AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!

AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!: "AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys)."

San Jose Mercury News - Market for doorknobs slowly losing its grip

San Jose Mercury News - Market for doorknobs slowly losing its grip: "Because few people, decorators aside, get up in the morning feeling that they simply must do something about their doorknobs, it's a slow revolution. But levers now account for 15 percent of U.S. door-opener sales for homes, according to hardware industry surveys, and double that in the market's high end."

Bare Choons - Flash Physics

Bare Choons - Flash Physics: "Wow! It's amazing what you can do with flash these days... You can even interact with it. My favorite it the 2nd experiment."

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library: "Bullet is a 3D Collision Detection and Rigid Body Dynamics Library for games and animation.
Free for commercial use, including PlayStation 3, Open Source multiplatform C under the ZLib License.
Discrete and continuous collision detection, integrated into Blender 3D and COLLADA 1.4 Physics tools support."

Netgear's tiny Network Attached Storage RAID -- just right for a home entertainment/data server? - Boing Boing

Netgear's tiny Network Attached Storage RAID -- just right for a home entertainment/data server? - Boing Boing: "it's a network-attached storage box with four SATA slots that comes empty or with up to 4 terabytes of storage and is approximately the size of the little practice amp I had when I was learning to play bass guitar."

Bulk Food Distributor, Wholesale Spices, Nuts, Chocolates and Candy Online

Bulk Food Distributor, Wholesale Spices, Nuts, Chocolates and Candy Online: "the premier online bulk foods distributor"

The Optics of an Eyeglass Prescription

The Optics of an Eyeglass Prescription: "This essay is intended to satisfy curiosity about what the notations and numbers on an eyeglass prescription mean. It is about optics, not about ophthalmology."

Bacon Flow Chart

Bacon Flow Chart

Fun with Inform 7 || kuro5hin.org

Fun with Inform 7 || kuro5hin.org: "What is Inform you may ask? Well it's compiler for the old z-machine VM, that was made popular by Infocom in the 1980's."

Sinus problems? Wash them away -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Sinus problems? Wash them away -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com: "Twenty-five years later, she's still touting the neti pot -- and she's also using it daily to refresh her nasal passages."

more at:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/013258.php#013258

Alfred the King of Disco, Dick Hyman

Alfred the King of Disco, Dick Hyman: "There is nothing anonymous about this tune. 'Alfred, the King of Disco' is certainly not going to just blend in with the likes of 'Two Hearts in Three-Quarter Time' or 'The Way We Were.' It's not only odd, it quite likely never make it out of the sound library until someone grabbed the tape.

And then there's the music. This is Hyman solo on electronic organ with rhythm effects and some kind of wah-wah peddle. In fact, it sounds as if some demo tape Hyman recorded to showcase his skills on the wah-wah, since at one point he dabbles with it to the point that the tune almost self-deconstructs."

Paul's Ramblings: Vintage Christmas Wax: Revisited

Paul's Ramblings: Vintage Christmas Wax: Revisited: "here is a collection of vintage wax recordings from the early 1900s through the late 1930s"

Games � Bloxorz

Games � Bloxorz :
twotd

FARK.com: (3274131) Sixty-three years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge began. "Just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this i

FARK.com: (3274131) Sixty-three years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge began. "Just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going"

"Late on the night of December 23rd, Sergeant John Banister of the 14th Cavalry Group found himself meandering through the village of Provedroux, southwest of Vielsalm. He'd been separated from his unit during the wild retreat of the first days and joined up with Task Force Jones, defending the southern side of the Fortified Goose Egg. Now they were in retreat again. The Germans were closing in on the village from three sides. American vehicles were pulling out, and Banister was once again separated from his new unit, with no ride out.

A tank destroyer rolled by; somebody waved him aboard and Banister eagerly climbed on. They roared out of the burning town. Somebody told Banister that he was riding with Lieutenant Bill Rogers. "Who's he?" Banister wanted to know. "Will Rogers' son," came the answer. It was a hell of a way to meet a celebrity.
An hour later they reached the main highway running west from Vielsalm. There they found a lone soldier digging a foxhole. Armed with bazooka and rifle, unshaven and filthy, he went about his business with a stoic nonchalance. They pulled up to him and stopped. He didn't seem to care about the refugees. "If yer lookin for a safe place," he said, "just pull that vehicle behind me. I'm the 82nd Airborne. This is as far as the bastards are going."

The men on the tank destroyer hesitated. After the constant retreats of the last week, they didn't have much fight left in them. But the paratrooper's determination was infectious. "You heard the man," declared Rogers. "Let's set up for business!" Twenty minutes later, two truckloads of GIs joined their little roadblock. All through the night, men trickled in, and their defenses grew stronger."

Top 15 Weird Gadgets You Never Thought Existed

Top 15 Weird Gadgets You Never Thought Existed: "Innovation has brought us many amazing gadgets. However, there are some weird gadgets that were born as the result of the wildest imagination by their inventors. Here are the top 15 weird gadgets that you never thought existed."

Now THAT is a Christmas dinner! | Samizdata.net

Now THAT is a Christmas dinner! | Samizdata.net: "The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago. He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock - producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish."

Diana Walker: The Bigger Picture Gallery (December 2007) - The Digital Journalist

Diana Walker: The Bigger Picture Gallery (December 2007) - The Digital Journalist: "STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs"

Phone Recording Archive

Phone Recording Archive: "Here are a bunch of phone company recordings that I have recorded off of my phone. The files are available in .WAV format and also in .MP3 format"

Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG: Advent calendars

Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG: Advent calendars
Daily manger sets!

success_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 1155x1330 pixels)

success_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 1155x1330 pixels)

Datamancer.net -- Datamancer's Steampunk Victorian Laptop

Datamancer.net -- Datamancer's Steampunk Victorian Laptop: "This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts."

inside looking out � What You Need To Know About Amazon SimpleDB

inside looking out � What You Need To Know About Amazon SimpleDB:

"What’s cool about SimpleDB
* Really large data sets
* Really Fast
* Highly Available - It’s Amazon. Running Erlang. Whoa.
* On demand scaling - Like S3, EC2, with a sensible data metering pricing model
* Schemaless - major cool factor for me here; items are little hash tables containing sets of key, value pairs"

Plushie:An Interactive Design System for Plush Toys:

We introduce Plushie, an interactive system that allows nonprofessional users to design their own original plush toys. To design a plush toy, one needs to construct an appropriate two-dimensional (2D) pattern. However, it is difficult for non-professional users to appropriately design a 2D pattern. Some recent systems automatically generate a 2D pattern for a given three-dimensional (3D) model, but constructing a 3D model is itself a challenge. Furthermore, an arbitrary 3D model cannot necessarily be realized as a real plush toy, and the final sewn result can be very different from the original 3D model. We avoid this mismatch by constructing appropriate 2D patterns and applying simple physical simulation to it on the fly during 3D modeling. In this way, the model on the screen is always a good approximation of the final sewn result, which makes the design process much more efficient. We use a sketching interface for 3D modeling and also provide various editing operations tailored for plush toy design. Internally, the system constructs a 2D cloth pattern in such a way that the simulation result matches the user's input stroke. Our goal is to show that relatively simple algorithms can provide fast, satisfactory results to the user whereas the pursuit of optimal layout and simulation accuracy lies outside this paper's scope. We successfully demonstrated that non-professional users could design plush toys or balloon easily using Plushie.

Welcome to DropZone, home of SCAD diving in the UK

Welcome to DropZone, home of SCAD diving in the UK: "SCAD Diving is a new, unique thrill ride. It is the only system in the world, that allows unattached, controlled free fall. The rider gets to the release level at 150 feet height by using a special elevator or the stairs outside the tower. Mobile operations use buildings or cranes."

Megan McArdle (December 11, 2007) - How can markets be efficient if people are such morons?

Megan McArdle (December 11, 2007) - How can markets be efficient if people are such morons?: "There is, of course, a bit of a puzzle in finance. To wit: how can markets be so efficient that even very smart people with PhDs in finance cannot (on average) outperform a diversified index, when so many of the people buying and selling the stocks are so stupid that they think they can beat the market?"

Handbook of Applied Cryptography

Handbook of Applied Cryptography: "CRC Press has generously given us permission to make all chapters available for free download. "

Desktop Tower Defense

Desktop Tower Defense: "Desktop TD is a fun flash based puzzle / strategy game where you have to protect your desktop from invaders by spending money on attacking pieces and building a maze for them to follow. A strangely addictive yet stress relieving game... how many levels can you survive?"

CAPTCHA CAPTCHA DECODER CAPTCHA DECODE

CAPTCHA CAPTCHA DECODER CAPTCHA DECODE

The Programmer Dress Code

The Programmer Dress Code: "I really want to know what it is about programming, or computers in general, that makes people want to grow a beard, have long hair, and dress like a slob."

