Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell | Magazine

The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell | Magazine: "By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Demand is already one of the largest suppliers of content to YouTube, where its 170,000 videos make up more than twice the content of CBS, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, Universal Music Group, CollegeHumor, and Soulja Boy combined. Demand also posts its material to its network of 45 B-list sites — ranging from eHow and Livestrong.com to the little-known doggy-photo site TheDailyPuppy.com — that manage to pull in more traffic than ESPN, NBC Universal, and Time Warner’s online properties (excluding AOL) put together."

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Introducing oraddlscript � devioblog

Introducing oraddlscript � devioblog: "The answers directed me to the DBMS_METADATA package (9i documentation, 10g documentation)."

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

David's Favourite Captain Haddock Curses

David's Favourite Captain Haddock Curses: "From the simple ('dogs!', 'rats!') to the scientific ('pithecanthropuses!') to the sublime ('vegetarian!'), you've just gotta love Captain Haddock of Tintin fame for his unique turn of phrase. I've tried to capture as many of his idiocyncratic curses as possible."

Woot : Wootcasts from the Past: Magellan Like a Felon Edition

Woot : Wootcasts from the Past: Magellan Like a Felon Edition: "After over three and a half years of our daily podcast, we sure have a lot of episodes in the can. (It’s where we do our best thinking.) Have you noticed how certain themes recur? We have! For example, grab hold of the common thread running through these moldy oldies, which are all about Ferdinand Magellan’s trip ‘round the globe. Well, mostly about that."

Monday, October 26, 2009

7 Lessons from Startup School - mediabistro.com: BayNewser

7 Lessons from Startup School - mediabistro.com: BayNewser: "On Friday, we told you about the day-long 'Startup School' held at the University of California, Berkeley on Saturday. Given the caliber of speakers, we thought it might be a good place for journalism entrepreneurs to learn a few tips and tricks.

Here are seven lessons from the sessions:"

ClickToFlash

ClickToFlash: "Flash only when you want it."

Thursday, October 22, 2009

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing: "All these parts came from www.hobbycity.com:

HXT900 9g / 1.6kg / .12sec Micro Servo $10.95
T1000.3S.25 - Turnigy 1000mAh 3S 25C Lipo Pack $16.58
Turnigy-3S - Turnigy balancer & Charger 2S-3S $4.49
HK-SS30A - Hobbyking SS Series 25-30A ESC $9.25
TP2410-12T - TowerPro BL Outrunner TP2410-12T(Y) $5.99
TP_11x4.7 - TP Slow Fly propeller 11x4.7 $2.40
HK-T4A-M2 - Hobby King 2.4Ghz 4Ch Tx & Rx $29.99
Total: $79.65"

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

YouTube - Park Zone Vapor Slow fly mod

YouTube - Park Zone Vapor Slow fly mod: "The lightest slowest vapor yet. 1 gram 0 mph"

E-Sky 4 CH Flight Simulator Training Kit For Airplanes and Helicopters w/ USB Port

E-Sky 4 CH Flight Simulator Training Kit For Airplanes and Helicopters w/ USB Port: "If you find flying helicopter is much harder than you think, then try our RC flight simulator! You don't have to waste money on over-rated software that cost hundreds of dollars when you can just pay $24.95 to get one of the best-rated flight simulator program in the world. You will receive a complete kit with both hardware and software included. All that is required for you to do is installed the software and connect the USB cable from the supplied transmitter to your computer and off you go!"

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing:

"Here's Dan Shapiro's geeky, fun, and inspiring five-minute Ignite talk about becoming a remote control hobbyist for under $100."

Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Corner on National Review Online

The Corner on National Review Online: "My favorite insight about humor and the divine comes from the poet Galway Kinnell, who wrote that “laughter is our stuttering in a language we can’t speak yet.” What he’s talking about is the language of transcendence, of what C. S. Lewis called the state of being “surprised by joy.”"

Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy: "As an aside, my daughter points me to a very beautifully and subtly astute novel, Never Let Me Go, by the great Kazuo Ishiguro, who also gave us The Remains of the Day."

