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."

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive � Optimizing Page Load Time (and a little about the Debug menu)

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive � Optimizing Page Load Time (and a little about the Debug menu): "Another tip you might find handy as a web developer is the “Show Page Load Test Window” option in the Safari Debug menu. You can turn on the Debug menu by typing defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu YES at a shell prompt, and then restarting Safari. This menu includes a number of rough debugging tools that we created mainly for browser testing, but you may find some of them handy for web development. The page load test in particular is interesting because it measures page load time in a more precise way than either onload timing or just using a stopwatch. If you change the “Suite” pop-up menu to “URL”, you can type the URL of your choice and get a fairly precise time for loading it. If you empty the cache first, you can get an uncached time."

PubCon Publishers Search and Marketing Conferences 2007

PubCon Publishers Search and Marketing Conferences 2007: "PubCon Street Tips: Giving a Kick Ass Presentation"

Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC

Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC: "Send a self-addressed stamped envelope, your IP address and password to: 2245 N. Green Valley Parkway Suite 411 Henderson, NV 89014"

Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC

Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC: "Send a self-addressed stamped envelope"

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics: "However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years. So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before? Let’s take a look at the most interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools."

DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly: Jerz. Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky

Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky

"Accordingly, this paper analyzes previously unpublished files recovered from a backup of Woods's student account at Stanford, and documents an excursion to the real Colossal Cave in Kentucky in 2005. In addition, new interviews with Crowther, Woods, and their associates (particularly members of Crowther's family) provide new insights on the precise nature of Woods's significant contributions. Real locations in the cave and several artifacts (such as an iron rod and an axe head) correspond to their representation in Crowther's version; however, by May of 1977, Woods had expanded the game to include numerous locations that he invented, along with significant technical innovations (such as scorekeeping and a player inventory). Sources that incorrectly date Crowther's original to 1972 or 1974, or that identify it as a cartographic data file with no game or fantasy elements, are sourced thinly if at all. The new evidence establishes that Crowther wrote the game during the 1975-76 academic year and probably abandoned it in early 1976. The original game employed magic, humor, simple combat, and basic puzzles, all of which Woods greatly expanded. While Crowther remained largely faithful to the geography of the real cave, his original did introduce subtle changes to the environment in order to improve the gameplay."

Apache API notes

Apache API notes:
"Special considerations for response handlers

Handlers for most phases do their work by simply setting a few fields in the request_rec structure (or, in the case of access checkers, simply by returning the correct error code). However, response handlers have to actually send a request back to the client.

They should begin by sending an HTTP response header, using the function send_http_header. (You don't have to do anything special to skip sending the header for HTTP/0.9 requests; the function figures out on its own that it shouldn't do anything). If the request is marked header_only, that's all they should do; they should return after that, without attempting any further output.

Otherwise, they should produce a request body which responds to the client as appropriate. The primitives for this are rputc and rprintf, for internally generated output, and send_fd, to copy the contents of some FILE * straight to the client."

Quicktext - Hesslow Extensions

Quicktext - Hesslow Extensions: "Quicktext is an extension for Thunderbird that lets you create templates that can be easily inserted into your own emails. Using Thunderbird, Quicktext is the perfect tool to help you quickly answer routine, repetitive emails. Quicktext performs both simple and complex tasks. The program can insert different signatures into your emails depending on whom you are sending the email to."

Regular Expressions in Oracle Database 10g

Regular Expressions in Oracle Database 10g: "To harness the power of regular expressions, you can exploit the newly introduced Oracle SQL REGEXP_LIKE operator and the REGEXP_INSTR, REGEXP_SUBSTR, and REGEXP_REPLACE functions."

Seriously Good: Okra

Seriously Good: Okra:

"So before rejecting okra, try it in it's best light. Here, then is the numinous fried okra.

Fried Okra

1/2 lb okra
1 c cornmeal
1 tbsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 c buttermilk
vegetable oil

Choose okra that is an even green color and 2' - 4' long. Trim stem ends from okra and cut into 3/4' lengths. Soak in buttermilk for 15 minutes.

Mix cornmeal, salt, and pepper in a plastic bag. Add okra and toss to coat.