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii: "Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR led in the tip. By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track upto 4 points, multiple pens can be used. "

Vertical Wind Tunnel / Indoor Skydiving

Vertical Wind Tunnel / Indoor Skydiving: "iFly SF Bay is vertical wind tunnel where almost anyone can learn to fly. iFly by SkyVenture is the most exciting activity around!"

Starting Forth by Leo Brodie

Starting Forth by Leo Brodie: "This classic Forth tutorial is available in its entirety here as an updated online edition. Updates to the original text include code examples that run on iForth and SwiftForth systems. Aficionados (and detractors) of the original book's illustrations will find most of them restored in this online edition by FORTH, Inc."

What's a File?

What's a File?: "What's a File? Mark Dominus Plover Systems Co."

Monospace/Fixed Width Programmer's Fonts

Monospace/Fixed Width Programmer's Fonts: "Becoming frustrated with source code not aligning in my favorite source editor I decided to hunt for the best font. In particular, I began to hunt down the available fixed-width or monospaced fonts."

SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software

SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software: "SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software / 'Building the Car Instead of Reinventing the Wheel' "

PROBABILITY THEORY -- THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE

PROBABILITY THEORY -- THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE: "Fragmentary Edition of June 1994"

Developer's Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code

Developer's Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code: "The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into it: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=200x125&chd=s:helloWorld"

Favourite System 80 Books

Favourite System 80 Books

TRS-80 Assembly Language by Hubert. S. Howe Jr.

Basic faster and better and other mysteries by Lewis Rosenfelder


with downloadable pdfs!!!

Jason Corso - Vi Input Manager Plugin

Jason Corso - Vi Input Manager Plugin: "This bundle patches the Cocoa Text System to add a Vi-like command mode. After entering command-mode (typically, by hitting escape in Vi), ordinary Vi commands can be typed and the text field will be updated accordingly. Essentially, this add Vi command functionality (albeit a small subset) to any (and all) text editors that use the Cocoa text system; e.g., Safari, TeXShop, XCode, etc. Note, however, this does not work for other programs that do not use the Cocoa system.

All the text windows, will initialize in 'input' mode (standard cocoa text input). You invoke the Vi-command window (exit the input mode) by hitting ` (the back-apostrophe key, this is customizable, see installation instructions) and then key in your favorite Vi commands. For example, move down a line 'j', move right 'l', delete two lines 'd2d', and so on. You enter back into 'input' mode by typing the 'i'. You get the idea. Right now, you should be thinking -- 'you mean the editor in XCode will behave like Vi?' Answer: Yes."

Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited - ChronicleReview.com

Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited - ChronicleReview.com: "Schumpeter pointed out that that wasn't how market economies really worked. The essence of capitalist economies was, as Marx had recognized before him, the entrepreneur and the innovator: the risk taker who sets in motion new and more-efficient ways of making old or new products, and so produces an economy in constant change. Marx saw that the coming of capitalist economies destroyed all feudal, traditional, and patriarchal relationships and orders. Schumpeter saw farther: that market capitalism destroys its own earlier generations. There is, he wrote, a constant 'process of industrial mutation — if I may use that biological term — that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in, and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.'"

Index of /sugar

Index of /sugar: "xubuntu-sugar-live-2007-12-02.iso"

email from Jani Monoses:

now that the browser activity is working[*], I have modified a Xubuntu
7.10 liveCD to include the existing .deb packages of Sugar. They are up
to date as of git master, equivalent of current joyride.

TamTam and Etoys are not yet packaged.

It boots in plain Xfce and the emulator is in the applications menu,
'Other' section

Starting in native sugar can be achieved by relogging in and choosing
the sugar session. User is 'ubuntu' and there in no password.

It can be installed to the hard drive as any Ubuntu derived liveCD, by
using the install icon on the desktop.

There's a script in the download directory which puts the ISO on a
bootable USB stick for easier testing.

http://startx.ro/sugar

SkyandTelescope.com - Interactive Observing Tools - SkyandTelescope.com's Almanac

SkyandTelescope.com - Interactive Observing Tools - SkyandTelescope.com's Almanac: "The almanac window will expand to list detailed information about the Sun, Moon, and five naked-eye planets. "

Ken Jennings - Blog

Ken Jennings - Blog: "Maybe I wouldn’t notice so much if so many of the koans weren’t in service of Brad Bird’s weird Objectivist leanings of late."

London Free Press - Food - Colourful peppers stuffed with ratatouille tasty sidedish

London Free Press - Food - Colourful peppers stuffed with ratatouille tasty sidedish

RATATOUILLE-STUFFED PEPPERS

(Makes 8 servings)

4 large bell peppers

1/4 cup (50 ml) olive oil

1 small eggplant, diced

1 sweet onion, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 large tomato, coarsely chopped

1 cup (250 ml) sliced fresh mushrooms

1/2 tsp. (2 ml) each dried basil, oregano and salt

Black pepper and hot pepper sauce, to taste

1 zucchini, sliced lengthwise and cut into 1/2 -inch (1-cm)) chunks

1/4 cup (50 ml) grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F). Cut peppers in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and membranes without cutting through shell. Place halves in a 13-by-9-inch (3-l) rectangular glass dish, cover with vented plastic wrap and microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes or until peppers are crisp-tender.

2. Immerse peppers in an ice-water bath to stop cooking process; drain and set aside with cut sides up.

3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add eggplant and onion and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, tomato, mushrooms, basil, oregano, salt, black pepper and hot sauce and cook, stirring, until mushrooms are tender and mixture is fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes more or until crisp-tender.

4. Spoon mixture into prepared pepper halves and sprinkle each half with about 1 tsp. (5 ml) grated cheese, if desired. Bake for 15 minutes or until mixture cheese is begins to bubble. Serve.

Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft - Catalogue - BACHJS:GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft - Catalogue - BACHJS:GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: "JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Goldberg-Variationen Goldberg Variations Variations Goldberg Variazioni Goldberg, BWV 988 Trevor Pinnock, harpsichord "

The Cool Cam - Worse Than Failure

The Cool Cam - Worse Than Failure: "Tim's 'cool cam' saved European Air War. It went from a money-leaking embarrassment to a top-tier release for MicroProse. The weekly meetings got easier, more developers were brought on, and the team managed to put together one hell of a game. It reviewed well after its 1998 release and is still a popular game for history buffs. And it probably wouldn't have been released if not for a programmer that knew what the project needed most; the cool cam."

AT&T Yahoo! Help - Home

AT&T Yahoo! Help - Home

Dynamist Blog: The Nature of Objectivity

Dynamist Blog: The Nature of Objectivity: "The always-interesting historian of science Peter Galison, author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps and Image and Logic, has a new book called Objectivity, co-authored with Lorraine Daston. Examining scientific atlases from widely diverse fields, they trace the overlapping histories of three different scientific ideals: 'truth-to-nature' (representing the underlying type of, say, a particular species of plant), 'mechanical objectivity,' and 'trained judgment' (finding patterns and 'family resemblances' in many samples). Objectivity, they argue, only emerged as an ideal in the 19th century:"

ABC News: Overweight? Standing May Be Solution

ABC News: Overweight? Standing May Be Solution: "The problem, they say, is that all the stuff we've heard the last few years about weight control left one key factor out of the equation. When we sit, the researchers found, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down."

Airport Extreme Configuration with SpeedStream 4100 DSL Modem

Airport Extreme Configuration with SpeedStream 4100 DSL Modem
also:
SpeedStream 4100 - Siemens Gigaset Provider Portal Home
2.4 Efficient 4100 modem Ameritech - SBC FAQ - dslreports.com
UPG Update - Siemens

libev

libev: "A full-featured and high-performance (see benchmark) event loop that is loosely modelled after libevent, but without its limitations and bugs. It is used, among others, in the GNU Virtual Private Ethernet and rxvt-unicode packages. Features include child/pid watchers and periodic timers based on wallclock (absolute) time (in addition to timers using relative timeouts), as well as epoll/kqueue/ports support, fast timer management, time jump detection and correction, and ease-of-use. It can be used as a libevent replacement using its emulation API or directly embedded into your programs without the need for complex configuration support. A full-featured and well-documented perl interface is also available."

7 Incredible Natural Phenomena you've never seen

7 Incredible Natural Phenomena you've never seen

macosxhints.com - Speed internet browsing via a local domain name server

macosxhints.com - Speed internet browsing via a local domain name server

[HOWTO] - Speed up DNS lookups in OSX - macosx.com

[HOWTO] - Speed up DNS lookups in OSX - macosx.com: "This will explain how to speed up DNS lookups. This is useful for contacting servers much quicker than normal, plus not waiting around forever before a lookup fails. I would just like to note at the beginning here that this will not load web pages any faster, or let you download anything faster, but it will contact web servers & such much, much quicker than the default."

