worthwhile

Interesting

Here is a collection of content i hold in high regard:

TED

Great videos on all sorts of topics from Architecture to Religion.

Hacker News

Good tech news and general programming related topics.

Adam Curtis

Pretty much any Documentary he has made as well as his blog for interesting insights into geopolitics and general socio political behaviour.

Hans Rosling

An insightfull view of the world using statistics through the Gap Minder software. Often reporting on good things going on in the world with the odd amusing quip thrown in.

Doubling time and the rule of 70

Lecture on what exponential growth really means to you. The answer to this question is incredible important in a way you will not comprehend until you watch this video. It also teaches you what compound growth is, this is important for anyone who has a bank account.

Multivax and the The Last Question

A short story by Isaac Asimov on the future. Shows that entropy is kind of scary.

Helvetica

A documentary about typography and graphic design in the last century. It stars some very interesting and enjoyable characters, talking passionately about a subject you engage in everyday but probably think little about.

Photography – Cambridge in Colour

If you read all the tutorials and articles on this site you have pretty much undertaken a basic to mid level digital photography course without paying anything.

Photo Editing – dpBestflow

If you are into photography you should know all your tools, this extends to more than just your camera. You should know the content of these links and how they apply to making your pictures pretty.

Books

Interesting books. No particular order.

Stalingrad
ISBN: 0141032405
War is not fun.
Zen and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance
ISBN: 0061673730
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
ISBN: 0099450259
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
ISBN: 0434003484
Brave New World
ISBN: 0099518473
Catch-22
ISBN: 9780099477310
1984
ISBN: 0141036141
Animal Farm
ISBN 9780141036137

Erowid

If someone supposedly tells you what a drug is like and this website doesn’t have a similar story they are probably lying. This place has more interesting stories about drugs than the 60s rolled into one.

Typeography

  • http://practicaltypography.com/

Open Catalogue Protocol (OCP / OCF)

Tek

I Have recently been trying to find a way of standardising the on-line catalogue we use at work. Something to do with the same data being entered into multiple databases, lots of manual data entry you get the picture.

I have been a bit disappointed to discover that there is very little in the way of a standard format for exchanging catalogue information. I can understand why Online Shopping Cart projects have been slow to implement this “we don’t want them running away from our system” but i would have thought there might have least been a push from some of the more confident open source movements.
Please correct me if I’m wrong here i haven’t looked at them all

After digging around a bit i did find that someone has created a format called the Open Catalogue Protocol or Format but unfortunately whoever implemented doesn’t seem to be around any more. (http://www.martsoft.com/ocp/)

If anyone knows where i could find a DTD for this please let me know.

This is the only example i could find of its implementation:


From:  http://www.martsoft.com/docs/hierarchy.txt
Date:  1999-05-05

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>

<!--
  Catalog hierarchy file:
    this file only contains a hierarchy of categories, no products;
    the catalog engine caches it in memory
-->

<catalog>

  <category name="Computer Product">

    <param name="NumberOfProduct" value="23"/>

    <attr name="Part ID" value=""/>
    <attr name="Vendor" value=""/>
    <attr name="Description" value=""/>
    <attr name="Cost" valuetype="float" value="" unit="dollar"/>

    <category name="Computer Hardware">
      <link name="" valuetype="Alternative"
         value="OCP://www.martsoft.com/UPYP/Computer Related/Computer/HW/"/>
    </category>

    <category name="Computer Software">
      <attr name="title" value="Software xxx"/>
      <attr name="Platform" value=""/>
      <attr name="Version" value=""/>

      <link name="" valuetype="CrossSell" value="OCP://www.xyz.com/sw/"/>

      <product name="11000078">
        <link name="" valuetype="PartOf" value="Computer Product/Computer Software/11000079"> 
        <attr name="Part ID" value="33444IET">
        <attr name="Vendor" value="Microsoft">
        <attr name="title" value="Microsoft Word"/>
        <attr name="Cost" valuetype="float" value="29.99" unit="dollar"/>
        <attr name="Platform" value="Microsoft Windows 98"/>
        <attr name="Version" value="7.0"/>
        <attr name="Description" value="Word Editor"/>
          <value>
            <val>Inline pictures</val>
            <val>HTML ready</val>
          </value>
        </attr>
      </product> 

      <product name="11000079">
        <link name="" valuetype="HasPart" value="Computer Product/Computer Software/11000078">
        <attr name="Part ID" value="33444FFY">
        <attr name="Vendor" value="Microsoft">
        <attr name="title" value="Microsoft Office 98"/>
        <attr name="Cost" valuetype="float" value="399.99" unit="dollar"/>
        <attr name="Platform" value="Microsoft Windows 98"/>
        <attr name="Version" value="7.0"/>
        <attr name="Description" value="Office product suite"/>
      </product>

    </category>

  </category>

  <category name="Real Estate">
  </category>

</catalog>