Hi def Last Supper

16 gigapixels

Human race will 'split into two different species' | the Daily Mail

Human race will 'split into two different species' | the Daily Mail:

"The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist."

You'll never guess which species evolves from the scientists...

Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities

Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities: "We at Computerworld would be the last to say that science and technology aren't creative pursuits. Still, when most people say, 'Oh, she's very creative,' they're probably not talking about the subject's ability to perform higher math or engineer a network. Such people might be amazed to learn of the remarkable number of actors, directors, musicians and other celebrities who nurture an inner geek."

How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail, Managing Technology Article - Inc. Article

How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail, Managing Technology Article - Inc. Article -- Joel Sposky

"Here's my five-step guide to ensure software failure:

Mistake No. 1: Start with a mediocre team of developers.
Mistake No. 2: Set weekly milestones.
Mistake No. 3: Negotiate the deadline.
Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equitably.
Mistake No. 5: Work till midnight."

Apple Wireless Keyboard LED - 40X on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Apple Wireless Keyboard LED - 40X on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
"Ever wonder how the power LED shows through the aluminum of Apple's new wireless keyboard when it's on, but blends into the metal when it's off? Here's how.

This design feature caught my eye as soon as I powered the keyboard up, so I brought it into work the next day and took a picture at 40X magnification using the scope in our lab. A small pattern of what must be laser cut holes allows the light from the LED to shine through, but hides it from view when it's turned off. "

A Celebration of Tex-Mex, Without Apology - New York Times

A Celebration of Tex-Mex, Without Apology - New York Times: "“Cal-Mex is long on burritos and sour cream,” Mr. Walsh said. “In New Mexico, it’s all about green chilies, and in Arizona they are proud to have invented chimichangas — deep-fried burritos. The embodiment of Tex-Mex is a cheese enchilada with gravy.”"

Death special: The plan for eternal life - death - 13 October 2007 - New Scientist

Death special: The plan for eternal life - death - 13 October 2007 - New Scientist

"Ordinary citizens wouldn't know what to do with eternal life," says Minsky. "The masses don't have any clear-cut goals or purpose." Only scientists, who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans, he argues.

He is also staunchly against regulating the development of new technologies. "Scientists shouldn't have ethical responsibility for their inventions, they should be able to do what they want," he says. "You shouldn't ask them to have the same values as other people."

International Chindogu Society

International Chindogu Society: "The tyranny of the automobile makes life increasingly tough for ecoconscious pedestrians, and finding a safe place to cross can result in inconvenient diversions and wasted time. Now the pedestrian can fight back. When you've found the crossing point that best suits you, simply roll out the the Portable Zebra Crossing in front of you and cross confidently and in safety at your own pace. "

The hay fever hat

The hay fever hat

The following ten tenets define the gentle art and philosophy of Chindogu

1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use
2. A Chindogu must exist
3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy
4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life
5. Chindogu are not for sale
6. Humor must not be the sole reason for creating a Chindogu
7. Chindogu is not propaganda
8. Chindogu are never taboo
9. Chindogu cannot be patented
10. Chindogu are without prejudice

Boomshine

Boomshine: "Boomshine is an addictive Flash casual game. Click the screen to start a chain reaction and try to explode as many dots as needed to pass a level. The game contains 12 levels ranging from the easy to the hard (only 3.97% of games pass level 12). Over 3 million games have been played by over 100,000 different players."

ORACLE-BASE - Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) Installation On Fedora Core 1 (FC1)

ORACLE-BASE - Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) Installation On Fedora Core 1 (FC1): "In this article I'll describe the installation of Oracle Database 10g (10.1.0.2) on Fedora Core 1. The article is based on a Fedora Core 1 Server"

swap 2364 mb

echo 262144 > rmem_default
echo 262144 > rmem_max
echo 262144 > wmem_default
echo 262144 > wmem_max

sudo rpm -Uvh libaio-0.3.106-2.2.i386.rpm

Plaster Repair Made Easier | This Old House

Plaster Repair Made Easier | This Old House

Now there's a new product that reattaches plaster without leaving behind difficult-to-disguise bumps. Big Wally's Plaster Magic repair kit uses a two-part adhesive to glue the lath and plaster back together, so a spackle is all it takes to make the repair disappear. Rory Brennan, a Vermont-based plaster restoration expert, developed this homeowner-friendly system after years of using drums of similar adhesives on large-scale plaster-repair projects.