The Paul Smith Foundation Home Page

The Paul Smith Foundation Home Page
The original ascii artist!

A "Psychological" Optical Illusion

A "Psychological" Optical Illusion: "The influence of culture and environment can have an effect on our visual perception. This theory was first explored by Robert Laws, a Scottish missionary working in Malawi, Africa, during the late 1800's. Take a look at the picture below. What you see will largely depend on where you live in the world. After you have examined the picture, scroll down for a more detailed explanation."

surberpictures: Congress

surberpictures: Congress: Pro Forma session, complete in 46 seconds!

Chain Factor

Chain Factor: "How to Play: Use your mouse to drop discs into the grid. The Main Idea: Whenever the number on a disc matches the size of the row or column that disc is in, it will disappear. See if you can clear the board, or just try to survive as long as possible before filling the grid."

ez_setup.py

: "Bootstrap setuptools installation"

Stratolab > MakeBot - Computer Courses for Kids in New York

Stratolab > MakeBot - Computer Courses for Kids in New York: "For my Lunar Repair Yard course, I needed an IDE for students to use which was intuitive and quick to learn. The command line works well once you know how, but I wanted to have the absolutely shortest learning curve possible so my students could get to the fun stuff right away. "

PsyBlog: Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies

PsyBlog: Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies: " Like eminent social psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, I'm also obsessed with why we do dumb or irrational things. The answer quite often is because of other people - something social psychologists have comprehensively shown."

Irby Smith - Awards

Irby Smith - Awards: "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures for: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)"

macosxhints.com - Record OS X screen activity to a Flash movie

macosxhints.com - Record OS X screen activity to a Flash movie: "Instructions for setting it all up are at the end of this message, but here is the basic usage. To record actions from your local computer, start X11 and start the vnc server with the OSXvnc program. In a Terminal, type the command vnc2swf -nowindow -startrecording output.swf localhost:0. Now just perform the actions you want to record. When done, return to the Terminal and type control-C to end. You can play the resulting Flash file in QuickTime, or in any web browser that has the Flash plugin. "

vnc2swf - Screen Recorder

vnc2swf - Screen Recorder: "Vnc2swf is a cross-platform screen recording tool for ShockWave Flash (swf) format."

Slashdot - One SimCity Per Child

One SimCity Per Child: "More SimCity links, courtesy of Don Hopkins"

Tcl on slashdot... - comp.lang.tcl | Google Groups

Tcl on slashdot... - comp.lang.tcl | Google Groups
Messages from Don Hopkins, Alan Kay, re. Tcl, SimCity, OLPC

ESPN - Man, machines send squash aflying

ESPN - Man, machines send squash aflying: "The 52,000-pound trebuchet made of steel and red oak traveled here, to the First State, on the bed of a tractor trailer. Its wheels, weighing more than a ton apiece, are cut from an oil drum 10 feet in diameter. Hanging above its base is a swinging counterweight freighted with several tons of railroad track."

Comparing yahoo and google pages over the years

Comparing yahoo and google pages over the years.

Silicon Valley Users Guide: How to coast to a writing career

Silicon Valley Users Guide: How to coast to a writing career
"As the only Valleywagger who writes for the Wall Street Journal, I get lots of email from readers who want to know Sweet, how can I land that gig next time you're busy? Careful what you wish for. Freelance writing is hard work. Unless, that is, you follow my easy guide to slacking your way to the top -- well, not really the top, but sort of near the top. Which is the whole idea."

ECB Mods

ECB Mods: "THE SUPERMODIFIED ECB!

* Modification 1 - Improve accessibility to the firepan.
* Modification 2 - Improve firepan airflow
* Modification 3 - Improve accessibility to the water pan
* Modification 4 - Improve temperature indication

...and some of my own mods:

* Modification 2a: - Improve fireplan airflow even more (charcoal rails).
* Modification 2b - Add vent covers.
* Modification 5 - Improve cooker airflow (top vent & foil).
"

ECB -- El Cheapo Brinkman

ECB: "Brinkmann Smoke & Grill - aka: Sportsman, Cajun Smoker, ECB (*affectionately* El Cheapo Brinkmann).

The Brinkmann water smoker is an inexpensive tool which can make some excellent barbecue. It is sometimes referred to as an ECB on this mail List (El Cheapo Brinkmann). Don't let this moniker fool you however. The ECB makes some mighty fine barbecue right out of the box. However, there are several modifications which can improve its performance, ease its use and therefore enhance your enjoyment."

YouTube - Arrogant Worms - Carrot Juice is Murder

YouTube - Arrogant Worms - Carrot Juice is Murder: "An awesome music video by the Arrogant Worms"

The Cool Cam - Worse Than Failure

The Cool Cam - Worse Than Failure

What's your cool cam?

"With all of the bugs he could get started on, he decided it was necessary to add a new feature instead. He developed a camera system that would focus on anything "cool" happening near the player. For instance, one plane shakes another with a delicate evasive maneuver. Or it'd mount to a bomb right as a B-17's bay was opening, following its descent onto the earth. Or it'd follow a plane being shot down, ablaze and spiraling toward the ground, engines sputtering.

The "Cool Cam" was cool. But it didn't change the fact that the game was almost completely broken. Brand wanted to confront Tim about bug priority and all of the code he was toiling away to debug, but held his tongue. No one could save the project at this point anyway.

At the next week's meeting with management, the air felt heavy. With each passing week the execs were seeing money hemorrhaged into a dying project that they'd had a full team on for four years. Tim started up the game and played carefully to avoid the obvious bugs. Getting a double whammy of tough questions ("How overbudget is this project?" and "Why shouldn't we cancel this right now?"), Tim made sure his plane was level and flying evenly and let go of the joystick and hit the cool cam button.

Brand sat there silently, watching the monitor. Tim turned toward the execs, about to stumble through an answer they probably wouldn't accept. The room was silent, save for the steady hum of the plane's engines coming out of the computer speakers. Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on an explosion, following a flaming plane barreling toward the earth, then the focus moved slightly to another plane quickly evading the flaming shell. Tim took the controls again when the execs lobbed another tough question about bugs they'd made no progress in fixing. Again, Tim leveled the plane and hit the cool cam button. And again, he didn't have to answer because everyone was fixated on the screen.

Tim's "cool cam" saved European Air War. It went from a money-leaking embarrassment to a top-tier release for MicroProse. The weekly meetings got easier, more developers were brought on, and the team managed to put together one hell of a game. It reviewed well after its 1998 release and is still a popular game for history buffs. And it probably wouldn't have been released if not for a programmer that knew what the project needed most; the cool cam."

Chew On That � Blog Archive � Pankegg!

Chew On That � Blog Archive � Pankegg!

"After watching a particularly good episode of my favorite (now ended) video blog The Show With ZeFrank, I knew my life would never be satisfying until I followed the instructions he gave me (watch til the end):

“Put a little oil in the pan, but make sure you add some butter. That’s where the flavor is. Coat it, and then pour yourself a nice, big pancake. Now watch it. See those tiny little holes? Those are bonding holes, and they have a purpose. As soon as you see enough bonding holes, pick the pancake up and crack an egg under it…”

Success!

The mix of flavors and textures works really well. The cooked egg white combines with the pancake to make something exquisitely fluffy, and the runny yolk fills the role normally occupied by syrup.

EDIT: There’s been a request for egg-in-the-basket instructions as well, and since it is a valid alternative to the Pankegg, here they are: take a piece of bread. Butter it. Cut a circle into the center of the bread; eat the circular scrap that results. Put the bread buttered-side-down in a skillet, crack an egg into the hole, and break the yolk. Allow one side to cook, flip the bread, and lightly cook the other (to insure the whole egg white has been cooked)."

the show with zefrank

the show with zefrank: "pankegg" -- at the end of the video.

Twenty Sided � Blog Archive � DM of the Rings I:The Copious Backstory

Twenty Sided � Blog Archive � DM of the Rings I:The Copious Backstory: "Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign."

One Show - Paul Rand Tribute Film (2007) 4:00 (USA) | Adland

One Show - Paul Rand Tribute Film (2007) 4:00 (USA) | Adland: "A 4 minute short about Paul Rand created for his posthumous induction to the One Club Hall of Fame in 2007."

Megan McArdle (October 29, 2007) - Vouching for vouchers (Education)

Megan McArdle (October 29, 2007) - Vouching for vouchers (Education)

"11) There's no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can't match the same level of quality we've come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?"

Reason Magazine - Resilience vs. Anticipation

Reason Magazine - Resilience vs. Anticipation:

"IN HIS 1988 BOOK, SEARCHING FOR SAFETY, the late UC-Berkeley political scientist Aaron Wildavsky laid out two alternatives for dealing with risk: anticipation, the static planning that aspires to perfect foresight, and resilience, the dynamic response that relies on having many margins of adjustment: "Anticipation is a mode of control by a central mind; efforts are made to predict and prevent potential dangers before damage is done. Forbidding the sale of certain medical drugs is an anticipatory measure. Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back. An innovative biomedical industry that creates new drugs for new diseases is a resilient device. . . . Anticipation seeks to preserve stability: the less fluctuation, the better. Resilience accommodates variability; one may not do so well in good times but learn to persist in the bad."

