Adriana's Caravan -- search for Szechuan

Adriana's Caravan: "All of our spices are purchased in very small quantities to guarantee freshness. Because these spices are more flavorful, more aromatic, and less expensive than their bottled counterparts, you will never be satisfied with supermarket spices again.

Whole spices keep better than ground spices. Brown-toned spices will retain their freshness for 1 year; green herbs, 6 months. All individual spices are salt-free. All salt-free blends are marked as such. Store all spices and herbs in tightly sealed glass containers in a cool, dark place.
Be sure to check the International Sections for additional spice blends and spice pastes."

Marginal Revolution: The Undercover Economist

"That is from Tim Harford's new The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor -- and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car (don't trust Amazon, the release date is November, not January). This book is one of the very best introductions to the economic way of thinking. 'Required Reading,' says Steve Levitt, what better endorsement could you want?

Here is Tim's home page, including his FT 'Dear Economist' columns. Here is Tim's Private Sector Development Blog. Here is Tim's recent FT piece on Thomas Schelling. "

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."

timewaster

"But, also, don't hate me because this Timewaster is dangerously addictive. Arguably the most addictive since the zombie shootout. I can't explain how to play, really, but it's actually pretty obvious once you dork around with it for a minute." http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_09_corner-archive.asp#079521

LILEKS (James) the bleat

"But lo: it’s an iPod that plays video, which is different from a video iPod. Right? Repeat that until your faith in The Leader is restored. As for those of us in Lemmingland, it was fun to see how fast we could flip-flop – or, as they call it in the Beltway, re-nuance our position. We went from “I have no need” to “damn: black or white?” in about 14 seconds. I can only speak for myself, I guess – I would have passed on a big video iPod, because it’s not something I can see myself using very much. But I am in the market for an iPod that can carry around everything; I’d like to have 15 GB of old radio, 15 GB of pop, 15 GB of classical, 5 GB of audio books, and what the hey, why not 10 GB of old movies. I was going to get one anyway, so the video addition is a sweet bonus. Nothing more.

You know what it’s like to have the Kool-Aid not only going in via feeding tube and IV, but shot through a catheter at volumes normally associated with pressure-washers?"

The Innovator's Dilemma

"FAILURE IN THE FACE OF DISRUPTIVE
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES"

Oracle Finds the Flaw in MySQL's Business Plan

"on Friday, the database behemoth gulped down InnoDB, the development company behind what some people consider to be one of the most crucial pieces of technology in the innovative 5.0 database release."

DOWN IN THE VALLEY: The Uncanny Valley...

"Mori’s research indicated that people feel comfortable or empathetic with non-human creations that are made to appear human only up to a point. Like if you have a robot, he may be a simple mechanical man, and that’s fine; you add some human features such as life-like arms and legs, or maybe a human-looking or even goofy face, and that’s pretty cool; but when you go too far, and the robot (or cartoon) resembles a human being too closely, or just enough to bug us"

Web Sudoku - Billions of Free Sudoku Puzzles to Play Online

"Sudoku (数独) is the number placing game taking the world by storm - see Wikipedia.

The rules of Sudoku are simple. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square."

IBM Research turns 60 | CNET News.com

"Originally housed in a renovated fraternity house at Columbia University, the then-named Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory has become one of the pre-eminent technological research centers in the world--and it has given IBM an edge over competitors in many fields.

Five IBM employees have won Nobel Prizes for, among other achievements, the discovery of electron tunneling and the invention of a microscope that captures images of individual atoms. Add to that seven National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and four A.M. Turing Awards."

USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID

"I had just set up my 2 firewire drives and thought, 'Can I RAID USB Floppy DRIVES'? I happen to work for Y-E DATA which is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of USB Floppy Drives, so I have access to these things. I had just been going through a pile of returns testing the drives for failure. There are always a few that are fine though, so I got 5 of them for this very important scientific feat."