On the Tension Between Object-Oriented and Generic Programming in C

On the Tension Between Object-Oriented and Generic Programming in C : "The author discusses how the use of generic programming in C can lead to conflicts with object-oriented design principles. He demonstrates how a technique known as type erasure can often be used to resolve these conflicts. An in-depth example is presented: any_iterator, a type-safe, heterogeneous C iterator."

EWD: Quick and Dirty

dposter.jpg (JPEG Image, 508x581 pixels)

Journal of Alias (5735)

Journal of Alias (5735): "A contributed test in t/05_links.t creates softlinks to several directories and then deletes them to test that remove() does NOT follow the softlinks. Unfortunately, one of the places the test links to is File::Spec::rootdir(). As a result, when the test FAILS it will recursively delete the root directory."

Knuth: Address Wanted

Knuth: Address Wanted: "Finally I was able to go through all the letters accumulated during a 15-year hiatus"

Chris Ball: : Favourite Unicode Codepoints

Chris Ball: : Favourite Unicode Codepoints: "Favourite Unicode Codepoints"

Republic of the Rio Grande-S.H. Dixon

Republic of the Rio Grande-S.H. Dixon: "The Republic of the Rio Grande: A Story of Its Rise and Fall From Romance and Tragedy of Texas History by Sam Houston Dixon, 1924

Many events of an extraordinary character transpired in Texas during the year 1839. The two which overshadowed all others, from a military point of view, were the campaigns driving the Cherokee Indians from Eastern Texas and the establishment on Texas soil of "The Republic of the Rio Grande." The troubles which led up to the expulsion of the Cherokee Indians from Texas are matters generally known, but little is known to the causal reader of Texas history concerning the events surrounding the revolution against the Centralist of Mexico which led to the establishment of the "Republic of the Rio Grande." This event has historical value to Texas because the revolution had its birth in Texas and, too, because the "Republic of the Rio Grande" unfurled its banner on Texas soil.

The impetuous Texans who joined the Mexican Republicans in this revolution, were venturesome spirits who were not contented with the dull monotony of peaceful scenes. They thought they saw in it opportunities for service and gain. They felt that by taking advantage of these opportunities they could gain both. They were young men of splendid abilities-ambitious and brave but they did not stop to count the cost of failure or consider the reproach they were bringing upon their country."

Mexico - Filibustering: Republic of the Rio Grande

Mexico - Filibustering: Republic of the Rio Grande: "The red, black and white flag was the national flag of the short- lived Republic of the Rio Grande. A group of rebels known as the Federalists declared a republic based on the Mexican Constitution of 1824. The new state was to include the Mexican States of Coahuila, Nuevo Le�n, and Tamaulipas, with its capital at Laredo. The Republic of the Rio Grande was declared in January 1840. The Centrists in Mexico City (who were responsible for the suspension of the 1824 constitution) moved to quickly to bring the Rio Grande back into the fold. Laredo was captured by Mexican forces less than two months later, but the insurgency continued and the Federalists eventually retook the town. A major Centrist victory at Satillo in October 1840 effectively killed the Republic of the Rio Grande. The Federalists surrendered two weeks later and their new nation ceased to exist. The republic lasted 283 days."

TheHistoryNet | Wild West | The Republic of the Rio Grande

TheHistoryNet | Wild West | The Republic of the Rio Grande: "Texans of the 19th century were audacious gamblers, putting their lives and all they had at risk while settling their frontier and securing their borders. Enemies were everywhere, often outnumbering them. Texans had the Alamo to remember, and a lot more, too. The new Republic of Texas was experiencing plenty of growing pains. Texas had gained its hard-earned independence from Mexico by winning the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, and Sam Houston, the victorious general who was elected president of the Republic of Texas that fall, gained American recognition for the republic in 1837. Still, relations with politically unstable Mexico were hardly rosy. Border conflicts were inevitable, especially when it wasn't certain where that border was."

PBS - THE WEST - The Republic of the Rio Grande

PBS - THE WEST - The Republic of the Rio Grande: "Mexicans!... It would appear that justice had fled from this world, leaving you to the caprice of your oppressors, who have become each day more furious toward you... My part is taken, the voice of revelation whispers... that the Lord will enable me, with powerful arm, to fight against our enemies. Juan Cortina"

Handbook of Texas Online:

Handbook of Texas Online:: "REPUBLIC OF THE RIO GRANDE. The Republic of the Rio Grande was an effort on the part of Federalist leaders in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila to break away from the centralistic government of Mexico in 1840 and to form a new confederation. Since 1835, with the ascension of Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna,qv then a Centralist, to the presidency of Mexico, Federalist leaders throughout the nation had attempted to force a return to the federalistic Constitution of 1824.qv This feeling was particularly strong in the northern states of Mexico, and, when they failed to achieve success in that enterprise, the northern Federalists worked to win independence from the Mexican Republic."