Here, then, is the basic difference between the valley and the Hub: Viewing the world as predictable and itself as the center of the universe, Boston has encouraged strategies of anticipation. People try to imagine everything that might go wrong and fix it in advance. But in Silicon Valley, there are no certainties. The future is open and subject to upheaval. Resilience is the strategy of choice. People do the best they can at the moment, deal with problems as they arise, and develop networks to help them out.

The positive side of anticipation is that it encourages imagination and deep thought, the stuff of intellectual life. And it is good at eliminating known risks. It can build confidence, appropriate in a city whose leading business manages the life savings of America's middle class. "Just look at the name: Fidelity," says Hutchinson. "Rock solid, New England." Building Fidelity Investments meant not just hiring good fund managers but getting customers to trust impersonal computers, phones, and customer-service systems as they'd once trusted the neighborhood banker. Anticipation makes such systems reliable."

USAFSS Misawa Family - Home Page

USAFSS Misawa Family - Home Page: "1st RSM and the Misawa Project are seeking those who served in the USAF Security Service from 1949 through 1979. If you fit this profile, you are urged to contact Contact Helen Henderson Helen Henderson for further information."

The saga of Texas chili and Terlingua | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Life/Travel

The saga of Texas chili and Terlingua | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Life/Travel: "When chuck-wagon cooks first began stewing beef with hot peppers in the late 1800s, they probably never dreamed they were helping to create the state dish of Texas. Nor, it is likely, did the chili queens of San Antonio, who were ladling their specialty from cauldrons nightly on the city's downtown streets about then. Neither group could have foreseen that their humble fare one day would be the focus of hundreds of culinary competitions, and two of the biggest would be held annually in a tiny ghost town on the edge of Big Bend. Also Online Prize-winning Texas chili recipes Frank X. Tolbert's chili recipe LBJ's Pedernales River Chili recipe They'd never have imagined that grown men would throw such hissy fits that they'd need two competitions – one of them 'behind the store' – to separate the warring factions. And then there are the three chili societies jockeying for supremacy."

Rod Drury > Leopard Easter Egg

Rod Drury > Leopard Easter Egg: "The Apple engineers must have wet their pants with this one. When you CoverFlow the network computers, here is how a Windows machine is displayed …"

Mac Tip: Display the Date on the Menubar

Mac Tip: Display the Date on the Menubar: "Mac OS X only: If you don't want to install a whole other piece of software to see today's date in your menubar, you can add it manually in System Preferences. It's not an obvious checkbox or dropdown, so bear with me."

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter - Dumbledore - Books - New York Times

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter - Dumbledore - Books - New York Times: "But it is possible that Ms. Rowling may be mistaken about her own character. She may have invented Hogwarts and all the wizards within it, she may have created the most influential fantasy books since J. R. R. Tolkien, and she may have woven her spell over thousands of pages and seven novels, but there seems to be no compelling reason within the books for her after-the-fact assertion. Of course it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books’ accounts certainly don’t make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should."

SARUKE: The Ultimate Human vs. Chimpanzee Obstacle Course : Japan Probe

SARUKE: The Ultimate Human vs. Chimpanzee Obstacle Course : Japan Probe: "Mr. Sasuke and Wakki are easily defeated by Gomez, but can he defeat Hiromichi Sato? Watch the video and find out:"

MST3K: The Shorts | MetaFilter

MST3K: The Shorts | MetaFilter: "During its run, Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed on over 50 short films. Almost all of them are now on YouTube or Google Video. See the list (shamelessly cribbed from here) inside for links."

Hi def Last Supper

16 gigapixels

Human race will 'split into two different species' | the Daily Mail

Human race will 'split into two different species' | the Daily Mail:

"The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist."

You'll never guess which species evolves from the scientists...

Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities

Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities: "We at Computerworld would be the last to say that science and technology aren't creative pursuits. Still, when most people say, 'Oh, she's very creative,' they're probably not talking about the subject's ability to perform higher math or engineer a network. Such people might be amazed to learn of the remarkable number of actors, directors, musicians and other celebrities who nurture an inner geek."

How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail, Managing Technology Article - Inc. Article

How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail, Managing Technology Article - Inc. Article -- Joel Sposky

"Here's my five-step guide to ensure software failure:

Mistake No. 1: Start with a mediocre team of developers.
Mistake No. 2: Set weekly milestones.
Mistake No. 3: Negotiate the deadline.
Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equitably.
Mistake No. 5: Work till midnight."

Apple Wireless Keyboard LED - 40X on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Apple Wireless Keyboard LED - 40X on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
"Ever wonder how the power LED shows through the aluminum of Apple's new wireless keyboard when it's on, but blends into the metal when it's off? Here's how.

This design feature caught my eye as soon as I powered the keyboard up, so I brought it into work the next day and took a picture at 40X magnification using the scope in our lab. A small pattern of what must be laser cut holes allows the light from the LED to shine through, but hides it from view when it's turned off. "

A Celebration of Tex-Mex, Without Apology - New York Times

A Celebration of Tex-Mex, Without Apology - New York Times: "“Cal-Mex is long on burritos and sour cream,” Mr. Walsh said. “In New Mexico, it’s all about green chilies, and in Arizona they are proud to have invented chimichangas — deep-fried burritos. The embodiment of Tex-Mex is a cheese enchilada with gravy.”"

Death special: The plan for eternal life - death - 13 October 2007 - New Scientist

Death special: The plan for eternal life - death - 13 October 2007 - New Scientist

"Ordinary citizens wouldn't know what to do with eternal life," says Minsky. "The masses don't have any clear-cut goals or purpose." Only scientists, who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans, he argues.

He is also staunchly against regulating the development of new technologies. "Scientists shouldn't have ethical responsibility for their inventions, they should be able to do what they want," he says. "You shouldn't ask them to have the same values as other people."

International Chindogu Society

International Chindogu Society: "The tyranny of the automobile makes life increasingly tough for ecoconscious pedestrians, and finding a safe place to cross can result in inconvenient diversions and wasted time. Now the pedestrian can fight back. When you've found the crossing point that best suits you, simply roll out the the Portable Zebra Crossing in front of you and cross confidently and in safety at your own pace. "

The hay fever hat

The hay fever hat

The following ten tenets define the gentle art and philosophy of Chindogu

1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use
2. A Chindogu must exist
3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy
4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life
5. Chindogu are not for sale
6. Humor must not be the sole reason for creating a Chindogu
7. Chindogu is not propaganda
8. Chindogu are never taboo
9. Chindogu cannot be patented
10. Chindogu are without prejudice

Boomshine

Boomshine: "Boomshine is an addictive Flash casual game. Click the screen to start a chain reaction and try to explode as many dots as needed to pass a level. The game contains 12 levels ranging from the easy to the hard (only 3.97% of games pass level 12). Over 3 million games have been played by over 100,000 different players."

ORACLE-BASE - Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) Installation On Fedora Core 1 (FC1)

ORACLE-BASE - Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) Installation On Fedora Core 1 (FC1): "In this article I'll describe the installation of Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) on Fedora Core 1. The article is based on a Fedora Core 1 Server"

swap 2364 mb

echo 262144 > rmem_default
echo 262144 > rmem_max
echo 262144 > wmem_default
echo 262144 > wmem_max

sudo rpm -Uvh libaio-0.3.106-2.2.i386.rpm

Plaster Repair Made Easier | This Old House

Plaster Repair Made Easier | This Old House

Now there's a new product that reattaches plaster without leaving behind difficult-to-disguise bumps. Big Wally's Plaster Magic repair kit uses a two-part adhesive to glue the lath and plaster back together, so a spackle is all it takes to make the repair disappear. Rory Brennan, a Vermont-based plaster restoration expert, developed this homeowner-friendly system after years of using drums of similar adhesives on large-scale plaster-repair projects.

On the Tension Between Object-Oriented and Generic Programming in C

On the Tension Between Object-Oriented and Generic Programming in C : "The author discusses how the use of generic programming in C can lead to conflicts with object-oriented design principles. He demonstrates how a technique known as type erasure can often be used to resolve these conflicts. An in-depth example is presented: any_iterator, a type-safe, heterogeneous C iterator."

EWD: Quick and Dirty

dposter.jpg (JPEG Image, 508x581 pixels)

Journal of Alias (5735)

Journal of Alias (5735): "A contributed test in t/05_links.t creates softlinks to several directories and then deletes them to test that remove() does NOT follow the softlinks. Unfortunately, one of the places the test links to is File::Spec::rootdir(). As a result, when the test FAILS it will recursively delete the root directory."