World's Armed Forces Forum

"Colour WWI photos"

MacZealots > Tutorials > Installing WordPress on Tiger

"WordPress is an excellent choice for a personal or professional blog, and the price is right, too. This tutorial will show you how to install WordPress 1.5.1.3 on OS X 10.4 Tiger."

boren.nu » Anatomy of a WordPress Theme

boren.nu » Anatomy of a WordPress Theme: "Here is the list of theme files recognized by WordPress. Of course, your theme can contain any templates, stylesheets, images, or other files you wish to include. Just keep in mind that the following have special meaning to WordPress."

boren.nu » Templates and the “is” Functions

"WordPress 1.3 introduces the “is” series of template functions. These tell you what type of page is being requested. For example, is_home() is true if the home page is being requested. is_category() is true if a category is being requested. Here is the full list of “is” functions and the requests for which they are true."

Miklb’s Mindless Ramblings » “Blank” WordPress Theme

"So, as I’ve begun designing WordPress themes, I found the tutorial over at Urban Giraffe invaluable. They walk you through the dissection of the default Kubrick theme, how to strip it down to bare bones, and start with a blank style sheet. Now that I’ve done that a couple of times, I decided it would be nice to have all the work done, and be able to have all the template files cleaned, as well as a style sheet with all the divs and classes there, simply without the style."

UrbanGiraffe » WordPress Theme Guide

"Dissection of a WordPress theme:

* Part one - Pulling it apart
* Part two - Complete design, header, and footer
* Part three - The sidebar
* Part four - The content"

WordPress Themes by John Godley

"A guide to creating your own themes with WordPress. The guide begins with a short introduction to installing WordPress locally on your own PC, and then follows with a thorough look at how a WordPress theme is constructed. A basic design is established and then expanded upon, ultimately leading to the creation of three example themes. An online accompaniment provides all themes and graphics for download."

boren.nu » Anatomy of a WordPress Theme

"Here is the list of theme files recognized by WordPress. Of course, your theme can contain any templates, stylesheets, images, or other files you wish to include. Just keep in mind that the following have special meaning to WordPress."

boren.nu » Templates and the “is” Functions

"WordPress 1.3 introduces the “is” series of template functions. These tell you what type of page is being requested. For example, is_home() is true if the home page is being requested. is_category() is true if a category is being requested. Here is the full list of “is” functions and the requests for which they are true."

Have Recessions Absolutely, Positively Become Less Painful? - New York Times

"It had been a busy day for Georgia businesses, and FedEx's regular nightly flights from Atlanta to the company's Memphis hub were overbooked with packages. So the local crew made a call to a sprawling, low-slung room here at headquarters, where people hunch over computer screens showing weather maps and flight plans, and asked for help from the five empty FedEx jets that roam over the United States every night.

The recent birth of that small fleet, at a multimillion-dollar price tag, explains a lot about how the nation's economy has become so much more resilient. Think of it as the FedEx economy, a system that constantly recalibrates itself to cope with surprises."

89.3 KPCC | Perspectives | Sandra Tsing Loh

"The Loh Life™ is Sandra Tsing Loh's weekly take on life in early 21st century southern California."

Sudoku

Fill in the grid so that every row,
every column, and every 3x3 box
contains the digits 1 through 9.

B.C. man aims to earn one million air miles in two months | CP

"Pilot Marc Tacchi is seeing the country the way most Canadians never could - or would.

He is soaring with Air Canada, here, there and everywhere, over and over again. Tacchi is currently a frequent flyer with the airline - a very, very frequent flyer trying to accumulate one million air mile credits, which is equal to 10 round-trip, executive class flights to Australia. He aims to do it before the end of November.

A commercial cargo pilot, Tacchi decided two weeks ago to take Air Canada up on its North America Unlimited Pass offer, which costs the customer $3,500 a month and allows unlimited travel to more than 100 destinations in North America."

go anywhere disposable scrabble game.

"here's a scrabble board that conveniently prints on an A4 or lettter sized sheet of paper. if you are ever stuck on a plane or in a pub with no scrabble board you can use this sheet to get your fix."

