Keys to the Kingdom: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

Keys to the Kingdom: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com: "Between them, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have made 13 of the 100 top-grossing movies of all time. Yet they struggled for more than a decade with the upcoming fourth installment of their billion-dollar Indiana Jones franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Annie Leibovitz gets exclusive access to the set, while Lucas, Spielberg, and their star, Harrison Ford, tell Jim Windolf about the long standoff over the plot, why critics and fans will be upset, and how they’ve updated Indy."

Toad World > Community > Experts' Blog - Error Management functions and features for PL/SQL Developers

Toad World Community Experts' Blog - Error Management functions and features for PL/SQL Developers: "I thought I would share with you some of the features and functions available in PL/SQL, especially those introduced in recent versions of Oracle, which will help you trap and log error information."

How Can I find out who called me or what my name is

How Can I find out who called me or what my name is: "Many times we are asked 'in a procedure/function, can I find out who called me' or 'can I dynamically figure out the name of the procedure or package that is currently executing'.

You can find it in the call stack returned by dbms_utility.format_call_stack."

Stranded at the airport? Don’t forget Rule 240 - TODAY: Travel - MSNBC.com

Stranded at the airport? Don’t forget Rule 240 - TODAY: Travel - MSNBC.com: "Rule 240 mandated that an airline facing a delayed or canceled flight had to transfer you to another carrier if 1) the second carrier could get you to your destination more quickly than the original line and 2) it had available seats. In pre-deregulation days, all the big U.S. airlines adhered to this practice."

Looney Labs - Free Computer Card with $25 purchase

Looney Labs - Free Computer Card with $25 purchase: "How To Play Fluxx:"

Buy Fluxx

Buy Fluxx: "Fluxx: the card game with ever changing rules! It starts out simple, with the rules being only to draw 1 card and play 1 card during each player's turn. But New Rule cards quickly make things chaotic, and even the object of the game will often change as you play. Can you get the Rocket to the Moon before someone changes the goal to Death by Chocolate?"

Stevey's Blog Rants: Emergency Elisp

Stevey's Blog Rants: Emergency Elisp: "Most Lisp introductions try to give you the 'Tao of Lisp', complete with incense-burning, chanting, yoga and all that stuff. What I really wanted in the beginning was a simple cookbook for doing my 'normal' stuff in Lisp. So that's what this is. It's an introduction to how to write C, Java or JavaScript code in Emacs Lisp, more or less."

A good tiny X font

A good tiny X font: "I sometimes find myself using a low-resolution screen and I want as small a (fixed) font as possible while still having it readable. Some time ago I made this 5x9 font and I've used it since. I think it's the best font of its size possible."

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod: "Don't be a slave to your tripod. Build this stabilizer and see how much better you photos and video can be. Get professional results. This instructional video shows yo... More�u how to build your own stabilizer in 5 minutes for less than $1. It is super light weight and folds up small enough to fit in your pocket. With this stabilizer, you can hand-hold your camera with shutter speeds at least 3 stops slower than without. It works just as well with video cameras."

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.

Danga Interactive developed memcached to enhance the speed of LiveJournal.com, a site which was already doing 20 million dynamic page views per day for 1 million users with a bunch of webservers and a bunch of database servers. memcached dropped the database load to almost nothing, yielding faster page load times for users, better resource utilization, and faster access to the databases on a memcache miss."

Careers - Job Hunting - What if Companies Paid to Interview You?

Careers - Job Hunting - What if Companies Paid to Interview You?: "Add another one to the list: the best candidates don't put their resumes up on them, and--what else--a new job site hopes to address this, but in a completely unusual way. NotchUp makes companies pay to interview you."

Writing a Book in Google Docs

Writing a Book in Google Docs: "Currently, my editor Brian Jepson and I are collaboratively writing the book (tentatively titled) Google Office Hacks by O'Reilly using Google Docs. I wanted to outline the process we came up with, and maybe it's helpful for you too for certain needs."

Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Building a Small Business Backup System Using Amazon S3

Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Building a Small Business Backup System Using Amazon S3: "This article focuses on Amazon S3. Amazon S3 offers a hosted storage solution for just pennies on the gigabyte (GB). Using Amazon S3, you can store data objects up to 5 GB in size in containers called buckets, and then retrieve that data at a later date.

Why use Amazon S3? Instead of spending money on servers or external hard drives, paying money to connect those machines to the network (or paying co-location fees), and then paying more money to secure, maintain, and update those servers, you can pay a fraction of that money for a high-bandwidth, high-reliability service provided by Amazon."

