1. Kerbal Space Program Airship Design Tips

    When consistently failing to synchronise orbit and dock got boring, I started installing mods and building whatever nonsense their parts inspired. KAS confused me a little at first (what use is a grappling hook on a rocket?), but adding in Hooligan Labs’ Airships, B9 Aerospace’s cargo holds and Firespitter’s propulsion parts results in some really fun craft.

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  2. Problems with Hash Fragment Subscriptions

    Superfeedr has this awesome feature allowing you to subscribe to fragments of an HTML page rather than the whole thing — perfect for cases where the publisher of the HTML page doesn’t send PubSubHubbub pings to let the hub know when content has changed, as this forces the hub to poll the content and notify subscribers on even the smallest change to the content.

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  3. Getting started with microformats2

    Classic microformats have been serving the web community’s need to extend HTML’s expressive power since 2004. Through an evolutionary, open, rigorous community process and human-first design principles, structured use of the class and rel attributes have paved the cowpaths of publishing data about people, places, events, reviews, products and more.

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  4. Barebones PIC Programming on Mac + pickit2

    If you’ve never done any microcontroller programming, start with an arduino.cc. It’s the best way of getting started with embedded hardware programming.

    If for whatever reason you’re determined to use PICs (cost, availability of free samples, you already had a bunch of them, etc.), you should get a pickit3 and use the netbeans-derived MPLAB X to develop, program and debug your devices.

    But if like me you’re in the weird position of having a bunch of PICs, a Chinese knockoff pickit2 and a strong dislike of Java, here’s how to set up a *minimal* C development environment on a Mac.

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  5. What are internet of things devices called?

    Each computer hardware form factor has gone through several names before one started to obviously dominate. Palmtop, PDA, handheld computer, smartphone, notebook, laptop, clamshell, netbook, portable computer, tablet, slate, touchpad computer, “phablet”.

    What should the new class of devices being created under the “internet of things” banner be referred to as?

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  6. Data Export

    In which I document the experience of exporting data from several services, commenting on the UI, UX, terminology and utility/tangibility/formatting of the data produced.

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