Dictionary.com/pumpernickel

"[German, probably from dialectal, term of abuse : obsolete Pumper, breaking wind (from dialectal pumpern, to break wind, from Middle High German, to knock, frequentative of pumpen, of imitative origin) + German Nickel, goblin; see nickel.]"

The Military's Walrus: An Unlikely Flying Machine

"DARPA's Walrus program to develop and evaluate a very large airlift vehicle has moved forward; DARPA announced the contractors for the first phase of the program. Despite detailed early descriptions of 'war-balloons' in late nineteenth century science fiction, this isn't your father's (not to mention great-grandfather's) dirigible airship. According to DARPA's press release, 'the Walrus aircraft will be a heavier-than-air vehicle and will generate lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring and gas buoyancy generation and management.'"

This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes - Los Angeles Times

"A laborer has gathered 10,000 books, giving his impoverished neighbors a window to the world."

My Sandmen: Applying the Principles of War to Harriet Miers SCOTUS Nomination

"MOOSEMUSS is the easily learned acronym that highlights the nine, generally accepted, Principles of War.

M – Mass – Concentrate Combat Power at decisive time and place.
O – Objective – Direct every military operation against a clearly defined, decisive and obtainable objective.
O – Offensive – Seize, retain and exploit the initiative.
S – Surprise – Strike the enemy at a time, a place and in a manner for which he is unprepared.
E - Economy of Force – Allocate minimum combat power to secondary efforts.
M – Maneuver - Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through flexible application of combat power.
U - Unity of Command – For every objective, ensure unity of effort under on responsible commander.
S – Security – Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.
S – Simplicity – Prepare clear, complicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure understanding."

The Interactive Nolli Map Website

"The 1748 Map of Rome, by Giambattista Nolli is widely regarded by scholars as one of the most important historical documents of the city ever created. This project is a collaborative exploration of the exquisite Nolli engraving, through its historic significance and contemporary application."

Mr. Sun!: Cool maps.

"Dig maps? I do. The University of Texas at Austin Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection is a relatively obscure gem. For current events, try the Middle East and Iraq sections, but don't miss the incredible Historical maps collection."

Mr. Sun!: Salute to Adam Mclean.

"Give me a man who knows how to go overboard with style.
Make no mistake about this: Adam Mclean is into alchemy."

Artistic Homes of California, 1887-1890

"Artistic Homes of California consists of twenty-seven views of exteriors (and a few interiors) of mansions located in California. Most of the mansions are located in San Francisco. A few are located in San Jose and Oakland. The individual photomechanical reproductions were published by Britton & Rey between 1887 and 1890 as supplements to the San Francisco News Letter."

IGN: IGN's Top 25 Animated Movies of All Time

"Therefore, we came up with an exhaustive plan: we will rate the Top 25 movies for 13 genres in 13 weeks. Starting today, we will roll out a new genre each Friday until we have covered the most important categories of movies, beginning with Animation! "

Basic Hip Digital Oddio

"Basic Hip Digital Oddio is home to Kiddie Records Weekly, The Online Guide to Whistling Records and host of the Space Age Pop Music broadcast. We collect records from the fifties and sixties, focusing on pop instrumentals, soundtracks and incredibly strange music. We hope you enjoy your visit!"

Kiddie Records Weekly

"I was lucky enough to find this rare EP in beautiful condition and hope you enjoy it's excellent sound quality. Four Ludwig Bemelmans stories combined with the music of master composers, Schubert, Haydn, Beethoven and Rossini. Madeline is right up there with Curious George, Blueberries for Sal, Caps for Sale and The Biggest Bear as one of my all time favorite books as a child. Enjoy this lovely recording!"

Oracle Tip: How to use default values with database columns

"One very common problem is to emulate the Autonumber functionality of other database vendors where a column is automatically populated with some kind of sequence number. In Oracle databases, you cannot specify a sequence number as a DEFAULT value for a column; however, you can emulate this functionality using a trigger. Even if a column is declared NOT NULL, you can still omit the column from INSERT statements to be populated in the trigger."

