Fun Stuff I love "You can call us Aaron Burr by the way we droppin' Hamiltons"
(here's the full
lyrics)
Ironically, this parody gives me a better appreciation for real rap. With
some of the rhymes I was like, "hey, that's really clever."
(Here's an essay on
why it's funny instead of insulting/stupid.)
Best. Christmas. Lights. Ever. (via Jarrett Wold)
SNL "Lazy Sunday (Chronic
of Narnia" rap video.
Posted at 22:49
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Rails Asset Management Thomas Fuchs has more
about Fluxiom on his blog.
sigh I feel obsolete. I can't tell if Fluxiom does video analysis,
though. I didn't notice any in the demo, so it doesn't look like they do
video yet. Our saving grace!
If I were building a DAM application from scratch today, I'd do the web
app portion using Rails and write web services for the integration with
third-party systems like Flip Factory and Virage with whatever APIs those
products support (Java or C++ or .Net, preferably Java).
Fluxiom has made made a very impressive digital
asset management system based on Ruby on
Rails. The demo is very cool (once you get Quicktime 7, that is). It has
lots of AJAX effects that make the UI very slick (and that's not
surprising because one of the developers is Thomas Fuchs who developed the
script.aculo.us JavaScript effects library).
Posted at 17:31
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IT workers worst dressed However, I'd rather die than show up to work in one of Ms. Moss's
"solutions" to this "problem":
Corporate stylists in Australia dubbed IT workers the
worst dressed:
Short sleeved shirts, man-made fibres and the wrong coloured socks were some of the most common fashion faux-pas cited by corporate stylist, Melanie Moss, who hosted the event on Wednesday night.
"Because the majority of IT people are not in front of customers all the time, they tend to slack off," she said.
Posted at 11:53
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Mac OS X Backup and Recovery I found The X Lab's
Backup and Recovery helpful for understanding how to get everything set
up.
I've had my iMac for almost 3 years now and I have never backed it up. Not
wanting to tempt fate any longer, I bought a
400 GB external
hard drive from OWC. I'm running my first backup (a duplicate of my
entire hard drive for emergency recovery) right now.
Posted at 22:53
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Tag schemas I am in favor of the normalized variant, of course.
Philipp Keller:
Tags:
Database schemas.
Posted at 16:21
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Craigslist A: By charging businesses below-market
rates for help wanted ads in SF, NYC and LA.
Q: How does craigslist support its operations?
Posted at 20:57
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Web Development Bookmarklets
There's some cool
stuff here.
Displaying the page's generated DOM tree sounds very useful.
Posted at 11:39
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Attractive Parking Garages This article talks about the growing trend of making parking garages
attractive, mixed use structures. David Sucher talks about making parking
an integral part of your urban fabric, because cars aren't going anywhere.
You need to make them less destructive. I think the trend towards
attractive parking structures is a big step forward towards solving
cities' parking problems.
For example, the parking/traffic situation in Uptown is pretty bad. I
think Uptown needs to reduce the amount of surface parking available to
non-residents to keep traffic off residential side streets by developing a
municipal or private ramp from which developers can "buy" or "trade"
parking stops. This would enable denser development in a more pedestrian-
and neighborhood-friendly way.
I would've liked to see some discussion of automatic parking ramps, which
are able to pack even more cars into the same space.
Robotic Parking is one US
vendor that builds these structure. They're more popular in Europe, where
space is at a premium.
(Via Planetizen)
Keith Schneider, Michigan Land Use Institute:
Winning
Downtowns Stack Their Decks: The age of attractive parking structures has
arrived.
Posted at 17:25
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Family cat sails to France My cat Scout went missing a few times and we got him back by luck. Once he
wandered several miles away and was being fed for a month by a woman, who
finally looked at his tag and called us. But this is above and beyond!
Star Tribune: Family
finds pet cat across the ocean
APPLETON, Wisconsin -- When Emily the cat went missing a month ago, her owners looked for their wandering pet where she had ended up before -- the local animal shelter.
But this week they learned Emily sailed to France.
Lesley McElhiney figures her cat went prowling around a paper warehouse near home and ended up in a cargo container that went by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and was trucked to Nancy, a city in northeastern France near the border with Germany.
Employees at a French lamination company found her in the container, checked her tags and called Emily's veterinarian back in the U.S., John Palarski.
"It probably had access to food and water,'' Palarski said. "I doubt if it went three weeks without it. There must have been a lot of mice on the boat. Even if it was in the cargo department, you would assume there was water down there. She had to have something.''
Posted at 11:46
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Microloans
Kiva allows you to personally give
microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. This is reputedly the
most effective poverty alievation program yet devised.
Posted at 17:44
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Web 2.0 idea generator I swear some of these ideas/company names are real
(something very close to Infogami definately
comes up).
The source code is amusing too.
(Via BoingBoing)
Having trouble thinking up a name and idea for your oh-so-hip Web 2.0
company?
Posted at 17:42
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Better Web Forms Particletree:
10 Tips To A Better Form.
A response:
Jesse Andrews:
Forms Suck - Re: 10 Tips To A Better Form.
Some guidelines.
Posted at 15:10
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Old News
The Star Tribune has a new-ish feature called
Old News which takes a look at
the Star and Tribunes' impressive archive of stories from years past.
Posted at 20:19
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Leonard Francl, RIP My dad, Len Francl, died July 26
of pancreatic cancer. It was painful for him and my family. I spent much
of the summer in Pennsylvania to be with him while he was sick and to help
out my mom as much as possible.
Today would've been his 56th birthday.
My dad was a passionate scientist. His
field of study was Plant Pathology.
When he died, he was Head of the Plant Pathology department at Penn State.
He believed, deep in his heart, that agricultural research could make the
world a better place by helping to feeding the millions of hungry people
in the world. Norman
Borlaug was his hero. He inspired my dad to become an agricultural
researcher.
