Some lovely quotes from various sources about programming here. I liked:

"Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

and

"There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'."

The Compton Skyline Project: "The Compton Skyline Project is a collaborative project devised by Brighton-based artist Steve Geliot which brings together professional artists and local people to create a unique temporary artwork in the heart of a community."

There was a presentation on this at dScape last year and it looked absolutely fantastic.

Bad news for mobile music: "When asked what do they do when they hear a track which they'd like to download to their mobile, only six per cent said they'd buy it from their network operator's portal. A massive 44 per cent said they simply weren't interested in downloading music to their mobile phones."

Given that we've had MP3-playing mobiles for a good few years now (I can't remember the last time I bought a handset which didn't have 64MB of memory and headphones bundled with it), are there any studies about teenagers behaviour with phones and music-playing *today* - i.e. actual evidence that, in the wild, the phone is starting to replace the dedicated MP3 player?

I'm not after an analysis of units shipped of ipods vs handsets - handsets get upgraded quickly, and the purchase of a handset doesn't necessarily indicate that it's being used to listen to music. And I'm not interested in focus-group type studies asking end-users what they'd like to do - but rather actual research into observed behaviour.

Anyone know?

All Aboard The Gravy Train: "You just focus on the problems with the old technology, while saying nothing of the problems that will inevitably accompany the new one. The newer option has an image that is unblemished by the harsh light of experience."

We're sponsoring this event at Sussex University next week: "Human-Centred Technology: Designing for Collaborative as well as Individualised Environments".