The Robin Hood of the Rio Grande

The Robin Hood of the Rio Grande: "Juan Nepomuceno Cortina has been described by the Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie as 'the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit, not even excepting Pancho Villa, that ever wet his horses in the muddy water of the Rio Bravo'; in Mexican and Tejano culture he is considered a heroic figure who fought against the injustices and blatant racism of the Anglo-Americans. "

LAREDO history

LAREDO history: "During the unsettled years after the Texas revolution, southwest Texas became the scene of hostilities and attacks by lawless elements -- Indians, smugglers, brigands and fortune seekers. In response to the need for authority and order in the area, as well as resentment against the despotic rule of General Santa Ana, leaders from both sides of the Rio Grande met and formed the Republic of the Rio Grande, and named Laredo as its capital. Although the Republic of the Rio Grande lasted only from early 1939 until the late summer of 1840, its capital building still stands. Facing north across San Augustin Plaza, the old capital building, now a museum, is a lasting memorial to the brave men who dreamed and fought for an independence, which was not to be."

Republic of the Rio Grande (U.S.)

Republic of the Rio Grande (U.S.):

"I spotted this flag in Laredo while traveling in south Texas. I was curious about its resemblance to the Texas state flag, so I did some research to determine its origins.

The red, black and white flag was the national flag of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande. A group of rebels known as the Federalists declared a republic based on the Mexican Constitution of 1824. The new state was to include the Mexican States of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamulipas, with its capital at Laredo. The Republic of the Rio Grande was declared in January 1840.

The Centrists in Mexico City (who were responsible for the suspension of the 1824 constitution) moved to quickly bring the Rio Grande back into the fold. Laredo was captured by Mexican forces less than two months later, but the insurgency continued and the Federalists eventually retook the town. A major Centrist victory at Satillo in October 1840 effectively killed the Republic of the Rio Grande. The Federalists surrendered two weeks later and their new nation ceased to exist. The republic lasted 283 days.

Although the republic is long gone, its flag is still displayed in prominent places, including the masthead of the local paper."

Ryan Fennell, 27 July 2000

Historical Texas Flags (U.S.)

Historical Texas Flags (U.S.):

Page 1

• First Texas Lone Star flag
• Fredonian Rebellion Flag
• Captain Baker's San Felipe Flag
• Scott's Flag of the Liberals
• Goliad Flag
• Myth! - The Lorenzo de Zavala Flag of 1836
• Gonzales Banner of 1835
  
  Page 2
  
• New Orleans Greys
• Burnet's Flag - Texas Republic's First Flag
• Twentieth Texas Infantry

$1 trillion green market seen by 2030 | Environment | Reuters

$1 trillion green market seen by 2030 | Environment | Reuters: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global sales from clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power and biofuels could grow to as much as $1 trillion a year by 2030, U.S. bank Morgan Stanley has estimated."

Oracle's Sample Schemas: Saying Goodbye to Scott

Oracle's Sample Schemas: Saying Goodbye to Scott: "With the new sample schema, the users have a dependency upon one another. Oracle points out the order of the creation for you in case you want to create these schemas manually. The names - HR, OE, PM, QS, and SH - are in alphabetical order, and that order specifies the order of creation. All installation options (personal, standard and enterprise) receive the first four schemas, and only the enterprise edition with partitioning receives the SH schema. For your convenience, Oracle provides a master script that creates the entire sample schema, and it is found in ORACLE_HOME\demo (the mksample SQL script)."

Fantasy Planes

Fantasy Planes: "Sometimes I think the most interesting airplanes are the ones that never got built. Some of these were schemes that were too visionary, some are found in fiction, and some were practical aircraft that lost out somewhere between blue sky and finished prototype."

