Thursday, July 31, 2008

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

IBM Slides

IBM Slides: "It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future"

LIL, The Little Implementation Language

LIL, The Little Implementation Language: "LIL, The Little Implementation Language, has been a lost and overlooked chapter in the history of Unix and the C language.

Back in the days when systems programmers still disdained 'high level languages' there were stories in the compiler community, passed mouth to ear about LIL, a high level assembler, whose creator, had a friendly competition with the creators of C, as to which language could generate more efficient code. Each time LIL edged out C, the C compiler would be improved, and erase LIL's margin of advantage.

A unique element to the LIL saga, is that LIL's creator documented the story, available here (thanks to a copy provided by the author);"

Sunday, July 27, 2008

JPEG JFIF

JPEG JFIF: "The JPEG compression specification was also published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as Recommendation T.81 and is available in PDF."

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars:
"Sheedy: No, I don't hear so much from hackers. No. No, no, no. I don't. Thankfully. No.
Wired: Just one no would've been fine."

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars: "It was the year Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an 'evil empire'; the year the United Nations implored the Russians to withdraw from Afghanistan; the year ABC aired The Day After, a TV movie about the wake of a nuclear attack on the US. In the midst of all this came WarGames, a fizzy little thriller about looming Armageddon."

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Chocolate Cake In 5 Minutes! | Dizzy Dee

Chocolate Cake In 5 Minutes! | Dizzy Dee:
"4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug" and microwave 3 min, let rest.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

My Dream App For the Mac

My Dream App For the Mac: "Just my luck. The one time I falsely accuse a towering figure of 20th century technology of using drugs, he's actually reading my comments."

Portals - WSJ.com

Portals - WSJ.com: "They help make cooking -- baking especially -- a snap. Stick a bowl on the scale, add the flour you need, reset the scale to zero, add your sugar, and so on. You can work through most ingredients like this in a single bowl, quickly, to a high degree of accuracy and without having a lot of measuring cups to wash up when you're done."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie - NYTimes.com

Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie - NYTimes.com: "To put the technique to the test, one batch of the cookie dough recipe given here was allowed to rest in the refrigerator. After 12, 24, and 36 hours, a portion was baked, each time on the same sheet pan, lined with the same nonstick sheet in the same oven at the same temperature."

Friday, July 11, 2008

ExifTool by Phil Harvey

ExifTool by Phil Harvey:
"ExifTool is a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in image, audio and video files. ExifTool supports many different types of metadata including EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3, as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras by Canon, Casio, FujiFilm, HP, JVC/Victor, Kodak, Leaf, Minolta/Konica-Minolta, Nikon, Olympus/Epson, Panasonic/Leica, Pentax/Asahi, Ricoh, Sanyo, Sigma/Foveon and Sony."
exif

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Protocol Buffers - Google Code

Protocol Buffers - Google Code: "Protocol buffers are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler. You define how you want your data to be structured once, then you can use special generated source code to easily write and read your structured data to and from a variety of data streams and using a variety of languages – Java, C , or Python."

How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You Sound Black? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You Sound Black? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog:
"(It turns out you don’t want to sound southern, either. Although pretty imprecisely estimated, it is almost as bad for your wages to sound southern as it is to sound black, even controlling for whether you live in the south.)"

How to Edit

How to Edit: "Walter Murch, editor of great films like The Godfather III, and Apocalypse Now, wrote a wonderful and very informative text called The Blink of an Eye. He discusses his experience in editing, and gives great advice for aspiring editors. My favorite chapter out of the text, “The Rule of Six,” lays out a set of criteria that Murch believes should be at the top of an editors list when working.

His list is as follows (in descending order by importance):

1) Emotion
2) Story
3) Rhythm
4) Eye-trace
5) Two-dimensional plane of Screen
6) Three-dimensional space of action"

chicagomediaworks.com - Dymtryk Notes on Editing

chicagomediaworks.com - Dymtryk Notes on Editing:
"EDWARD DMYTRYK WROTE a marvelous little book entitled ON FILM EDITING. I re-read it twice yearly. Buy it. Here are my condensed notes on it."