GTD: Project Verbs vs. Next-Action Verbs | 43 Folders

GTD: Project Verbs vs. Next-Action Verbs | 43 Folders:

"Project verbs

Finalize	Resolve	Handle
Look into	Submit	Maximize
Organize	Design	Complete
Ensure	Roll out	Update
Install	Implement	Set-up

Next-action verbs

Call	Organize	Review
Buy	Fill out	Find
Purge	Look into (Web)	Gather
Print	Take	Waiting for
Load	Draft	Email

Get the distinction? Most all of those big verbs can and should be uncorked to reveal that they contain nothing but dozens of smaller verbs. And those little fellas are your physical next actions. That’s your work."

GTD: Project Verbs vs. Next-Action Verbs | 43 Folders

GTD: Project Verbs vs. Next-Action Verbs | 43 Folders: "It’s a list of “Project Verbs” versus “Next-Action Verbs” and, man, is it ever useful."

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Summary - WikiSummaries, free book summaries

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Summary - WikiSummaries, free book summaries: "Part 1 provides an outline for getting control of your life through the five stages of mastering workflow: collection, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing. Part 2, which is well over half the book, repeats a lot of what is said in Part 1, but provides much more detail on the application of Allen’s methodology. Part 3 explains why Allen’s methods work and the benefits to be gained from using his approach."

Cable Messes: Want meatballs with that?

Cable Messes: Want meatballs with that?: "The following are some of my favorite images of nasty cable messes."

macosxhints.com - Make a Nokia 6126 work with iSync

macosxhints.com - Make a Nokia 6126 work with iSync

Executive Summary:

1. edit /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist

2. Find the entry for the Nokia 6111.

3. Copy this entry and s/6111/6126/.

"While trying to get my Nokia 6126 to work with iSync (it is not supported at the time of writing) I came across some info at chromewalker.com about getting a 6131 to work. Since the 6126 is essentially a 6131 but for North America, I gave it a try and it worked.

1. Make sure iSync is not running, and un-pair the phone from your Bluetooth preferences.
2. Go to your applications folder and right click on the iSync application.
3. Click on 'Show Package Contents'
4. Navigate to Contents -> Plugins -> ApplePhoneConduit.Syncdevice -> Contents-> Plugins -> PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin -> Contents -> Resources
5. Within this last folder there will be a file called Metaclasses.plist
6. Copy this file and rename it something like Metaclasses.plist.bkp, if you do not know how to do this, you shouldn't even be trying this.
7. Once you have made a backup of the file, open the original file in a text editor and do a search for the Nokia 6111. When you find it, you will see that it is a Series 40 v3 device.
8. Look at all the stuff that precedes it and follows it and make sure to copy only the stuff that pertains to the Nokia 6111 and copy/paste it right below it. This will give you two Nokia 6111's in a row. Then on the second Nokia 6111 change every instance of the 6111 with a 6126 and save the file.
9. Pair the phone with your mac, and then launch isync.

How to Start Fire with Water! - Instructables - DIY, How To, offbeat

How to Start Fire with Water! - Instructables - DIY, How To, offbeat: "You probably already know a few ways to do this, but none that beats this method! It will not only make you be able to start a combustion with a drop of water, but it will be the coolest GREEN flame!"

Mastering Oracle Python, Part 1: Querying Best Practices

Mastering Oracle Python, Part 1: Querying Best Practices: "Among the core principles of Python's way of doing things there is a rule about having high-level interfaces to APIs. The Database API (in this case the Oracle API) is one example. Using the cx_Oracle Python module from Computronix, you can take command over the Oracle query model while maintaining compatibility with Python Database API Specification v2.0."

Fogonazos: Most popular

Fogonazos: Most popular

Fogonazos: 13 time-lapse wonders

Fogonazos: 13 time-lapse wonders: "Time-lapse is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography."

What Is Truth? - The Daily WTF - 2005-10-24

What Is Truth? - The Daily WTF - 2005-10-24: "

The problem with "logic" is that it makes things out to be nothing but simple dualities. Proponents of logic want us to believe that everything is true or false, black or white, yes or no, paper or plastic, etc. Thankfully, there are some among us, like Mark Harrison's colleague, who are not afraid to stand up to these logic advocates and shout "no, I will not succumb to your false dichotomies!" Today, I think we all should salute those few brave people ...

enum Bool
{
   True,
   False,
   FileNotFound
};

Sex, Science & Profits: How People Evolved to Make Money by Terence Kealey review | Non-fiction book reviews - Times Online

Sex, Science & Profits: How People Evolved to Make Money by Terence Kealey review | Non-fiction book reviews - Times Online: "What does marijuana tell us about the government funding of science? Well, a vast amount of taxpayers’ money around the world is spent on agricultural research to improve yields. Yet, according to Terence Kealey, pot-growers manage nicely without that aid and have developed “ever stronger and ever more disease-resistant strains” of literally mind-blowing potency.

