Naked - David Sedaris

A collection of autobiographical essays by American humorist David Sedaris. I listened to the abridged audio. I am tempted to get the book to read the gaps.

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UIWebView and Wikipedia don't mix?

Ok, so I was going to blog about the issues I have been having with UIWebView and Wikipedia, but decided I might get some answers from StackOverflow.

The short version is:

• Discovery. UIWebView no work for Wikipedia pages.
• Self Deprecation. I have broken something.
• Paranoia. Those bastards are blocking me.
• Sanity. Oh! Not so much blocking me. Smiling and sending me data.
• More Self Deprecation. Oh god, I suck. It really is me.
• Last minute ego rescue. Wow! This doesn't work in Tweetie either and Tweetie freakin rocks! Therefore, I don't suck ... So much.
• Depression. This looks like UIWebView bug, how the hell am I gonna work around this?
• Duct Tape FTW. Turns out the solution can be found with nasty hackery. Awesome. Thanks StackOverflow.

You can find a slightly more coherent description of the problem in my StackOverflow question.

If you are interested in the test UIWebView app that demonstrates the problem, it is here.

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Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century - Tony Judt

A collection of essays and book reviews on a variety of 20th century places, events and personalities. This book emphasizes the importance of remembering the lessons of that century, that might otherwise be forgotten.

While my lack of philosophical and historical vocabulary limited my understanding and enjoyment of the earlier essays on European intellectuals, I found the later parts Lost in transition, places and memories and The American half-century fascinating.

Without anything more insightful to say than can't be found elsewhere, I made a note of a few quotes from the later essays that struck me particularly:

The country that wouldn't grow up (Israel Liberal Daily Haaretz - May 2006)

Seen from the outside Israel still comports itself like an adolescent, consumed by a brittle confidence in it's own uniqueness, certain that no one understands it and everyone is against it, full of wounded amour-propre. Quick to take offense and quick to give it.

The Crisis, Kennedy, Khrushchev and Cuba

With hindsight, we can see that Kennedy managed to obtain the best possible outcome in the circumstances, he was not just lucky either, he was consistent. In rejecting the advise he was offered in hundreds of hours of secret meetings, he ran serious risks too. As he remarked to the assembled senior congressmen on the day of his press conference revealing the crisis:

"The people who are the best off are the people whos advise is not taken, because whatever we do is filled with hazards."

Of course Kennedy's motives were never unmixed and like any politician he sought to turn his management of the affair into a political asset.

The Illusionist - Henry Kissinger and American foreign policy

The years 1968 to 75 were the hinge on which the second half of our century turned.

Richard Nixon was, in one respect, a fortunate man. Felled by Watergate he has been resurrected, in some quarters, as an unlikely tragic hero. The greatest foreign policy president we nearly had, as it were ... Anyone tempted to give credit to such claims, should read William Bundy's book which anticipates what, one must hope, will be the considered judgment of history upon a troubled and troubling era in American public affairs.

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WW2 Daily on the iPhone and Android

WW2 Daily answers two fundamental questions:

• What happened today in World War Two?
• Where did it happen? Show me a map!

New in 1.5 - iOS 4.0 & new artwork.

A lite version version is available free, which only supports today's date and shows 5 daily cards.

Flip through daily cards showing important events leading up to and during the most deadly and perhaps most significant conflict in human history.

Each card shows the date, a succinct description and a zoomable map for the event. You can flip the card over to read the Wikipedia article describing the event.

You can sort your deck of events using two mechanisms:

• Sort by day and month for a this day in history view.
• Select a start date and then sort by day, month and year for a true chronological sequence of events from that date onwards.

The data for WW2 Daily comes from the World War Two Timeline Project. This is a community contributed project to collect time and place data for the war. You can come to the site to browse the timeline or even log in and contribute new data.

The Timeline Project currently indexes almost 800 hundred data points with new entries being added daily. If a significant event isn't in the database yet, it soon will be.

Iconoclast : Ted Jotikasthira!

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Tap Index

Tap Index is a fast, cross referenced glossary of Tap Terms. It is free on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

• Index information is stored on your phone. Fast access and no network connectivity required.
• Each page has been cross referenced for fast browsing of glossary terms.
• Random flashcard functionality allows you to test your knowledge of Tap terms.

Tap Index uses some of the information available on the Wikipedia Tap page. This data has been modified, optimized and cross referenced for the iPhone and is available under the CCA - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Permalink - Comments - Tags: Development,Tap Index,iPhone,App,Glossaries

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