Heat 1/2' oil in a 10' skillet (cast iron is traditional) over medium high heat. When oil begins to shimmer, sift excess cornmeal mixture from okra and add to skillet. Cook, turning occasionally, until golden brown. (Stir gently to avoid losing coating.) Drain on paper towels and salt again if needed."

14 Numbers Your Cell Phone Can't Live Without � The Cranking Widgets Blog

14 Numbers Your Cell Phone Can't Live Without � The Cranking Widgets Blog: "So, if your cell phone has no other numbers stored in its memory, make sure it has these numbers:"

Glanzer: Picking the wrong fight

Glanzer: Picking the wrong fight:

"If he did, he might realize that although God may not be mentioned, messages consistent with Christianity and even a sprinkling of Christian symbolism abound (especially in the seventh book, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows').

In fact, Christians should actually see J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series as fantasy tales in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Rowling's series reinforces a core Christian belief that good and evil are not just socially constructed."

Townhall.com::Harry Potter and the Fire breathing Fundamentalists::By Jerry Bowyer

Townhall.com::Harry Potter and the Fire breathing Fundamentalists::By Jerry Bowyer:

"When I left the theatre, I knew two things: first, that I had been an ignorant blow-hard. This wasn’t Wiccan propaganda: it was standard-issue fairy tale magic like Cinderella and The Wizard of Oz. Second, that Joanne Rowling had spent a great deal of time immersed in The Greats – the long line of literary masterpieces that range from The Lord of the Rings and Narnia back through Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, the Arthurian Legends, the Church Fathers, the Scriptures themselves, and into the best of the pre-Christian Greek classics. In other words, Rowling was one of us."

Christian themes abound in Potter tales - 08/04/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

Christian themes abound in Potter tales - 08/04/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

'J.K. Rowling gets the last laugh on the dwindling number of conservative Christians who have attacked her Harry Potter saga over the past decade: The most important plot point of the seventh and final book is unambiguously Christian.

Rowling cleverly scattered so many red herrings among the loaves and fishes in the previous books that she made it difficult to see the trail clearly except in retrospect. The Potter story is not a linear Christian allegory. And Harry's World is insistently devoid of explicit religion, right through the final chapter.

But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finally reveals plainly what the author had said for many years: that her Christian faith undergirds her fictional creation.'

YouTube Architecture | High Scalability

YouTube Architecture | High Scalability

Serving Thumbnails

* Surprisingly difficult to do efficiently.
* There are a like 4 thumbnails for each video so there are a lot more thumbnails than videos.
* Thumbnails are hosted on just a few machines.
* Saw problems associated with serving a lot of small objects:

How To Design The Perfect Nap - lifehack.org

How To Design The Perfect Nap - lifehack.org: "A correctly performed nap can give you a great boost in energy, focus, and concentration, but a poorly executed nap can leave you groggy and more tired than when you started."

Introduction to Economic Analysis

Introduction to Economic Analysis

ISBN 160049000X

by

R. Preston McAfee
California Institute of Technology

Download the book in PDF format

(Note: permanent link to current version is
http://www.introecon.com/IEA.pdf)

Source Code (Word document)

"The Open Source Introduction to Microeconomics"

Buy a printed copy for $11.10 plus shipping

Oracle Tips - PL/SQL Cursor For Loop

Oracle Tips - PL/SQL Cursor For Loop: "The CURSOR FOR is a very efficient cursor. Lines 2 through 6 define the cursor. Line 8 handles opening the cursor, fetching the rows, testing for new rows, and exiting when a new row is not returned. Notice that the record r_c8 is not defined in the declaration section. The CURSOR FOR automatically defines r_c8 as a c8%rowtype. The scope for r_c8 is only inside the CURSOR FOR loop. Likewise, the cursor attributes for cursor c8 are defined only inside the CURSOR FOR loop. "

Mii Transfer: Get Your Mii on Your Mac - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Mii Transfer: Get Your Mii on Your Mac - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): "Mii Transfer is a tiny utility which lets you copy your Miis from your Wii Remote to your computer so you can share them on sites such as MiiPlaza.net and edit them using Mii Editor."

| Nintendo - Customer Service | Wii - Wii Remote & Sensor Bar Troubleshooting

| Nintendo - Customer Service | Wii - Wii Remote & Sensor Bar Troubleshooting: "This section covers troubleshooting information for the Wii Remote and Sensor Bar. Because these two accessories interact with eachother, it is helpful to combine the troubleshooting steps for both. Our experience has shown that the majority of Wii Remote and Sensor Bar problems can be solved with the information on this page. Please be sure to read the information carefully and follow all applicable instructions."