Liam’s Pictures from Old Books

Liam’s Pictures from Old Books: "Over 2,200 high-resolution images scanned from more than 100 different old or rare books, with extracts!"

Five Things You Should Never Tell Your Boss

Five Things You Should Never Tell Your Boss
"1. All about the technology -- and nothing about the business.
2. There's only one solution.
3. Bad opinions about your colleagues.
4. There's no way.
5. A surprise."

brad's blog: PyOpenGL on OS X

brad's blog: PyOpenGL on OS X:
"Here are the steps to install PyOpenGL on Mac OS X (10.4.10):

1. You'll need to get setuptools, and the easiest way to do that is with EasyInstall (see http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall). You'll download the ez_setup.py file, and just run: python ez_setup.py.

2. Download PyOpenGL from their download page. (Side Note: I also grabbed the OpenGLContext). Now, once you untar/unzip it, you should have a PyOpenGL/ directory. Just open a Terminal, cd into that directory, and run python setup.py build. Once that is finished, run python setup.py install

3. Now, do the same for OpenGLContext..."

43 Folders

43 Folders: "Video featuring terrific advice from This American Life’s Ira Glass on having the tenacity to get better at the creative work you’re passionate about — even through the times when you know what you’re making isn’t as good as you’d like."

Sunday, July 06, 2008

"Formal Methods in the Movies"

googletest - Google Code

googletest - Google Code:
"Google's framework for writing C tests on a variety of platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows CE, and Symbian). Based on the xUnit architecture. Supports automatic test discovery, a rich set of assertions, user-defined assertions, death tests, fatal and non-fatal failures, various options for running the tests, and XML test report generation."

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: Forth

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: Forth:
"In this article we chat to Charles H. Moore about the design and development of Forth. Moore invented Forth while at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory to help control radio telescopes and data-collection/reduction systems."

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: AWK

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: AWK:
"As well as co-authoring the 'Dragon' book series; Aho was one of the three developers of the AWK pattern matching language in the mid-1970's, along with Brian Kernighan and Peter Weinberger.

Computerworld recently spoke to Professor Aho to learn more about the development of AWK, in the first of a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages."

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: INTERCAL

Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: INTERCAL:
"In this interview, Computerworld ventures down a less serious path and chats to Don Woods about the development and uses of INTERCAL.

Woods currently works at Google, following the company's recent acquisition of Postini, and he is best known for co-writing the original Adventure game with Will Crowther. He also co-authored The Hackers Dictionary. Here we chat to him about all things spoof and the virtues of tonsils as removable organs."

Down for everyone or just me?

Down for everyone or just me?
web ping

Visual and Face Recognition Tests on the Internet

Visual and Face Recognition Tests on the Internet: "Welcome! At this website, we've created tests assessing memory, visual recognition, and face processing. The main purpose of these tests is to allow you to assess yourself."

lgf: Tech Note: Flippy Triangle Style

lgf: Tech Note: Flippy Triangle Style: "jQuery is the cat's pajamas"

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Specialty Bottle - Glass & Plastic Bottles Jars Vials Tins Other Containers

Specialty Bottle - Glass & Plastic Bottles Jars Vials Tins Other Containers: "Specialty Bottle is a national supplier of bottles, jars and tin containers."

Pascal's Pensees -Table of Contents

Pascal's Pensees -Table of Contents: "by Blaise Pascal 1660 translated by W. F. Trotter"

Why Fly When You Can Float? - NYTimes.com

Why Fly When You Can Float? - NYTimes.com: "As the cost of fuel soars and the pressure mounts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, several schemes for a new generation of airship are being considered by governments and private companies. “It’s a romantic project,” said Mr. Massaud, 45, sitting amid furniture designs in his Paris studio, “but then look at Jules Verne.”"

Pipecleaner Dance III : davidbessler.com

Pipecleaner Dance III : davidbessler.com: "Instructions: Click on a round button to start some tunes. Then use the keyboard, or mouse-over the keyboard on the screen to dance. Use the round “x” button to stop the music."

Friday, July 04, 2008

Python __Underscore__ Methods - Siafoo

Python __Underscore__ Methods - Siafoo:
"Abstract: Need to override an operator in your Python class? Ever wonder what all those double-underscore class methods do? Here's your answer."

