Archive: January 7th, 2015

HTTP/2.0 - The IETF is Phoning It In - ACM Queue

There are some good points here comparing HTTP2 and SPDY, but I’m mostly linking to this because of the three wonderful opening paragraphs:

A very long time ago —in 1989 —Ronald Reagan was president, albeit only for the final 19½ days of his term. And before 1989 was over Taylor Swift had been born, and Andrei Sakharov and Samuel Beckett had died.

In the long run, the most memorable event of 1989 will probably be that Tim Berners-Lee hacked up the HTTP protocol and named the result the “World Wide Web.” (One remarkable property of this name is that the abbreviation “WWW” has twice as many syllables and takes longer to pronounce.)

Tim’s HTTP protocol ran on 10Mbit/s, Ethernet, and coax cables, and his computer was a NeXT Cube with a 25-MHz clock frequency. Twenty-six years later, my laptop CPU is a hundred times faster and has a thousand times as much RAM as Tim’s machine had, but the HTTP protocol is still the same.

Pasta with cauliflower, rosemary, anchovy, parsley, and chili flakes, with parmesan.

Pasta with cauliflower, rosemary, anchovy, parsley, and chili flakes, with parmesan.

Cauliflower.

Cauliflower.

Cauliflower and rosemary.

Cauliflower and rosemary.

People working in open-plan offices need to develop the ability—à la City And The City—to not see what is on their co-worker’s screens.

Events in 2015

Quite a significant chunk of my time last year was spent organising dConstruct 2014. The final result was worth it, but it really took it out of me. It got kind of stressful there for a while: ticket sales weren’t going as well as previous years, so I had to dip my toes into the world of… (shudder) marketing.

That was my third year organising dConstruct, and I’m immensely proud of all three events. dConstruct 2012—also known as “the one with James Burke”—remains a highlight of my life. But—especially after the particularly draining 2014 event—I’m going to pass on organising it this year.

To be honest, I think that dConstruct 2014, the tenth one, could stand as a perfectly fine final event. It’s not like it needs to run forever, right?

Andy has been pondering this very question, but he’s up for giving dConstruct at least one more go in 2015:

As we prepare for our tenth anniversary, we’ve also been asking whether it should be our last—at least for a while. The jury is still out, and we probably won’t make any decisions till after the event.

Y’know, it could turn out that dConstruct in 2015 might reinvigorate my energy, but for now, I’m just too burned out to contemplate taking it on myself. Anyway, I know that the other Clearlefties are more than capable of putting together a fantastic event.

But dConstruct wasn’t the only event I organised last year. 2014’s Responsive Day Out was a wonderful event, and much less stressful to organise. That’s mostly because it’s a very different beast to dConstruct; much looser, smaller, and easy-going, with fewer expectations. That makes for a fun day out all ‘round.

I wasn’t even sure if there was going to be a second Responsive Day Out, but I’m really glad we did it. In fact, I think there’s room for one last go.

I’ve already started putting a line-up together (and I’m squeeing with excitement about it already!), and this will definitely be the last Responsive Day Out, but keep your calendar clear on Friday, June 19th for…

Responsive Day Out 3: The Final Breakpoint.

We Suck at HTTP

I’m always surprised to find that working web developers often don’t know (or care) about basic protocol-level stuff like when to use GET and when to use POST.

My point is that a lot of web developers today are completely ignorant of the protocol that is the basis for their job. A core understanding of HTTP should be a base requirement for working in this business.

Apps Everywhere, but No Unifying Link - NYTimes.com

But as people spend more time on their mobile devices and in their apps, their Internet has taken a step backward, becoming more isolated, more disorganized and ultimately harder to use — more like the web before search engines.

Postcards from a Supply Chain

Dan has started writing up what he did on his Summer hols …on a container ship travelling to China.

It is, of course, in the form of an email newsletter because that’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

A New Way to Test Internet Explorer on OS X, iOS and Android | Rey Bango

This a great step-by-step walkthrough from Rey on setting up a remote version of Internet Explorer for testing on Mac.