The case of the cannabis cultivators is characteristic of the irreverence and eclecticism that make Sex, Science & Profits such an absorbing read. The author, who is a clinical biochemist at the University of Buckingham, seeks to demolish the myth that the advancement of scientific learning depends in any way on government intervention."

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library: "Bullet is a 3D Collision Detection and Rigid Body Dynamics Library for games and animation.
Free for commercial use, including PlayStation 3, Open Source multiplatform C under the ZLib License.
Discrete and continuous collision detection, integrated into Blender 3D and COLLADA 1.4 Physics tools support."

Karl King Compositions

Karl King Compositions: "MP3s of Karl King Marches"

Air Force Link - Ceremonial Music

Air Force Link - Ceremonial Music: "Ceremonial Music"

"Reflections: The Cleave Cartmill Affair: Two" by Robert Silverberg

"Reflections: The Cleave Cartmill Affair: Two" by Robert Silverberg: "'Deadline' is often cited today as an example of science fiction’s ability to predict the future. As Campbell went to such pains to demonstrate long ago, it did no such thing. It simply recycled existing data. A far better example of prophetic power is Heinlein’s 'Solution Unsatisfactory' of 1941, in which atomic bombs are developed by the United States and the quasi-Soviet 'Eurasian Union,' a brief atomic war breaks out that we win, and America thereafter finds it necessary to impose a military dictatorship over the rest of the world to prevent future nuclear warfare. Now there’s true extrapolation by a master of the form!"

"Reflections: The Cleve Cartmill Affair: One" by Robert Silverberg

"Reflections: The Cleve Cartmill Affair: One" by Robert Silverberg: "And before long it began to seem as though a whole network of science fiction writers might be involved–a chain of conspirators. For example, the report continues, 'It is established that Cartmill is very friendly with [ ], Retired U.S.N.R., who is associated with [ ] at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. This [ ] formerly was doing research work at Columbia University, and he is said to have accepted some material thought to be atomic copper from [ ] in order to measure it in the mass spectroscope at Columbia University. [ ] was advised by [ ] that the device was broken. He never received the material back from [ ]. One [ ] who has written for [ ] Magazine is said to be working with [ ] also. The possibility of the transmittal through [ ] to Cartmill has not so far been resolved. . . .'

Well, now it can be told, and you are quite familiar with the names of these sinister people. The retired naval man was Robert A. Heinlein. His Philadelphia Navy Yard associate, the former Columbia man, was Isaac Asimov. The one who sent the copper to Asimov and never got it back was Will F. Jenkins, who wrote science fiction under the pseudonym of Murray Leinster. The blanked-out magazine was Astounding, and the other writer working at the Navy Yard with Heinlein and Asimov was L. Sprague de Camp."

marknet - Google Code

marknet - Google Code: "This is an aggregation of several projects too small to bundle up by themselves."

Oracle Tips - PL/SQL Basic Structure - INOUT

Oracle Tips - PL/SQL Basic Structure - INOUT:

"Here is an example of a simple block:

SQL> declare
2 v_line varchar2(40);
3 begin
4 v_line := 'Hello World';
5 dbms_output.put_line (v_line);
6 end;
7 /

Hello World

"

Using Oracle PL/SQL

Using Oracle PL/SQL: "PL/SQL stands for Procedural Language/SQL. PL/SQL extends SQL by adding constructs found in procedural languages, resulting in a structural language that is more powerful than SQL."

Looks Good Works Well

Looks Good Works Well: "Bill Scott's musings on rich web design and user interface engineering"

ReadyNAS NV - NETGEAR.com

ReadyNAS NV - NETGEAR.com: "Packed with technology previously reserved for upper echelon high-end servers (i.e. RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, Continuous System Monitoring and Backup capabilities), the ReadyNAS NV brings Enterprise-level technology to the masses in a cost-effective manner. The ReadyNAS NV is a bullet-proof way to virtually insure that your data will never be lost again to hardware failure."

Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers

Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers

"I want to draw a few general lessons from the story of the symmetrical percentages, and specifically from the amount of attention that these percentages got from traditional press outlets, blogs, and online news sources.

• Lesson 1: The Internet is full of people who have four things that make them dangerous, both to would-be election fraudsters and (paradoxically) to the larger cause of election integrity: computers, intermediate math skills, a mix of patriotic and entrepreneurial zeal, and the ability to publish in the blink of an eye. When you add a stream of evolving vote tallies to this mix and shake vigorously, the resulting concoction will produce lots and lots of foam. (Some of that foam may look just like the Virgin Mary for a bit, so you can get on the evening news with it if you're quick enough. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
• Lesson 2: The larger the cloud of numbers and statistical analyses grows, the less inclined reporters will be to actually download a spreadsheet and tackle the data themselves. They're just going to report what this or that group has uncovered, especially if it's juicy.
• Lesson 3: The e-voting activism world is an odd mix of patriotism, territorialism, and old-fashioned entrepreneurism. Basically, everyone is racing to find that remarkable scoop that's going to get them quoted on CNN."

Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers

Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers: "The Internet is full of people who have four things that make them dangerous, both to would-be election fraudsters and (paradoxically) to the larger cause of election integrity: computers, intermediate math skills, a mix of patriotic and entrepreneurial zeal, and the ability to publish in the blink of an eye."

TOC

TOC: "ACM Classic Books Series
This list of classic books is the result of a poll ACM conducted where members named their favorite computer science books.We plan to make the full text available online to members as we obtain permissions from authors to display each book. We hope you enjoy the books in this Classic Books series!"

Paul Whiteman payroll from 1928

From a coworker: "Courtesy of my mother, who was a follower of the big bands back in the day, comes this handwritten payroll list for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in January 1928. A few pretty big names tucked in there." Bing Crosby for $150/week... not bad!

SunJournal.com - U.S. helium supply is deflating

SunJournal.com - U.S. helium supply is deflating: "In 1925, the U.S. government began buying helium and stockpiling it in an abandoned natural gas field in the Texas Panhandle, primarily to use in dirigibles, airships widely used before 1940. It decided to get out of the business almost 70 years later when private sector uses began dwarfing its own.

'It's estimated there is about 22 billion cubic feet left in the reserve last year, and last year we sold about 2.1 billion cubic feet,' Stuart said. 'When you consider the reserve supplies 45 percent of all U.S. supplies and about one-third worldwide, that's significant.'"

Transport Department -- Webcast

Transport Department -- Webcast
Hong Kong Traffic Cams

18 Stunning Bridges From Around The World - Frikoo

18 Stunning Bridges From Around The World - Frikoo: "With the technological boom of the last century came a huge increase in construction capability, and rivers, seas or valleys which were once thought to be completely uncrossable were finally overcome by the advent of numerous new, spectacular bridges. So in honour of these incredible engineering achievements, we have selected our favourite few bridges from around the world. We have the very old, the very new, the very-nearly-finished, the very long and of course the ones which just look very, very cool. Take your pick!"

The Apple Product Cycle

The Apple Product Cycle: "Mac-heads cook up droves of far-fetched, often bizarre ideas. A cursory reading makes it readily apparent why Apple executives pay no attention to their fanatical customers."

Web Services Without Pain: gSOAP Writes Your XML, SOAP, and RPC.

Web Services Without Pain: gSOAP Writes Your XML, SOAP, and RPC.: "Its name is gSOAP. It takes a header defining C or C functions, or a URL for someone else's web service definition, and automatically writes both clients and servers in C or C . The impact of this program on a programmer's task is as great as that of a compiler converting a high-level-language to assembly code.

To demonstrate that, I'll write a web service in one line:

int sv__add(int a, int b, int * result);"

Boing Boing

Boing Boing: "The wonderful folks at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have figured out how to make edible googly eyes (snip the ed of a gelatin pill capsule pop in a round cake-sprinkle and affix it to half a Whopper;"

How To Make Fire Balls Video

How To Make Fire Balls Video: "Learn to make fire balls that you can hold in your hands. Simple tutorial with nice music."

WebUrbanist � 7 Unusually Geeky Street Graffiti Projects: From Digitized Spray-Painting to Physical Hyperlinking

WebUrbanist � 7 Unusually Geeky Street Graffiti Projects: From Digitized Spray-Painting to Physical Hyperlinking: "Hektor “is a portable spray-paint output device for laptop computers.” In essence, it is a machine that packs into a suitcase but that can be rapidly deployed to plot out digitally created graffiti on urban surfaces or at art shows. This geeky graffiti art project is even open source, with the technology made available to anyone who wants to use it."

Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" According to Dr. Alan Kay (meaning of OOP objectoriented definition term notion meaning explanation what is)

Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" According to Dr. Alan Kay (meaning of OOP objectoriented definition term notion meaning explanation what is): "At Utah sometime after Nov 66 when, influenced by Sketchpad, Simula,
the design for the ARPAnet, the Burroughs B5000, and my background in Biology and Mathematics, I thought of an architecture for programming. It was probably in 1967 when someone asked me what I was doing, and I said: 'It's object-oriented programming'."

http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/doc_kay_oop_en

SourceForge.net: Libedit

SourceForge.net: Libedit: "non-GPL replacement for readline library. A spin-off from NetBSD code. Aim is for 100% readline API compatibility."

Communications From Elsewhere

Communications From Elsewhere: "The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator. To generate another essay, follow this link. If you liked this particular essay and would like to return to it, follow this link for a bookmarkable page."

Aetiology: Fecal transplants to cure Clostridium difficile infection

Aetiology: Fecal transplants to cure Clostridium difficile infection: "What if, instead of re-constitituing healthy gut flora one species at a time, you could simply take the entire fecal contents from a healthy person and use it to re-colonize your own gut...?"

Fool.com: IRAs for Kids

Fool.com: IRAs for Kids: "We discussed how business owners could reduce their income and self-employment taxes by hiring their children in our article Putting Junior on the Payroll. One side issue discussed in that article was investing in an IRA (either Roth or traditional) for the kids with their earned income."

Design Within Reach - Muro Media Storage - Unfinished

Design Within Reach - Muro Media Storage - Unfinished: "Muro Media Storage delivers the look and function of a wall-mounted flat panel TV, but without the hassle of hardwiring. Made from unfinished MDF, Muro is ready for paint or wallpaper. Paint this do-it-yourself version the same color as your wall for the ultimate streamlined look, or make it stand out with a different color or wallpaper. The Muro features a wall-mounted load-bearing frame, plus a structural panel with a universal system for hanging a plasma or LCD television. Between the frame and panel, there's a space that holds cables and hides them from view. Furthering the clean look of cable management are slots at the back of each 17.5' x 13.75' shelf."

Video Fabrication d'une lampe triode - triode, tube, radio, radioamateur, fabrication - Dailymotion Share Your Videos

Video Fabrication d'une lampe triode - triode, tube, radio, radioamateur, fabrication - Dailymotion Share Your Videos: "F2FO, radioamateur depuis 1959, montre ici les diff�rentes �tapes de la construction d'une lampe triode r�alis�e par ses soins. Cette lampe a permis d'�tablir des liaisons avec d'autres radioamateurs situ�s sur 4 continents.
Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus, visitez son site web personnel : http://paillard.claude.free.fr"

Cursor*10 (nekogames)

Cursor*10 (nekogames): "Cursor*10 may feature the graphical wonder of echochrome and gameplay length"

Cursor*10 (nekogames)

Cursor*10 (nekogames): "Cursor*10 may feature the graphical wonder of echochrome and gameplay length"

Mario knockoff is the most evil game ever - Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Mario knockoff is the most evil game ever - Nintendo Wii Fanboy: "Many of us can remember the joy of playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time. Imagine how different that memory would be (something along the lines of pulling out our hair and screaming a lot, we're sure) if the game had been more like the ripoff in the video above. While this hack (which features the cheapest enemies and traps of all time) might be frustrating to play, its epic fail results in nothing but hilarity when watching."

Modern Mechanix � Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow

Modern Mechanix � Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow: "Commuters living 100 miles or more from the city would fly to work in their private planes. Landing on the roof, they would descend by elevators and moving platforms to an indoor parking space for 250,000 private cars and taxis, whence they would be whisked without delay to their destination. Similar facilities would serve passengers arriving by transport planes and airship lines. By centralizing air and land terminals in one building, the “aerotropolis” would save time now lost in journeying to and from airports far from the heart of a city. Other parts of the building provide space for offices and light industrial plants, theaters, two enormous arenas for football and baseball games, restaurants, and cafes."

Location Selection for Sunrise Sunset Calendar

Location Selection for Sunrise Sunset Calendar: "Custom Sunrise Sunset Calendar"

Oracle Catalog Views / Data Dictionary Views

Oracle 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."

