http://www.alandix.com/blog just starting ... Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:22:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I had been reluctantly considering giving up using Firefox as it crawled to a halt so often on so many sites. To be fair I think it is because I keep lots of tabs open and Firefox did not seem to deal will with pages with many refreshing elements ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/08/28/firefox-3-seems-to-have-fixed-memory-problems/ Just adding blog to Technorati Profile so need to add this post so it recognises me! http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/08/27/joining-technorati/ A story, a bit of a moan ... and then I hope some constructive ideas . It is time for the University annual report, which includes a list of all publications across the University. In previous years this was an easy job. I keep an up-to-date web page with all ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/08/12/eprints-relaxed-and-scalable-interfaces/ Last week I was away in Cornwall and lost (but later found) my phone, so was both without a phone and with no internet connection ... and it was amazingly liberating. My life is driven by the never ending stream of incoming mails and while in principle I could ignore ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/08/06/escape-from-distraction/ When the delayed SATS results eventually arrive, I'm sure there will be the regular navel gazing at the state of basic numeracy and literacy in UK schools. But what about those who were in primary schools 30 years ago? This morning on BBC News Channel an interviewer was talking to ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/07/18/basic-numeracy/ Firefly will be featured in a special science series on BBC North West Tonight this evening sometime between 6:30 and 7 (SKY channel 978 if you are not in the North West!). http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/07/15/firefly-on-tv/ Was with Kiel, one of my PhD students the other day, reading a draft chapter of his PhD thesis. He used the word 'thusly' and at first I thought this was a Kiel-ism (sorry Kiel, you do have a few). However, he assured me it was common usage ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/06/26/thusly-he-wrote/ Over 20 years ago I wrote "The Myth of the Infinitely Fast Machine", about the way software developers effectively assume that everything on the machine side of human interaction happens instantly. Often interaction is programmed in a turn-taking style: wait for user action process the event display changes back to step 1 This ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/06/21/why-software-need-never-hang/ Some weeks ago I upgraded Microsoft Office to Office 2008 (yes it does still have menus on the Mac!), and life since has been constant trouble. OK first there are 'minor' niggles like it eating 1/2 my screen space in huge tool bars replicated at the top of every window, or ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/06/16/pain-tears-and-office-2008/ I've worried for a while about desktop URLs. Within the web it is easy to link things together. If I want to refer to my home page I just add a link like this. However, on the desktop things are not so simple and I end up copying ... http://www.alandix.com/blog/2008/06/13/local-uris-mashing-up-the-desktop/