Friday, October 16, 2009

argparse - Project Hosting on Google Code

argparse - Project Hosting on Google Code: "The argparse module improves on the standard library optparse module in a number of ways including:

* handling positional arguments
* supporting sub-commands
* allowing alternative option prefixes like and /
* handling zero-or-more and one-or-more style arguments
* producing more informative usage messages
* providing a much simpler interface for custom types and actions"

PEP 20 -- The Zen of Python

PEP 20 -- The Zen of Python: "
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!"

Shaolin Monks - Photo Gallery

Shaolin Monks - Photo Gallery: "The Shaolin Monastery was founded at the foot of Mount Song in Henan Province, China in 477 A.D.

Although Buddhist tenets emphasize peace and non-harming, the monks of Shaolin found themselves called upon to defend themselves and their neighbors many times during China's tumultuous history.

As a result, they developed a world-renowned form of martial arts technique, known as Shaolin kung fu."

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Principles of the Phase Contrast (Electron) Microscopy

Principles of the Phase Contrast (Electron) Microscopy: "Fritz Zernike (1888-1966) with one of first phase-contrast microscopes were not built until 1941."

Hematology - 56 - Microscope Row, Laboratory Medicine: Yale School of Medicine

Hematology - 56 - Microscope Row, Laboratory Medicine: Yale School of Medicine: "In addition to single head light microscopes, where the majority of technical work is performed, the Hematology Lab also utilizes multiheaded microscopes for training and consultations."

The Bureau of Communication - Fill-in-the-blank Correspondence

The Bureau of Communication - Fill-in-the-blank Correspondence

"Let that which is unsaid be said"

AFCPE | Home

AFCPE | Home: "AFCPE is the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. We’re a nonprofit, professional organization dedicated to educating, training, and certifying financial counselors and educators."

Corporatism: A Love Story - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Corporatism: A Love Story - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: "Michael Moore recently visited George Washington University to do some capitalist-style promotion for his new flick Capitalism: A Love Story and got a little more than he bargained for during the audience Q&A. Check out the clip below where college libertarian Chad Swarthout gets Moore to admit that the real problem is “corporatism” and “giving too much power to government.”"

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

John Graham-Cumming: Damn the torpedoes

John Graham-Cumming: Damn the torpedoes: "

three torpedos that need to be damned:

You Can't
I Can't
They Won't

PS And while you are being single-minded and purposeful, don't forget to be joyful."

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Allround Automations

Allround Automations
PL/SQL Developer is an Integrated Development Environment that is specifically targeted at the development of stored program units for Oracle Databases. Over time we have seen more and more business logic and application logic move into the Oracle Server, so that PL/SQL programming has become a significant part of the total development process. PL/SQL Developer focuses on ease of use, code quality and productivity, key advantages during Oracle application development.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph:
"* Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

* Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

* Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck."

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph: "My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a 'luck school' - a simple experiment that examined whether people's luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person."

Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Little Book of Semaphores

The Little Book of Semaphores: "The Little Book of Semaphores is a free (in both senses of the word) textbook that introduces the principles of synchronization for concurrent programming."

Property Values - Office of the Assessor - Alameda County

Property Values - Office of the Assessor - Alameda County

Friday, October 09, 2009

Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part I) | The Art of Manliness

Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part I) | The Art of Manliness: "“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”"

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Time Out's 50 Greatest Animated Films with added commentary by Terry Gilliam – Time Out Film - Time Out London

Time Out's 50 Greatest Animated Films with added commentary by Terry Gilliam – Time Out Film - Time Out London: "In celebration of the release of Pixar's 'Up' and Wes Anderson's beautiful stop-motion rendering of Roald Dahl's 'The Fantastic Mr Fox', Time Out ushers in the help of master animator Terry Gilliam – whose own partially animated 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' opens in cinemas this month – to run down 50 of the greatest animated features of all time"

Monday, October 05, 2009

Carsonified � 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users

Carsonified � 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users: "In this video from The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA), Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, WeFollow and Revision3, shares 9 things he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.

Here’s a quick bullet-point summary. You can watch the video for the complete presentation or view the presentation slides here. We’ll be uploading just the audio for you to listen to soon."