Knuth: Address Wanted

Knuth: Address Wanted: "Finally I was able to go through all the letters accumulated during a 15-year hiatus"

Chris Ball: : Favourite Unicode Codepoints

Chris Ball: : Favourite Unicode Codepoints: "Favourite Unicode Codepoints"

Republic of the Rio Grande-S.H. Dixon

Republic of the Rio Grande-S.H. Dixon: "The Republic of the Rio Grande: A Story of Its Rise and Fall From Romance and Tragedy of Texas History by Sam Houston Dixon, 1924

Many events of an extraordinary character transpired in Texas during the year 1839. The two which overshadowed all others, from a military point of view, were the campaigns driving the Cherokee Indians from Eastern Texas and the establishment on Texas soil of "The Republic of the Rio Grande." The troubles which led up to the expulsion of the Cherokee Indians from Texas are matters generally known, but little is known to the causal reader of Texas history concerning the events surrounding the revolution against the Centralist of Mexico which led to the establishment of the "Republic of the Rio Grande." This event has historical value to Texas because the revolution had its birth in Texas and, too, because the "Republic of the Rio Grande" unfurled its banner on Texas soil.

The impetuous Texans who joined the Mexican Republicans in this revolution, were venturesome spirits who were not contented with the dull monotony of peaceful scenes. They thought they saw in it opportunities for service and gain. They felt that by taking advantage of these opportunities they could gain both. They were young men of splendid abilities-ambitious and brave but they did not stop to count the cost of failure or consider the reproach they were bringing upon their country."

Mexico - Filibustering: Republic of the Rio Grande

Mexico - Filibustering: Republic of the Rio Grande: "The red, black and white flag was the national flag of the short- lived Republic of the Rio Grande. A group of rebels known as the Federalists declared a republic based on the Mexican Constitution of 1824. The new state was to include the Mexican States of Coahuila, Nuevo Le�n, and Tamaulipas, with its capital at Laredo. The Republic of the Rio Grande was declared in January 1840. The Centrists in Mexico City (who were responsible for the suspension of the 1824 constitution) moved to quickly to bring the Rio Grande back into the fold. Laredo was captured by Mexican forces less than two months later, but the insurgency continued and the Federalists eventually retook the town. A major Centrist victory at Satillo in October 1840 effectively killed the Republic of the Rio Grande. The Federalists surrendered two weeks later and their new nation ceased to exist. The republic lasted 283 days."

TheHistoryNet | Wild West | The Republic of the Rio Grande

TheHistoryNet | Wild West | The Republic of the Rio Grande: "Texans of the 19th century were audacious gamblers, putting their lives and all they had at risk while settling their frontier and securing their borders. Enemies were everywhere, often outnumbering them. Texans had the Alamo to remember, and a lot more, too. The new Republic of Texas was experiencing plenty of growing pains. Texas had gained its hard-earned independence from Mexico by winning the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, and Sam Houston, the victorious general who was elected president of the Republic of Texas that fall, gained American recognition for the republic in 1837. Still, relations with politically unstable Mexico were hardly rosy. Border conflicts were inevitable, especially when it wasn't certain where that border was."

PBS - THE WEST - The Republic of the Rio Grande

PBS - THE WEST - The Republic of the Rio Grande: "Mexicans!... It would appear that justice had fled from this world, leaving you to the caprice of your oppressors, who have become each day more furious toward you... My part is taken, the voice of revelation whispers... that the Lord will enable me, with powerful arm, to fight against our enemies. Juan Cortina"

Handbook of Texas Online:

Handbook of Texas Online:: "REPUBLIC OF THE RIO GRANDE. The Republic of the Rio Grande was an effort on the part of Federalist leaders in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila to break away from the centralistic government of Mexico in 1840 and to form a new confederation. Since 1835, with the ascension of Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna,qv then a Centralist, to the presidency of Mexico, Federalist leaders throughout the nation had attempted to force a return to the federalistic Constitution of 1824.qv This feeling was particularly strong in the northern states of Mexico, and, when they failed to achieve success in that enterprise, the northern Federalists worked to win independence from the Mexican Republic."

The Robin Hood of the Rio Grande

The Robin Hood of the Rio Grande: "Juan Nepomuceno Cortina has been described by the Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie as 'the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit, not even excepting Pancho Villa, that ever wet his horses in the muddy water of the Rio Bravo'; in Mexican and Tejano culture he is considered a heroic figure who fought against the injustices and blatant racism of the Anglo-Americans. "

LAREDO history

LAREDO history: "During the unsettled years after the Texas revolution, southwest Texas became the scene of hostilities and attacks by lawless elements -- Indians, smugglers, brigands and fortune seekers. In response to the need for authority and order in the area, as well as resentment against the despotic rule of General Santa Ana, leaders from both sides of the Rio Grande met and formed the Republic of the Rio Grande, and named Laredo as its capital. Although the Republic of the Rio Grande lasted only from early 1939 until the late summer of 1840, its capital building still stands. Facing north across San Augustin Plaza, the old capital building, now a museum, is a lasting memorial to the brave men who dreamed and fought for an independence, which was not to be."

Republic of the Rio Grande (U.S.)

Republic of the Rio Grande (U.S.):

"I spotted this flag in Laredo while traveling in south Texas. I was curious about its resemblance to the Texas state flag, so I did some research to determine its origins.

The red, black and white flag was the national flag of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande. A group of rebels known as the Federalists declared a republic based on the Mexican Constitution of 1824. The new state was to include the Mexican States of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamulipas, with its capital at Laredo. The Republic of the Rio Grande was declared in January 1840.

The Centrists in Mexico City (who were responsible for the suspension of the 1824 constitution) moved to quickly bring the Rio Grande back into the fold. Laredo was captured by Mexican forces less than two months later, but the insurgency continued and the Federalists eventually retook the town. A major Centrist victory at Satillo in October 1840 effectively killed the Republic of the Rio Grande. The Federalists surrendered two weeks later and their new nation ceased to exist. The republic lasted 283 days.

Although the republic is long gone, its flag is still displayed in prominent places, including the masthead of the local paper."

Ryan Fennell, 27 July 2000

Historical Texas Flags (U.S.)

Historical Texas Flags (U.S.):

Page 1

• First Texas Lone Star flag
• Fredonian Rebellion Flag
• Captain Baker's San Felipe Flag
• Scott's Flag of the Liberals
• Goliad Flag
• Myth! - The Lorenzo de Zavala Flag of 1836
• Gonzales Banner of 1835
  
  Page 2
  
• New Orleans Greys
• Burnet's Flag - Texas Republic's First Flag
• Twentieth Texas Infantry

$1 trillion green market seen by 2030 | Environment | Reuters

$1 trillion green market seen by 2030 | Environment | Reuters: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global sales from clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power and biofuels could grow to as much as $1 trillion a year by 2030, U.S. bank Morgan Stanley has estimated."

Oracle's Sample Schemas: Saying Goodbye to Scott

Oracle's Sample Schemas: Saying Goodbye to Scott: "With the new sample schema, the users have a dependency upon one another. Oracle points out the order of the creation for you in case you want to create these schemas manually. The names - HR, OE, PM, QS, and SH - are in alphabetical order, and that order specifies the order of creation. All installation options (personal, standard and enterprise) receive the first four schemas, and only the enterprise edition with partitioning receives the SH schema. For your convenience, Oracle provides a master script that creates the entire sample schema, and it is found in ORACLE_HOME\demo (the mksample SQL script)."

Fantasy Planes

Fantasy Planes: "Sometimes I think the most interesting airplanes are the ones that never got built. Some of these were schemes that were too visionary, some are found in fiction, and some were practical aircraft that lost out somewhere between blue sky and finished prototype."

Zepps

Zepps: "Zeppelins ~ Rotary and Otherwise Some ideas just won't go away"

Apple - Downloads - Create Booklet - PDF Service - Automator Actions

Apple - Downloads - Create Booklet - PDF Service - Automator Actions: "A booklet is a staple of pages that is folded in the middle to be used like a book. This means the pages have to be resorted before printing and two pages have to be shrunk onto one. Create Booklet does that for you and as it is a PDF Service you can do it directly from the print panel. Additionally you get the Automator Action that is used in that PDF Service."

Scala Home Page

Scala Home Page: "Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, and MIDI file generation and tuning conversion. All this is integrated into a single application with a wide variety of mathematical routines and scale creation methods. Scala is ideal for the exploration of tunings and becoming familiar with the concepts involved. In addition, a very large library of scales is freely available for Scala and can be used for analysis or music creation."

NPR: When Good Interviews Go Bad

NPR: When Good Interviews Go Bad: "Anyway, last Friday the band showed up promptly at 11am (EDT) and commenced to give what is possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media."