Zepps

Zepps: "Zeppelins ~ Rotary and Otherwise Some ideas just won't go away"

Apple - Downloads - Create Booklet - PDF Service - Automator Actions

Apple - Downloads - Create Booklet - PDF Service - Automator Actions: "A booklet is a staple of pages that is folded in the middle to be used like a book. This means the pages have to be resorted before printing and two pages have to be shrunk onto one. Create Booklet does that for you and as it is a PDF Service you can do it directly from the print panel. Additionally you get the Automator Action that is used in that PDF Service."

Scala Home Page

Scala Home Page: "Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, and MIDI file generation and tuning conversion. All this is integrated into a single application with a wide variety of mathematical routines and scale creation methods. Scala is ideal for the exploration of tunings and becoming familiar with the concepts involved. In addition, a very large library of scales is freely available for Scala and can be used for analysis or music creation."

NPR: When Good Interviews Go Bad

NPR: When Good Interviews Go Bad: "Anyway, last Friday the band showed up promptly at 11am (EDT) and commenced to give what is possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media."

Neatorama � Blog Archive � How To Make Giant Soap Bubbles

Neatorama � Blog Archive � How To Make Giant Soap Bubbles: "Those bubbles are BIG! This video contains the recipe for super-tough bubble formula."

ACM Queue - Languages, Levels, Libraries, and Longevity: New programming languages are born every day. Why do some succeed and some fail?

ACM Queue - Languages, Levels, Libraries, and Longevity: New programming languages are born every day. Why do some succeed and some fail?

We can gather insights from the last 50 years of programming systems to the current time. For the far future, Vernor Vinge’s fine science-fiction novel, A Deepness in the Sky, rings all too true. The young protagonist, Pham, has joined a starship crew and is learning the high-value vocation of “programmer archaeologist,” as the crew’s safety depends on the ability to find needed code, use it, and modify it without breaking something. He is initially appalled at the code he finds:

The programs were crap…Programming went back to the beginning of time…There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it…these programs still worked…down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely… the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems…

“We should rewrite it all,” said Pham.

“It’s been done,” said Sura.

“It’s been tried,” corrected Bret…“You and a thousand friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it… And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then…”

“The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’”

Steve Souders: "High Performance Web Sites: 14 Rules for Faster Pages"--video - O'Reilly FYI

Steve Souders: "High Performance Web Sites: 14 Rules for Faster Pages"--video - O'Reilly FYI: "See O’Reilly author and Yahoo!’s performance expert, Steve Souders talk about his rules for revving up websites."

The Facebook revolution - Los Angeles Times

The Facebook revolution - Los Angeles Times: "It all sounds way too complicated for mortals to understand until you hear Zuckerberg explain it. Boiled down, it goes like this: Humans get their information from two places -- from mainstream media or some other centralized organization such as a church, and from their network of family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. We've already digitized the first. Almost every news organization has a website now. What Zuckerberg is trying to do with Facebook is digitize the second. "

Soaring on Ridgelift: Facebook – Business as a database?

Soaring on Ridgelift: Facebook – Business as a database?: "Unless you live in Los Angeles you probably won't have seen Fred Vogelstein's article 'The Facebook revolution' in today's Los Angeles Times. Fred is a great journalist and always thinks outside the box – the premise of his article is that another way to look at Facebook is as a huge database of interactions between friends, neighbors and colleagues – a digital version of word of mouth information distribution."

7 Life Lessons I Learned Playing Halo | PickTheBrain

7 Life Lessons I Learned Playing Halo | PickTheBrain: "In retrospect, I even learned some important life lessons that have helped me succeed."

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com: "I point this out not to challenge the reality of global warming or the fact that it's caused in large part by humans, but because the discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up. We have to rediscover the middle ground, where we can have a sensible conversation. We shouldn't ignore climate change or the policies that could attack it. But we should be honest about the shortcomings and costs of those policies, as well as the benefits."

Cheat on the Need to Sleep / Wired How To's

Cheat on the Need to Sleep / Wired How To's: "Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed. 1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in. 2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness. 3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot."

United States Congress - Senators and Representatives share their Favorite Recipes

United States Congress - Senators and Representatives share their Favorite Recipes: "Our elected officials share some of their favorite recipes, many featuring foods special to the part of the country they so proudly represent. You can find interesting recipes from soups to desserts, award winning recipes and family favorites.... from sea to shining sea."