Diary of Disaster: Riding Out Katrina in the Data Center

"Vacuum-cleaner maker Oreck had the linchpin of its business continuity plan blown away by Hurricane Katrina. Intercosmos Media Group rode out Katrina with half a terabyte of data on the line, guarded by a former Green Beret whose preparations included generators, food, water, a camera and a gun. A day-by-day account of the decisions these companies made and why they made them."

How to Prepare for One Really Quick Getaway - New York Times

"What is the first thing you will grab from your home if your house floods, catches on fire or comes tumbling down in an earthquake? Family photos? The pets? The Hummel figurines?

It probably will not be your financial and medical records, the very things you will need to rebuild your life after a disaster. If you are like most people, you have documents stashed in various places throughout your home, perhaps some under lock and key. And with your mind racing as danger hits, you are not going to have the time or wherewithal to figure out which ones you need."

So what do you have to do to find happiness? - Sunday Times - Times Online

"Are we wired up to be cheerful, or are some of us destined to languish in abject misery? Dorothy Wade reports on the new science of feeling good"

Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near"

Slashdot comment:

"Rewind your brain 15 years and imagine what you'd think if I told you:

Your computer will be roughly 1,000 faster than what you're using today. You will probably have more than 4,000 times the memory, and a fast hard drive that stores over 100,000 times as much as that floppy you're using. You can buy these supercomputers for less than $500 at Wal-Mart.

That computer will be hooked into a self-directed network that was designed by the Department of Defense and various universities - along with nearly 400,000,000 other machines. Your connection to this network will be 10,000 times faster than the 300 baud modem you're using. In fact, it will be fast enough to download high-quality sound and video files in better than realtime.

There will be a good chance that your computer's operating system will have been written by a global team of volunteers, some of them paid by their employers to implement specific parts. Free copies of this system will be available for download over the hyperfast network. You will have free access to the tools required to make your own changes, should you want to.

You will use this mind-bendingly powerful system to view corporate sponsored, community driven messages boards where people will bitch about having to drive cars that are almost unimaginably luxurious compared to what you have today.

Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened."

Lost in Translation

"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of September 2003, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original. Remember the old game of 'Telephone'? Something is lost, and sometimes something is gained. "

Katherine Kersten: A remarkable man melds faith and reason

"Jesse Ventura famously remarked that religion is 'a crutch for weak-minded people.' Jesse, of course, was a bit rough around the edges. But many more sophisticated people share his opinion. In their view, being a religious believer and a thinking person is a contradiction in terms.

Clearly, these folks have never met Rutherford Aris. Aris is a scientist of dazzling brilliance -- a chemical engineer whose mathematical models revolutionized his field -- and a deeply devout Christian. From 1958 to 1996, when he retired, he was one of the University of Minnesota's brightest stars, a primary reason that its chemical engineering graduate program is ranked No. 1 in the nation by the National Research Council.

'Aris thought in a dimension that none of us ordinary folks were capable of,' says colleague Lanny Schmidt, himself an eminent scientist. A mathematical wizard, Aris went straight into industry at 16 after graduating from high school in his home country of England. He never formally attended college -- getting his degree in mathematics with highest honors by correspondence -- and wrote his Ph.D. thesis in six weeks. As a young man, his groundbreaking papers made waves internationally.

Remarkably, Aris held a joint appointment at the university in the Department of Classics and Near Eastern Studies. An avid lover of medieval manuscripts, he scoured French and Italian monasteries for his work on Latin scripts. Aris is a prolific poet, author of 16 books and author or coauthor of 300 technical papers."

Students Discover Economics in Its Natural State - New York Times

"Mr. Tjoa's question was the title of one of two short papers he submitted in response to what I call the 'economic naturalist' writing assignment in my introductory economics course. The specific assignment is 'to use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behavior that you personally have observed.'