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Stossel in the Classroom

Stossel in the Classroom: "Join the nearly 100,000 teachers across the country who have experienced the benefits of using these educational and engaging segments from John Stossel and ABC News' 20/20 in their classrooms. Get your FREE DVDs and supplemental materials from STOSSEL IN THE CLASSROOM!"

Paul Graham at Startup School 08 | Omnisio

Paul Graham at Startup School 08 | Omnisio: "Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, speaks at Startup School 08 about how to create a successful startup."

Saturday, October 03, 2009

“Jia Junpeng, Your Mom Wants You To Go Home To Eat!” | chinaSMACK

“Jia Junpeng, Your Mom Wants You To Go Home To Eat!” | chinaSMACK: "[What I am posting is not a post, I am posting loneliness.]"

django guys let us understand python *args and **kwargs : Dpeepul Blog

django guys let us understand python *args and **kwargs : Dpeepul Blog: "As many new django developers often confuse between *args and **kwargs i planned to write the below post which clearly explains the difference between *args and **kwargs."

Palantir Technologies � Blog Archive � The Palantir Technologies Demo Reel: screenshots, round 3

Palantir Technologies � Blog Archive � The Palantir Technologies Demo Reel: screenshots, round 3: "The Palantir family of products is much more that just pretty pictures; we have the underlying intelligence infrastructure to make those realtime animations possible and (more importantly) meaningful. That said, we sure do think they’re pretty.

By the way, if you’re interested in the progression of our interfaces, this not the first time we’ve posted eye candy: we posted a set of updated screenshots a little over a year ago; think of this as the next installment in the series.

And yes, it’s really all Java Swing."

How The Owner Of “Fail Blog” And “I Can Has Cheezburger” Keeps Racking Up Wins – With Ben Huh

How The Owner Of “Fail Blog” And “I Can Has Cheezburger” Keeps Racking Up Wins – With Ben Huh: "Ben Huh came to Mixergy to talk about how he raised money to buy a blog about LOL cats, called 'I Can Has Cheezburger,' and how he turned it into a growing publishing company that own over 20 sites, including Fail Blog and This is Photo Bomb. His network has over 11 million users and 218 million monthly page views.

I asked him how he did it and, more importantly, what YOU can learn about building a publishing company, based on his experience."

Amazon Web Services Blog: Don't Forget: You Can Use Amazon SimpleDB For Free!

Amazon Web Services Blog: Don't Forget: You Can Use Amazon SimpleDB For Free!: "You can keep up to 1 gigabyte of data in SimpleDB without paying any storage fees. You can transfer 1 GB of data and use up to 25 Machine Hours to process your queries each month. This should be sufficient to allow you to issue about 2 million PutAttribute or Select calls per month."

Friday, October 02, 2009

Lisp Book Home Page

Lisp Book Home Page: "Civilized Software is making available a book entitled Interpreting Lisp which presents how LISP works and how to build a LISP interpreter."

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Gloss: a Pygame OpenGL wrapper | TuxRadar

Gloss: a Pygame OpenGL wrapper | TuxRadar: "Gloss is a high-performance graphics wrapper around Pygame that lets you take advantage of OpenGL without having to delve into the murky depths of 3D programming. Gloss lets you build 2D games where you can rotate, scale and recolor sprites on the fly, and also includes a selection of helpful mathematics functions to make the life of games coders easier."

Let's Discuss the Matter Further � Google Earth and Middle-earth

Let's Discuss the Matter Further � Google Earth and Middle-earth: "I wanted to measure distances in Tolkien's Middle-earth. While a flat map distorts such measurements, it occured to me that Google Earth can correctly measure both lines and paths across the curved surface of the globe. I soon found excellent documentation for using image overlays with Google Earth, so I downloaded a map of Middle-earth and tried placing it on the globe."

David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: The Book

David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: The Book: "You may download The book in one file (640 pages):"

Code Monkeyism: The dark side of NoSQL

Code Monkeyism: The dark side of NoSQL:

- ad hoc data fixing – either no query language available or no skills
- ad hoc reporting – either no query language available or no in-house skills
- data export – sometimes no API way to access all data