Yahoo! Design Innovation Team

Yahoo! Design Innovation Team: "Query Bursts

At Yahoo! Research, JASMINE NOVAK has been running data analysis to identify when a search term becomes very popular, or 'bursts.' Sharing this data with us, we did reverse IP lookup on the addresses in the data and plotted the patterns of activities as a particle system. Here, in a time-lapse animation, particles show queries from each location worldwide. Visualized are searches for 'miss teen usa' (related to this video), 'cricket' (world playoffs) 'mattel' (recalls of toys with lead paint), and a close up on the Gulf of Mexico for 'hurricane felix'."

Simply GTD with Kelly: David Allen gives the keys to GTD on YouTube

Simply GTD with Kelly: David Allen gives the keys to GTD at Google on YouTube: "The Matrix of Self-Management is great stuff"

on your desk: anything that is not:
 supplies
 reference
 decoration
 equipment
represents a commitment


matrix of self-management


  crazy  master &
 ^ maker  commander
 |
perspec- 
tive  reactor  micro
    manager

  control ---->

Flying Objects!

Flying Objects!: "Once you've been in the MRI field for any length of time, you start hearing all of the various horror stories about things that have flown into a scanner. Often, newcomers don't take the real danger of flying objects seriously until they witness an oxygen tank or gurney flying into a magnet themselves. This page will contain a collection of pictures and stories of metalic projectiles. Please show this page to all MRI newcomers, for their own safety and the safety of their patients!"

Serenity sound clips - Movie Sound Clips

Serenity sound clips - Movie Sound Clips:
"Operative:'Do you really believe that?'
Mal:'I do.'
Operative:'Are you willing to die for that belief?'
Mal:'I am... Course that ain't exactly plan A.'"

iKitesurf.com - CA- san francisco Wind Data

iKitesurf.com - CA- san francisco Wind Data: "This Wind Obs map represents observed and forecasted surface values at specific locations at selected time intervals. The map displayed corresponds to CA- san francisco local time as stamped in the upper right corner of the map."

Real-Time San Francisco Bay Wind Patterns

Real-Time San Francisco Bay Wind Patterns: "Wind speeds are in knots. Arrow size indicates exact speed, color gives approximate speed.
All speeds are for the wind at 10 meters above the surface elevation and directions are from true north."

Happiness may be good for your health | Science | Reuters

Happiness may be good for your health | Science | Reuters: "The current findings, according to Steptoe, add to evidence that happiness and other positive emotions are 'associated with biological responses that are health-protective.'"

Dynamist Blog: Searchers vs. Planners

Dynamist Blog: Searchers vs. Planners: "This is what we do: Eleven Afghan men and women and I scour this harried land for its (licit) bounties and turn them into beauty products. Our soaps, colored with local vegetable dyes and hand-molded and smoothed till they look like lumps of marble, and our oils, elixirs for polishing the skin, sell in boutiques that cater to the pampered in New York, Montreal, and San Francisco."

Psychology - New Year's Resolutions - Regret - Mental Health - New York Times

Psychology - New Year's Resolutions - Regret - Mental Health - New York Times: "Over the past decade and a half, psychologists have studied how regrets — large and small, recent and distant — affect people’s mental well-being. They have shown, convincingly though not surprisingly, that ruminating on paths not taken is an emotionally corrosive exercise. The common wisdom about regret — that what hurts the most is not what you did but what you didn’t do — also appears to be true, at least in the long run."

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2): "For end users, slipstreaming can also be useful. For example, you can copy the installation directory from your XP CD-ROM to the hard drive, slipstream the XP SP2 files into that installation directory, and than write it back to a recordable CD, giving you a bootable copy of the XP setup disk that includes SP2 right out of the box (so to speak). That's the process we're going to examine here. And slipstreaming isn't limited to service packs, either: You can also slipstream in various product updates, including hot-fixes. Previous to the release of SP2, I created a bootable XP CD that included the original 'gold' version of XP, Service Pack 1a, and the Security Rollup 1 update, all meshed together into a single install. Now, I've tossed that CD aside for one that includes XP SP2 instead. Let's take a look at how I did this."

AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!

AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!: "AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys)."

San Jose Mercury News - Market for doorknobs slowly losing its grip

San Jose Mercury News - Market for doorknobs slowly losing its grip: "Because few people, decorators aside, get up in the morning feeling that they simply must do something about their doorknobs, it's a slow revolution. But levers now account for 15 percent of U.S. door-opener sales for homes, according to hardware industry surveys, and double that in the market's high end."