'Your space limit is 500 words,' the assignment continues. 'Many excellent papers are significantly shorter than that. Please do not lard your essay with complex terminology. Imagine yourself talking to a relative who has never had a course in economics. The best papers are ones that would be clearly intelligible to such a person, and typically these papers do not use any algebra or graphs.'"

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

"THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
by Carlo M. Cipolla
illustrations by James Donnelly"

National Geographic Magazine - WildCam AFRICA

"Embark on a quiet adventure and watch wildlife gather at Pete's Pond. Baby baboons scurry in the dust. Wildebeests push and shove to make room at the watering hole. Warthogs wallow in the mud."

video link: http://play.rbn.com/ngm/ngm/live/live.rm

Todd Dailey - Weblog - Blog Archive - Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso

"I should emphasize again that I was quite happy with my nano and its condition, even with the slight scratches. I don’t think the nano has a problem with being excessively prone to scratching. That said, it was completely amazing that I could remove every scratch with just a little work with Brasso. If you wish you had put your nano in a case before you used it, you now have an inexpensive way to get a 2nd chance."

Short Story

">(From OMNI, April 1991. This story, which was a 1991 Nebula nominee, has been appearing around the internet lately without my name attached. Several people were kind enough to alert me, but the truth is I'm more flattered than offended. )

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

by Terry Bisson

'They're made out of meat.'

'Meat?'

'Meat. They're made out of meat.'

'Meat?'

'There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat.'"

Microsoft Pushes Kid's Programming Language

"'One of the things we realized is that we all learned programming on some flavor of BASIC when we started. You're not going to learn how to program in BASIC anymore,' said Morrison, in an interview. 'We wanted something that isn't 20 years old; modern technology that uses an integrated development environment, so we can take our kids and move them directly from this to the .NET environment.'"

Odd things from Japan / Curiosidades de Japón: Mobile phones, truly mobile

"'Keitai-byuun' ('Keitai' =cell phone, 'byuun' =sound of a speedy run) is a set of wheels that you can attach to your cell phone to make it run like a little car. What for...? I guess it's just for fun, I don't see any other purpose here. This is for people who are really, reeeally bored and are willing to waste a few coins. It comes in 6 colors and 2 types: manual and pull back."

Macworld: News: MIT to launch $100 laptop prototype in November

"The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10 to 1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get 10 minutes of power and use. When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be ruggedized and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1GB of memory."

Rock Paper Scissors - 25

"You will notice that there is some branching going on with the arrows in the diagram. Trust me, you wouldn't be able to even get close to reading it otherwise. Thick lines branch out to thinner ones, and I've had to actually go around the outside of the circle for the smaller paths. I will be the first to admit that this game is just too complicated and you might get lost unless you really squint. By playing this game you agree not to hold me responsible for blindness, seizures, or let's face it, madness."

CaliforniaRepublic.org

"Teacher Union's Funny Numbers
To understand education budget, start with math...
[Tom McClintock] 5/18/05

The multimillion-dollar campaign paid by starving teachers unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate.

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year.

That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering."

Polski3's View from Here: YES on Proposition 75

"It is court mandated that public school teachers will be in either CTA/NEA or CFT/AFT, whichever union has bargaining rights in the school district."

Political Calculations: Rewriting the Rules of Math

"Trigonometry has for centuries been difficult for students to learn. Part of the reason is that the foundations of the subject are problematic, relying on vague pictorial definitions of the key concepts of angles and trigonometric functions. That means students rarely come to grips with the logical structure of the theory. Rational trigonometry is much simpler, relying on the fundamental quadratic notions of quadrance and spread, and with basic laws that can be derived completely rigorously using only elementary algebra."

BMW Authorities Vehicles

"Interior and Equipment

The BMW Series Special Task Vehicle is already optimally prepared from the factory for the installation of additional systems. Special equipment like firearms, blue lights, illuminated "stop" batten, etc. is accommodated securely and ergonomically in the vehicle so that it is immediately to hand when needed."

