lines of C++

• ALPHA3: a tool for transforming x86 machine code into 100% alphanumeric code

• Hadoop at Twitter: Splittable LZO Compression

• Why Normalization Failed to Become the Ultimate Guide for Database Designers?

  A factor in the movement to NoSQL - I bet Chris Date feels a disturbance in the force.

Toys

• Zome Advanced Math Creator

  A construction set for adults. I simply must have one of these. Must must.

UX

Two long UX reads in this edition of the linklog - make a cup of coffee, sit somewhere comfortable, and enjoy:

• Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface

  A monograph on user interface design by Bret Victor.

• color vision

  A thorough and entertaining survey of human colour perception, colour models, and the history of our understanding of these things.

Visualisation

• Visualisation of genomic data with the Hilbert curve

  The Hilbert curve is a great visualisation tool when you care about clusters of features in a sequence, but don't care about order. Look out for a few more blog posts on this subject from me in the near future.

• Force-Directed Edge Bundling for Graph Visualization

  Beautiful graph visualisation technique, which reminds me uncannily of the trunking in ant trails. I wonder what a pheromone-trail inspired algorithm for graph visualisation would look like?

• A 2010 "Graphical Computing" Calendar

  A fascinating printable calendar, featuring a different nomographic method for every month.