Sand Pile Model

Sand Pile Model: "This cellular automata models a granular material in a gravitational field. There are two kinds of cells. Immovable ground cells and movable sand grains. Grains fall from a source at the top of the window and proceed down to the ground. Grains pile up and redistribute themselves according to the cellular automata rules. Application of the rule is a little more sophisticated than the Game of Life or Forest Fire rules."

Ronald Rood's oracle blog: oracle 10.1.0.5 on Leopard

Ronald Rood's oracle blog: oracle 10.1.0.5 on Leopard: "I had my installation upgraded to 10.1.0.5 while running Tiger. After the leopard installation (I installed on a new volume and imported the users from the old volume) I only had to create the dba group like it was in tiger and assign it to my dba account."

Bitstrips: Page One

Bitstrips: Page One: "Top Bitstrips"

Vying Games : Cephalopod : Play

Vying Games : Cephalopod : Play: "Vying Games : Cephalopod |"

Dayrobber.com - 2. Jamaican Fried Dumplings

Dayrobber.com - 2. Jamaican Fried Dumplings: "This is how you make Jamaican Fried Dumplings!"

Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot - New York Times

Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot - New York Times: "But come on -- 13 percent of the camcorder market? This limited little thing? What's going on here? Having finally lived with the Flip, I finally know the answer: it's a blast. It's always ready, always with you, always trustworthy. Instead of crippling this 'camcorder,' the simplicity elevates it. Comparisons with a real camcorder are nonsensical, because the Flip is something else altogether: it's the video equivalent of a Kodak point-and-shoot camera. It's the very definition of 'less is more.'"

CSS Tutorial

CSS Tutorial: "Save a lot of work with CSS!

In our CSS tutorial you will learn how to use CSS to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once."

ORACLE-BASE - Schema Owners and Application Users

ORACLE-BASE - Schema Owners and Application Users: "In the context of this article, the schema owner represents the Oracle user that owns all your database objects, while application users are Oracle users that need access to those schema objects.

Allowing applications to make direct connections to the schema owner is a bad idea because it gives those applications far to many privileges, which can easily result in damage to your data and the objects themselves. Instead, it is better to define application users and grant those users the necessary privileges on the schema owners objects.

This article presents two methods for achieving this separation and highlights their pros and cons. For simplicities sake I've only defined two roles, but you can define as many roles as you wish, making the security as granular as you need for each type of application user."

Tom White: "Disks have become tapes"

Tom White: "Disks have become tapes": "MapReduce is a programming model for processing vast amounts of data. One of the reasons that it works so well is because it exploits a sweet spot of modern disk drive technology trends. In essence MapReduce works by repeatedly sorting and merging data that is streamed to and from disk at the transfer rate of the disk. Contrast this to accessing data from a relational database that operates at the seek rate of the disk"

wattzon.org

"The Game Plan : A solution framework for climate change and energy."

The Nine Billion Names of God

The Nine Billion Names of God: "By Arthur Clarke"

Retirement Planner - MSN Money

Retirement Planner - MSN Money: "Socking away money for retirement is a great idea, but how much do you really need to save? How long do you need to work to set yourself up comfortably in your golden years? Enter your information below, the charts and numbers on the right will change as you go along, so try a few different numbers and see how different scenarios might play out for you.

All amounts are calculated using today's dollar values. The rate of return on investments is adjusted for a 3% inflation rate."

Burn a DVD on Your Mac - Wired How-To Wiki

Burn a DVD on Your Mac - Wired How-To Wiki: "Apple first sold all of us on the digital music revolution using the slogan 'Rip, Mix, Burn.' Indeed, thanks to Apple software, it was suddenly dead simple to copy and burn music CDs using your Mac. But what about video DVDs? It turns out there are a few hoops to jump through, but in the end, it's pretty easy, even though you may need to invest in some additional software."

The Nuclear Weapon Archive - A Guide to Nuclear Weapons

The Nuclear Weapon Archive - A Guide to Nuclear Weapons: "A 'sister site' relationship has been established with Gregory Walker's Trinity Site. Greg and I are actively collaborating to provide the broadest variety of nuclear weapon information, in the most convenient form that we can. The two sites each have a different focus. The Nuclear Weapon Archive provides current information, technical data, and informative write-ups. The Trinity Site focuses on historical information, especially reproductions of public domain documents."

smuglispweeny: Tilton's Law: Solve the First Problem

smuglispweeny: Tilton's Law: Solve the First Problem: "Now they were stuck on some software problem and needed help fast. Their stack was Tandy, Cobol, and some micro database package. My skills were Apple, Cobol, and ISAM and in those days that was a deerskin glove fit so off I went for a mutual look-see."

Toolbox - Graphics program for Mac

Toolbox - Graphics program for Mac: "Toolbox is a visual programming tool which enables you to combine bitmaps, vector graphics and effects into amazing works of digital art."

:: DESTRUCTOID PC blog - Hardcore Gamer Community :: PC News, PC Hints, PC Cheats, and Codes on Video Games: PC, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 2, Gam

:: DESTRUCTOID PC blog - Hardcore Gamer Community :: PC News, PC Hints, PC Cheats, and Codes on Video Games: PC, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PSP, DS, GBA & Retro: "Fez is obviously a platformer with a ridiculously cute (and adorably animated) main character. That is all well and good, but the minute I saw the game break the traditional 2D perspective and morph into this crazy 2D/3D ridiculously well-designed hybrid I almost fell of my chair and cried with happiness."

Subterranean Press � Audio: Trunk and Disorderly by Charles Stross

Subterranean Press � Audio: Trunk and Disorderly by Charles Stross: "[Editor’s note: Charles Stross is damned funny, both in person and on the page. You’ll have to take my word on the first count. As to the second, here’s a P. G. Wodehouse meets Robert A. Heinlein as filtered through Mr. Stross’s sensibilities. In other words, it’s funny and indescribable as hell, and probably my favorite story this year.]"

The Art of the Push-Up - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

The Art of the Push-Up - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog: "Here’s a calculator to tell you how many push-ups you should be doing if you are in good shape."

An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up - New York Times

An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up - New York Times: "The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit."

Buzzard Blog: Tim Keller Speaks at Google

Buzzard Blog: Tim Keller Speaks at Google: "Tim spoke for about 35 minutes on 'The Reasoning Behind Belief in God,' the topic of his new book. Below is an outline and a few quotes and notes from Tim's 3-point message, the bulk of which centered on his 3rd point."

Youpi Key

Youpi Key keyboard macro "iKey is a utility that can eliminate repetitive actions. iKey allows creation of shortcuts that perform an action or sequence of actions each of which can be launched by key combinations, menu, timer, event or USB devices."

cx_Oracle executemany() Example

cx_Oracle executemany() Example: "executemany() is that it takes a sequence of mappings, as its second argument, not a sequence of sequences. The first argument is the statement itself. More specifically, that means a list of dictionaries."

def convertSequenceToDict(list):
"""For each element in the sequence, creates a dictionary item equal
to the element and keyed by the position of the item in the list.
Thanks to Dick Wall.
Example:
>>> convertListToDict(("Matt", 1))
{'1': 'Matt', '2': 1}
"""
dict = {}
argList = range(1,len(list)+1)
for k,v in zip(argList, list): dict[str(k)] = v
return dict

Getting the difference between dates

Getting the difference between dates: "Frequently we are asked -- how can I find the number of minutes between two dates or what is the amount of elapsed time. With Oracle Dates, this is pretty trivial, you can get either TOTAL (days, hours, minutes, seconds) between 2 dates simply by subtracting them or with a little mod'ing you can get Days/Hours/Minutes/Seconds between."

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control: "When you finally decide it's time to do something about that rat's nest of cables that's spreading like kudzu, you don't have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control. Whether you're looking to stow your headphone wires tangle-free in your gym bag, hide the ugly wire spaghetti you keep kicking further under your desk, or organize your gadget chargers and power plugs, we've got some cord management tricks for you. Hit the jump for photos and videos of our top 10 favorite ways to get cables under control."

mozdev.org - livehttpheaders: index

mozdev.org - livehttpheaders: index: "Welcome to the livehttpheaders project.

The goal of this project is to adds information about the HTTP headers in two ways:

* First by adding a 'Headers' tab in 'View Page Info' of a web page.
* Second by adding a tool in the 'Tools->Web Development' menu to be able to display http headers in real time (while pages are being downloaded from the Internet.
* Third by letting you edit request headers and replay an URL (beta). Look for the Replay button in the live window!"

How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data

How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data: "Apple's .Mac syncing features are sometimes no exception to these problems, and even though Apple provides a number of decent solutions in its .Mac sync support pages, they don't always work. Fortunately, a brief adventure using .Mac sync chat support (found at the bottom of that aforelinked page) cleared up a repeating 'merge/overwrite' sync dialog problem for me, and we felt the procedure was worth sharing."