Neatorama � Blog Archive � How To Make Giant Soap Bubbles

Neatorama � Blog Archive � How To Make Giant Soap Bubbles: "Those bubbles are BIG! This video contains the recipe for super-tough bubble formula."

ACM Queue - Languages, Levels, Libraries, and Longevity: New programming languages are born every day. Why do some succeed and some fail?

ACM Queue - Languages, Levels, Libraries, and Longevity: New programming languages are born every day. Why do some succeed and some fail?

We can gather insights from the last 50 years of programming systems to the current time. For the far future, Vernor Vinge’s fine science-fiction novel, A Deepness in the Sky, rings all too true. The young protagonist, Pham, has joined a starship crew and is learning the high-value vocation of “programmer archaeologist,” as the crew’s safety depends on the ability to find needed code, use it, and modify it without breaking something. He is initially appalled at the code he finds:

The programs were crap…Programming went back to the beginning of time…There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it…these programs still worked…down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely… the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems…

“We should rewrite it all,” said Pham.

“It’s been done,” said Sura.

“It’s been tried,” corrected Bret…“You and a thousand friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it… And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then…”

“The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’”

Steve Souders: "High Performance Web Sites: 14 Rules for Faster Pages"--video - O'Reilly FYI

Steve Souders: "High Performance Web Sites: 14 Rules for Faster Pages"--video - O'Reilly FYI: "See O’Reilly author and Yahoo!’s performance expert, Steve Souders talk about his rules for revving up websites."

The Facebook revolution - Los Angeles Times

The Facebook revolution - Los Angeles Times: "It all sounds way too complicated for mortals to understand until you hear Zuckerberg explain it. Boiled down, it goes like this: Humans get their information from two places -- from mainstream media or some other centralized organization such as a church, and from their network of family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. We've already digitized the first. Almost every news organization has a website now. What Zuckerberg is trying to do with Facebook is digitize the second. "

Soaring on Ridgelift: Facebook – Business as a database?

Soaring on Ridgelift: Facebook – Business as a database?: "Unless you live in Los Angeles you probably won't have seen Fred Vogelstein's article 'The Facebook revolution' in today's Los Angeles Times. Fred is a great journalist and always thinks outside the box – the premise of his article is that another way to look at Facebook is as a huge database of interactions between friends, neighbors and colleagues – a digital version of word of mouth information distribution."

7 Life Lessons I Learned Playing Halo | PickTheBrain

7 Life Lessons I Learned Playing Halo | PickTheBrain: "In retrospect, I even learned some important life lessons that have helped me succeed."

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com: "I point this out not to challenge the reality of global warming or the fact that it's caused in large part by humans, but because the discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up. We have to rediscover the middle ground, where we can have a sensible conversation. We shouldn't ignore climate change or the policies that could attack it. But we should be honest about the shortcomings and costs of those policies, as well as the benefits."

Cheat on the Need to Sleep / Wired How To's

Cheat on the Need to Sleep / Wired How To's: "Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed. 1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in. 2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness. 3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot."

United States Congress - Senators and Representatives share their Favorite Recipes

United States Congress - Senators and Representatives share their Favorite Recipes: "Our elected officials share some of their favorite recipes, many featuring foods special to the part of the country they so proudly represent. You can find interesting recipes from soups to desserts, award winning recipes and family favorites.... from sea to shining sea."

Math Trek: A Prayer for Archimedes, Science News Online, Oct. 6, 2007

Math Trek: A Prayer for Archimedes, Science News Online, Oct. 6, 2007: "Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed 'a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics.' In The Method, Archimedes was working out a way to compute the areas and volumes of objects with curved surfaces, which was also one of the problems that motivated Newton and Leibniz. Ancient mathematicians had long struggled to 'square the circle' by calculating its exact area. That problem turned out to be impossible using only a straightedge and compass, the only tools the ancient Greeks allowed themselves. Nevertheless, Archimedes worked out ways of computing the areas of many other curved regions."

ENIAC simulation: simulation

ENIAC simulation: simulation: "If you are looking for documentation, you might be interested in A Java Simulator for the ENIAC, an 11 pages article about the ENIAC simulation. For further details, you can download the author's diploma thesis Simulating the ENIAC as a Java applet in PDF or in PostScript format. The thesis contains an introduction to the applet from the user's point of view, a brief chapter about the ENIAC's history and software engineering details. As well the slides of a talk about the simulation are available as PDF and as gzipped PostScript (both German language)."

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican book on Templars' demise

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican book on Templars' demise: "The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages. The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed."

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com: "Stop fighting over global warming -- here's the smart way to attack it. By Bjorn Lomborg"

glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization

glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization: "View real-time data and statistics from any logfile on any server you have SSH access to, in an intuitive and entertaining way. FEATURES * Multiple logfiles on multiple servers (via SSH & tail) * Configurable layout * Multiple logfile parsers (Apache Combined, Rails, IIS & Postfix included) * Show only data you're interested in * Custom events * Show rate, total or average * If you can 'tail' it, you can visualize it * Written in Ruby using net-ssh & libopengl-ruby * Free! (GPLv2)"

BBC Radio 4 - Comedy - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Home Page

BBC Radio 4 - Comedy - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Home Page: "Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently comes to Radio 4 Wednesdays at 6.30pm, from 3rd October 2007"

Google Holiday Logos

Google Holiday Logos: "We have a variety of logos commemorating holidays and events. We've put them in this online museum for your amusement. Please do not use them elsewhere."

:: Munseys : Over 20,000 rare and hard to find titles in 10 formats!

:: Munseys : Over 20,000 rare and hard to find titles in 10 formats!
"Free ebooks"

nanoHUB - nanoHUB Home

nanoHUB - nanoHUB Home: "A resource for nanoscience and technology, the nanoHUB was created by the NSF-funded NCN and its development is driven by research themes in: * Nanoelectronics * NEMS/Nanofluidics * Nano-Bio Devices"

Toad World > Community > Experts' Blog - Team Coding???

Toad World > Community > Experts' Blog - Team Coding???: "Toad, it seems that the one universal feature that eludes most users is the Team Coding feature. ... Let’s take a quick look at Team Coding together, and maybe I can convince you it’s worth a 2nd or 3rd look. John POcknell has already dedicated a blog to Team Coding, but I wanted to take a step back and look at it from a slightly different perspective."

Amazon's Dynamo - All Things Distributed

Amazon's Dynamo - All Things Distributed: "Reliability at massive scale is one of the biggest challenges we face at Amazon.com, one of the largest e-commerce operations in the world; even the slightest outage has significant financial consequences and impacts customer trust. The Amazon.com platform, which provides services for many web sites worldwide, is implemented on top of an infrastructure of tens of thousands of servers and network components located in many datacenters around the world. At this scale, small and large components fail continuously and the way persistent state is managed in the face of these failures drives the reliability and scalability of the software systems. This paper presents the design and implementation of Dynamo, a highly available key-value storage system that some of Amazon’s core services use to provide an “always-on” experience. To achieve this level of availability, Dynamo sacrifices consistency under certain failure scenarios. It makes extensive use of object versioning and application-assisted conflict resolution in a manner that provides a novel interface for developers to use."

Justin Quinnell - Pinhole photography

Justin Quinnell - Pinhole photography
Put your photo where your mouth is.

ShareBrained Technology � The Chronulator

ShareBrained Technology � The Chronulator: "The Chronulator starts life as a clock, showing the hours and minutes on two old-school analog panel meters. Dress it up to look like old test equipment, audio VU meters, or motorcycle gauges. Mount it in a picture frame, shadow box, computer case, plush toy, pumpkin… Customize the code and hardware to make the meters indicate something other than time — network traffic/lag, outside temperature, freeway congestion, terror threat level, stress level, whatever! Let your imagination run free."

Historical Anatomies on the Web: Browse Titles

Historical Anatomies on the Web: Browse Titles: "Images have been selected from the following anatomical atlases in the National Library of Medicine's collection. Each atlas is linked to a brief Author & Title Description, which offers an historical discussion of the work, its author, the artists, and the illustration technique. The Bibliographic Information link provides a bibliographical description of the atlas, so users will know which edition was scanned and if there are any characteristics special to the Library's copy."

Dimitri Gielis Blog: Changing WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8 with ALTER DATABASE CHARACTERSET!

Dimitri Gielis Blog: Changing WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8 with ALTER DATABASE CHARACTERSET!: "Today I did something 'tricky' with the Oracle database... I went from one character set to another although it was not a superset/subset of each other."

