On keyboards
A blog post on the importance of keyboards. I concur! I’m reasonably happy with my pre-Aluminium Apple wireless keyboard, but I’m still waiting for something that’s RSI-reducing, has decent tactile response (despite being a child of the eighties, I used to own a typewriter and have a lot of push in these fingers of mine). A nice noisy clatter is fine.
I have a huge problem with most laptop keyboards - the one on my MacBook Pro is pretty good - I fat-finger the keys a little, and it’s plagued with first revision Apple defects (fuck you, Steve Jobs, I just want a computer that works) that have cost me tons in repairs that anywhere else than Apple would be covered by warranty. Most PC laptop keyboards I’ve used are a pile of utter shite. They keys are off just target enough to be unusable.
Despite people wishing for neural and body gesture interfaces, keyboards are still going to be with us in fifty years. I want a keyboard that doesn’t get dirty, doesn’t require cleaning, that I can drop off my desk and it’ll still work (hey, I could probably drop my old typewriter on the floor and it’d do more damage to the floor than the typewriter), is secure (ie. the Bluetooth connection between the computer and the keyboard is encrypted), has a reassuring clatter and is something that I can write hundreds of pages with comfortably.
Wadhurst, East Sussex, England
The wicked witch is dead. No more font in HTML 5! Still not complete though - it lacks the head/@profile attribute which, for some insanely heavy-handed interpretation of “pave the cowpaths”, was removed from the standard (since, you know, if you have something that people don’t use, the best way to encourage them to use it is to get rid of it).
Orpington Road, Chislehurst, England
Sir Tim ‘timbl’ Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau have been quoted in a post on BBC News where timbl says that the Web is in it’s infancy. I agree. Obviously, this is a reference to the Semantic Web, but the article does not discuss this.
Orpington Road, Chislehurst, England
If you are in London this evening, be sure to sign up and come along to the Fire Eagle developer day. There’s free pizza and free wifi, both courtesy of the nice folks at Yahoo! 18 places left at time of writing.
Malet Street, London, England
Daniel Lewis has a great post knocking some sense into another clueless article about the Semantic Web. If you don’t understand something about the Semantic Web, rather than broadcast your ignorance to the world, do come and ask on IRC!
Dryden Street, London, England
If a woman can tell her children that their father kidnapped her, it’s a great love story.
Seriously? That’s what the ‘cultural liaison officer’ says. Some women disagree. A case of Terminal 4 ethics, perhaps?
Orpington, England
A particualry ingenious use of XML. Why am I not surprised that it’s through an “enterprisey” web services endpoint?
Orpington, England
Another celebration of fifteen years of the Web on the BBC News site. I love the statistic about the Web growing 341,634% in 1994. Thanks timbl! I don’t know where I would be without the Web.
Orpington, England
The Templeton Foundation has published responses from scientists and philosophers to the question “Does science make belief in God obsolete?”
Tonbridge, Kent, England