Savings Account Paying 4.0% - Fat Pitch Financials

"Savings Account Paying 4.0%

"

www.nanoengineer-1.com - nanoENGINEER-1 Gallery (New)

"Welcome to the nanoENGINEER-1 Gallery. This collection of images and animations have all been rendered with nanoENGINEER-1.

The jiggling of atoms seen in these animations results not from mechanically induced vibration, but from the thermal motion of atoms, a natural occuring phenomenon that is visible in dynamical simulations at this scale.

We invite you to click on the links below to learn more about each nanodevice design, who created it, and how nanoENGINEER-1 was used to simulate it.
"

Shirt Ninja

"Tie the sleeves in a single knot in the middle of your head. Very simple.
Pull it tight so the mask does not come loose during battle. "

WLTX News19 FYI Experiment: Mentos & Soda -- It's a BLAST!

"*** WHAT DO I NEED? ***

- One 2-Liter Bottle of Soda
(Diet soda is recommended - less sticky!)
- A pack of Mentos
- Optional: A test tube and an index card
- A level surface, preferably OUTDOORS!"

GameSpot - Sid Meier's Legacy

"Join us for a tour of Sid Meier's games, from the early obscure titles to the well-known classics. We'll even peek into some corners that Sid himself would probably wish would stay hidden, but that's half the fun, especially when we hear it from Sid himself."

CINCINNATI SUBWAY

"Abandoned tunnels are often the object of urban legend, but Cincinnati is in fact the site of the country's largest abandoned subway tunnel. But 'abandoned' is not quite the word, as construction slowed to a stop in 1925 before even half of the 16 mile line was completed. Seven miles between Cincinnati's central business district and the industrial suburb of Norwood were tunneled, bridged, or graded, but no track was laid and no subway cars were ordered. No passengers ever rode between the six stations that were built."

Magical Macintosh Key Sequences

"All the magic key sequences to make your Mac do various things."

HIOX PHP Tutorials - Error Handling, supress error, stop, turning off warning message

"error_reporting(0);
fopen('test.txt',r);
echo('test for turning off warning message');
?>

Result: test for turning off warning message"

1st Ave Machine>View Media

Interesting music video.

CSU Connection.com is the place to be!

"Here are the videos! Enjoy."

Japaner schocken | chilloutzone.de - free games and free fun

Japaner schocken | chilloutzone.de - free games and free fun

http://archiv.chilloutzone.de/05071103.wmv

Please excuse some of the links advertised on these pages.

mobiBLU 512 MB Cube Digital Audio Player, Orange - Wal-Mart

"At only 1 inch in size, the mobiBLU Cube is the world's smallest, full-featured digital audio player. The brilliant OLED display lets you easily see track names, settings and battery status. Also features a multi-function headphone jack for USB 2.0 connectivity. Plays about 250 songs with its 512 MB capacity.

More Cube features: SRS WOW Sound Effects, FM Radio, FM/Voice Recorder, Clock Display and Sleep Timer"

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online

"Catalog your books online

* Easy. Catalog your books online (example); no software required.
* Powerful. LibraryThing mines the full Library of Congress catalog—ideal for collectors and scholars.
* Free. Enter 200 books for free; lifetime membership $10 (beta special).
* Tagged. LibraryThing allows blog/Flickr-style tagging (example).
* Shared. Show everyone your library, or keep your library private. You can even put a widget on your blog to show people what you're reading.
* Safe. LibraryThing's not going away, but you can export your data."

Postgresql audit table

open-ils blog » Blog Archive » Filler: "Like all big projects that deal with user transactions we require an amount of accountability because of shared access to customer/patron data. The normal approach to this when using an RDBMS is to create an audit table for each production table you want to track. Normally one would have to create each audit table by hand, but since we’re using Postgres we get a little help. Postgres has a table creation option called LIKE that will create all columns from the named LIKE table in addition to any named in the CREATE list. Wrap that up in a UDF that creates the audit table and add a couple of triggers, and voila!"

MilkandCookies - Crazy Ping Pong Match

MilkandCookies - Crazy Ping Pong Match: "Two tournament players get more caught up in keeping the ball alive than actually winning."

