reification:

1. The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
2. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
3. (programming) Process that makes out of a non-computable/addressable object a computable/addressable one.

(see also the Wikipedia disambiguation page ( Read more... )

I'm still not sure how I feel about the "All the things must be flat" design trend. (Well, that's not true, I certainly hate Windows 8's Xbox-like desktop, the way that the Xbox UI was changed to match it, and the iOS 7 UI update.) Also, I did notice, the other day, how LJ's own user interface was certainly, er, flattenized ( Read more... )

Something I didn't know about, and was excited to find out yesterday.

Github finally has traffic analytics built-in! (Well, finally as in this past January. But still, I didn't realize!) And all thanks to Ilya Grigorik and his excellent ga-beacon repo ( Read more... )

To shellefly, who asked about the Pomodoro Technique in the comments:

Yep, I used it with an actual pomodoro kitchen timer (which is cute and only $4.99 on amazon! Though the one I bought, Cat liked and immediately yoinked), as well as the online Pomodoro Helper timer ( Read more... )

A number of years ago, I stumbled upon an instant messenger service called IM Smarter. It was an IM daemon -- you signed up on the website, and added the IMSmarter bot to your IM friends list (I believe it worked with AIM or Yahoo Messenger). And then you could open up a chat window, and send commands to the bot. You could do things like:

in 1 ( Read more... )

Recycling is hard in general, even when you're fairly motivated. You pretty much have to set it up so that all the activation barriers are lowered, and all obstacles are removed. So, if you set up convenient recycling containers for your glass or plastic or whatnot, then it takes a minimum of effort and thought, and it actually happens. Make it so ( Read more... )

JoikuSpot software does something remarkable. For supported cellphones (a couple of Samsung models, and a bunch of Nokia models), it turns your cellphone into a WiFi hotspotThink about that for a second. Think of the elegance of it. Most phones these days have unlimited, fairly high-speed internet connections. What the software does is use that ( Read more... )

If, like me, you happen to:
* be running Pidgin on Windows
* and had to recently upgrade to Pidgin 2.4.3
* and the fact that the typeahead search on the buddy list is broken (gets stuck at the first letter) drives you crazy,

here's the fixAhhh, much better ( Read more... )

I'm sure you've seen this Wired article that talks about how Technology Brings Us Closer Together, makes it more interesting to live in cities than to spread apart and telecommute.

And I just wanted to bring that up again, to say I can completely vouch for thisMy local, physical, human life is so much richer because of tech. Almost every single ( Read more... )

I've been wanting to do a whole-house data backup solution for a while now (and the Tech Magazine Loses June Issue, No Backup article only reminds me of it, and also makes me want to mock them).

I have a DVD burner for short-term local backups (although see this excellent How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media article for which blank media is the ( Read more... )