Links for Thursday March 20th 2014

27 Reasons Why You’re Still Watching “The West Wing”
I really did/do love that show. In fact, I honestly worry about people who don't. I suspect they may have something wrong with them. Something really quite fundamental.

Links for Tuesday March 11th 2014

The Case For Columbo
I now wish to watch more Columbo. I've seen the odd episode before, but I've never really had a go at the full canon, as it were.

BBC News – The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
This is an absolutely fantastic story about a man who has invented something that genuinely makes life better for some of the poorest women in the world.

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This
And boy, do I remember some of these. The twitching has almost stopped…
clutter – Opt out of Dropbox’s arbitration clause – Opt out of Dropbox’s arbitration clause
If you use Dropbox, I urge you to go here, read this, and then opt out of the new TOS clause. Dropbox is still a great service, and I hope it will never matter that I've done this, but the clause is a bad idea – I don't want my rights limited if something *should* go wrong – even if I never exercise them. All that said: I'm impressed they've made it easy to opt out of this clause.

Kintsugi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Found this via Del. Brilliant and fascinating concept, the idea of using repair to add value and even beauty to damaged things.
An Exciting Announcement | Newspaper Club
Newspaper club are now doing a PoD service. This is the proper interesting. OK, it's not terribly cheap, but as a notionally interesting object, a 24 page newspaper for a fiver seems saleable to me.

The Year of Code’s neoliberal agenda – Adrian Short
I completely support teaching young people a basic understand of what it means to code – I think it's an increasingly vital skill to understand, even if one does not wish to do it professionally, in much the same way I think it's a good idea to have an understand of the rough shape of legal proceedings, and how the law works, even if you're not a lawyer. What I absolutely *no not* support, as expressed on this bit of writing, is teaching the idea that it is only of value to learn a skill because it will make you money. All the skills I am proudest of, and derive the most personal satisfaction from, are the ones that I *do not want* to commercialise, and we should be teaching our kids that *learning* is good, not "skills acquisition".

Beautiful Games gallery: football fonts | Football | theguardian.com
I have close to fuck-all interest in football, but I do like studies of unusual uses for type.

The League of Moveable Type
A selection of rather nice free & open-source fonts.

15 Ways To Improve London’s Train Network | Londonist
I liked this. A dozen or so usability improvements to the map and sinage, and a few other idea that make a suprising amount of sense, like reopening York Road.
The 2014 London “Coffee Stops’ Map
Tube map, listing the best coffee to be had near each stop. I take issue with a few of their choices, and their definition of "near" is a bit, er, different (their choice for Wimbldon, for example, is a 15 min walk up a steep hill to a place that is often *very* busy, which is more than I would want to both with if I'm just in town and want a quick coffee) but still: handy nonetheless.