Math Trek: A Prayer for Archimedes, Science News Online, Oct. 6, 2007

Math Trek: A Prayer for Archimedes, Science News Online, Oct. 6, 2007: "Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed 'a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics.' In The Method, Archimedes was working out a way to compute the areas and volumes of objects with curved surfaces, which was also one of the problems that motivated Newton and Leibniz. Ancient mathematicians had long struggled to 'square the circle' by calculating its exact area. That problem turned out to be impossible using only a straightedge and compass, the only tools the ancient Greeks allowed themselves. Nevertheless, Archimedes worked out ways of computing the areas of many other curved regions."

ENIAC simulation: simulation

ENIAC simulation: simulation: "If you are looking for documentation, you might be interested in A Java Simulator for the ENIAC, an 11 pages article about the ENIAC simulation. For further details, you can download the author's diploma thesis Simulating the ENIAC as a Java applet in PDF or in PostScript format. The thesis contains an introduction to the applet from the user's point of view, a brief chapter about the ENIAC's history and software engineering details. As well the slides of a talk about the simulation are available as PDF and as gzipped PostScript (both German language)."

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican book on Templars' demise

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican book on Templars' demise: "The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages. The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed."

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com

Chill out. - washingtonpost.com: "Stop fighting over global warming -- here's the smart way to attack it. By Bjorn Lomborg"

glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization

glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization: "View real-time data and statistics from any logfile on any server you have SSH access to, in an intuitive and entertaining way. FEATURES * Multiple logfiles on multiple servers (via SSH & tail) * Configurable layout * Multiple logfile parsers (Apache Combined, Rails, IIS & Postfix included) * Show only data you're interested in * Custom events * Show rate, total or average * If you can 'tail' it, you can visualize it * Written in Ruby using net-ssh & libopengl-ruby * Free! (GPLv2)"

BBC Radio 4 - Comedy - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Home Page

BBC Radio 4 - Comedy - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Home Page: "Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently comes to Radio 4 Wednesdays at 6.30pm, from 3rd October 2007"

Google Holiday Logos

Google Holiday Logos: "We have a variety of logos commemorating holidays and events. We've put them in this online museum for your amusement. Please do not use them elsewhere."

:: Munseys : Over 20,000 rare and hard to find titles in 10 formats!

:: Munseys : Over 20,000 rare and hard to find titles in 10 formats!
"Free ebooks"

nanoHUB - nanoHUB Home

nanoHUB - nanoHUB Home: "A resource for nanoscience and technology, the nanoHUB was created by the NSF-funded NCN and its development is driven by research themes in: * Nanoelectronics * NEMS/Nanofluidics * Nano-Bio Devices"

Toad World > Community > Experts' Blog - Team Coding???

Toad World > Community > Experts' Blog - Team Coding???: "Toad, it seems that the one universal feature that eludes most users is the Team Coding feature. ... Let’s take a quick look at Team Coding together, and maybe I can convince you it’s worth a 2nd or 3rd look. John POcknell has already dedicated a blog to Team Coding, but I wanted to take a step back and look at it from a slightly different perspective."

Amazon's Dynamo - All Things Distributed

Amazon's Dynamo - All Things Distributed: "Reliability at massive scale is one of the biggest challenges we face at Amazon.com, one of the largest e-commerce operations in the world; even the slightest outage has significant financial consequences and impacts customer trust. The Amazon.com platform, which provides services for many web sites worldwide, is implemented on top of an infrastructure of tens of thousands of servers and network components located in many datacenters around the world. At this scale, small and large components fail continuously and the way persistent state is managed in the face of these failures drives the reliability and scalability of the software systems. This paper presents the design and implementation of Dynamo, a highly available key-value storage system that some of Amazon’s core services use to provide an “always-on” experience. To achieve this level of availability, Dynamo sacrifices consistency under certain failure scenarios. It makes extensive use of object versioning and application-assisted conflict resolution in a manner that provides a novel interface for developers to use."

Justin Quinnell - Pinhole photography

Justin Quinnell - Pinhole photography
Put your photo where your mouth is.

ShareBrained Technology � The Chronulator

ShareBrained Technology � The Chronulator: "The Chronulator starts life as a clock, showing the hours and minutes on two old-school analog panel meters. Dress it up to look like old test equipment, audio VU meters, or motorcycle gauges. Mount it in a picture frame, shadow box, computer case, plush toy, pumpkin… Customize the code and hardware to make the meters indicate something other than time — network traffic/lag, outside temperature, freeway congestion, terror threat level, stress level, whatever! Let your imagination run free."

