/dev/nikc/blog

A while back, Jeff Atwood wrote about the proverbial Internet Driver’s license. I liked the article and agreed wholeheartedly. Lately even more so.

Nowadays, hardly a month passes when a new service or interesting site doesn’t pop up, that one simply “must” check out to keep on top of the game – especially being part of the industry, but mostly due to curiosity or peer pressure. Often, this site or service will offer a higher level of service if you register as a member. In my case, I tend to create user accounts just to take the alias I use off the market. Or, rather, I used to do so.

Lately I’ve noticed that I mostly shun away from sites that require me to create a new user account. It’ll have to be something pretty damn special for me to care. Despite the fact that I’ve given up on managing my credentials mentally and handed over the task to 1Password. I just don’t want Yet Another User Account, when there are existing established solutions available which will let me identify myself using one that I already have.

So stop asking me to register and let me use the identity provider of my own choice.

Approximately 24 and a half hours ago I placed an order on Amazon.com. During the night a shipment confirmation had arrived in my inbox. Five minutes ago, UPS Finland phoned me up to inform me my shipment is arriving next week and that they’ll be taking care of all the customs mumbo jumbo for me.

Wow.

These guys have their act together. Big time.

Thanks to the Mobile Meetup arranged by Frontend Finland, I was presented a quick look into the current state of developing apps for the three leading mobile platforms today, presented by people who are actually doing it. Personally, mobile development is a field I’ve dabbled time to time in over the years, but never created anything useful due to several reasons; me (and my [lack of] creativity) probably being the biggest obstacle and the lack of paying customers for my employers following closely after.

Of the platforms presented today, surprisingly, Qt Quick together with QML seemed the most appealing to the coder inside me, but sadly isn’t very current for me. iOS probably tickled the drag-and-droppers in the crowd – me, not so much. Android should be right down the alley for those who are familiar with razors and/or cranial acceleration towards firm surfaces – not the least thanks to the tools that are (not) available.

It really is a jungle out there. Maybe one day there’ll be a machete that’ll allow us to hack-n-slash our way through it in style.

<code>/usr/bin/curl -s http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/saa/Helsinki|/usr/bin/grep "Päivän pituus"|/usr/bin/sed -e 's/^[ ]*//' -e 's/<[/]\{0,1\}[^>]*>//g'</code>