Though my father enjoyed successes in his life, he was not a rich man.
Nevertheless, he wanted his legacy to live on. So he directed in his will
that a memorial endowment be created at Penn State in his name for the
advancement of the study of plant epidemiology (the spread of plant
diseases).
The Leonard J. Francl Memorial Endowment in
Plant Pathology will become perpetually self-sustaining and begin
disbursing grants when it reaches $20,000. I've made it my goal to make it
reach that level. I sent my first check in today, in honor of my dad's
birthday.
I've also set up a website for people to
learn about the endowment. Please take a look and let me know if you have
any suggestions.
And if you support the goal of making the world a better place through
controlling plant disease, consider a donation to Leonard's endowment:
sending a check to the Pennsylvania State University, care of the Leonard
J. Francl Memorial Endowment in Plant Pathology, 211 Buckhout Laboratory,
University Park, PA 16802. For more details, please call (814) 865-7448.
Those
of you who both know me and read my blog know that I don't post much
about the details of my personal life. I like to keep them separate.
Today, I'm making an exception.
Posted at 23:43
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Homeless or Jesus? Of course, Jesus said that He was the 'least of these':
Matthew 25:41-45 (NIV):
Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are
cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For
I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me
nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I
needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you
did not look after me.'
They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help
you?'
He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of
the least of these, you did not do for me.'
Can you tell the
difference? (via jwz)
Posted at 17:04
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Shortest book ever "Don't." ;-)
Posted at 22:44
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Ruby for Java Programmers So, I went to the book store and I grabbed a couple Python and Ruby books.
I flipped through them. My thought process went something like this:
Python looks good. Clean syntax, lots of resources to learn from, big
library. Ruby looks like Python. Except...sort of like Perl, too. Oy.
And...it's from Japan and hardly anyone here uses it. Python it is!
And that's how I decided to become a Python programmer.
Flash forward a few years...I'm always kicking about ideas for websites
and stuff in my head. But I don't have much time, so I want to be
productive. Python would make a great language for this, I think, but how?
I'm not going back to straight CGI programming.
Along comes this Ruby on Rails thing. Cool, I think. What a great idea.
Where's the Python version?
After a while, I just gave up. Ruby it is.
And in that vein, some links.
Some years ago, I read that scripting languages were the cat's pajamas,
and you should do as much of your work in them as possible because it's
more productive. I knew Perl a little bit. Enough to know I didn't want to
learn more. I knew PHP, but that was a web programming language (even more
so then), and it also was very crusty. The two other main choices were
Python and Ruby.
Posted at 17:07
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Photo + GPS = cool I sent Dennis a message about two very interesting projects I saw at
CodeCon 2005 that dealt with this topic.
First, there was Mapr, which isn't strictly GPS, but
is a really cool application that works on top of Flickr. It finds
place-named tags and puts them on a map. It's an interesting way to look
at photos.
Second, there was Photospace which
actually used GPS. The guy who wrote it biked around with a GPS taking
photos and then coorelated the data using the timestamps on his photos.
He could then plot the photos on a map, or search for photos within a
certain distance of a zip code and stuff like that. It was VERY cool.
Unfortunately, his demo seems to be down. But you can look at the slides
and download the code.
Dennis Forbes, a regular poster on the
Joel on Software forum, has an
interesting post about the application of EXIF headers in images and GPS.
You could do a lot of cool things with a library of geo-coded photos.
Posted at 17:39
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Fridays: short ebooks It reminds me of what Philip Greenspun has said about writing. In his
article What can we
learn from Jakob Nielsen? he proposes that computer books are bloated to
meet the pressures of the market, where the biggest spine often wins. He
suggests that many books are expansions of short core ideas up to book
length in order to sell. They would be better as a tight 30-50 pages. And
you could deliver them on the web.
Prickly Paradigm Press is also doing
something similar by publishing old skool pamphlets, like Rick Perlstein's
The Stock Ticker and the
Superjumbo and Thomas Geoghegan's
The Law in Shambles. They
are about 100 pages and cost $10.
This is a promising development in publishing.
There is one problem though -- how do I know if I want to read these
ebooks? I can search for web pages and I don't usually have to pay for
them. I can flip through books at the book store. But these ebooks aren't
free, they're locked up behind paywalls. How do I find them? How do I know
it will answer my question?
Pragmatic Programmers has launched a new product line of short (60-100
pages) books which they are calling
Fridays. The first one is
$8.50.
Posted at 16:43
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Zombie Pub Crawl Be there, or get eaten.
My friend Chuck is organizing a
Zombie Pub Crawl for Oct. 15.
Posted at 23:25
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Pedometers
The Anatomy of a Petometer is a good site on
how pedometers work and which kinds are best.
Posted at 17:46
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Mac OS X: Deactivating services However, it seems like every app under the sun wants to add its own
services.
Are extraneous services harshing your mellow? Get the
Services Manager
and deactivate the lame ones.
Services are one of the coolest features of Mac OS X.
Posted at 18:50
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The Artistic History of Webcomics Discusses: Argon Zark, Dilbert, User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance, 8-Bit
Theater, Megatokyo, Sinfest, PvP, Penny Arcade, and Scott McCloud.
The Webcomics Examiner:
The
Artistic History of Webcomics. An insanely detailed look at some
influential webcomics and the development of the medium.
Posted at 15:29
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Weirdest job listing ever It was your standard pitch for a Content Server administrator, but then
down at the bottom:
"Please note that this position is located within a smoking work
environment."
Um...ok.
I guess it'd be awesome if you smoked.
I got a recuriter email today with the most bizzare thing I've ever seen.
Posted at 22:07
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OTUG: Refactoring Your Wetware, Oct. 18 I'll be there. I'm looking forward to it. If you're into programming, you
should go too.
The Twin Cities Object Technology User Group ( OTUG)
is having a lecture on "Refactoring Your Wetware" by pragmatic programmer
Andy Hunt on October 18.