MIT OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.189 A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python, January (IAP) 2008 | Home

MIT OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.189 A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python, January (IAP) 2008 | Home: "This course will provide a gentle introduction to programming using Python™ for highly motivated students with little or no prior experience in programming computers. The course will focus on planning and organizing programs, as well as the grammar of the Python programming language. Lectures will be interactive featuring in-class exercises with lots of support from the course staff.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month."

Thursday, July 03, 2008

SimplyNoise.com - The best free white noise generator on the Internet.

SimplyNoise.com - The best free white noise generator on the Internet.:
"Instructions:
* Slide the orb
* Find comfort zone
* Enjoy auditory zen"

All Sessions 2008 (3D Basecamp 2008)

All Sessions 2008 (3D Basecamp 2008): "The following is a list of sessions that were presented at Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2008. The event was held on Google's Mountain View campus from June 11th to the 13th, 2008."

NOVA | scienceNOW | Wisdom of the Crowds | PBS

NOVA | scienceNOW | Wisdom of the Crowds | PBS: "Ask enough people to estimate something, and the average of their guesses will get you surprisingly close to the right answer."

Charles Babbage Institute --> ConneXions: The Interoperability Report (1987-1996)

Charles Babbage Institute --> ConneXions: The Interoperability Report (1987-1996): "ConneXions was published monthly by Interop Company, a Division of Softbank
Expos, 303 Vintage Park Drive, Suite 201, Foster City, CA 94404-1138, USA.
Copyright (c) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 by
Interop Company. Quotation with attribution is encouraged. ConneXions--The
Interoperability Report and the ConneXions logo are registered trademarks of
Interop Company. This version web-published with the permission of the
copyright holders.

Ole Jacobsen edited ConneXions during these years, and for a time served
also as publisher. He may be reached at Cisco Systems SJ-7/3; 170 West
Tasman Drive; San Jose CA 95134-1706 . He
presently edits the Internet Protocol Journal ."

Introduction - The Internet Protocol Journal - Cisco Systems

Introduction - The Internet Protocol Journal - Cisco Systems: "This journal is not intended to promote any specific products or services, but rather is intended to serve as an informational and educational resource for engineering professionals involved in the design, development, and operation of public and private internets and intranets. The journal carries tutorial articles ('What is...?') as well as implementation/operation articles ('How to...'). It provides readers with technology and standardization updates for all levels of the protocol stack and serves as a forum for discussion of all aspects of internetworking."

How To Hide An Airplane Factory

How To Hide An Airplane Factory: "During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide
the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from being a
target for a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage
netting and to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air..."

Sound & Vision Magazine - The Netflix Queue: How's it Work?

Sound & Vision Magazine - The Netflix Queue: How's it Work?: "This got us wondering: Exactly how does their whole DVD queue system work? How does the Netflix master-cylinder determine whether you'll get a new release first or last; whether you'll get the 'long wait' movie at the top of your want-list next or the 'short wait' flick at the bottom?

We asked the people at Netflix how they really determine who gets that popular flick first, how they anticipate demand, and why they eliminated the household peace-preserving Profiles feature. They took a moment to 'queue us in.'"

Poiser Hand Drawn Physics Puzzle Game - Smart-Kit.com

Poiser Hand Drawn Physics Puzzle Game - Smart-Kit.com

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

VMware: Team Fusion: Replacing those blurry icons!

VMware: Team Fusion: Replacing those blurry icons!: "Today, we're discussing an issue, where when using VMware Fusion to run Windows on Mac, in Unity mode, the icons for Windows applications show up blurry. A helpful anonymous user already posted a solution for this on macosxhints.com, but we wanted to highlight it here and provide a bit more background."

mozdev.org - surfkeys: index

mozdev.org - surfkeys: index: "Why is a mouse good for web surfing? Because it is easy to use with just one hand while the other is doing something else, or just taking rest. Why is it bad? Too many reasons..

SurfKeys is a project that aims to make comfortable surfing possible with just one hand using just keyboard. It is intended to use with Hit-a-Hint extension."

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The 11 Best Foods You Arent Eating - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

The 11 Best Foods You Arent Eating - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog: "Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice."