Mellow Motif

Mellow Motif is a collaboration of Natasha (vox), Eugene (piano), and friends. We arrange and perform Jazz standards repertoire and selected Brazilian music :) Mellow Motif's album was launched in Thailand in February 2009 under Warner Music and we are currently in the process of making our second album to be released in January 2010.

Life's trade-offs in 10 easy principles

Life's trade-offs in 10 easy principles: "The first four of Mankiw's 10 principles concern the way people make decisions, and the first is: people face trade-offs. That is, to get one thing we like we usually have to give up another thing we like.

Economics is about the trade-offs people - and societies - have to make, and about helping people improve the trade-offs they're making."

cigar box guitar refs

boing boing
songs inside the box

Use rsync to deploy your website

Use rsync to deploy your website:

"rsync -arvuz /home/user/brecksblog breck32@breckyunits.com:/var/www/html/ --exclude '.git' --exclude 'deploy' --exclude 'README' --exclude 'posts.php'"

Walking Randomly � The rise and rise of Python in computational science

Walking Randomly � The rise and rise of Python in computational science: "One of my plans for next year is to start giving short talks and tutorials about scientific Python to various groups around the University of Manchester. Ever since I attended EuroSciPy in Leipzig earlier this year I have been excited about the possibilities offered by Python for students, researchers and teachers. I genuinely believe that Python and SAGE will do for MATLAB and Mathematica users what R has done for users of SPSS and Stata. It’s the future…I’ve tasted it! Here are a few links to others who agree with me.

* Scientific Python tools use rising in education – a blog post from Fernando Perez
* A hands-on 2-day workshop at UC Berkeley – includes videotaped lectures
* Python for High Performance Computing (HPC)
* Should I switch to Python – Are you a MATLAB user considering the switch?
* Python in the Scientific World – From Guido van Rossum – Pythons benevolent dictator"

C Craft - Chapter�1.�Introduction

C Craft - Chapter�1.�Introduction: "C is the desert island language.

This is my favourite statement from a talk Rob Pike gave in 2001. Despite its age, despite many flaws, C is still the de facto standard, the lingua franca. Why? As with other older languages, inertia is partly to blame, but this cannot be the only reason. C must possess a near-perfect balance of vital language features."

Science Friday Newsbriefs: Dr. Rebecca Lancefield's Eggnog Recipe

Science Friday Newsbriefs: Dr. Rebecca Lancefield's Eggnog Recipe:

"Dr. Rebecca Lancefield's Eggnog Recipe

Friday, December 19th, 2008--

Ingredients

1 dozen eggs
1 quart heavy cream
1 quart light cream
1 pint bourbon
1 quart rum
nutmeg
sugar to taste (1/2 - 3/4 lb)

Beat eggs, add bourbon and rum slowly with stirring to prevent precipitation of egg proteins. Beat heavy cream separately until it peaks and add to the egg/bourbon/rum mix.
Add the light cream with stirring. Add the sugar to taste with mixing (1 pound/batch), then add nutmeg to taste.
Leave standing at least overnight with lid slightly ajar in refrigerator. Serve after 2-3 weeks in the cold."

Photobucket | surreal art Pictures, surreal art Images, surreal art Photos

Photobucket | surreal art Pictures, surreal art Images, surreal art Photos: "Find Stuff on Photobucket"

The C Programming Language: 4.10

The C Programming Language: 4.10: "Recursion may provide no salvation of storage, nor of human souls; somewhere, a stack of the values being processed must be maintained. But recursive code is more compact, perhaps more easily understood– and more evil and hideous than the darkest nightmares the human brain can endure."

Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College - ABC News

Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College - ABC News: "Like most students, Kris Alfred was repeatedly told in high school that everyone goes to college.

Alfred said he owes more than $125,000 for his degrees in theater when he's not even working in that field.
Photo: College students at graduation.
Some experts say students might be better off getting a job after high school, rather than getting a college degree.

'I work at a call center, and I make $10 an hour,' he said. 'It's surreal. I feel like a loser.'"

The Heart of Dartness

The Heart of Dartness: "Darts is a popular game, played both in the pub and at a professional level. Yet most players aim for the highest scoring region of the board (triple 20), regardless of their skill level. It turns out that this is not always the optimal strategy! We describe a method for a player to obtain a customized heatmap of the dartboard. In this heatmap, the bright regions correspond to aiming locations which yield high (expected) scores. We also investigate alternate arrangements of the numbers 1 through 20, in an attempt to make scoring more difficult."

Toy-A-Day

Toy-A-Day

shell tools online - xml formatter

shell tools online - xml formatter: handy.

ColoRotate: Home

ColoRotate: Home
"Colors come to life in 3D!"

Chengdu Restaurants, Chengdu Restaurants Listings - Chengdu Travel Guide

Chengdu Restaurants, Chengdu Restaurants Listings - Chengdu Travel Guide:

"Marco Polo
Add: #18 Zongfu St. Chengdu
Tel: 86711446
Description: A fast food pizza restaurant.
Type of Cuisine: Italian Cuisine
Opening Hours: 10:00-23:00
Average Cost: $$
Credit Cards: Not Accepted
Menu: Chinese, English
Language Spoken: Mandarin, English"

Bung Droppers

Bung Droppers

Did you ever have one of those days?

Diagrammr

Diagrammr: "Create and share diagrams by writing sentences!"

Ask Tom "iPhone optimized AskTom"

Ask Tom "iPhone optimized AskTom":

"you can download the asktom software (ask the expert software).

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/packaged_apps/packa
ged_apps.html#ASK"

Ask E.T.: The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Not relevant for design

Ask E.T.: The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Not relevant for design: "These studies on memorizing nonsense then led some interface designers to conclude that only 7 items belong on a list or a slide, a conclusion which can be sustained only by not reading the paper. In fact Miller's paper neither states nor implies rules for the amount of information to be shown in a presentation (except possibly for slides that consist of nonsense syllables that the audience must memorize and repeat back to a psychologist). Indeed, the deep point of Miller's paper is to suggest strategies, such as placing information within a context, that extend the reach of memory beyond tiny clumps of data."

BarcodeContents - zxing - A rough guide to standard encoding of information in barcodes - Project Hosting on Google Code

BarcodeContents - zxing - A rough guide to standard encoding of information in barcodes - Project Hosting on Google Code: "There are some standards -- de facto and otherwise -- already in use. This wiki attempts to catalog some possible standards for encoding various types of information, and suggest a standard action associated to them. It is not necessarily complete and contributions are welcome."

QR Code on a Business Card but how?

QR Code on a Business Card but how?: "How many different ways can you think of to get a working QR Code on your business card?

Here are two to start the ball rolling and when you think of others please add them in a comment."

vCardMaker: Make electronic business cards quickly and easily

vCardMaker: Make electronic business cards quickly and easily: "Address"

QR-Code Generator

QR-Code Generator: "Save this code to add it to your blog
or your documents.

You can also use the code's permalink,
or copy-paste the following HTML code:"

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World: "A far more intimate and relaxed experience than you might imagine, the experience on board is a sharp contrast to the rough and industrial outward appearance a container ship tends to project. You will be one of a handful of passengers amongst a crew that is unlikely to number more than a few dozen. There will be no organized games of bingo or evening cabaret show. You might, however, be invited to karaoke with the sailors and you will almost always dine alongside the captain, who is far more likely to turn up in shorts and a t-shirt than full uniform."

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World: "A far more intimate and relaxed experience than you might imagine, the experience on board is a sharp contrast to the rough and industrial outward appearance a container ship tends to project. You will be one of a handful of passengers amongst a crew that is unlikely to number more than a few dozen. There will be no organized games of bingo or evening cabaret show. You might, however, be invited to karaoke with the sailors and you will almost always dine alongside the captain, who is far more likely to turn up in shorts and a t-shirt than full uniform."

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World

Travel by Cargo Ship Around the World: "A far more intimate and relaxed experience than you might imagine, the experience on board is a sharp contrast to the rough and industrial outward appearance a container ship tends to project. You will be one of a handful of passengers amongst a crew that is unlikely to number more than a few dozen. There will be no organized games of bingo or evening cabaret show. You might, however, be invited to karaoke with the sailors and you will almost always dine alongside the captain, who is far more likely to turn up in shorts and a t-shirt than full uniform."

Wii.com - Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Wii.com - Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii: "In this interview, we're going to talk about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but rather than diving straight into a discussion of the new title, I'd like to begin by talking about Mario's roots. There will of course be a lot of readers who know all about this, but I think there are also people who are completely in the dark about how Mario began."

Wii.com - Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Wii.com - Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii: "In this interview, we're going to talk about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but rather than diving straight into a discussion of the new title, I'd like to begin by talking about Mario's roots. There will of course be a lot of readers who know all about this, but I think there are also people who are completely in the dark about how Mario began."

Bones Theory

Bones Theory: "Soldiers are entitled to the best leadership possible, said Command Sgt. Maj. Michele Jones, command sergeant major of the Army Reserve. She said she follows the Bones Theory, which entails having

a backbone (courage),
a wishbone (a belief that things will get better),
a funny bone (laughter) and
a tailbone (“You can’t be the best if you don’t get off your tailbone and make things better.”)."

The Pomodoro Technique™

The Pomodoro Technique™:

"The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique™ can be split in five simple steps:

1. Choose a task to be accomplished
2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
3. Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
4. Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
5. Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break"

Computer Laboratory – Technical reports: UCAM-CL-TR-754

Computer Laboratory – Technical reports: UCAM-CL-TR-754:
"Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security

Frank Stajano, Paul Wilson

The success of many attacks on computer systems can be traced back to the security engineers not understanding the psychology of the system users they meant to protect. We examine a variety of scams and “short cons” that were investigated, documented and recreated for the BBC TV programme The Real Hustle and we extract from them some general principles about the recurring behavioural patterns of victims that hustlers have learnt to exploit.

We argue that an understanding of these inherent “human factors” vulnerabilities, and the necessity to take them into account during design rather than na�vely shifting the blame onto the “gullible users”, is a fundamental paradigm shift for the security engineer which, if adopted, will lead to stronger and more resilient systems security."

four: New HTTP Parser

four: New HTTP Parser: "I've implemented a new HTTP/1.1 request and response parser by hand. (My previous parser was written with the help of Ragel.) It requires 124 bytes per HTTP connection, makes zero allocations, has no dependencies, is nearly optimal in its use of CPU instructions, interruptible on any character, has extensive tests, and is MIT licensed."

ScreenMath.com :: HDTV Plasma and LCD Screen Size Guide

ScreenMath.com :: HDTV Plasma and LCD Screen Size Guide: "To find the HDTV screen size (diagonal measure) that gives the same height as your old television, take the screen size of the old TV and multiply by 1.22. So if you want an HDTV with a screen that's the same height as your old 34-inch TV, for example, the chart below shows that you need to buy an HDTV with a 42-inch screen, and that they will both have a height of 20.4 inches."

Safari Books Online - ACM - Home

Safari Books Online - ACM - Home: "ACM has partnered with Safari Books Online to provide members like you with a searchable, on-demand digital library with 600 hand-picked titles from over 9,800 books and videos available through Safari Books Online."

Charming Python: Easy Web data collection with mechanize and Beautiful Soup

Charming Python: Easy Web data collection with mechanize and Beautiful Soup: "At this point, we are done with mechanize; all that is left is to make some sense of that big bunch of HTML files we saved during the fetch() loop. The batch nature of the process lets me separate these cleanly, but obviously in a different program, fetch() and process() might interact more closely. Beautiful Soup makes the post-processing even easier than the initial fetch."

RunOnNginx – uWSGI

RunOnNginx – uWSGI:

"Running uWSGI behind Nginx �

In the 'nginx' directory of the distribution you will find the uwsgi handler for nginx.

Download a 0.7.x (stable) release of nginx and untar it at the same level of your uwsgi distribution directory"

Daring Fireball: A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

Daring Fireball: A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs:

\b(([\w-] ://?|www[.])[^\s()<>] (?:\([\w\d] \)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/)))

"-------------------------------------------
T h e T a o O f P r o g r a m m i n g
-------------------------------------------
T r a n s l a t e d B y G e o f f r e y J a m e s"

Tunnell-Braun - KTBCS, KTB-IS, Skinner Editorial

Tunnell-Braun - KTBCS, KTB-IS, Skinner Editorial: "Tunnell-Braun Enterprises is the umbrella under which Karl Tunnell-Braun operates various endeavors."

How a Self-Educated HS Dropout Became the Youngest Manager at Apple - Buccaneer scholar - Gizmodo

How a Self-Educated HS Dropout Became the Youngest Manager at Apple - Buccaneer scholar - Gizmodo: "James Bach, a legend in the software-testing field, just published Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, the tale of how he dropped out of school, became a self-taught games programmer, and scored a sweet gig at Apple—all before turning 21."

Atari Video Games | Arcade

Atari Video Games | Arcade: "Atari Arcade is the place to find beloved Atari classics including Asteroids and Lunar Lander. You can play them all here online, any time and free of charge."

Build your entrepreneurial confidence. Try these tips on for size.�|�JonBischke.com

Build your entrepreneurial confidence. Try these tips on for size.�|�JonBischke.com: "Entrepreneurship is hard. You’re going to go through moments where you feel like you’re on top of the world. And then you’re going to experience moment when you think the world is going to come to an end. And often those moments will occur within the same hour of the day.

When you get a little down on your luck (and we’re all there at some point in time), here’s a good little reading list (along with some comments) and a few videos for you."

uWSGI

uWSGI: "uWSGI is a fast (pure C), self-healing, developer-friendly WSGI server, aimed for professional python webapps deployment and development."

Richard Dingwall � The trouble with soft delete

Richard Dingwall � The trouble with soft delete: "Check out the book “Developing Time Oriented Database Application in SQL” for a systematic look at some options for storing historical data. A wider topic than just soft deletion, but related.

It’s out of print and the author made it available on his site:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts/tdbbook.pdf"

Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital

Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital: "VCs are good at asking questions. They are unimplicated in your dumb decisions, unmoved by your original sense of mission and far less concerned than you that a blunder could bankrupt you. They re-imagine your business in terms of all the other businesses they’ve seen, pulling the arms off one doll and the head off another to create a perfect money-making Frankenstein. And since the stakes are high, the whole philosophical exercise tends to result in action.

Here are the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business."

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain: "How to make a million dollars is: a) something students are interested in, and b) something I am qualified to talk about. And the talk went really well."

10 CHINDOGU TENENTS � International Chindogu Society

10 CHINDOGU TENENTS � International Chindogu Society: "Every Chindogu is an almost useless object, but not every almost useless object is a Chindogu. In order to transcend the realms of the merely almost useless, and join the ranks of the really almost useless, certain vital criteria must be met. It is these criteria, a set of ten vital tenets, that define the gentle art and philosophy of Chindogu."

papert: logo in your browser

papert: logo in your browser: "this is free software, and papert is hosted on google code"

Beowulf Page 1

Beowulf Page 1: "Since Beowulf is written in Old English, the earliest known form of the English language, one might assume that it would be easy to translate, at least easier than works printed in languages more substantially different from modern English. Yet looking at the many translations of Beowulf that are available in bookstores and libraries, it's immediately apparent that they have important differences in language, form, and style. This immediately raises the questions: Why are these translations so different? And how can I decide which, if any, is the 'best' to read?"

Comparison of different SQL implementations

Comparison of different SQL implementations: "The following tables compare how different DBMS products handle various SQL (and related) features. If possible, the tables also state how the implementations should do things, according to the SQL standard."

David Friedman, _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_ Ch 1

David Friedman, _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_ Ch 1: "Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that people have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them."

G.K. Chesterton: Author's Page at Ignatius Insight

G.K. Chesterton: Author's Page at Ignatius Insight: "this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India."

Amelia Earhart was too much of an icon to make an interesting moving character.

Amelia Earhart was too much of an icon to make an interesting moving character.: "Glamour is an imaginative experience, charisma a personal characteristic. A place, an idea, even an object can be glamorous, but only a person can be charismatic. A still photograph best captures glamour; a live performance most powerfully conveys charisma. Glamour operates at a distance; it requires mystery, allowing the audience to fill in the details with its own desires. Charisma works through personal contact. It draws the audience to share the charismatic figure’s own commitments. Charisma enhances leadership; glamour enhances sales."

Mac ODBC: Database connectivity for Mac OS X by Actual Technologies

Mac ODBC: Database connectivity for Mac OS X by Actual Technologies: "Applications that use SQLite databases

Which applications use SQLite to store program data?
Many applications on Mac OS X use SQLite to store information - including Apple's own Safari and Mail applications. You can use the Actual ODBC Driver for Open Source Databases to import the information stored in the database into an ODBC-ready application, such as Excel, FileMaker Pro, or even a PHP web page."

Distinctive Features Of SQLite

Distinctive Features Of SQLite:

"Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing:

May you do good and not evil
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others
May you share freely, never taking more than you give."

An Introduction to SQLite

Using SQLite database files as the native application data format

Size isn't everything for the modest creator of SQLite

mac apps:
apps:

skype
flipshare
firefox

iphone,android

ORACLE - DBA Tips Corner

ORACLE - DBA Tips Corner: "The BECOME USER System Privilege

"Oracle has an undocumented OCI function called upicui that will allow a given oracle user to become another user. This user has to have the 'BECOME USER' system privilege."

Writing great documentation: what to write

Writing great documentation: what to write: "Tech docs can take a bunch of different forms ranging from high-level overviews, to step-by-step walkthroughs, to auto-generated API documentation. Unfortunately, no single format works for all users; there’s huge differences in the way that people learn, so a well-documented project needs to provide many different forms of documentation."

What Makes Them Click � Blog Archive � 100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information - Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate

What Makes Them Click � Blog Archive � 100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information - Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate: "A dopamine induced loop – With the internet, twitter, and texting we now have almost instant gratification of our desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type it into google. What to see what your friends are up to? Go to twitter or facebook. We get into a dopamine induced loop… dopamine starts us seeking, then we get rewarded for the seeking which makes us seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, stop checking our cell phones to see if we have a message or a new text."

cyoa

cyoa: "In scanning over the distribution of colors in this plot, one clear pattern is a the gradual decline in the number of endings. The earliest books (in the top row) are awash in reds and oranges, with a healthy number of ‘winning’ endings mixed in. Later cyoa books tended to favor a single ‘best’ ending (see CYOA 44 & 53). The most extreme case of this was actually not a Choose Your Own Adventure book at all but a gamebook offshoot of the Zork text adventure series. The Cavern of Doom (labeled WDIDN 3 above) has a virtually linear progression where endings later in the book are increasingly better than those on earlier pages. This is reflected in the nearly unbroken spectrum from red to blue when scanning down the rows."

The Happiness Project: Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering.

The Happiness Project: Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering.: "One of my great realizations about happiness (and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists) is that outer order contributes to inner calm.

But as much as most of us want to keep our home, office, car, etc. in reasonable order, it’s tough. Here’s a list of some myths of de-cluttering that make it harder to get rid of stuff."

A Note on the Joel Test

Because we're not a pure software house but are instead in the movie business, we do a few things differently software development-wise. So, don't panic when Joel says "10 or lower, you've got serious problems." This is still a great place to work!

Here's a few notes on our Joel Score.

Do you use source control?

Yes, we use Perforce.

Can you make a build in one step?

Yes.

Do you make daily builds?

No. Because of the nature of our work, daily builds aren't useful for all projects. We do daily builds where it's useful.

Do you have a bug database?

Yes.

Do you fix bugs before writing new code?

Sometimes. Our priorities are driven by our movie release dates. In some cases it's more important to fix bugs, in others to add new features. We haven't missed a release date
yet!

Do you have an up-to-date schedule?

Yes, although our shifting, production-driven priorities mean that we need a lot more flexibility to quickly adjust our schedule.

Do you have a spec?

Yes.

Do programmers have quiet working conditions?

Yes. Our place is even nicer than Joel's place!

Do you use the best tools money can buy?

Yes.

Do you have testers?

Yes.

Do new candidates write code during their interview?

Yes.

Do you do hallway usability testing?

Yes.

Scary Anthropomorphic Foods Promote the British Food Standards Agency – Eat Me Daily

Scary Anthropomorphic Foods Promote the British Food Standards Agency – Eat Me Daily: "These series of short promos for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in England show healthy foodstuffs talking with their unhealthy counterparts, ostensibly to promote Family Supercooks, a program about eating healthily."

Stossel in the Classroom

Stossel in the Classroom:

"A message from John Stossel:
Dear Educator,
I am excited to offer you high-quality classroom materials that teachers say bring lesson plans to life, encouraging students to think and participate, while serving your curriculum requirements."

Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions

Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions: "Vessel positions may be up to one hour old or incomplete. Data is provided for informational reasons only and is not related by any means to the safety of navigation."

The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM

The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM: "Using either stored procedures or embedding, the useful work component is a very small percentage of total transaction cost, for today’s OLTP data bases which usually fit in main memory. Instead, a recent paper [1] calculated that total OLTP time was divided almost equally between the following four overhead components:"

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly: "The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities."

Camino and Adblock Plus...who wants it? • mozillaZine Forums

Camino and Adblock Plus...who wants it? • mozillaZine Forums: "Next, update Netinfo Database by typing the following into Terminal:

sudo niload -v -m hosts . < /etc/hosts"

Manipulate Clipboard From Command Line - MacTips

Manipulate Clipboard From Command Line - MacTips: "An easy way to manipulate the clipboard from the command line is by using the pbcopy and pbpaste"

Figuring out what your company is all about - Joel on Software

Figuring out what your company is all about - Joel on Software: "Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template?"

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy: "The basic lesson of Bayesian analysis is that you can learn only from information that disconfirms some part of your current belief set. But of course the natural tendency of the mind is to minimize cognitive dissonance by accepting confirming evidence and rejecting disconfirming evidence, and that tendency is emphasized when beliefs get to be badges of group membership.

This is a deeply unhealthy tendency, and it tends to defeat one of the basic evolutionary strategies of homo sapiens, which Karl Popper summed up as “letting our beliefs die in our place.” Unfortunately, it has been on full display in the comment threads to my posts, which consisted (when the comments related to the posts at all rather than merely ranting about unrelated topics) mostly of vigorous attempts to prove that the thoughts offered in the posts were worthless or wicked, and the poster an ill-intentioned idiot.

Eugene no doubt thought he was doing his readers a favor by offering them some reading that might challenge their precoceptions. There is little evidence in the comment thread that the VC readership shares that view, but it’s possible to hope that the comments are not a representative sample of reader reaction."

Start-up studies: A pop quiz | VentureBeat

Start-up studies: A pop quiz | VentureBeat: "There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible? STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig discusses the query and how budding entrepreneurs responded."

Talking to DC � Adam Bosworth’s Weblog

Notes on writing a good standard: "Well, the discussion was about what actually will work in terms of making health data liquid. What standards should be used for the integration of such data?

1. Keep the standard as simple and stupid as possible.
2. The data being exchanged should be human readable and easy to understand.
3. Standards work best when they are focused.
4. Standards should have precise encodings.
5. Always have real implementations that are actually being used as part of design of any standard.
6. Put in hysteresis for the unexpected.
7. Make the spec itself free, public on the web, and include lots of simple examples on the web site.
"

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."

Introducing oraddlscript � devioblog

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

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."

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."

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"

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."

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.”"

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."

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."

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.”"

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."

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.

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."

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

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.”"

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"

An inteview with Brian Kernighan, co-developer of AWK and AMPL - AMPL, AWK, a-z of programming languages, Brian Kernighan - Computerworld

An inteview with Brian Kernighan, co-developer of AWK and AMPL - AMPL, AWK, a-z of programming languages, Brian Kernighan - Computerworld: "No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code, and rewrite it, and see it used, and rewrite again."

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."

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."

“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."

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."

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

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA - W8MI Mackinac Straits, MI

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA - W8MI Mackinac Straits, MI: "Articles here include how-to-build simple but nice sounding/playing folk instruments."

Getting started with online glasses

I first learned about this via GlassyEyes. He has some good introductory articles here and here. There are some discount links there as well. I learned a lot from the GlassyEyes forum. There is a flickr channel as well.

I've bought my glasses from EyeBuyDirect. It's convenient to be a repeat customer because they keep your prescription for you.

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1: "Flash games are currently the ghetto of the game development industry. Compared to the number of players it serves, the Flash game ecosystem makes little money, launches few careers, and sustains few developer owned businesses. Despite the vast potential of the ecosystem, Flash games contribute surprisingly little to the advancement of game design as an art or a craft.
In order to understand why this promising game platform is such a surprising dissapointment, we'll look at Flash games from three perspectives:

* Chapter 2 - Making money: How do Flash developers currently make money.
* Chapter 3 - Generating value: How Flash developers currently create 'valuable' game for their players?
* Chapter 4 - Reaching customers: How developers currently reach their players.
* Chapter 5 - Premium Flash games as a service: A mental model for understanding the new world of web gaming.

For each step, I'll cover alternative techniques that give you, the game developer, make even better games."

Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp: "Just fifty years ago, John McCarthy circulated a notice that he would be giving an informal talk that he thought would be of interest. I drove up to MIT from New Jersey to attend this seminar of typical length in a typical classroom. But the seminar was anything but typical. It was a revelation. In one session at the blackboard, John introduced Lisp—all you could do with car, cdr, cons, cond, lambda, and recursion."

4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive - Rules to Survive Fire, Tornado, Blizzard and Hurricanes - Popular Mechanics

4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive - Rules to Survive Fire, Tornado, Blizzard and Hurricanes - Popular Mechanics: "Some disasters are simply not survivable. But most are, and research on human behavior suggests that the difference between life and death often comes down to the simple—yet surprisingly difficult—task of recognizing threats before they overwhelm you, then working through them as discrete challenges. The people who survive disasters tend to be better prepared and more capable of making smart decisions under pressure. Not everyone is born with these traits, but almost anyone can learn them. Here’s how to wire your brain for survival."

Dean Kamen Quotes About Health Care Debate - Interview With Inventor Dean Kamen - Popular Mechanics

Dean Kamen Quotes About Health Care Debate - Interview With Inventor Dean Kamen - Popular Mechanics: "n an interview with PM, Dean Kamen, one of the world's most prolific inventors of healthcare technologies, challenges the notion that the U.S. has a healthcare crisis. Rather than slowing the pace of medical progress in order to cut healthcare costs, he argues, America should be encouraging more innovation in life-saving drugs and technologies."

Lucian’s blog� Blog Archive � Me this trust thing = dog juicy bone

Lucian’s blog� Blog Archive � Me this trust thing = dog juicy bone: "On the upside, at least on this occasion I’m offering you some new thoughts on the subject, not just recycling that “As far as I’m concerned, trust in this country received its mortal wound, along with 60,000 soldiers in the British Army, on the first day of the First Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916″ soapbox stuff that you’ve heard from me a million times already.

My theme today is that when we talk about consumers’ “trust” in financial services, we’re actually wrapping up about four or five different kinds of trust within that one single word - and on closer examination there are significant differences in the current status of each kind."

ORA-02437: cannot validate - primary key violated - Stack Overflow

ORA-02437: cannot validate <name> - primary key violated - Stack Overflow:

SQL>@%ORACLE_HOME%\rdbms\admin\utlexpt1.sql

Table created.

SQL> ALTER TABLE MY_TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT PK_FOO PRIMARY KEY (MY_ID)
2 exceptions into exceptions
3 /

Using DBMS_SYS_SQL to Execute Statements as Another User | Pythian Group Blog

Using DBMS_SYS_SQL to Execute Statements as Another User | Pythian Group Blog: "Sometimes you need to execute SQL (or PL/SQL) as some other user. Say you need to remove a job residing in some other user’s schema. Or you need to create a database link in a different schema. You can’t do things like these without becoming the other user. If you don’t know the other user’s password then you basically have two choices"

Online Name Generator

Online Name Generator: "Cool online names with a single click! - Free and cool name generator! - Cool nicknames and project names!"

Notes from the Metalevel

Notes from the Metalevel: "Notes from the Metalevel
An Introduction to Computer Composition"

"The Principia Discordia"

Toledo Nanochess and Toledo Picochess

Toledo Nanochess and Toledo Picochess: "Although Toledo Nanochess is smaller, it manages to beat gracefully Micromax v1.6,"

Micro-Max

Micro-Max: "As far as I am aware, this still makes micro-Max the smallest C Chess program in existence. A close competitor for this honor, Toledo, measures 2168 characters. Despite its smaller size, micro-Max seems to beat Toledo easily."

BashForth - Kwiki

BashForth - Kwiki: "BashForth is a ForthInterpreter, written entirely in the bash scripting language."

Tiny Code: Floppy booting, Open Firmware, Bitlash, more Movizt.

Tiny Code: Floppy booting, Open Firmware, Bitlash, more Movizt.: "There is a certain appeal in closing the meta-loop of minimalism in programming. Writing simple, efficient code in languages which themselves are simple and efficient. To that end, I've collected programming environments which are small and self contained, while still useful."

Speechification: Confessions of a Crap Artist

Speechification: Confessions of a Crap Artist: "Here’s some more from the (no doubt extraordinary) archives of Mr Ken Hollings – a show he made in 2006 about, well, er, Philip K Dick certainly. And tape-recorders and typewriters. And the divine. And madness, machines and mass suicide. Including contributions from Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Nelson, Brian Aldiss, Tim Powers and James Blaylock. This is brilliant stuff."

Boing Boing

Boing Boing: "Seth Roberts made a list of 11 observations while shopping at a Wal-Mart in China. Here are the first four.

1. They sell live turtles.
2. A whole display case is devoted to sea cucumbers.
3. Like any upscale American or Beijing supermarket, they have a sushi case. The prices are half what they’d be in America, but the pieces of fish are much thinner.
4. They cut up meat in front of you. A whole pig was being butchered on a table. A roast duck was being sliced for packaging."

Analytic functions by Example | Oracle FAQ

Analytic functions by Example | Oracle FAQ: "This article provides a clear, thorough concept of analytic functions and its various options by a series of simple yet concept building examples."

Oracle Tip: Create functions to join and split strings in SQL

Oracle Tip: Create functions to join and split strings in SQL: "A common task when selecting data from a database is to take a set of values a query returns and format it as a comma delimited list. Another task that's almost as common is the need to do the reverse: Take a comma delimited list of values in a single string and use it as a table of values."

Google File System II: Dawn of the Multiplying Master Nodes • The Register

Google File System II: Dawn of the Multiplying Master Nodes • The Register: "There are places in the design where we've tried to optimize for throughput by dumping thousands of operations into a queue and then just processing through them,' he continues. 'That leads to fine throughput, but it's not great for latency. You can easily get into situations where you might be stuck for seconds at a time in a queue just waiting to get to the head of the queue."

Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society | Library of Economics and Liberty

Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society | Library of Economics and Liberty: "If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic."

InfoQ: Facebook: Science and the Social Graph

InfoQ: Facebook: Science and the Social Graph: "In this presentation filmed during QCon SF 2008, Aditya Agarwal discusses Facebook’s architecture, more exactly the software stack used, presenting the advantages and disadvantages of its major components: LAMP (PHP, MySQL), Memcache, Thrift, Scribe."

Play Infocom Games Online

Play Infocom Games Online: "Here you can find and play online every known version of every Infocom adventure."

HR 3200 from a systems design perspective (Part I) : Bruce F. Webster

HR 3200 from a systems design perspective (Part I) : Bruce F. Webster: "On the occasions where I have reviewed the actual text of major legislation, I have been struck by the parallels between legislation and software, particularly in terms of the pitfalls and issues with architecture, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. Some of the tradeoffs are even the same, such as trading off the risk of “analysis paralysis” (never moving beyond the research and analysis phase) and the risks of unintended consequences from rushing ill-formed software into production. Yet another similarity is that both software and legislation tend to leverage off of, interact with, call upon, extend, and/or replace existing software and legislation. Finally, the more complex a given system or piece of legislation is, the less likely that it will achieve the original intent."

Northwest Montana Daily Inter Lake > Archives > Opinion > Columns > Charity and the good ol' Constitution

Northwest Montana Daily Inter Lake > Archives > Opinion > Columns > Charity and the good ol' Constitution: "'Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?'

That question was asked not of President Obama nor of Sen. Max Baucus or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but of the less well-known Tennessee congressman, David Crockett."

How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009)

How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009): "After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem."

assertTrue( ): The UNIX Way

assertTrue( ): The UNIX Way: "
1. Small is beautiful.
2. Make each program do one thing well.
3. Build a prototype as soon as possible.
4. Choose portability over efficiency.
5. Store data in flat text files.
6. Use software leverage to your advantage.
7. Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
8. Avoid captive user interfaces.
9. Make every program a filter
"

機械式駐車場が超カッコいい - ひろゆ記

機械式駐車場が超カッコいい - ひろゆ記: "人がでてからどうなってるのかなと昔から気になってたけど、そうかカメラを置いて行けばよかったのか！！！"

Appy framework

Appy framework: "pod (python open document) is a library that allows to easily generate documents whose content is dynamic. The principle is simple: you create an ODF (Open Document Format) text document (with OpenOffice Writer 2.0 or higher for example), you insert some Python code at some places inside it, and from any program written in Python, you can call pod with, as input, the OpenDocument file and a bunch of Python objects. pod generates another ODF text document (ODT) that contains the desired result. If you prefer to get the result in another format, pod can call OpenOffice in server mode to generate the result in PDF, DOC, RTF or TXT format."

Love is a Fallacy

Love is a Fallacy
by Max Shulman

"Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen.

It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect...."

Althouse: "[T]he inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat..."

Althouse:
"Saw a recent show with author Jim Collins on his book How The Mighty Fall

He lists 5 stages:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death"

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS: "Computer programing is self-inflicted torture. The problem is to make a mindless machine behave rationally. Before you can tell the machine how to solve a problem, you must first figure out how your own brain solves it—every step, every detail. You watch your brain as it effortlessly snakes its way along some line of reasoning that loops back through itself, and then you try to draw a diagram showing how your brain did it, and you discover that your brain couldn’t possibly have done it—yet you know it did. And there sits the computer. If you can’t explain to yourself, how are you ever going to explain to it"

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS: "The computer rooms disintegrated in panic. Engineers leaped with trembling screwdrivers at the machine’s intestines. The director stared fish-eyed at a mathematician. A key-punch girl yattered terrified questions at a programmer. Young Madison Avenue types rushed in and out, uttering shrill cries. And the computer just sat there."

SkillBuilders: Oracle10g PL/SQL Programming Workshop Outline

SkillBuilders: Oracle10g PL/SQL Programming Workshop Outline: "Topic Summary

* Introduction to PL/SQL
o What is PL/SQL?
o Why Use PL /SQL?
o PL/SQL Program Structure
o Anonymous Blocks
o Compile Errors
o Sending Output to SQL*Plus
o Introduction to Procedures
o Procedure Compile Errors
o Procedure Compile Warnings (10g)
o Introduction to Functions
o Introduction to Packages
o Querying the Data Dictionary
o Introduction to Triggers
o Tools for PL/SQL Development
o Working in SQL*Plus"

Oracle 10g Flashback Versions Query, Drop Table and Recyclebin Management � H.Tongu�Yılmaz – Oracle Blog

Oracle 10g Flashback Versions Query, Drop Table and Recyclebin Management � H.Tongu�Yılmaz – Oracle Blog: "Oracle Flashback Versions Query is an extension to SQL that can be used to retrieve the versions of rows in a given table that existed in a specific time interval. Oracle Flashback Versions Query returns a row for each version of the row that existed in the specified time interval. For any given table, a new row version is created each time the COMMIT statement is executed."

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation: "Steve Jobs hired him, says Bird, because after three successes (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2) he was worried Pixar might struggle to stay innovative. Jobs told him: “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out,” Bird quotes his boss as saying “…We want you to come shake things up.” Bird explains to McKinsey how he did it — and why, for “imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.”

The piece is behind McKinsey’s pay wall, but we extract its 9 key lessons below."

Skulpt

Skulpt: "Python. Client side.

Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python."

Obama Press Conference Videos - How to Answer Questions Like Obama - Esquire

Obama Press Conference Videos - How to Answer Questions Like Obama - Esquire: "Because sometimes life can feel like a White House press conference — or, worse, a town-hall shouting match about health care. And if there's anything Barack Obama has mastered in the last 200-or-so days — and the last week in particular — it's maneuvering his way through almost any inquisition."

2276 Compound Words

2276 Compound Words: "2276 Compound Words"

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft): "I have been thinking a lot about what a new version of this test would look like, given what I've seen work and not work in startups. Like many forms of progress, most of the items on the new test don't replace items from Joel's - they either supplement or extend the ideas on which the original is based."

glasses for computer use

If you want glasses simply for helping other programmers, get a pair
of single-vision glasses for the over-the-shoulder distance. Here are
two ways to figure out what prescription you need. You'll need to know
about how far it is from your eyes to the screens you can't read, and
you'll need your "driving" prescription.

Method 1. Use the following guideline: If the screens you have to read
are 3 feet away, add +1.00 diopter to your driving glasses
prescription's spherical correction. If the screens are 2 feet away,
add +1.50 diopters. If they are 1.5 feet away, add +2.00 diopters.
Most likely they are no closer than that, given that your computer
glasses aren't working for this.

Method 2. Put on your driving glasses and visit the reading glasses
section of your local drug store. With luck, they will have glasses in
every strength from +1.25 to +2.50 (in increments of 0.25). Try on
various strength reading glasses *over* your driving glasses until you
can read at the over-the-shoulder distance. Whatever works is what you
need to add to the spherical correction of your driving glasses.

IMPORTANT: Be sure you're adding a positive number to your driving
prescription, not a negative number. You're a programmer, so I'm sure
you know that when you add +1.00 to the number -2.25, you get -1.25,
*not* -3.25!

If you want a single pair of glasses that will allow you to help
others, but also to see your own screen, for days when you're back and
forth a lot, I suggest getting a pair of "monovision" glasses, with
one lens optimized for over-the-shoulder and one lens optimized for
your own screen. In other words, add +1.5 (or whatever you got above)
to the spherical correction of your driving prescription for one eye
only. Choose the eye based on which eye has the best view of the
screen when you're doing the over-the-shoulder thing.

For the record, I teach Computer Science and have to do a lot of over-
the-shoulder myself, but I also have to see students from the front of
the classroom. So my monovision glasses have one lens of "driving"
prescription and one lens of "over-the-shoulder" prescription. My
guess is that you want one over-the-shoulder lens and one "your own
computer" lens.

If your two prescriptions have slightly different PD values, don't
worry about it. Either will work - my pick would be the larger of the
two (probably the driving prescription).

Another great speaker at Fool HQ

Another great speaker at Fool HQ: "Adding to our recent string of great speakers visiting Fool HQ, Randy Nelson, the former dean of Pixar University, spoke with us today. Basically, he was in charge of in-house education efforts at Pixar (now part of Disney), the creators of Toy Story, Ratatouille, etc.

Short summary: Amazing speaker."

OmniGraffle Pro Insists on Saving .graffle as a Directory

OmniGraffle Pro Insists on Saving .graffle as a Directory:

>Always flat:
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 0
>
>Flat unless there are images (the normal behavior):
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 1
>
>Always as a package:
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 2

(Use "OmniGraffle" or "OmniGrafflePro" as appropriate.)

Oracle deadlocks - what happens?

Oracle deadlocks - what happens?:

"# Oracle does not kill the session.
# Oracle does not kill the transaction.
# Oracle only kills the statement.
# Oracle does not rollback the statement.
# PMON (Process Monitor) does not clear out the locks.

It is the responsibility of the session that detects the “ORA-00060 deadlock detected while waiting for resource” error to trap and handle the error by issuing a rollback (or a commit) command. Only once this has been done will the other session be able to continue."

Using Python to detect the most frequent words in a file | Zen and the Art of Programming

Using Python to detect the most frequent words in a file | Zen and the Art of Programming: "Let’s consider the small task of printing a list of the N most frequent words within a given file:"

mr boss' design lair: Everything I Learned About Game Design I Learned From Disneyland

mr boss' design lair: Everything I Learned About Game Design I Learned From Disneyland: "As promised, here are the slides from my GDC talk. We had a 'sold out' crowd and I got to meet lots of nice people after the talk. Please share these with your friends and co-workers. According to show officials, video and audio will be available after the show. I'll post more info when I know it. Enjoy!"

PaperBack

PaperBack: "PaperBack is a free application that allows you to back up your precious files on the ordinary paper in the form of the oversized bitmaps. If you have a good laser printer with the 600 dpi resolution, you can save up to 500,000 bytes of uncompressed data on the single A4/Letter sheet."

Why I am Not a Professor

Why I am Not a Professor: "OR
The Decline and Fall of the British University"

Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) Support - Urban Airship

Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) Support - Urban Airship: "We deliver a scalable, easy-to-implement solution that allows you incorporate Apple Push Notification Service into an existing app. Best of all, instead of taking weeks, it takes minutes. Using our open source libraries, you’ll be up and running within hours. And integration? Our RESTful APIs makes it a snap. With Urban Airship, you’ll be pushing messages to your apps and engaging with your users as never before—without all of the headaches."

AC Power Control through USB

AC Power Control through USB: "Second Implementation: User space

* libusb library
* usb_control_msg: USB_PORT_FEAT_POWER"

"THE YEAR OF SPAGHETTI by HARUKI MURAKAMI

Nineteen-seventy-one was the Year of Spaghetti.

In 1971, I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti.

Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life."

Python Module of the Week - Python Module of the Week

Python Module of the Week - Python Module of the Week: "The Python Module of the Week series, or PyMOTW, is a tour of the Python standard library through short examples."

Conway's Game of Life - Experiment Garden

Conway's Game of Life - Experiment Garden: "Finally, I recorded an amazing video of a complex spaceship construction device running in Conway's Game of Life. The device is made up hundreds of modified Gosper guns synchronized so that they shoot the right gliders and spaceships at just the right time such that when they collide it creates a larger traveling spaceship."

Blunt warning about greens under the bed | Antonia Senior - Times Online

Blunt warning about greens under the bed | Antonia Senior - Times Online: "Britain is, thankfully, an ideologically barren land. The split between Right and Left is no longer ideological, but tribal. Are you a nice social liberal who believes in markets, or a nasty social liberal who believes in markets? Anthony Blunt’s memoirs, published this week, reveal a different age, one in which fascism and communism were locked in a seemingly definitive battle for souls.

Blunt talks of “the religious quality” of the enthusiasm for the Left among the students of Cambridge. There is only one ideology in today’s developed world that exercises a similar grip. If Blunt were young today, he would not be red; he would be green."

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki: "Here is how I’ve set up my Macbook to be my DBA Playground. You can have Oracle 11gR1 and 10gR2 installed on two operating systems, Red Hat Linux 4 and Solaris 10. Both are 64bit and both can be running simultaneously for easy comparisons. This guide shows you how to install Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare Fusion on a Macbook."

Booklets by Professor Solomon

Booklets by Professor Solomon: "Free Download:
Flying Saucer Travel Tips"

Instapundit � Blog Archive � INDEED: “A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government…

Instapundit � Blog Archive � INDEED: "A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.”"

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times: "Below is our list of the 61 essential reads of postmodern literature. It's annotated with the attributes below -- the author is a character, fiction and reality are blurred, the text includes fictional artifacts, such as letters, lyrics, even whole other books, and so on."

10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons | JavaWorld's Daily Brew

10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons | JavaWorld's Daily Brew: "Throughout my 20s and 30s, I played D&D and other fantasy role playing games at least once a week. Doing so did more than teach me the rules of combat or proper behavior in a dragon's lair. I gained several skills that truly did help me in my career."

just ping - Online ping - Online web-based ping: remote ping a server or web site using our network with 37 checkpoints worldwide

just ping - Online ping - Online web-based ping: remote ping a server or web site using our network with 37 checkpoints worldwide: "Online web-based ping: remote ping a server or web site using our network with 37 checkpoints worldwide"

Cars-Pixar

Cars-Pixar: "The Renderfarm at Pixar is a computer cluster that is used to render computer generated imagery for their animated films. We made this two-sided sign that hangs above the main entrance to the Renderfarm using 10mm, 8mm and 7mm tubing."

Python Package Index : pudb 0.92.2

Python Package Index : pudb 0.92.2: "PuDB is a full-screen, console-based visual debugger for Python.

Its goal is to provide all the niceties of modern GUI-based debuggers in a more lightweight and keyboard-friendly package. PuDB allows you to debug code right where you write and test it--in a terminal. If you've worked with the excellent (but nowadays ancient) DOS-based Turbo Pascal or C tools, PuDB's UI might look familiar."

Hadoop Training: Virtual Machine | Cloudera

Hadoop Training: Virtual Machine | Cloudera: "n order to make it easy for you to get started with Hadoop and complete our various training exercises, we have created a virtual machine with everything you need. The VM includes Cloudera's Distribution for Hadoop, all of our example code, as well as eclipse and other standard tools."

EWD Mathematics Inc Papers

The following are Documents regarding Mathematics Inc.

EWD442. Inside ``Mathematics Inc''
EWD539. Mathematics Inc., a private letter from its chairman
EWD743. A new policy for Mathematics Inc.?
EWD1224. Hm++, a new Professional Standard (From the desk of the chairman of the Board of Mathematics Inc.)
Randell.pdf. Revenue Sharing Agreement (from counsel to the chairman of the Board of Mathematics Inc.)

George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior @ Foundations Magazine

George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior @ Foundations Magazine: "By age sixteen, Washington had copied out by hand, 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. They are based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595. Presumably they were copied out as part of an exercise in penmanship assigned by young Washington's schoolmaster. The first English translation of the French rules appeared in 1640, and are ascribed to Francis Hawkins the twelve-year-old son of a doctor."

Perforce Knowledge Base: Working Disconnected From The Perforce Server

Perforce Knowledge Base: Working Disconnected From The Perforce Server: "How can I reconcile my workspace once I am reconnected to the server?"

Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science

Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science: "Below this short table of contents is an expanded table of contents including sections within each chapter. Click on the chapter name to jump down. You can also download the complete text of each chapter in PDF format for elegant printing, or browse the HTML version. Part introductions are included in the PDF of the following chapter. Projects are included in the PDF of the preceding chapter."

Reverse Engineering a Data Model using the Oracle Data Dictionary

Reverse Engineering a Data Model using the Oracle Data Dictionary: "All of the above tables (the USER_* tables) only contain objects defined by the current Oracle user. Oracle also maintains a set of tables of identical structure that start with ALL_*. These show you every object that you have access to, regardless of whether you created that object (e.g., our beloved friend DUAL). Similarly, Oracle provides DBA_* tables that contain info about all users' objects, but this group of tables is only accessible to the database administrator."

cdto - Google Code

cdto - Google Code: "Finder Toolbar button to open a Terminal window"

Python Call Graph

Python Call Graph: "pycallgraph is a Python module that creates call graphs for Python programs."

Bootleggers and Baptists � Brad Taylor’s Blog

Bootleggers and Baptists � Brad Taylor’s Blog: "Indeed, the pages of history are full of episodes best explained by a theory of regulation I call “bootleggers and Baptists.” Bootleggers, you will remember, support Sunday closing laws that shut down all the local bars and liquor stores. Baptists support the same laws and lobby vigorously for them. Both parties gain, while the regulators are content because the law is easy to administer."

Battle of Gonzales

Battle of Gonzales: "Recall of the Gonzales Cannon. As part of the disarmament of Texians or the consolidation of armaments for suppression of Federalist sentiments by the Centralista (Santanista) dictatorship, the military authorities in San Antonio requested the return of a cannon which had been 'loaned' to the DeWitt Colonists in 1831 for protection against Indians."

Drawger.com

Drawger.com: "Welcome to The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies... where tools of the trade that have died or have just about died a slow slow death are cheerfully exhibited."

Bruce Yandle on Bootleggers and Baptists | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

Bruce Yandle on Bootleggers and Baptists | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty: "Bruce Yandle of Clemson University explains why politics makes such strange bedfellows and the often peculiar alliance of self-interested special interests with more altruistic motives. He uses his insights to explain some of the seemingly perverse but politically understandable effects of the Clean Air Act, the tobacco settlement and other regulation."

Identity Generator

Identity Generator: "generate plausible data"

iText, a Free Java-PDF Library: Home Page

iText, a Free Java-PDF Library: Home Page: "iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly."

CS145 - Autumn, 2007

CS145 - Autumn, 2007: "Oracle gives mysterious error numbers when you do something wrong. Using the error-messaage number as a Google query often gives you an answer from some newsgroup that has discussed the problem."

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki: "This guide shows you how to install Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare Fusion on a Macbook."

13 Enabling Advanced Features of Oracle Net Services

13 Enabling Advanced Features of Oracle Net Services:

"What TAF Restores

TAF automatically restores some or all of the following elements associated with active database connections. Other elements, however, may need to be embedded in the application code to enable TAF to recover the connection."

