Flashback to 1986

I’m so pleased that I came across an archive of Popular Computer Weekly magazine on Archive.org.  I found one of my contributions from when “I was a lad” back in the 4th December 1986 issue – it’s a tip on how to rescue your Commodore 64 BASIC program if you’ve hit the reset switch or typed “NEW”. (more…)

Why is Facebook blue? The science of colour in marketing

Why is Facebook blue? According to The New Yorker, the reason is simple. It’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. This means that blue is the color Mark can see the best. In his own words Zuck says:

“Blue is the richest color for me I can see all of blue.”

Not highly scientific right? Well, although in the case of Facebook, that isn’t the case, there are some amazing examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions.

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Why PHP?

PHP is a strange and (let’s get it over with) ugly, little language. It’s not exceptionally fast. It’s not beautiful syntactically. It’s not formulated around a clear opinion. And it’s still what I write a lot of software in. The obvious question is: why? (more…)

Telegram – the smart persons’ choice

First I read of Whatsapp’s behaviour of rifling through the contacts on your phone, extracting details and sending them all back to HQ.  Then the news breaks of Facebook’s $19 BILLION(!) purchase of Whatsapp so it’s time to find an alternative messaging system. (more…)

WP-CLI

It’s typical… you spend ages writing scripts to manage WordPress installations… take a long time finding ways to detect if things need updating, looking for security holes etc.  Then, months later after refining your scripts to perfection, you come across a tool that is perfect for the job and does much more besides.  DOH! (more…)