Historical Anatomies on the Web: Browse Titles

Historical Anatomies on the Web: Browse Titles: "Images have been selected from the following anatomical atlases in the National Library of Medicine's collection. Each atlas is linked to a brief Author & Title Description, which offers an historical discussion of the work, its author, the artists, and the illustration technique. The Bibliographic Information link provides a bibliographical description of the atlas, so users will know which edition was scanned and if there are any characteristics special to the Library's copy."

Dimitri Gielis Blog: Changing WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8 with ALTER DATABASE CHARACTERSET!

Dimitri Gielis Blog: Changing WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8 with ALTER DATABASE CHARACTERSET!: "Today I did something 'tricky' with the Oracle database... I went from one character set to another although it was not a superset/subset of each other."

Journal of Smylers (2592)

Journal of Smylers (2592): "If you're using MySQL, or considering using it, here are some things you probably should be aware of. Dealing with Invalid Data MySQL lets you specify restict what can be stored in fields, for example the number of characters in a string. If you try to insert data that doesn't meet the restrictions then MySQL tries really hard to insert someting anyway -- such as by truncating the string"

LiveLeak.com - The Human LCD - Amazing

LiveLeak.com - The Human LCD - Amazing: "South korea: boys cheering for their soccer teams. the most amazing thing is that they do this with their CLOTHES (not holding up cards). they have a jacket that is one color on the back, one on the front, and that they can open or close to show a third color shirt on the inside. One school has also figured out how to use their pants to make shading. "

Engcom

Engcom: "Virtual Slide Rule See how calculations used to be done before the days of electronic calculators. Find out about an important piece of engineering history. All pieces of the slide rule are draggable."

On McIlroy

On McIlroy: "Doug McIlroy doesn't have an Erdos number; Erdos has a McIlroy number."

Mondrian Code Review On The Web

Mondrian Code Review On The Web -- Guido Von Rossum

How Google does web-based code reviews with Mondrian � Internet Duct Tape

How Google does web-based code reviews with Mondrian � Internet Duct Tape: "Niall has a good post describing an internal Google tool for web-based code reviews built by the same guy who brought us Python. Anything beats sitting in a conference room looking at printed out code."

Coppola says robbery cost years of data - Yahoo! News

Coppola says robbery cost years of data - Yahoo! News: "The director of 'The Godfather' said the backup that rested on the floor in his offices at the Zoetrope Argentina studio was just 'a little thing ... but the information is (worth) much time.' 'If I could get the backup back, it would save me years — all the photographs of my family, all my writing.'"

特别报道：全国各地惊现纸馅月饼

特别报道：全国各地惊现纸馅月饼: "近日，本市名人marhar从超市里买了盒某著名品牌月饼，回到家打开吃，刚吃了一口，感觉有点不对劲，发现嘴里好象有个纸团，拿出来一看，上面还写着一行字。对，就下面这个，您看准咯:

tufte-latex - Google Code

tufte-latex - Google Code: "As discussed in the Book Design thread of Edward Tufte's Ask E.T Forum, this is beginning of a Tufte-inspired LaTeX layout to produce handouts and scientific notes"

Huashan Video � Electric Pretzels

Huashan Video � Electric Pretzels: "I shot this using Lauren’s digital camera from the gusty top of Huashan’s “Plank Path”."

Catalog Views / Data Dictionary Views

Catalog Views / Data Dictionary Views: "The data dictionary views, also known as catalog views, let you monitor the state of the database in real time: * The USER, ALL, and DBA views show information about schema objects that are accessible to you, at different levels of privilege. * The V$ views show performance-related information. * The _PRIVS views show privilege information for different combinations of users, roles, and objects. "

Veggie-Art-July07

Veggie-Art-July07: "Food artists create colorful animals from vegetables. Can you identify the veggies? m 'Eat Your Green Stuff' "

Official Google Blog: Our feature presentation

Official Google Blog: Our feature presentation: "In April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today we're unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser."

"Silk market rules" : Photos taken by lloydthyen - Travellerspoint Travel Photography

"Silk market rules" : Photos taken by lloydthyen - Travellerspoint Travel Photography

Where can I find textures and background images? | Graphics

Where can I find textures and background images? | Graphics: "Below you’ll find a hand-picked selection of some useful resources related to textures and background images. We tried to pick the best ones which offer quality and professional content without annoying advertisement."