Business soaring at Oakland's Fenton's, thanks to 'Up!' - San Jose Mercury News

Business soaring at Oakland's Fenton's, thanks to 'Up!' - San Jose Mercury News: "The ice cream parlor is the most recent in a long line of local connections integrated into Emeryville-based Pixar's films. 'The Incredibles' featured a police chase down San Pablo Avenue, which runs from Oakland to West Contra Costa. Much of 'Monsters vs Aliens' took place between San Francisco and Modesto. Even the flying house from 'Up!' is based on a Victorian in West Berkeley."

xdotool - fake keyboard/mouse input :: semicomplete.com - Jordan Sissel

xdotool - fake keyboard/mouse input :: semicomplete.com - Jordan Sissel: "This tool lets you programatically (or manually) simulate keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows, etc"

wmctrl - A command line tool to interact with an EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager.

wmctrl - A command line tool to interact with an EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager.: "The wmctrl program is a UNIX/Linux command line tool to interact with an EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager.

The tool provides command line access to almost all the features defined in the EWMH specification. It can be used, for example, to obtain information about the window manager, to get a detailed list of desktops and managed windows, to switch and resize desktops, to make windows full-screen, always-above or sticky, and to activate, close, move, resize, maximize and minimize them."

Oracle: tracing a session

Method A (for your own session):

SQL> ALTER SESSION SET SQL_TRACE={True|False};


Method B (for your own session):

SQL> EXECUTE dbms_session.set_sql_trace ({True|False});


Method C (for super user to trace other sessions):

SQL> EXECUTE dbms_system.set_sql_trace_in_session (sid,serial#,{True|False});

Taco Sauce

Mild version:

3c water
2t cornstarch
1 6-oz can tomato paste
3T white vinegar
4t chili powder
2t salt
1t cayenne pepper

Dissolve cornstanch in water in medium saucepan.
Add remaining ingredients and stir well. Bring to a
boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and simmer for
5 minutes. Cover till cool, refrigerate.

Makes 3 cups.

Hot and spicy version:

1 6-oz can tomato paste
3c water
3T white vinegar
3t minced jalepeno
1T chili powder
1t dried minced onion
2t salt
2t cornstarch
1t cayenne pepper
1t sugar
1/4t onion powder
1/4t garlic powder

White House Chocolate Chip Cookies

3c + 3t all-purpose flour
1t baking soda
1/4t salt
1c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1c granulated sugar
2/3c packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/4c molasses
1T vanilla extract
2c (12 oz bag) chocolate chips
1c chopped walnuts

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium mixing bowl.

Cream together butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar. Beat in eggs, molasses and vanilla. Stir in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Chill dough for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat pads.

Drop heaping tablespoons or No. 40 ice-cream scoops of dough 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets, flattening slightly by hand.

Bake until just light golden, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool cookies for 5 minutes on baking sheets before transferring to wire rack.

Cookies will keep in an airtight container for 2 to 3 days.

Advance Preparation: Place balls of dough on parchment and freeze. Balls may be stored frozen in freezer bags for up to 1 month. Place frozen cookies on prepared sheets as above, and defrost on the counter for 30 minutes before baking.

Mark's Famous Chili

Famous on three continents!

"Chili meat" is coarsly ground beef. You can substitute any kind of ground beef if you can't find the chili grind.

1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 lb chili meat
1 Tbsp paprika
5-6 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp ground oregano
1 can tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, to taste
1/2 tsp jalepeno pepper, to taste

Brown chili meat. Add all ingredients except peppers. Simmer 1 hr
covered. Add peppers. Simmer 1/2 hr covered. Serve with pinto
beans if desired. Garnish with chopped onions and grated cheese.
If in competition, defer adding spices until just before judging.

Pachelbel Bedtime lyrics

Bathtime and Bedtime at the Crawford house inspired this little ditty.

Why don't you wanna say goodnight
Why is it that you do not go to your bed and sleep tight
until the morning light is coming,
casts its face upon your eyes,
and then you wake to greet the day God has made
and rejoice that you are part of it.

Why do you insist upon the crying and the moaning
and the whining and the screaming and the tantrums and the yelling
and the kicking and the smacking and the biting and the hissies
the one more drink of water and the "one more book please daddy"

and now,

I just want you to go to sleep, I don't want to hear a peep,
from either one, the day is well past done.

And I'm about to lose my mind,
Im gonna tear up your behind,
So nighty night,
Aand don't let the bedbugs bite.

Now it is so quiet and so peaceful
In this once chaotic house
We are are sleeping and we're dreaming
And it's as quiet as a mouse
But what is that familiar sound tiptoeing nearer?

Little steps approaching closer,
No, it can't be what i'm fearing

And it's not - it's just the cat
And she is purring so contently
and she snuggles at my feet,
to be sure it's quite endearing,
my lids relieve my eyes of all the stress that they were feeling
and i turn my head to sleep
but i feel somebody staring
and it's - augh!

She's staring right at me
her eyes are glazed with sleep,
I nearly wet, the sheets upon my bed,
Her lips, are trembling as she speaks,
Now there's color in her cheeks,
She looks so frail,
my heart begins to swell

Now she lays beside me and
she breathes so easily
her dreams are happy
and she sighs a tender sigh so peacefully
she knows her mommy and her daddy and her sissy love her greatly
and we sleep throughout the nighttime
never ever more sedately

and now

morning casts its light upon the pillow
where her head begins to stir
I try to wake her so her kind and gentle dreams
I don't disturb
but as I pull her from her slumber
ever slowly
I know in my heart of hearts exactly where this all is going

and the crying and moaning
and the whining and the screaming and the
"Daddy, you're so mean, how could you interrupt my dreaming",
the brushing of the hair,
and then the clothes they hate to wear,
i need to check the (?) and care
I gave her teddy bear.

And a son, in din in her own school, ???
all the work i travel to,
my mind's a wreck,
i keep hearing songs from Shrek,
I work all day and then go home,
all my stress is mostly gone,

my kids I see, and i pull them in closely,

then we start to do the homework
and the dinner must be started
and gymnastics and piano
and then groceries must be carted
and the smallest one is crying, "won't you hold me" like she's dying
and the oldest one's frustrated with her homework
though she's trying

and dinner's on the table but it's cold
because we waited for the children to get back
from practicing all their cheerleading
now the brocolli is so nasty,
the macaroni's pasty, the meat is tough as leather,
really nothing is quite tasty

so the crying and moaning
and the screaming and the whining
start again, but now the target is asleep
and sometime dining(?)

And I raise my hand in wonder
as I look around the table
how can anyone survive,
is anyone out there enabled

and I think about the laughter, when times are not so hectic,
and I know that though my stomach can get slightly nongo(?) peptic,
when I see their smiling faces when on swings I push them gently,
when I hold their little hands, life could not go more contently,

So the crying and the moaning and the screaming and the kicking
play a very tiny part of all the time my life is ticking,
and the good outweighs the bad, I am more happy than I'm sad,
For all of this I should be glad, I've had it better than my Dad,
You bet I have.