Moodteller: Estimating mood levels in LiveJournal

"A demo of a technique for estimating the current mood levels in the blogosphere using the language used by bloggers."

I hate to be pedantic about your pedantry

"I hate to be pedantic about your pedantry, but the phrase itself by no means implies two chronological acts and is not understood as such. And to amend it to “You can’t eat your cake and still have it” would be one of those small acts of linguistic dumbing-down that no true pedant should be in favor of. Or of which no true pedant should be in favor. Or in favor of which no true pedant should be. Whate ver."

Byron's Dutch Oven Recipes - Campfire Dutch Oven Pizza

"Campfire Dutch Oven Pizza
1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef 1/2 medium red onion; diced
2 tsp. italian seasoning 3 Tbs. diced greeen bell pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder 3 Tbs. diced red bell pepper
salt and black pepper to taste 1 (8 oz.) can mushroom stems & pieces; drained
2 Tbs. olive oil 12 black olives; sliced
1 can crescent rolls 8 oz. shredded Cheddar cheese
1 jar pizza sauce 8 oz. shredded Mozzarella cheese

Heat a 12' Dutch oven using 18-20 briquettes bottom until hot. In a medium bowl add ground beef, italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt and pepper; mix together with your hands. Drop ground beef by small pieces into the hot Dutch oven and fry until brown. Remove browned beef from Dutch oven and wipe oven down with a paper towel.

Pour olive oil into Dutch oven and spread evenly over bottom of oven. Unroll the can of crescent rolls and line the bottom of the oven with a layer of flattened rolls. Spoon pizza sauce evenly over crescent rolls. Sprinkle evenly with seasoned ground beef, red onion, bell peppers, mushrooms, olives, and top with Cheddar and Mozarella cheeses.

Cover and bake using 8-10 briquettes bottom and 16-18 briquettes top for 20-30 minutes until crust is browned on edges and cheese is bubbly.

Serves: 6-8"

Evolution Quotes

"For scientific materialist the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. We might therefore more accurately term them 'materialists employing science.' And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism First Things November 1997

One of the ironies of the whole controversy is that it's a stock in trade for the Darwinists to say, 'The critics are religiously motivated and they believe in God and they're throwing their religion at us and they shouldn't be doing that, and they should keep that out of science,' But being religious or antireligious is the same thing: It's a position about religion and God, and it goes beyond the evidence and into very confident assertions that are based more on personal convictions than they are scientific testing. Phillip Johnson's Assault Upon Faith-Based Darwinism East Bay Express July 27 2005"

Closing techniques

Closing techniques: "This is a big list, but the real list of closing techniques is almost endless. You can go to each need, for example, and invent several closes around satisfying or threatening them. Here are closing tips to help you further.

'Sell on the tangibles, close on the intangibles' is good general advice. Note how many of these methods follow this rule."

Highspeed Photography of Punctured Water Balloons:

"Highspeed Photography of Punctured Water Balloons:

Punctured water balloons are photographed at high speed (1000 frames/sec) in a laboratory. Since the rupture process is on the order of milliseconds, the initial impact of the membrane retraction on the bulk fluid can be observed without the significant interference of gravity."

LEGO.com Factory LEGO Digital Designer

"LEGO DIGITAL DESIGNER

Welcome to LEGO® Digital Designer! With Digital Designer 1.4, you can build anything in your imagination using virtual LEGO bricks - right on your computer at home!"

Technology

"New mediums aren't an everyday thing. Neither is the technology used to create them. Zebra holography, a very unique technology uses a highly proprietary process that renders a very fantastic result. "

AnnualCreditReport

"This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion."

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer

"What is a PocketMod?

The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to describe just how incredibly useful the PocketMod is. It's best that you just dive in and create one."