Journal of Smylers (2592)

Journal of Smylers (2592): "If you're using MySQL, or considering using it, here are some things you probably should be aware of. Dealing with Invalid Data MySQL lets you specify restict what can be stored in fields, for example the number of characters in a string. If you try to insert data that doesn't meet the restrictions then MySQL tries really hard to insert someting anyway -- such as by truncating the string"

LiveLeak.com - The Human LCD - Amazing

LiveLeak.com - The Human LCD - Amazing: "South korea: boys cheering for their soccer teams. the most amazing thing is that they do this with their CLOTHES (not holding up cards). they have a jacket that is one color on the back, one on the front, and that they can open or close to show a third color shirt on the inside. One school has also figured out how to use their pants to make shading. "

Engcom

Engcom: "Virtual Slide Rule See how calculations used to be done before the days of electronic calculators. Find out about an important piece of engineering history. All pieces of the slide rule are draggable."

On McIlroy

On McIlroy: "Doug McIlroy doesn't have an Erdos number; Erdos has a McIlroy number."

Mondrian Code Review On The Web

Mondrian Code Review On The Web -- Guido Von Rossum

How Google does web-based code reviews with Mondrian � Internet Duct Tape

How Google does web-based code reviews with Mondrian � Internet Duct Tape: "Niall has a good post describing an internal Google tool for web-based code reviews built by the same guy who brought us Python. Anything beats sitting in a conference room looking at printed out code."

Coppola says robbery cost years of data - Yahoo! News

Coppola says robbery cost years of data - Yahoo! News: "The director of 'The Godfather' said the backup that rested on the floor in his offices at the Zoetrope Argentina studio was just 'a little thing ... but the information is (worth) much time.' 'If I could get the backup back, it would save me years — all the photographs of my family, all my writing.'"

特别报道：全国各地惊现纸馅月饼

特别报道：全国各地惊现纸馅月饼: "近日，本市名人marhar从超市里买了盒某著名品牌月饼，回到家打开吃，刚吃了一口，感觉有点不对劲，发现嘴里好象有个纸团，拿出来一看，上面还写着一行字。对，就下面这个，您看准咯:

tufte-latex - Google Code

tufte-latex - Google Code: "As discussed in the Book Design thread of Edward Tufte's Ask E.T Forum, this is beginning of a Tufte-inspired LaTeX layout to produce handouts and scientific notes"

Huashan Video � Electric Pretzels

Huashan Video � Electric Pretzels: "I shot this using Lauren’s digital camera from the gusty top of Huashan’s “Plank Path”."

Catalog Views / Data Dictionary Views

Catalog Views / Data Dictionary Views: "The data dictionary views, also known as catalog views, let you monitor the state of the database in real time: * The USER, ALL, and DBA views show information about schema objects that are accessible to you, at different levels of privilege. * The V$ views show performance-related information. * The _PRIVS views show privilege information for different combinations of users, roles, and objects. "

Veggie-Art-July07

Veggie-Art-July07: "Food artists create colorful animals from vegetables. Can you identify the veggies? m 'Eat Your Green Stuff' "

Official Google Blog: Our feature presentation

Official Google Blog: Our feature presentation: "In April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today we're unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser."

"Silk market rules" : Photos taken by lloydthyen - Travellerspoint Travel Photography

"Silk market rules" : Photos taken by lloydthyen - Travellerspoint Travel Photography

Where can I find textures and background images? | Graphics

Where can I find textures and background images? | Graphics: "Below you’ll find a hand-picked selection of some useful resources related to textures and background images. We tried to pick the best ones which offer quality and professional content without annoying advertisement."

FOXNews.com - Smiley-Face Emoticon Turning 25 - Technology News | News On Technology

FOXNews.com - Smiley-Face Emoticon Turning 25 - Technology News | News On Technology: "

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.

[...]

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly."I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."'

the evangelical outpost: The Gospel in 6 Minutes

the evangelical outpost: The Gospel in 6 Minutes: "A few days ago Tim Challies wrote: What if there was a ten minute video clip (with transcript) of John Piper sharing the gospel? Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if [this] could be promoted to the front page [of social media sites] and be seen by thousands or tens of thousands? In response, Desiring God ministries provided this resource, John Piper on The Gospel in 6 Minutes :"

Thing Fish - LAIKA Open Source Software - Trac

Thing Fish - LAIKA Open Source Software - Trac:

"ThingFish is a network-accessable, searchable, extensible datastore. It can be used to store chunks of data on the network in an application-independent way, associate the chunks with other chunks through metadata, and then search for the chunk you need later and fetch it again, all through a REST API over HTTP.

The system should, in its most basic form, only do two things: 1. Store files via a network interface. 2. Store metadata about the files and provide a search facility for finding files via their associated metadata."

Children's Painting Competition On the Environment /Home

Children's Painting Competition On the Environment /Home

The UN continues its mission of spreading optimism and hope and hope for the future in the world's children.

Loading.Ready.Run. - How to Talk like a Pirate

Loading.Ready.Run. - How to Talk like a Pirate: "'In honour of Talk like a Pirate Day, we present this informational video for the less nautically inclined among us. After all, you don't want to look stupid.' "

web zen: arrgh! 'tis pirate zen 2007 - Boing Boing

web zen: arrgh! 'tis pirate zen 2007 - Boing Boing

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times

“Some of our customers don’t know the name, though after they meet us, they want to read the book,” she went on. “Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask: ‘Hey, where is John Galt? How come I’m not important enough to rate a visit from John Galt?’ ”

NerdTests.com Fun Tests - The Nerd Test, Version 2.0

NerdTests.com Fun Tests - The Nerd Test, Version 2.0

Homer Simpson's Rhetoric - Figures of Speech from Springfield's Master Rhetorician

Homer Simpson's Rhetoric - Figures of Speech from Springfield's Master Rhetorician: "n this article, we consider some of the ways in which Homeric rhetoric has traveled from The Odyssey to The Idiocy by way of America's second-favorite cartoon character of all time. (According to TV Guide, Bugs Bunny is still number one.) Let's journey to Springfield to review 20 classic figures of speech."

oracle: how to defragment a table

ALTER TABLE emp ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;
ALTER TABLE emp SHRINK SPACE COMPACT;
ALTER TABLE emp SHRINK SPACE;

MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Video - CollegeHumor video

MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Video - CollegeHumor video: "The blue screen was invented the day before Windows made this instructional video."

AsiaInfo Wins Exclusive Contract with China Mobile Pakistan to Deliver Telecom Billing and CRM Software Solutions

AsiaInfo Wins Exclusive Contract with China Mobile Pakistan to Deliver Telecom Billing and CRM Software Solutions: "Under the terms of the contract, AsiaInfo will provide its OpenBilling On- line Charging System (OCS), and OpenCRM customer relationship management system to CMPak. The system, designed to support 10 million subscribers, provides real time, convergent billing and unified customer service."

Office Ultimate 2007: Just $60! (for students) � InsideMicrosoft � part of the Blog News Channel

Office Ultimate 2007: Just $60! (for students) � InsideMicrosoft � part of the Blog News Channel: "Starting in 59 minutes, 35 seconds, Microsoft will begin offering Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for students for the amazing price of just sixty dollars. This special offer for students only represents a $620 discount off the retail price of $680, a 91% savings."

Catching Kids Doing Good

Catching Kids Doing Good: "The newspaper reported that we won the meet. I don't believe winning made all of the above happen. I believe all of the above made winning happen. I believe teens will show responsibility because they want to be treated like adults. I believe in catching kids doing good and telling on them."

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries (Curious Expeditions)

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries (Curious Expeditions): "Shocked into a library induced euphoria, Curious Expeditions has attempted to gather together the world's most beautiful libraries for you starting with our own pictures of Strahov. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do."

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 10,000 Melons Explode

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 10,000 Melons Explode
Impressive.

YouTube - Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage

YouTube - Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage: "Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage"

巴蜀早期儿童趣玩/雷瑞之/L/人物/巴蜀网 Phoer.net

巴蜀早期儿童趣玩/雷瑞之/L/人物/巴蜀网 Phoer.net
Lovely Chinese watercolors.

Internet Archive: Details: Quiet Please

Internet Archive: Details: Quiet Please: "Quiet Pleast - 1947 through 1949. The comple thoughts of Willis Cooper, as remembered as of April 7th, 2006. Quiet Please was Quiet, but remembered. This series is remembered here. This item is part of the collection: Old Time Radio"

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system: "memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load."

Scaling with memcached � SlideShare

Scaling with memcached � SlideShare: "memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system used by LiveJournal, Facebook, Bloglines and others. Find out how memcached works, how to it set up and how you can scale your website. Presented at YAPC::Europe 2007 by Leon Brocard."

lgf: rebooting mac in safe mode to clear system caches

lgf: there are mischiefs to be cured: "And here’s a tech tip for any graphics geeks who work on a daily basis with Adobe’s CS3 suite of design applications. I was using Fireworks CS3, my main tool for doing everyday graphics chores like cropping, resizing, etc. when suddenly I got the spinning beach ball of death; a ‘busy’ cursor that wouldn’t go away, and a frozen application that needed to be forcibly quit. And we all know how painful that can be. What’s more, the same thing happened in every one of the CS3 apps. Restarting didn’t fix it. Repairing permissions didn’t fix it. Deleting preferences files didn’t fix it. Searching the web yielded nothing. Oh noooo. The solution in this case, and something worth trying on a Mac OS machine whenever you have this kind of weird problem, was to boot up in ‘Safe’ mode, while holding the Shift key. It turns out that this not only does a Unix ‘fsck’ command and fixes any disk problems, it also flushes all of the system caches. It takes forever to start up, because it checks the whole startup disk, but after finishing the startup and logging in, if you then restart in normal mode—voila! Your pilikia is all pau."