Favicon Generator and Gallery

Favicon Generator and Gallery: "Welcome to favicon.co.uk where you can generate your own Favorites Icon for your website and view a gallery of some of the ones that have been created."

Psychology Today: Dumped, But Not Down

Psychology Today: Dumped, But Not Down: "Rejection is a fundamental law of the (social) universe. But if you laser in on every dis, you'll likely trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rejection-sensitivity is on the rise, but you can learn to brave even the biggest brush-offs. "

PIKAPIKA

PIKAPIKA: "This animation was created from a lighting doodle project through which we met various people in various places. The surprise and joy that brought life to the doodles linked one person with another. This communication naturally took form in the work. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all the participants!"

American Shower and Bath Corporation

American Shower and Bath Corporation: "[Shower Kits] [32' (81.3cm) & 36' (91.4cm) Corner Entry Shower Kits] "

Getty images

Getty images: "Footage Liberated"

Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 2nd Edition

Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 2nd Edition: "By Steven Feuerstein & Bill Pribyl; ISBN 1-56592-335-9E
Second Edition, published September 1997."

Oracle PL/SQL Programming

Oracle PL/SQL Programming: "Oracle PL/SQL Programming is the name of a book first published by O'Reilly Media in 1995. Written initially by Steven Feuerstein, and now co-authored by Bill Pribyl, Oracle PL/SQL Programming or OPP is now in its third edition and is widely hailed as the 'bible' for PL/SQL developers. Hundreds of thousands of copies of this book have helped countless developers take full advantage of the PL/SQL language."

The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies

The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies: "The Taxonomy is more useful than the alphabetical index for studying the logical relationships between fallacies. To understand an individual fallacy, it may be helpful to move upward in the Taxonomy via the 'Type' link, in order to understand the more general fallacy of which it is a subfallacy. Also, moving downward via the 'Subfallacy' link can help in understanding a general fallacy through seeing a more specific version of it. Finally, moving sideways via the 'Sibling' link can help to explain the nature of a fallacy by comparing it with a similar one of the same basic type. Some individual fallacies―such as Wishful Thinking―are found in more than one spot in the Taxonomy, which is because they are subfallacies of more than one type of fallacy."

Gateway Pundit: Goodness... What's Happened to France?

Gateway Pundit: Goodness... What's Happened to France?: "Volunteers hold a U.S. flag as they form a human chain to honor fallen U.S. troops in World War Two and form the words 'France Will Never Forget' as a symbol of the friendship between France and the U.S. in Omaha Beach, near the U.S. Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, western France, June 30, 2007."

Video TEASER FWNF : france will never forget - FERBUS, france, will, never, tribute - Dailymotion Share Your Videos

Video TEASER FWNF : france will never forget - FERBUS, france, will, never, tribute - Dailymotion Share Your Videos: "france will never forget"

Fighting the Flying Circus

Fighting the Flying Circus:

"FIGHTING THE FLYING CIRCUS
BY EDDIE RICKENBACKER

This on-line edition of Eddie Rickenbacker's World War One memoirs dates from the original version published by Stokes in 1919. Captain Rickenbacker, originally from Ohio, was best known as one of the Commanders of the 94th 'Hat-in-the-Ring' Squadron, a crack unit of pilots which included many former members of the famed Lafayette Escadrille. The 94th ended the war in France with the highest number of air victories of any American squadron. Captain Rickenbacker later belonged to an association of pilots and Great War air veterans who, in the years immediately following the Second World War, invited many of the new 'young' aces from the Pacific and European theaters for informal lectures. These men never lost their keen interest in aviation."