Ulf Wiger � Satnam Singh: Declarative Programming Techniques for Many-Core Architectures

Ulf Wiger � Satnam Singh: Declarative Programming Techniques for Many-Core Architectures: "From a Functional Programming seminar at Ericsson, 21 February 2008"

Programming in python: Lisp in a single expression

Programming in python: Lisp in a single expression: "#An interpreter for a simple scheme like lexically
#scoped language implemented as single python expression."

Retirement Planner - MSN Money

Retirement Planner - MSN Money: "Socking away money for retirement is a great idea, but how much do you really need to save? How long do you need to work to set yourself up comfortably in your golden years? Enter your information below, the charts and numbers on the right will change as you go along, so try a few different numbers and see how different scenarios might play out for you."

Top 10 Worst Captchas | John M Willis ESM Blog

Top 10 Worst Captchas | John M Willis ESM Blog: " Here are my top 10 worst Captcha’s ever."

Where to Find Free Math Courses Online -- Education-Portal.com

Where to Find Free Math Courses Online -- Education-Portal.com: "Taking a math course doesn't have to be expensive. There are many colleges, universities and other educational institutions that offer free math courses online."

How one man made an MMO: an interview with Gene Endrody

blog.hanfordlemoore - How one man made an MMO: an interview with Gene Endrody: "Gene Endrody is the man behind the free MMORPG Sherwood Dungeon and other multi-player games on maidmarian.com. Despite the fact that Gene had little programming experience, he’s managed to do all the development himself using off-the-shelf tools and build a loyal following that often reaches 4000 simultaneous players.

So how did this one-man-team do it? I wanted to know, so I interviewed him. We talked about his background, the technical aspects of doing an MMO with off the shelf tools, and how he built up his user base."

The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 146

The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 146:

William F. Buckley:
"It means a lot to me to say this: when I set out to explore the scene, I was determined to avoid one thing, and that was the kind of ambiguity for which Graham Greene and to a certain extent Le Carr�became famous. There you will find that the agent of the West is, in the first place, almost necessarily unappealing physically. He drinks too much, he screws too much and he’s always being cuckolded. Then, at some dramatic moment there is the conversation or the moment of reflection in which the reader is asked to contemplate the difficulty in asserting that there is a qualitative difference between Them and Us. This I wanted to avoid. So I was searching, really, for a little bit of the purity of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd in Blackford Oakes. Billy Budd has no sense of humor, and without a sense of humor you can’t be genuinely American. Therefore, Blackford Oakes couldn’t be Billy Budd. Furthermore, I made him almost spectacularly good-looking in defiant reaction to these semidisfigured characters that Greene and Le Carr�and Len Deighton specialize in."

Apache 2 Web server documentation: Apache2: Apache Portability Runtime library

Apache 2 Web server documentation: Apache2: Apache Portability Runtime library: "Apache Portability Runtime library"

Rogue Amoeba - Fission: Lossless Audio Editor for Mac OS X

Rogue Amoeba - Fission: Lossless Audio Editor for Mac OS X: "Fission is a streamlined audio editor designed to get you editing in minutes, not hours. Fission lets you copy, paste and trim audio, as well as split files, all with no quality loss! Rapidly edit mono and stereo files in MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless and AIFF formats."

gperf example for keyword lookup

test_mimetype: test_mimetype.c mimetype.gperf
        $(GPERF) --ignore-case --struct-type --output=mimetype.c mimetype.gperf
        $(CC) $(COPTS) -o test_mimetype test_mimetype.c


%define lookup-function-name gperf_mimetype
%includes
struct mimetype_tbl { char *name; char *val; };
%%
"ai", "application/postscript"
"aif", "audio/x-aiff"
"aifc", "audio/x-aiff"
"zip", "application/zip"
%%
static char *mimetype(char *ext)
{
    struct mimetype_tbl *v = gperf_mimetype(ext, strlen(ext));
    return v ? v->val : NULL;
}


#include <stdio.h%gt;
#include "mimetype.c"

void t1(char *ext)
{
    printf("ext=:%s: type=:%s:\n",ext, mimetype(ext));
}

int main()
{
    t1("mp3");
    t1("jpg");
    t1("JPG");
    t1("JpG");
    t1("foo");
    return 0;
}

XML Editor

XML Editor: "Altova XMLSpy 2008 is the industry-standard XML editor and development environment for modeling, editing, transforming, and debugging XML-related technologies. It offers the world’s leading XML editor, the original graphical schema designer, a code generator, file converters, debuggers, profilers, full database integration, support for XSLT, XPath, XQuery, WSDL, SOAP, and Office Open XML documents, plus Visual Studio .NET and Eclipse plug-ins, and more."