FOXNews.com - Smiley-Face Emoticon Turning 25 - Technology News | News On Technology

FOXNews.com - Smiley-Face Emoticon Turning 25 - Technology News | News On Technology: "

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.

[...]

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly."I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."'

the evangelical outpost: The Gospel in 6 Minutes

the evangelical outpost: The Gospel in 6 Minutes: "A few days ago Tim Challies wrote: What if there was a ten minute video clip (with transcript) of John Piper sharing the gospel? Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if [this] could be promoted to the front page [of social media sites] and be seen by thousands or tens of thousands? In response, Desiring God ministries provided this resource, John Piper on The Gospel in 6 Minutes :"

Thing Fish - LAIKA Open Source Software - Trac

Thing Fish - LAIKA Open Source Software - Trac:

"ThingFish is a network-accessable, searchable, extensible datastore. It can be used to store chunks of data on the network in an application-independent way, associate the chunks with other chunks through metadata, and then search for the chunk you need later and fetch it again, all through a REST API over HTTP.

The system should, in its most basic form, only do two things: 1. Store files via a network interface. 2. Store metadata about the files and provide a search facility for finding files via their associated metadata."

Children's Painting Competition On the Environment /Home

Children's Painting Competition On the Environment /Home

The UN continues its mission of spreading optimism and hope and hope for the future in the world's children.

Loading.Ready.Run. - How to Talk like a Pirate

Loading.Ready.Run. - How to Talk like a Pirate: "'In honour of Talk like a Pirate Day, we present this informational video for the less nautically inclined among us. After all, you don't want to look stupid.' "

web zen: arrgh! 'tis pirate zen 2007 - Boing Boing

web zen: arrgh! 'tis pirate zen 2007 - Boing Boing

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times

“Some of our customers don’t know the name, though after they meet us, they want to read the book,” she went on. “Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask: ‘Hey, where is John Galt? How come I’m not important enough to rate a visit from John Galt?’ ”

NerdTests.com Fun Tests - The Nerd Test, Version 2.0

NerdTests.com Fun Tests - The Nerd Test, Version 2.0

Homer Simpson's Rhetoric - Figures of Speech from Springfield's Master Rhetorician

Homer Simpson's Rhetoric - Figures of Speech from Springfield's Master Rhetorician: "n this article, we consider some of the ways in which Homeric rhetoric has traveled from The Odyssey to The Idiocy by way of America's second-favorite cartoon character of all time. (According to TV Guide, Bugs Bunny is still number one.) Let's journey to Springfield to review 20 classic figures of speech."

oracle: how to defragment a table

ALTER TABLE emp ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;
ALTER TABLE emp SHRINK SPACE COMPACT;
ALTER TABLE emp SHRINK SPACE;

MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Video - CollegeHumor video

MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Video - CollegeHumor video: "The blue screen was invented the day before Windows made this instructional video."

AsiaInfo Wins Exclusive Contract with China Mobile Pakistan to Deliver Telecom Billing and CRM Software Solutions

AsiaInfo Wins Exclusive Contract with China Mobile Pakistan to Deliver Telecom Billing and CRM Software Solutions: "Under the terms of the contract, AsiaInfo will provide its OpenBilling On- line Charging System (OCS), and OpenCRM customer relationship management system to CMPak. The system, designed to support 10 million subscribers, provides real time, convergent billing and unified customer service."

Office Ultimate 2007: Just $60! (for students) � InsideMicrosoft � part of the Blog News Channel

Office Ultimate 2007: Just $60! (for students) � InsideMicrosoft � part of the Blog News Channel: "Starting in 59 minutes, 35 seconds, Microsoft will begin offering Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for students for the amazing price of just sixty dollars. This special offer for students only represents a $620 discount off the retail price of $680, a 91% savings."

Catching Kids Doing Good

Catching Kids Doing Good: "The newspaper reported that we won the meet. I don't believe winning made all of the above happen. I believe all of the above made winning happen. I believe teens will show responsibility because they want to be treated like adults. I believe in catching kids doing good and telling on them."

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries (Curious Expeditions)

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries (Curious Expeditions): "Shocked into a library induced euphoria, Curious Expeditions has attempted to gather together the world's most beautiful libraries for you starting with our own pictures of Strahov. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do."

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 10,000 Melons Explode

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 10,000 Melons Explode
Impressive.