ANTs | High performance RDBMS - Ants Software Seeks To Migrate Sybase Users To Oracle

ANTs | High performance RDBMS - Ants Software Seeks To Migrate Sybase Users To Oracle: "Ants Software previously billed itself as a high-performance relational system; it's now emphasizing its ability to migrate database users away from Sybase to Oracle."

Package Design Magazine--Packaging, Branding and Design News for the flexible, plastic, and corrugated packaging industry

Package Design Magazine--Packaging, Branding and Design News for the flexible, plastic, and corrugated packaging industry: "Nine emotional triggers were uncovered as having a strong correlation between likelihood of purchase and brand equity:

1. Pride - Feelings of status conferred by the brand

2. Empowerment - A sense of control in overcoming daily problems

3. Trust - Faith in the ability of the brand to perform an expected function

4. Identification - A sense of shared values with the brand

5. Familiarity - A feeling of knowledge about the brand

6. Warmth - A positive feeling of intimacy toward the brand

7. Curiosity - A desire to get to know the brand better

8. Relevance - A feeling of emotional fit with the life of the consumer

9. Approachability - A lowered-risk willingness to obtain the brand"

Ratatouille Wine

Wine Spectator | Articles | Unfiltered June 27, 2007: "We have to admit, when we heard Disney had teamed up with Costco to put a cartoon character on a wine label, we scratched our heads. About as good an idea as the candy cigarette, was our first thought. Then we went online and saw the trailer for the new Pixar film Ratatouille, and only two words came to mind: Brilliant. Marketing. Ratatouille is the story of a rat named Remy who's working behind the scenes in a top Paris restaurant. The chefs, it turns out, are no good--it's the rat who's secretly adding spices and adjusting stocks to win diners' acclaim. Since food and wine go so well together, Disney has introduced the Ratatouille wine, being carried by Costco, to help promote the food-friendly film. Of course, the wine is French--a 2004 white Burgundy from the M�con's Ch�teau de Messey, and will be available Aug. 1 at Costco stores in 18 states for $13. We just hope it's OK to sneak some of the wine into the theater while we watch the movie."

Global Nerdy � Blog Archive � Laws of Software Development

Global Nerdy � Blog Archive � Laws of Software Development: "Inspired by Phil Haack’s article 19 Eponymous Laws of Software Development, I decided to collect laws, axioms and rules pertaining to mainstream software development and put them in a nice, easy-to-read table.

This is by no means a complete list of laws; I’ve purposely stuck to the ones that apply to everyday software development and steered clear of the more theoretical ones. Maybe I’ll compile a more complete list someday.

You’ll notice that some of the laws come from the world of biology — they also appear in some lists of software laws, and I think they still apply."

Sue's Blog... again...: How to Add Tabs to SQL Developer

Sue's Blog... again...: How to Add Tabs to SQL Developer:
"Suppose you want to add a new tab to your tables definitions that shows all the column comments, or more partitioned information, or sub-partitined information."

3D-Stereogram Tetris by ~3Dimka on deviantART

3D-Stereogram Tetris by ~3Dimka on deviantART: "Artist's Comments
The idea is not that new, but this might be the first flash version of Magic Eye Tetris.
There's no preloader, so please be patient while whole thing being loaded.

Flash itself does not have ability to render stereograms so I had to prerender all 256 combinations of cells in a row. That's why the file is pretty big ( 1.4 Mbytes).

Playing tetris in Magic Eye mode is quite a challenge, so I really appreciate your try. And please drive responsible after ;) LOL
As for me, I can play this legendary game for hours and hours. Oh yeah, some creds to the creator of tetris Alexey Pazhitnov - [link] (thanks man!)

Have fun!
3Dimka"

Browser emulator

Browser emulator: "Sorry, due to heavy load on the server, browsing is quite slow.
On the positive side, it makes the experience even more authentic..."