Top 10 Incredible Recordings - The List Universe

Top 10 Incredible Recordings - The List Universe: "Before I start on the list, I feel that I should advise that a couple of the items here are quite horrific and I would recommend that those who are weak of heart or who have a nervous disposition avoid them. The items I am referring to are marked in the text. The items are not in any particular order as it is very hard to rate the historical importance versus the just plain weird value."

� 5 Pen Tricks from Japan — Uh oh…

� 5 Pen Tricks from Japan — Uh oh…: "The Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans — none of them can hold pens still for a second. Now you won’t be able to either. Here are the different moves I’ll show (and name) here. The higher the number, the harder it is: The Helicopter (2) The Pincher (4) The Wheel (1) The Drummer (3) The Flip (5)"

At Rapleaf, your personals are public | CNET News.com

Rapleaf, based in San Francisco, is building a business on that premise. The privately held start-up, whose investors include Facebook-backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, runs two consumer Web sites: Rapleaf.com, a people search engine that lets you retrieve the name, age and social-network affiliations of anyone, as long as you have his or her e-mail address; and Upscoop.com, a similar site to discover, en masse, which social networks to which the people in your contact list belong.

How to become another user in sqlplus

How to become another user in sqlplus: "A DBA frequently needs to become another user to test something or verify a problem. Short of having to gain acess to that users password, we are asked can I su to that account, sort of like root does on unix. This is an 'su.sql' script I use: "

Ask Tom "connecting as another user without their..."

Ask Tom "connecting as another user without their...":

"So, this is still 'valid', but there are other ways in the year 2007. proxy users for example, consider: ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> alter user scott grant connect through ops$tkyte; User altered. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte[scott]/foobar; Connected. scott%ORA10GR2> select user from dual; USER ------------------------------ SCOTT scott%ORA10GR2> connect scott/foobar; ERROR: ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE. scott%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte/foobar; Connected. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> "

The SIMH Altair 8800 Z80 simulator

The SIMH Altair 8800 Z80 simulator: "The Altair 8800 simulator is part of the SIMH family of simulators currently at version 3.7-2. Unlike a real Altair 8800 it features several enhancements: * Choice of processor (8080 CPU or Z80 CPU) * Optional banked memory (8 banks with 64 Kbyte) * Optional hard drive support for additional storage capacity * Networking support via TCP/IP for client/server systems * Support for up to 4 consoles * Timer generated interrupts * Ability to set the clock speed for 'real-time' simulation (useful for games)"

blueprintcss - Google Code

blueprintcss - Google Code: "Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing."

Anarchaia: A tumblelog by Christian Neukirchen

Anarchaia: A tumblelog by Christian Neukirchen: "Experimental, impressionistic sub-paragraph tumblin' (think obstsalat)"

YouTube - How to light a grill in 2 seconds

YouTube - How to light a grill in 2 seconds: "Web classic (circa 1995) of engineers lighting a grill [really fast] with liquid oxygen."

Quote of the Day — on Law School | Through a Glass Darkly

Quote of the Day — on Law School | Through a Glass Darkly:

"“Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.” – Hart Pomerantz"

The Fishbowl: The Only Flowchart You'll Ever Need

The Fishbowl: The Only Flowchart You'll Ever Need: "Do I want to do this? Will it end in disaster? Will it make a good story anyway?"

vm4all.com

vm4all.com: "VMware's virtualization technology has become the industry standard for virtualization in the enterprise. More and more people are writing software based on the SDK and created a lot of little handy tools. On the other side there are some larger company’s who also created all kinds of applications to support VMware ESX server and Virtual Center. The vm4all.com website provides a complete list of all these tools and applications. "

xtravirt.com - Downloads

xtravirt.com - Downloads: "This stunning pack contains 70 individual handcrafted Visio objects to represent VMware VI3 environments."

Economist's View: "The Naive Pay All the Fees"

Economist's View: "The Naive Pay All the Fees": "The smartest strategy, they say, is for the sophisticated consumer to choose the service with the most hidden charges and highest add-on prices, but then avoid paying those added costs. “The sophisticated consumer takes advantage of that,” Mr. Gabaix said. “The na�ve pay all the fees.”"

YouTube - Ben Stein Talks Retirement -- Part 1

YouTube - Ben Stein Talks Retirement -- Part 1: "Retirement Planning: Getting Started (Part 1) First video in a three-part series on retirement planning, Ben Stein outlines basic steps to begin the retirement planning process, from the use of retirement planning calculators to tips on finding a financial advisor. "

IMAO: Special Harry Potter Edition Fred Thompson Facts

IMAO: Special Harry Potter Edition Fred Thompson Facts: "* Fred Thompson's glare has the same effect as a Cruciatus Curse. * Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort ever feared. Why? Because Dumbledore was friends with Fred Thompson. * Fred Thompson can transform into the most powerful Animagus form of all: Fred Thompson. * If you call Fred Thompson a Muggle, he'll cast a spell on you where you spit out all your teeth. He uses his fist to cast the spell. * A Quidditch game ends when either the Golden Snitch is caught or Fred Thompson becomes bored. * Fred Thompson has killed more Death Eaters than any Auror... and that was just this morning. * Even an Imperius Curse can't make you vote against Fred Thompson. * SPOILER!!! At the end of Deathly Hallows, Fred Thompson kills Voldemort. With a ping pong paddle. "

CFT I - CHICAGO URBAN EXPLORATION

CFT I - CHICAGO URBAN EXPLORATION: "We entered into a loading room, filled with pipes and pumps. We explored for a bit and discovered another set of ladders going down another 50 ft., this being a guess because it was filled with water (the plunge test gave no answers...next time, we're bringing a rope). Two explorers went as far as they could go, but didn't feel like getting wet (little did we know what was in store for us). "

libapr(apache portable runtime) programming tutorial

libapr(apache portable runtime) programming tutorial: "This is a tutorial on how to use libapr(apache portable runtime)."

RFC 2183 - Content Disposition

RFC 2183 - Content Disposition:
"disposition := 'Content-Disposition' ':' disposition-type *(';' disposition-parm)

disposition-type := 'inline' / 'attachment' / extension-token ;

disposition-parm := filename-parm / creation-date-parm / modification-date-parm / read-date-parm / size-parm / parameter"

404 Error Pages: Reloaded | Design Showcase

404 Error Pages: Reloaded | Design Showcase: "Three weeks ago we’ve showcased some of the most beautiful, creative and user-friendly 404 Error Pages; we’ve collected some interesting ideas one can use to help out the visitors once they got lost ony your page. We’ve also asked our readers to design their own 404 pages and promised to present the best solutions afterwards. "

How to Speed up Firefox page loading

How to Speed up Firefox page loading: "Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up: 1.Type about:config into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set network.http.pipelining to true Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0 (zero). This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves. If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now! "

HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ

HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ: "HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ What is HTTP pipelining? Normally, HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with the next request being issued only after the response to the current request has been completely received. Depending on network latencies and bandwidth limitations, this can result in a significant delay before the next request is seen by the server. HTTP/1.1 allows multiple HTTP requests to be written out to a socket together without waiting for the corresponding responses. The requestor then waits for the responses to arrive in the order in which they were requested. The act of pipelining the requests can result in a dramatic improvement in page loading times, especially over high latency connections."

Optimizing Page Load Time - die.net

Optimizing Page Load Time - die.net: "It is widely accepted that fast-loading pages improve the user experience. In recent years, many sites have started using AJAX techniques to reduce latency. Rather than round-trip through the server retrieving a completely new page with every click, often the browser can either alter the layout of the page instantly or fetch a small amount of HTML, XML, or javascript from the server and alter the existing page. In either case, this significantly decreases the amount of time between a user click and the browser finishing rendering the new content. However, for many sites that reference dozens of external objects, the majority of the page load time is spent in separate HTTP requests for images, javascript, and stylesheets. AJAX probably could help, but speeding up or eliminating these separate HTTP requests might help more, yet there isn't a common body of knowledge about how to do so. While working on optimizing page load times for a high-profile AJAX application, I had a chance to investigate how much I could reduce latency due to external objects. Specifically, I looked into how the HTTP client implementation in common browsers and characteristics of common Internet connections affect page load time for pages with many small objects."