Bare Choons - Flash Physics

Bare Choons - Flash Physics: "Wow! It's amazing what you can do with flash these days... You can even interact with it. My favorite it the 2nd experiment."

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library

Bullet Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Library: "Bullet is a 3D Collision Detection and Rigid Body Dynamics Library for games and animation.
Free for commercial use, including PlayStation 3, Open Source multiplatform C under the ZLib License.
Discrete and continuous collision detection, integrated into Blender 3D and COLLADA 1.4 Physics tools support."

Netgear's tiny Network Attached Storage RAID -- just right for a home entertainment/data server? - Boing Boing

Netgear's tiny Network Attached Storage RAID -- just right for a home entertainment/data server? - Boing Boing: "it's a network-attached storage box with four SATA slots that comes empty or with up to 4 terabytes of storage and is approximately the size of the little practice amp I had when I was learning to play bass guitar."

Bulk Food Distributor, Wholesale Spices, Nuts, Chocolates and Candy Online

Bulk Food Distributor, Wholesale Spices, Nuts, Chocolates and Candy Online: "the premier online bulk foods distributor"

The Optics of an Eyeglass Prescription

The Optics of an Eyeglass Prescription: "This essay is intended to satisfy curiosity about what the notations and numbers on an eyeglass prescription mean. It is about optics, not about ophthalmology."

Bacon Flow Chart

Bacon Flow Chart

Fun with Inform 7 || kuro5hin.org

Fun with Inform 7 || kuro5hin.org: "What is Inform you may ask? Well it's compiler for the old z-machine VM, that was made popular by Infocom in the 1980's."

Sinus problems? Wash them away -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Sinus problems? Wash them away -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com: "Twenty-five years later, she's still touting the neti pot -- and she's also using it daily to refresh her nasal passages."

more at:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/013258.php#013258

Alfred the King of Disco, Dick Hyman

Alfred the King of Disco, Dick Hyman: "There is nothing anonymous about this tune. 'Alfred, the King of Disco' is certainly not going to just blend in with the likes of 'Two Hearts in Three-Quarter Time' or 'The Way We Were.' It's not only odd, it quite likely never make it out of the sound library until someone grabbed the tape.

And then there's the music. This is Hyman solo on electronic organ with rhythm effects and some kind of wah-wah peddle. In fact, it sounds as if some demo tape Hyman recorded to showcase his skills on the wah-wah, since at one point he dabbles with it to the point that the tune almost self-deconstructs."

Paul's Ramblings: Vintage Christmas Wax: Revisited

Paul's Ramblings: Vintage Christmas Wax: Revisited: "here is a collection of vintage wax recordings from the early 1900s through the late 1930s"

Games � Bloxorz

Games � Bloxorz :
twotd

FARK.com: (3274131) Sixty-three years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge began. "Just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this i

FARK.com: (3274131) Sixty-three years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge began. "Just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going"

"Late on the night of December 23rd, Sergeant John Banister of the 14th Cavalry Group found himself meandering through the village of Provedroux, southwest of Vielsalm. He'd been separated from his unit during the wild retreat of the first days and joined up with Task Force Jones, defending the southern side of the Fortified Goose Egg. Now they were in retreat again. The Germans were closing in on the village from three sides. American vehicles were pulling out, and Banister was once again separated from his new unit, with no ride out.

A tank destroyer rolled by; somebody waved him aboard and Banister eagerly climbed on. They roared out of the burning town. Somebody told Banister that he was riding with Lieutenant Bill Rogers. "Who's he?" Banister wanted to know. "Will Rogers' son," came the answer. It was a hell of a way to meet a celebrity.
An hour later they reached the main highway running west from Vielsalm. There they found a lone soldier digging a foxhole. Armed with bazooka and rifle, unshaven and filthy, he went about his business with a stoic nonchalance. They pulled up to him and stopped. He didn't seem to care about the refugees. "If yer lookin for a safe place," he said, "just pull that vehicle behind me. I'm the 82nd Airborne. This is as far as the bastards are going."

The men on the tank destroyer hesitated. After the constant retreats of the last week, they didn't have much fight left in them. But the paratrooper's determination was infectious. "You heard the man," declared Rogers. "Let's set up for business!" Twenty minutes later, two truckloads of GIs joined their little roadblock. All through the night, men trickled in, and their defenses grew stronger."