Discover APL | Vector - the array languages

Discover APL | Vector - the array languages: "The 1960s and 70s saw many efforts to produce VHLLs that would lower the skill requirements for programmers, a general strategy of industrialisation. The APL community played no part in this. Iverson stressed the importance of APL as a “tool of thought”, a notation to help humans describe and solve complex problems. We were not trying to make everyday programming easy; we wanted to solve harder problems faster. (The complete code for calculating the mean of a list of numbers requires 4 characters in J.) Ironically, experience shows APLs are easier for novices to learn than conventional PLs."

kuler

kuler:
Adobe Color Matching

Electronic Computers Within The Ordnance Corps, Introduction

Electronic Computers Within The Ordnance Corps, Introduction: "HISTORICAL MONOGRAPH FROM 1961

Karl Kempf
Historical Officer
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD
November 1961
PREFACE

This historical monograph covers the pioneer efforts and subsequent contributions of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in the field of automatic electronic computing systems during the period 1942 through 1961.

"

comp-tree.png (PNG Image, 6601x3822 pixels) - Scaled (15%)

comp-tree.png (PNG Image, 6601x3822 pixels) - Scaled (15%)

InnoVis - Phyllo Trees

InnoVis - Phyllo Trees: "PhylloTrees: Phyllotactic Patterns for Tree Layout

We explore the use of nature’s phyllotactic patterns to inform the layout of hierarchical data. These naturally occurring patterns provide a non-overlapping, optimal packing when the total number of nodes is not known a priori. PhylloTrees are a family of expandable tree layouts that we developed based on these patterns."

Lighthead - Caffeine

Lighthead - Caffeine: "Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu."

Home Zone - Adapting your Mac to wherever you are

Home Zone - Adapting your Mac to wherever you are: "Home Zone monitors Airport networks and Bluetooth devices in your proximity and can automatically trigger user-definable actions when configured networks or devices appear or disappear.

Available actions include enabling or disabling the screen saver password, switching network locations, setting the system volume, locking all keychains or opening any file, application or URL."

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime� components

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime� components: "Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional Media Types:

* AVI, FLV, and MKV file formats
* MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio
* AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
* Subtitle support for SSA and SRT

"

Oracle-on-Linux Installation Guides

Oracle-on-Linux Installation Guides: "This page contains a collection of install guides and tips that worked best for customers as reported in the Linux Discussion Forums and OTN Installfests. "

Ning - Create your own Social Networks!

Ning - Create your own Social Networks!:

"Get Your Own Social Network!

Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds."

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Cooking hot dogs via electrocution

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Cooking hot dogs via electrocution: "How to cook hot dogs... with electricity!

[Disclaimerzilla: While we could give you lots of warnings about all the different dangers involved and how to possibly skirt them, the simple truth is that this just isn't safe. If you are foolish enough to attempt this, you will have to deal with pointy things, raw electricity out of the wall, hot steam, and the possibility of fire. If that isn't enough, and you succeed, you are still faced with the possibility of having to eat a hot dog. In summary: do not, under any circumstances, cook hot dogs this way.]"

Swarm Behavior - National Geographic Magazine

Swarm Behavior - National Geographic Magazine: "A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots."

Milan Airport Pickpocket Video - Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide

Milan Airport Pickpocket Video - Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide: "Check out this MSNBC clip of young Italian rapscallions pickpocketing travelers in broad daylight, immediately after said travelers stagger out of a Milan airport train station."

Milan Airport Pickpocket Video - Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide

Milan Airport Pickpocket Video - Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide: "Check out this MSNBC clip of young Italian rapscallions pickpocketing travelers in broad daylight, immediately after said travelers stagger out of a Milan airport train station."

What is PowerShell?

What is PowerShell?: "Windows PowerShell (previously known by its code name, Monad) is a command-line tool built upon .NET that includes an entire .NET-based scripting language that is probably as useful as other scripting languages such as Perl.

PowerShell is available for free and runs on any of the newer Windows operating systems. It can be downloaded from the main PowerShell site."

XMLRPC Debugger

XMLRPC Debugger

Instructions on usage of the debugger:

1. Run a 'list available methods' action against desired server
2. If list of methods appears, click on 'describe method' for desired method
3. To run method: click on 'load method synopsis' for desired method. This will load a skeleton for method call parameters in the form above. Complete all xmlrpc values with appropriate data and click 'Execute'

Example:

Server Address: phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net
Path: /server.php

Behr.com Explore Color

Behr.com Explore Color: "With ColorSmart, you can now select and purchase 8 oz samples of your colors to try out at home."