BBC News | In pictures

"Santiago Pangan, local recycler"

HoustonChronicle.com - How Curious George escaped the Nazis

"How Curious George escaped the Nazis
Popular books' authors fled Paris by bicycle with manuscript"

Cato News Release - September 14, 2005

"Budget Disaster Looming
Cato scholars offer budget cuts, as requested by Majority Leader DeLay

At a briefing on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declared an 'ongoing victory' against bloated federal spending. Congress passed $62 billion of spending for Hurricane Katrina relief that will push the deficit back up to the $400 billion range. When asked whether Katrina relief should be offset with budget savings elsewhere, DeLay said 'bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it.'

Cato Institute scholars Steve Slivinski and Chris Edwards have the offsets that the majority leader is looking for. They have compiled $62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term."

Tony Snow: Fear is a waste of time

"Here is a short inventory:

Faith matters. Prayers heal. Love overcomes.

People want to do good for others; they just need excuses.

Fear is a waste of time. The worst that can happen is that we'll die -- which happens to everybody, anyway. Until the Grim Reaper comes knocking, we're alive.

We can count our hardships, but not our blessings.

Life does not revolve around us. It envelops us.

There is no condition that someone else has not already overcome.

"

Las Vegas Weekly

"Picketers for Hire

The strange business of protesting jobs that may be better than yours"

Radio Blogger

"Three days of Clueless Joe Biden, condensed into one minute.

A daunting task indeed, but one which I felt needed to be done. The Senior Senator from Delaware was arguably at the center of what little fireworks occurred at the now-concluded question and answer session with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. Without further ado, I give you Joe Biden."

ExtremeMusic.com - Class A Production Music Library – A Site For Sore Ears

Production music library.

brevity.org -- Links to essays in Best Software Writing I

"Joel Spolsky has compiled a book of essays on software, which he calls The Best Software Writing I. The essays all came from online sources, but when Spolsky released the chapter listing, I didn't see anywhere online where he posted links to the originals. So here they are."

Songs About Oakland

Songs About Oakland: "Trio member Bruce Bratton recalls a period of a week or more when 'every major radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area would play the Oakland Song at exactly the same moment. So you could literally go up and down the radio dial and hear the Oakland song everywhere without missing a beat.'"

mozdev.org - greasemonkey: index

"Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ('user scripts') to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction.

For example, you could:

* Make sure that all URLs displayed in the browser are clickable links
* Improve the usability of a site you frequent
* Route around common and annoying website bugs
* Use the Coral content network selectively."

Demographic Google Map application

"Instructions:
To obtain a demographic report, simply select the desired report from the drop-down menu below, and click on the map."

It's an Artsy Ad

It's an Artsy Ad.

Hamlet - The Text Adventure

"Bedroom
You are in your luxurious palatial boudoir, all of ten feet square. There is a four-poster bed, and not much else. A portrait hangs on the wall.
An exit leads north.

> examine portrait
It is a painting of your late father - who, rather confusingly, was also called Hamlet - in the usual cheesy royal portrait pose."

Exclusive: BillG Goes To College

"You want it, we've got it. The camera work is a little bumpy, but here's the spoof video that was shown at PDC 2005... uncut. Some highlight screenshots are below..."

Small Ad

Small Ad

DAZ Productions - 3D Models, 3D Content, and 3D Software

"DAZ|Studio is a free software application that allows you to easily create beautiful digital art. You can use this software to load in people, animals, vehicles, buildings, props, and accessories to create digital scenes. DAZ|Studio includes two pre-configured scenes ready for you to Load & Render within DAZ|Studio. Just double-click on the scene thumbnails inside of DAZ|Studio, and everything will come on screen posed, lit, and ready for you to create a stunning digital image. "

Sushi Pictures

Sushi Pictures

USNews.com: The National Interest: Adam Smith, political pundit (9/14/05)

"Last night I was reading (actually, rereading) Gertrude Himmelfarb's luminous The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, and came across this quotation from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.

'In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have always been two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time, of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion.'"

What is the BBS Documentary?

"Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer...

....there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did.

They called these places 'Bulletin Board Systems', or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and dreams became the way that an entire generation learned about being online."