Details here.
Posted at 17:01
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Banned Books I've read:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford (whuhh? -- ed)
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
MN ACLU is commemorating banned book week at three metro-area book
stores tonight and tomorrow. See link for details.
It's banned book week. Which of the
ALA's most frequently banned books have you read?
Posted at 14:30
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Visitors: Log analysis the easy way I've previously used Analog for this and found it to be very difficult to
configure. So I looked at a couple new programs.
First, I tried AWStats. It's OK. The
beta 6.5 version wouldn't run but the stable 6.4 release was fine.
The first run gave me an empty report with no error messages or
anything, which was very confusing. After a little tweaking with the
config file, I got it to spit out the reports I wanted.
Then I tried Visitors and it is a world
of difference. Even though it's a C program, Visitors is much easier to
use. There is no config file (just a few simple command line switches) and
there are no external dependencies like graphics or CGI programs.
Everything on the report is HTML + CSS, included in the file. It doesn't
even need to have write access to the disk!
Visitors also has some support for mapping user navigation patterns and
outputting this to a list or
Graphviz.
I like it. This is log file analysis done right.
I have been doing a little logfile analysis on my web logs
(remember when that meant log files, and not blogs?) HTTP access logs to
find out where my visitors are coming from and how people are finding my resume.
Posted at 16:17
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You can make any dude at all understand science
Today's Achewood
is awesome. I love Roast Beef's reply.
Posted at 10:22
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Foolscap
Congratulations to Gabe from Penny Arcade for
getting into a
tussle with one of SF's greats,
Harlan Ellison.
Posted at 23:10
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Mac Key Sequences
Magical Macintosh
Key Sequences (
PDF)
Posted at 15:15
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iPod Nano vs. GameBoy Micro
The iPod Nano and the GameBoy Micro are both amazingly small.
Engadget poster Psiven made images comparing
them side-by-side.
Posted at 12:46
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Two Landings CNN:
Jet makes emergency landing -- the amazing JetBlue emergency landing. In
a post-modern twist, passengers were able to watch their ordeal live on
CNN.
AP: Pilots allegedly
faked emergency so soccer fans could watch game -- A charter pilot had a
delima: his 289 passengers, Gambian soccer fanatics, were going to miss
their game in Piura, Peru. So instead of land in Lima as scheduled, he
faked low fuel and did an emergency landing in Piura. FWIW, Gambria won
the match 3-1.
On Wednesday 9/21 there were two extraordinary landings.
Posted at 12:10
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Congrats, Ry4an A milestone: this is the first engagement announcement that I have received
through RSS.
My congratulations to Ry4an!
Posted at 08:36
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Widget Links Apple Developer Connection: Developing
Dashboard Widgets
Apple Developer Connection:
Dashboard Programming Guide
MacDevCenter.com: Build a
Dashboard Widget
MacDevCenter.com: Let's Build
Another Dashboard Widget
Mesa Dynamics: Amnesty lets you run widgets
outside the Dashboard, which is useful when you're debugging them. ($20, seems cool enough to
buy if you made a lot of widgets. 30 day trial.)
I do wish Apple would make an IDE for building widgets. It'd be helpful.
Also, you can open up any widget and look at its source code by control-clicking/right-clicking
on it and selecting "Show Package Contents".
Here's some links that are useful if you're developing Tiger Widgets.
Posted at 08:30
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My First Widget Sure, you could just go to their webpage, but maybe this will be a little
easier. Or not. Anyway, it was fun to write. It really is the world's
simplest widget. It just displays an image!
Those of you using Mac OS X Tiger and living in the Twin Cities metro area
may be interested in the little widget I wrote tonight. It displays
MNDOT's
traffic map.
Posted at 23:09
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Python Challenge It's a pretty fun way to stretch your Python. I made it through the first
couple levels fairly easily, but I did have to run crying to the tutorial.
I heard about the Python Challenge
today.
Posted at 17:51
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pgdiff
This is cool. pgdiff analyzes the
structure of two databases and produces SQL that will synchronize them.
Don't waste your time figuring out what modifications your database requires. Let pgdiff do the work for you!
As an example, consider a project where you have a SQL schema in a source code repository, a test server and a production server. By using pgdiff, you can guarantee that your database changes are migrated properly from source to test, and from test to production. By solving this problem programmatically, the chance for human error is greatly reduced.
Posted at 10:28
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Micro ISV Joel on
Software forum annoucement
The Amazon.com page for the book-in-progress.
Bob Walsh is writing a book on how to start a Micro ISV (a small software
company). It's based on his experience starting an Micro ISV and not being
able to find any good advice. The
outline sounds good.
Posted at 12:57
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Ouch I broke the passenger-side mirror on our car pulling out of the garage.
Cost to fix: $450.
And today I was riding my bike into work. It was a little wet from the
rain. Coming down the hill into the office parking ramp, I took the turn
too fast. Trying to avoid the curb, my bike slid out from under me and I
ended up tasting some asphalt with my elbow. I wasn't seriously hurt
(though my elbow still hasn't stopped oozing -- yuck), but my bike hit the
curb and the front tire is fucked.
I'm having some transportation difficulties lately.
Posted at 19:53
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ReSource Power Station The
ReSource PowerStation is a desktop power strip for up to three
rechargable devices (cell phone, iPod, PDA, GameBoy, etc.). It hides the
cords and you always know where to find your stuff.
I think this would be pretty useful as it would help me eliminate the
ritual morning hunt for my cell phone.
Well knock me down and call me a yuppie. I actually saw something
Sky Mall that I want.
Posted at 19:48
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Stupid Utopias I had no idea that Modernist architecture was so inspired by fascism. It
makes sense.
Jeremy Adam Smith:
The
Ten Stupidest Utopias! (via
Boing Boing)
Posted at 17:28
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Cool Ceiling Fan It looks like it's out the HQ from some gritty cop movie.
Also, it reminds me of the super-cool retro
Ecco fans (see also
Home Portfolio).
I was at Home Depot (or Home Despot as my co-worker likes to call it) this
weekend and I saw this
cool ceiling fan there.
Posted at 12:11
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Bike Commuting: Braving the Burbs However, today, I am going to ride my bike home.
Here's my route thanks to the Gmaps Pedometer.
It's about 13 miles. We'll see how it goes.
Update: Here's a shorter, more complicated
route. I think this is what my co-worker Dan uses when he rides.
Update 2: I made it home safe in 1 hour 18 minutes (including copious
time to stop and figure out where the hell I was). The bike map I had
lied, there wasn't an off-street trail for the first part of the trip. But
aside from some little shit kids in Hopkins throwing a rock at me, it
worked out OK (they missed).
I have never riden my bike to work since my company moved to Eden Prairie.
Posted at 23:24
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Tiger Secrets Some neat tips.
I think the workflow/Automator feature of Tiger is kind of cool, but still
very rough. You can create workflows and put them in a directory to make
them contextual menu items, but this is obscure and not well documented.
Automator will also pop up some very strange AppleScript errors (it's
really just a GUI builder for AppleScript) if you do something wrong. It
was also difficult to get my mind around the order Automator wants to do
things in.
But after a little effort, I did make a little batch rename thing to add a
string prefix to a set of file names. It would've been easier to do in
Python but now I can access it from the contextual menu.
Tiger
Secrets: System settings / 20 top-secret tweaks that can bend OS X 10.4
to your will
Posted at 14:20
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Nonprofit Matrix
The Nonprofit Matrix has a good
list of software for non-profits.
Posted at 11:40
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Liquor Laws Loosened Next stop: Sunday sales!
1960s, here we come!
Minneapolis liquor stores may soon be able to
sell until
10 PM.
Posted at 17:40
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Fargo Band Family Tree I was kind of a loser back then and didn't go to many Fargo Rock shows,
but I've seen a lot of the bands that came out of Fargo.
The Fargo Band
Family Tree is awesome.
Posted at 13:26
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Ruby and Unicode There is library called jcode that lets you use Unicode strings, but it
doesn't override the standard string length methods, so you need to know
you're using Unicode, which sucks.
According to a rumors I've heard, this lack of native unicode support is
tied into Japanese lack of enthusiasm for Unicode. Apparently, many
Japanese are upset by the Han
unification process, which uses the same codepoints for Han characters in
many East Asian languages. Localized fonts can display the perfered
national/regional variations, but not within the same document without
tweaking.
We'll see what the future holds for Ruby and Unicode.
Ruby 1.8's Unicode
support is lacking when compared to languages with baked-in Unicode, like
Java.
Posted at 14:37
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More PRT: Rebuttal See How They
Distort: Two examples of anti-PRT propaganda
He writes, "However, being wrong does not stop Avidor from repeating those
claims in forum after forum." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=237159 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/237556_antiprtop.html
Frankly, the fact that elevated guideways are ugly as hell is enough to
make me oppose PRT.
Feel free to try PRT somewhere to find out if it actually works. Just not
in my (and Ken's) city.
A PRT advocate wrote in in response to yesterday's post. Here's some links
he has put together to rebut opposition to PRT.
Posted at 16:10
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Personal Rapid Transit links Here's some links on PRT that I've dug up recently.
Gadgetbahn
by Aaron Naparstek
Personal Rapid Transit is Bogus by
"prtskeptic" aka Ken Avidor
Let's Get Real
About Personal Rapid Transit by Ken Avidor in Light Rail Now
PRT - A Cargo Cult of the
Post-Petroleum Era by Ken Avidor (worth it for the illustration alone)
Personal Rapid Transit
- Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality at Light Rail Now
PRT is a Joke by Ken Avidor
(a portal of sorts)
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) has bugged me for a while. It seems too good
to be true -- or at least, it's proponents present it as too good to be
true. It's ugly (elevated tracks in front of every building in town? Yeah,
no thanks). And it often seems to be a stalking horse for the auto
industry, much as buses were in the 1930s-1960s as privately operated rail
transit networks were bought up, run down, replaced with buses, and dumped
on the government.
Posted at 17:40
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Portland Portland sounds awesome.
Can a place be too perfect?
Posted at 17:02
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Lost cat? This young cat has been hanging around 31st and Emerson in Uptown all
evening today (Wednesday, August 17). She has a red collar with metal
stars on it, but no nametag. She's just been fixed; the stitches are still
visible. And she's very friendly.
Hopefully, she is an outdoor cat or she just got out and lives nearby, and
her owner will find her.
But if you know anyone in Uptown who is missing a cat of this discription,
please email me, or just come look for her.
Does this cat need a home?
Posted at 21:09
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Piranhna! My office is moving, and the company is selling some stuff. None of it is
as cool as these little dot-com relics: piranhna award trophies!
Posted at 21:03
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Faxing Kinkos: "We prefer you don't do that. We prefer you drop it off."
Me: "OK..."
Goodbye Kinkos, hello TPC.INT. And it's free. What a
great service for sending an occassional plain-text fax.
Me: "Hi. I need to fax a document. Can I email it to you and have you fax
it?"
Posted at 15:05
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Prius Plural Priuses, Prii, or simply Prius?
What's the plural of Prius?
Posted at 09:35
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Mark Bittman I just found out that he's
got a TV show.
It's How to Cook Everything: Mark
Bittman Takes On America's Chefs. On the show, famous chefs make their
signature dishes, while Bittman tries to match it with a home-cooked
version. It'll be
out
on DVD soon. I may have to pick it up.
Mark Bittman wrote the great cookbook
How To Cook Everything which I recieved as a gift last Christmas. I like
it because the recipes are simple, the food is good, and Bittman's style
encourages variations and experimentation. Almost ever recipe is followed
by a few alterations, substitutions and additions. It's great for someone
who wants to break out from just following instructions.