Disk Inventory X 1.0 - MacUpdate

Disk Inventory X 1.0 - MacUpdate: "Disk Inventory X is a disk usage utility for Mac OS X. It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called 'treemaps'.
If you've ever wondered were all your disk space has gone, Disk Inventory X will help you to answer this question."

Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Set newer portable Macs' sleep mode

Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Set newer portable Macs' sleep mode: "There are some downsides to this, however. You’ll give up some hard drive space, for instance—an amount of space equal to your machine’s RAM, plus another 750MB. So on my MacBook, that’s 2.75GB of drive space, or just under 4 percent of my drive’s capacity. In addition, putting the machine into sleep mode takes notably longer. If you watch the video I created, there’s a delay of 10 or so seconds between the time the lid is closed and the power light goes from solid to its normal gentle blinking state. It’s during this time that the machine is writing the contents of RAM to the hard drive. As I noted, in theory nothing should go wrong if you decide to open the lid during this period (when you realize you forgot to print that one important document, for instance). However, there are quite a few stories of people doing just this, and winding up with a machine with a black screen, requiring a full restart to recover."

United Kingdom English for the American Novice

United Kingdom English for the American Novice: "United Kingdom English for the American Novice
Sixth Edition, July 1983
'English' to 'American' Dictionary

The items in this dictionary were collected while I lived in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1983. The work is no longer maintained and so contains dated references to people of the time. The definitions are my interpretation of explanations from Brits with whom I came in contact and hence may not be complete or even totally accurrate."

Screeds

Screeds: "Another of Mankind's master intellects, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, has approached bureaucratic inefficiency from the standpoint of the incentives that govern the use of resources, particularly money. He presented the following matrix of spending decisions:

The Benefit Will Accrue To Me
The Benefit Will Accrue To Others
The Cost Will Be Borne By Me
The Cost Will Be Borne By Others


This is the incentives matrix each of us faces any time he has to make a spending decision."

"

Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

"

Growing Tomatoes Upside Down? An Alternative Garden Plan

Growing Tomatoes Upside Down? An Alternative Garden Plan: "We've been growing our tomatoes upside-down for the past three years and really have fun growing them this way! We also grow tomatoes in the ground, and, by comparison, the ones in the upside-down buckets seem to have a little better yield than the same varieties grown in the ground. I attribute it to the fact that the branches have less stress while growing, and have better air circulation. Of course, you have to grow smaller varieties or ones that are suited for container growing, or the yields will be less.

We've experimented with growing peppers and have found that sweet bells do not do good because the branches break very easily. Varieties such as Cayenne, Tabasco, or ones that produce small fruit, will grow fine."

Click opera - She comes in colours

Click opera - She comes in colours: "In just nine months, Pantone has completely changed its meaning in Japan. Once a fistful of numbered swatch cards that pernickety designers would menace printers with, it's now become a trendy consumer buzzword in Japan, and, some might say, a byword for the newly-acceptable face of colour in a nation which dips in and out of chromophobia."

The Secrets of Oracle Bitmap Indexes

The Secrets of Oracle Bitmap Indexes

"Characteristic of Bitmap Indexes

• For columns with very few unique values (low cardinality)

Columns that have low cardinality are good candidates (if the cardinality of a column is <= 0.1 % that the column is ideal candidate, consider also 0.2% – 1%)

• Tables that have no or little insert/update are good candidates (static data in warehouse)
  
• Stream of bits: each bit relates to a column value in a single row of table

create bitmap index person_region on person (region);

Row Region North East West South
1 North 1 0 0 0
2 East 0 1 0 0
3 West 0 0 1 0
4 West 0 0 1 0
5 South 0 0 0 1
6 North 1 0 0 0

Advantage of Bitmap Indexes

The advantages of them are that they have a highly compressed structure, making them fast to read and their structure makes it possible for the system to combine multiple indexes together for fast access to the underlying table."

Disgraceland, PRC

Disgraceland, PRC: "Once upon a time in a land called Xi Pu, just west of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in the People's Republic of China, there was a tourist theme park... The World Landscape Park. As a business venture it failed, and today the park lies abandoned and decaying. Personally, I think it's a lot more interesting this way than it could ever possibly have been when it was open."