YouTube - Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage

YouTube - Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage: "Lake Peigneur (disappearing lake) History Channel footage"

巴蜀早期儿童趣玩/雷瑞之/L/人物/巴蜀网 Phoer.net

巴蜀早期儿童趣玩/雷瑞之/L/人物/巴蜀网 Phoer.net
Lovely Chinese watercolors.

Internet Archive: Details: Quiet Please

Internet Archive: Details: Quiet Please: "Quiet Pleast - 1947 through 1949. The comple thoughts of Willis Cooper, as remembered as of April 7th, 2006. Quiet Please was Quiet, but remembered. This series is remembered here. This item is part of the collection: Old Time Radio"

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system: "memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load."

Scaling with memcached � SlideShare

Scaling with memcached � SlideShare: "memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system used by LiveJournal, Facebook, Bloglines and others. Find out how memcached works, how to it set up and how you can scale your website. Presented at YAPC::Europe 2007 by Leon Brocard."

lgf: rebooting mac in safe mode to clear system caches

lgf: there are mischiefs to be cured: "And here’s a tech tip for any graphics geeks who work on a daily basis with Adobe’s CS3 suite of design applications. I was using Fireworks CS3, my main tool for doing everyday graphics chores like cropping, resizing, etc. when suddenly I got the spinning beach ball of death; a ‘busy’ cursor that wouldn’t go away, and a frozen application that needed to be forcibly quit. And we all know how painful that can be. What’s more, the same thing happened in every one of the CS3 apps. Restarting didn’t fix it. Repairing permissions didn’t fix it. Deleting preferences files didn’t fix it. Searching the web yielded nothing. Oh noooo. The solution in this case, and something worth trying on a Mac OS machine whenever you have this kind of weird problem, was to boot up in ‘Safe’ mode, while holding the Shift key. It turns out that this not only does a Unix ‘fsck’ command and fixes any disk problems, it also flushes all of the system caches. It takes forever to start up, because it checks the whole startup disk, but after finishing the startup and logging in, if you then restart in normal mode—voila! Your pilikia is all pau."

Top 10 Incredible Recordings - The List Universe

Top 10 Incredible Recordings - The List Universe: "Before I start on the list, I feel that I should advise that a couple of the items here are quite horrific and I would recommend that those who are weak of heart or who have a nervous disposition avoid them. The items I am referring to are marked in the text. The items are not in any particular order as it is very hard to rate the historical importance versus the just plain weird value."

� 5 Pen Tricks from Japan — Uh oh…

� 5 Pen Tricks from Japan — Uh oh…: "The Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans — none of them can hold pens still for a second. Now you won’t be able to either. Here are the different moves I’ll show (and name) here. The higher the number, the harder it is: The Helicopter (2) The Pincher (4) The Wheel (1) The Drummer (3) The Flip (5)"

At Rapleaf, your personals are public | CNET News.com

Rapleaf, based in San Francisco, is building a business on that premise. The privately held start-up, whose investors include Facebook-backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, runs two consumer Web sites: Rapleaf.com, a people search engine that lets you retrieve the name, age and social-network affiliations of anyone, as long as you have his or her e-mail address; and Upscoop.com, a similar site to discover, en masse, which social networks to which the people in your contact list belong.

How to become another user in sqlplus

How to become another user in sqlplus: "A DBA frequently needs to become another user to test something or verify a problem. Short of having to gain acess to that users password, we are asked can I su to that account, sort of like root does on unix. This is an 'su.sql' script I use: "

Ask Tom "connecting as another user without their..."

Ask Tom "connecting as another user without their...":

"So, this is still 'valid', but there are other ways in the year 2007. proxy users for example, consider: ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> alter user scott grant connect through ops$tkyte; User altered. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte[scott]/foobar; Connected. scott%ORA10GR2> select user from dual; USER ------------------------------ SCOTT scott%ORA10GR2> connect scott/foobar; ERROR: ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE. scott%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte/foobar; Connected. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> "

The SIMH Altair 8800 Z80 simulator

The SIMH Altair 8800 Z80 simulator: "The Altair 8800 simulator is part of the SIMH family of simulators currently at version 3.7-2. Unlike a real Altair 8800 it features several enhancements: * Choice of processor (8080 CPU or Z80 CPU) * Optional banked memory (8 banks with 64 Kbyte) * Optional hard drive support for additional storage capacity * Networking support via TCP/IP for client/server systems * Support for up to 4 consoles * Timer generated interrupts * Ability to set the clock speed for 'real-time' simulation (useful for games)"