Top 15 Weird Gadgets You Never Thought Existed

Top 15 Weird Gadgets You Never Thought Existed: "Innovation has brought us many amazing gadgets. However, there are some weird gadgets that were born as the result of the wildest imagination by their inventors. Here are the top 15 weird gadgets that you never thought existed."

Now THAT is a Christmas dinner! | Samizdata.net

Now THAT is a Christmas dinner! | Samizdata.net: "The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago. He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock - producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish."

Diana Walker: The Bigger Picture Gallery (December 2007) - The Digital Journalist

Diana Walker: The Bigger Picture Gallery (December 2007) - The Digital Journalist: "STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs"

Phone Recording Archive

Phone Recording Archive: "Here are a bunch of phone company recordings that I have recorded off of my phone. The files are available in .WAV format and also in .MP3 format"

Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG: Advent calendars

Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG: Advent calendars
Daily manger sets!

success_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 1155x1330 pixels)

success_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 1155x1330 pixels)

Datamancer.net -- Datamancer's Steampunk Victorian Laptop

Datamancer.net -- Datamancer's Steampunk Victorian Laptop: "This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts."

inside looking out � What You Need To Know About Amazon SimpleDB

inside looking out � What You Need To Know About Amazon SimpleDB:

"What’s cool about SimpleDB
* Really large data sets
* Really Fast
* Highly Available - It’s Amazon. Running Erlang. Whoa.
* On demand scaling - Like S3, EC2, with a sensible data metering pricing model
* Schemaless - major cool factor for me here; items are little hash tables containing sets of key, value pairs"

Plushie:An Interactive Design System for Plush Toys:

We introduce Plushie, an interactive system that allows nonprofessional users to design their own original plush toys. To design a plush toy, one needs to construct an appropriate two-dimensional (2D) pattern. However, it is difficult for non-professional users to appropriately design a 2D pattern. Some recent systems automatically generate a 2D pattern for a given three-dimensional (3D) model, but constructing a 3D model is itself a challenge. Furthermore, an arbitrary 3D model cannot necessarily be realized as a real plush toy, and the final sewn result can be very different from the original 3D model. We avoid this mismatch by constructing appropriate 2D patterns and applying simple physical simulation to it on the fly during 3D modeling. In this way, the model on the screen is always a good approximation of the final sewn result, which makes the design process much more efficient. We use a sketching interface for 3D modeling and also provide various editing operations tailored for plush toy design. Internally, the system constructs a 2D cloth pattern in such a way that the simulation result matches the user's input stroke. Our goal is to show that relatively simple algorithms can provide fast, satisfactory results to the user whereas the pursuit of optimal layout and simulation accuracy lies outside this paper's scope. We successfully demonstrated that non-professional users could design plush toys or balloon easily using Plushie.

Welcome to DropZone, home of SCAD diving in the UK

Welcome to DropZone, home of SCAD diving in the UK: "SCAD Diving is a new, unique thrill ride. It is the only system in the world, that allows unattached, controlled free fall. The rider gets to the release level at 150 feet height by using a special elevator or the stairs outside the tower. Mobile operations use buildings or cranes."

Megan McArdle (December 11, 2007) - How can markets be efficient if people are such morons?

Megan McArdle (December 11, 2007) - How can markets be efficient if people are such morons?: "There is, of course, a bit of a puzzle in finance. To wit: how can markets be so efficient that even very smart people with PhDs in finance cannot (on average) outperform a diversified index, when so many of the people buying and selling the stocks are so stupid that they think they can beat the market?"

Handbook of Applied Cryptography

Handbook of Applied Cryptography: "CRC Press has generously given us permission to make all chapters available for free download. "

Desktop Tower Defense

Desktop Tower Defense: "Desktop TD is a fun flash based puzzle / strategy game where you have to protect your desktop from invaders by spending money on attacking pieces and building a maze for them to follow. A strangely addictive yet stress relieving game... how many levels can you survive?"

CAPTCHA CAPTCHA DECODER CAPTCHA DECODE

CAPTCHA CAPTCHA DECODER CAPTCHA DECODE

The Programmer Dress Code

The Programmer Dress Code: "I really want to know what it is about programming, or computers in general, that makes people want to grow a beard, have long hair, and dress like a slob."

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii: "Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR led in the tip. By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track upto 4 points, multiple pens can be used. "

Vertical Wind Tunnel / Indoor Skydiving

Vertical Wind Tunnel / Indoor Skydiving: "iFly SF Bay is vertical wind tunnel where almost anyone can learn to fly. iFly by SkyVenture is the most exciting activity around!"