Posted at 18:48
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Charles Pellegrino Thinking maybe I should check this book out again, I was looking into
Pellegario's books at Amazon, and he's even more interesting a character
than I thought. He's an expert on the Titanic, and has written two books
about it. He is a paleo-archeologist who has designed space-propulsion
engines and hangs out with Arthur C. Clarke. His work seems characterized
by combining his widely-varied intrests (this finally explains to me why
the Titanic plays a role in Flying to Valhalla).
He's also sort of strange. Consider
his reviews on Amazon, which are under his Real Name(tm), but oddly refer
to himself in the third person as they defend his research. His books have
the air of the 'crank' about him (and notice his extreme distress at
criticism in the Amazon comments and on
his website). Which other reviews are actually him? The
one entitled "Defending Time Gate" by "A reader" sure sounds like him.
See Michael Parfit's
scathing review in the New York Times, and
Pellegrino's
response. And what's this stuff about zealots in New Zealand burning his
lab?
It seems, at minimum, that he has a habit of writing that gives a false
impression, then tempermentally clarifying his remarks with what seems a
technical distinction. But it seems by and large he's on the level. I am
going to try to pick some up and see if they're any good.
These sound interesting:
Return to Sodom and Gomorrah takes a look at the historical context for
Old Testement events, a topic I am fascinated in because I've been reading
the fantasitc Darthmouth Bible, which is abridged and annotated for help
understanding biblical references. It has me convinced of the historicism
of lots of the OT.
Ghosts of the Titanic, on the last minutes of the Titanic and
memories by those who were there.
Ghosts of Vesuvius uses forensic archaeology to uncover what happened at
Vesuvius, and by connection, on 9/11.
Unearthing Atlantis: This review is so funny it makes me want to read the
book: "Pellegrino's voyages into the Earth and back through time are so
eye-opening, even mind bending, that you will never look at your world, or
even your own back yard, the same way again. I know I won't. Like his
other archaeology books, you simply cannot put this one down. They read
better than any novel - and especially better than Pellegrino's own
science fiction novels."
I mentioned Charles Pellegrino in my
previous post,
and also in my post about
Battlestar Galatica, so clearly his book Flying to Valhalla had a pretty
big impact on me. Not that it was really good or anything, but the ideas
in it have stuck with me for a long time. The treatment of the aliens is
interesting, too: Their civization has fallen because of genetic
engineering which has given them photographic memory. They become too
bogged down in the specifics (naming every tree in a forest) to function
at a high level.
Posted at 19:47
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Notes on The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell I found the book engaging but it seemed to lack the really big payoff that
it promises in the begining.
As it is a metaphor for the New World, it does suffer from a bit of SF
cliche. The world is very Earth-like, both intelligent species are vaugely
hominid, they can learn English, and we can learn their languages, they
come in male and female sexes exactly anagolous to earth. The aliens are
fairly primative so that the contact is on about the same technological
level as the European/American contact.
And because Russell wants to tell a story resembling that of a missionary
party, the contact is a little stupid, in my opinion. Instead of pulling
their asteroid/spaceship in orbit above some city, and radioing "take us
to your leaders", they land in the wilderness (undectected! Do they have
no telesopes on this planet?) and make contact with a rural village. I do
not think this would be my first instinct.
It reminded me, in a way, of Charles Pellegrino's
Flying to Valhalla, but probably just because that book also deals with
relativistic travel to Alpha Centauri and first contact (the biology's a
little more believable in that book).
It also has more than a little in common with James Blish's
A Case of Conscience, though the author claims not to have read it. She
didn't really set out to write a science fiction book, so I believe that.
Here's some links about the book:
John D Owen: A Case
of Conscience for Mary Doria Russell in Infinity Plus criticizes the
author for ripping off A Case of Conscience.
I just finished reading
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. The book is the story of first contact
with aliens by a mission led by Jesuits. It's a metaphor for the
disastorous results of contact of the native Americans by Europeans in the
1500s. They meant no harm, but screwed up utterly (the details of how they
change the native species' is left for the second book, but we get some
hints of what's happening).
Posted at 18:48
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Guns Germs and Steel, the movie In the Twin Cities, it's running between July 12 and the 23 on
TPT.
Hopefully they'll put out a DVD so I'll be able to check it out.
Cool. PBS made a documentary out of Jared Diamond's excellent and
thought-provoking book Guns, Germs and
Steel.
Posted at 00:36
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Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Photography Contest
While I was on a bike ride this lovely July 4th, I saw that the
Eloise
Butler Wildflower Garden is having a photography contest for flowers,
wildlife, and visitors this summer. Photos need to be submitted by
September 30th. I can't find any details online, so check out the park for
details. It's worth a visit.
Posted at 22:11
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Density 1. Density as
Efficiency. Dense urban living (potentially) saves more energy than
super-efficient single family Energy Star homes in a suburban patttern.
This is interesting, because I was just talking to some friends who want
to buy land out in the country and live sustainably. Not to begrudge
their choices too much, because they are doing more for the environment
than 99% of the people I know, but that sounds an awful lot like the vain
quest for arcadia that promotes urban sprawl. You move out to the country
to get away from it all, and pretty soon find you don't live in the
country any more. I was wondering if living in the city was more
sustainable. With this study, maybe it is possible to do so.
2. How Dense can we
be? This has a link to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's super cool
site
Visualizing Density. Wow, what a great site. You can really get a feel
for how livable density can be, if planned out appropriately. And you also
get a feel for how monotonous suburan development really is.
Two quick links from WorldChanging.
Posted at 22:07
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Orgasmatones
If only I lived in the UK.
Posted at 18:06
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And the internet is better...why? Yes I'm a procrastinator. But in my defense, I tried to do it online a
couple of days ago and got some sort of session timeout error. No problem,
I figured. I'll take care of it later. Today's the deadline, so I logged
back on tonight. Or rather, I tried to. Their server was totally pegged.
After numerous attempts, I just gave up.
Instead, I called the Student Loan phone line, helpfully open until
midnight PST today. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes or so, a nice,
helpful woman got my basic information (far, far less than is asked for on
the web form) and locked me in for today's intrest rate. They'll send me
the rest of the paperwork in the mail.
What good is this internet thing, again?
I just called in to consolate my student loans before the June 30th
deadline (the interest rates are going up tomorrow).
Posted at 23:18
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Reading The Sound and The Fury Having read it, I can attest that it definately is difficult.
After finishing it, I read the appendix which clarifies some things (and
confuses others) and realized I'd missed much of the novel.
I found some helpful resources on the web:
The William Faulkner Foundation's
character list,
chronology,
glossary, and
explanation of the
title help clarify things a great deal.
Ole Miss has a "Faulkner Web" with
Sound and the Fury
commentary.
The hypertext version from the
University of Saskatchewan is excellent. They've created a great
resource. For example, you can read Benjy's section of the novel in
chronological order. They've also highlighted Quentin's flashbacks by
topic so you can determine what the hell he's thinking about.
My book club is reading William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury this
month. I've owned it for a few years, but never touched it because of it's
reputation for being difficult.
Posted at 16:06
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House Blog/Cat Blog: New Couch Tucker shows off the new couch.
I got a new couch. It converts into a bed in an innovative way. This is
another way of saying that I am a sucker for shiny things.
Posted at 23:05
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House Blog: Marked for Death It's going to be expensive to get rid of.
The condo we bought shares an elm tree with our neighbor. I knew it
wouldn't last forever. Ten thousand trees a year are culled in Minneapolis
to slow the spread of Dutch elm disease. But I didn't think it'd get
marked for death within a month of moving in!
Posted at 21:14
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Twin Cities TV Interesting. Though the Twin Cities is the 14th largest metro region in
the country, it ranks 201st in TV watching. Nielsen Media Research chalks
it up to the higher number of college graduates here. I guess smart people
watch less TV. Should that make me feel superior cuz I don't have one?
Seriously, though: Movies are fun to watch at home, but TV is a waste of
time. There are some good shows, but the commericials are unbearable after
you haven't watched them for a while. Better to rent the shows you want to
watch on DVD.
AP:
Twin Cities Not So Hot for TV Ratings
Posted at 16:47
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Wind Turbines I think wind turbines are super cool. I'm trying to make a graphic like
the above. Go
tell me what you think about it.
Posted at 16:05
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Cat Tailor
BEST WEBSITE EVER!
Posted at 22:39
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But which time zone? CNN: Racy 'Gilligan' ad draws protest
But after 10 PM in which time zone?
It's always after 10 PM somewhere...
Sex sells.
A 60-second "director's cut" version of the clip is also available on TBS.com, but only after 10 p.m. Traffic on the Web site has doubled, to its highest level ever, according to Koonin.
Posted at 16:52
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Apple on Intel What I don't get is how Apple survives the
Osborne effect (via
Daring Fireball).
Osborne put itself out of business by pre-announcing its new, improved
hardware...leading no one to buy its current hardware.
Why will anyone buy a Mac until 2006?
On the plus side...
...faster, cooler, longer-running laptops
...better Windows emulators (or a version of VMWare?)
...easier game ports?
...Wine on OS X (via Jason)
...Dual boot? (Or triple boot: Mac/Linux/Windows)
On the minus side...
...Emulation of old apps will probably be slow
...transitions like this are always painful
...Apple is giving up on the PowerPC processor, so eventually all the
PowerPC customers (e.g., me) will be left in the dust. Apps won't get
ported, new OS versions won't get released.
Anyone want to buy a G4 iMac? ;)
So, it's true. Apple is moving to Intel chips. How many decades has
this rumor waited to come true?
Posted at 13:45
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Fair Use Day
Fair Use Day is July 11. My
birthday!
Posted at 11:59
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Coen + Partners: Thought that looked familar On their work itself, it seems to be an improvement over McMansion tract
homes, but inasmuch as it promotes/requires a car-dependent lifestyle, its
not much of an improvement.
Reading
an article about Minneapolis-based architects Coen + Partners, I saw a
photo of some of their work in Marine-on-Saint-Croix and I thought it
looked familar. Sure enough, I used to work in the same building as them
in downtown Minneapolis and they had a display in the loby.
Posted at 15:41
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HouseBlog: Sweeper Vac But it picks up pet hair!
Buying property changes you. Before, my apartment was a disaster. Now, I
read about the
Dirt
Devil Sweeper Vac
( product stats)
and think, "I need that." Even though it traps you in the damnable
disposable consumption cycle of the all-powerful Swifter Empire.
Posted at 11:34
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Work Spam
Just got my first-ever spam to my work email address. Probably due to my
posts on the Lucene mailing list. Curses!
Posted at 10:38
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Laleh Seddigh And I can't be the only one who thinks she's pretty hot, too.
Here's some photos I found on the web. These are mirrored locally so they
won't break.
It's an exciting time for Iran. The country is changing, and hopefully
moving to a more free and democratic future.
The New York Times has an
article about Laleh Seddigh, the first female Iranian race car driver to
compete against men. Scratch that, the first female to compete against men
in any sport since the Islamic Revolution. In March, she won that
country's national championship. Laleh may be Iran's answer to Jackie
Robinson.
Posted at 16:26
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SQL Zoo And it has a great domain name: sqlzoo.com.
The A Gentle Introduction to SQL is a good guide to
how SQL works on various databases. What makes this really cool is that
the tutorial is hooked up to eight different databases, which you can try
out queries on.
Posted at 14:23
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GotLogos Off BoingBoing
today, I saw a link to
Kevin Kelly's review of GotLogos. [GotLogos] provides a similar service,
but more limited (logos only, only one design to chose from) and cheaper
($25, $10 per revision).
Last year, I
linked to
Design Outpost, a site where designers from around the world compete to
create logos, business cards, letterheads, etc at low prices. It's
globalization in action, with the benefits going to people and small
businessess who can't afford to hire a designer (the losers would be
low-cost Western designers who can't afford to compete at these starvation
wages). My friend Ry4an later used the site to get a very nicely designed
business card for an affordable price.
Posted at 11:47
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Tetris Shelves People in the comments of that blog post are bitching about the price,
which is unaffordable for most tetris fans, but not unreasonable
considering the limited production and the fine workmanship required. The
owners of the company that made them replied (see Jesse's comment at
16:05): "WE ARE NOT IKEA." But they are looking to make a cheaper version
(~$90 per block), probably with a back. Now that, I could go for.
File under, "If I had more money":
Tetris piece shelves by Brave Space
Design.
Posted at 17:28
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Star Wars Thinker writes:
The
rest of the thread has some good thoughts too.
Update: Here's another good one from Mnemosyne:
I agree. Lucas should've started the story closer to the end. Having
Anakin be older would've been a great start (not to mention way more
plausable), and a love triangle sounds like a good idea to me. Oh, and get
rid of the droids. It's just too pat that Darth Vader made R2D2 and C3PO.
I just read one of the
most insightful comments on Star Wars that I've ever seen.
Actually, Return of the Jedi also sucked.
It lacked any sense of catharsis comparable to, say, in the Lord of the Rings, when the destruction of the Ring costs Frodo his well-being and means that elves and their magic must leave Middle Earth.
If, for example, the Jedi had sacrificed their control over The Force and Luke had died to overthrow the Empire, it would have had a sense of catharsis.
To extend the Tolkien analogy further, the first three episodes (I, II, and III ) generally suck, as compared to the last three for the same reason The Similarion sucks compared to The Lord of the Rings. There is something magic about a tale built upon a half-told prior story. When that prior story is spelt out, it sucks.
(Predition, if JK Rowling should write a prequel to Harry Potter, describing his parents' lives, that too would suck )
The remarkable thing about Star Wars is that The Empire Strikes Back, unlike most sequels, was excellent.
Short Version of How I Would Have Fixed Episodes I & II:
- Made Anakin older in Episode I, 12 at a minimum. Among other reasons, because having 16-year-old Amidala making goo-goo eyes at an 8-year-old was incredibly creepy and made her look like a child molester. But also because Anakin's abilities were literally physically impossible in a child that age.
- Made Obi-Wan and Anakin rivals for Amidala's love, or at least given Obi-Wan an unrequited passion for Amidala. Sure, the love triangle is the oldest story in the book, but that's because it works. Plus it puts Obi-Wan's actions in the later movies in a whole new light, making Luke the son of the woman Obi-Wan loved and lost.
Seeing Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass was a revelation. George Lucas picked some great actors for the films ... and then let them wither on the vine.
Posted at 14:09
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House Blog: Packing Boxes of books: 17.
Packing.
Posted at 19:16
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Orson Scott Card on Star Trek Good essay on Star Trek.
Obl. diss...
Card writes:
Says the man who's made a career out of turning a very good novella into a
sprawling empire of "Ender" books?
Orson Scott Card:
Lived too long, prospered too much.
The original 'Star Trek,' created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science-fiction television show could be bad....
This was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change, before episodic television was allowed to have a through line. So it didn't matter which episode you might be watching, from which year -- the characters were exactly the same.
Posted at 22:39
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County Commemorative Pennies Does anyone else think this actually sounds like a pretty cool idea?
First, the idea of a penny for your county is cool. Second, it would give
notoriously short-sighted Americans some sense of perspective.
However, I would do it one penny per month, just like the quarters. So it
would "only" take about 262 years to get all the pennies out.
The Onion: U.S.
Mint Gears Up To Issue Commemorative County Pennies:
Starting in 2006, the U.S. Mint will release five new pennies per year for the next 629 years. While the process will be a long one, residents of the nation's 3,143 counties and county equivalents have already begun debating how their regions should be depicted.
Posted at 10:10
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Kurt on the stadium
My old co-worker Kurt
got
a letter in the Strib today:
Spending his money
"I don't mind paying three cents on $20 to see an outdoor baseball game." I keep hearing this from supporters of the proposed baseball tax. More accurately they should be saying: "I don't mind everyone else paying three cents on their $20 so that I can see an outdoor baseball game."
Kurt Mehlhoff, Minneapolis.
Posted at 10:48
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HouseBlog: Condo conversions Star Tribune:
Mondo Condos
Southwest Journal:
The rules of
the condo conversion game
We bought a condo, so I've been paying attention to condo developement
trends in the city.
Posted at 22:10
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Unison I'd try it out, but I only really have one computer. Maybe I should
synchronize my home directory with my webserver or something.
If Unison works as
advertised, it would be a pretty awesome way to keep multiple computers
bidirectionally synchronized without mucking around with rsych or source
control (overkill).
Posted at 17:23
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Ask the Headhunter
Ask the Headhunter is sort of like Joel
on Software for HR. Author Nick Corcodilos has some
interesting articles
that are worth reading for insight on how hiring and headhunting work,
plus tips on how best to get hired, get a raise, and resign.
Posted at 17:21
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911 Hamburger The transcript is funny but the
audio is hilarious (WMA).
Snopes says it's undetermined, but the Orange County Sheriff Departmend did confirm that the call did take place.
Via Political Animal.
Would you call 911 for a hamburger? One Orange County Soccer mom (or a woman impersonating an Orange County
soccer mom) did.
Posted at 22:12
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House Blog #1 It's the one on the top left.
Today, we paid our last rent check.
Yesss!
So, we bought a condo. I'm a home owner!
Posted at 21:02
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Yessssssss
Minneapolis Happy Hour
Posted at 21:36
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Tiger Review Tiger sounds awesome, and I'm looking forward to getting it.
However, as in previous versions of Mac OS X, there are so many little
annoyances that drive Mac-heads like John Siracusa crazy. Why can't Apple
fix the damn finder?
Maybe next version.
Finally, an in-depth
review of Tiger (and when I say in depth I mean it!).
Posted at 12:24
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Four Tigers Not one tiger, not two tigers, but four tigers!
Best line in the article: "We believe Mr. Oly is in violation of that,"
Albers said Thursday. "He has seven (tigers), and you are only allowed to
have three."
Star Tribune: 4 tigers
attack Minneapolis woman.
Posted at 13:06
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The Man Who Planted Trees
World Changing posted a copy of
The Man Who Planted
Trees (L'homme qui plantait des arbres). I saw the amazing video
adaptation of this essay when I was in junior high school, and what do you
know, you can watch most of it
online or buy it for $30 on VHS or DVD. Unfortunately, the Minneapolis
Public Library doesn't seem to have a copy.
Posted at 23:15
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Upload Progress Monitor
This is really cool: Live updating
upload progress monitor.
Posted at 11:51
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Amendment II The Second Amendment reads:
Gun control activists often argue that the milita was equivalent to
today's National Guard, and much discussion centers around what a "well
regulated" militia is. Are random people owning guns a "well regulated"
militia? Or, could gun ownership be restricted to the National Guard, as
the successor to the militia of the 1700s?
I just noticed that the Fifth Amendment also mentions the militia:
This amendment makes a distinction between the "land or naval forces" and
the "militia" which indicates to me that the Founders intended the militia
not the same as the regular armed forces. Considering the way the National
Guard is used today, can you say that they are different from the regular
forces? Then again, we don't really have a militia any more.
I'm not really drawing any conclusions from this. As I said above, I'm
sure other people have hashed this out at length. And furthermore, in a
very real way, the gun control debate is dead at a national level. The gun
rights activists have won. Consider that the Chair of the Democratic Party
does not believe in national gun control beyond what we currently have.
But it was something I hadn't noticed before and I thought it was
interesting.
I was just reading the
Bill of
Rights and I noticed something that I'm sure comes as no surprise to
Constitutional scholars, but was new to me and I found interesting.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Posted at 10:33
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Rails Day
June 4th, 2005 is Rails Day, a 24 hour contest to
make the coolest Ruby on Rails application with some nice prizes. Hmmm...
Posted at 15:56
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I caught a turtle today Last night there was quite a bit of rain and the creek was gushing today.
I went out to take a walk, and the lake was the highest I've ever seen it.
As I was watching the water flow over the dam, I caught a splash in the
corner of my eye. Fish! There were some carp fighting against the current.
I spent some time enjoying the warm day and watching for another glimpse
of the fish.
I started walking back, but stopped to take a look at the lower dam, which
was totally submerged. A painted box turtle was crawling on the top of it
against the current. He wasn't making a whole lot of progress, so I
reached down and grabbed him out of the water. He was totally fearless.
"You're supposed to crawl inside your shell!" I told him, but he would
have none of that. I set him down on the concrete lip of the dam. He did a
quick 180 and dove into the water (with the current this time).
One of the few good things about working out in Eden Prairie is that
occasionally I see some wildlife. I work next to a small lake and creek
(My office is actually built on the creek's wetlands, oh well).
Posted at 20:15
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Google Vacation I didn't go on a vacation this winter, but I've been doing some vicarious Google Vacationing with
Google Maps. Here's
Vieques (those white things are clouds). You can zoom in quite a bit.
You might also want to visit
Old San Juan.
In December 2003, I went on vacation to Vieques, PR to visit friends and soak up the rays. It was
beautiful there -- for a place that was 2/3rds bombing range for a long time, anyway. Because it was
used for target practice by the Navy and Marines, Vieques is not as developed as other tourist
destinations in the Caribbean. It retains its rural character. Wild horses roam the island, and
chickens run around the streets of the two small towns. We were awakened by roosters every morning.
Sadly, that's changing now that the military has ceased bombing. I hope that the Viequenses can profit
from the new tourism while maintaining the character of the place.
Posted at 11:47
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SQL Reserved Words It's useful when picking names for your columns.
DB2 doesn't seem to mind when you use some of these words as column names,
which is causing me some grief right now.
Here's a list of all the reserved
words from the SQL standard and various vendors.
Posted at 15:59
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GOSH! You guys! Some of the more notable WHEREAS clauses:
WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's
most famous export...
WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho
athletics...
WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air
quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of
transportation...
WHEREAS, Napoleon's artistic rendition of Trisha is an example of the
importance of the visual arts in K-12 education...
WHEREAS, Kip's relationship with LaFawnduh is a tribute to e-commerce and
Idaho's technology-driven industry...
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the
Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this
concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having
the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"
Check
out this Idaho resolution
honoring Napoleon Dynamite filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess.
Posted at 14:42
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Dabblers and Blowhards
Maciej Ceglowski:
Dabblers and
Blowhards.
Posted at 14:23
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Command line Google search position checker
This Perl program determines where a URL is on the search ranking for a given query.
Posted at 15:51
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Database Rosetta Stone John Lim: Tips on
Writing Portable SQL.
Troels Arvin: Comparison of different
SQL implementations.
Posted at 16:26
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Scorched Earth Now, this brings me back! I have fond memories of playing many hours of
Scorched Earth on my 386 back in the day.
Ars Technica: An
interview with the creator of Scorched Earth, Wendell T. Hicken.
Posted at 10:54
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La Vida Robot
This story about
four undocumented Mexican immigrant teenagers who won the national
underwater robotics competition is really amazing.
Posted at 17:41
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Web Programming Matters Most I am a Python programmer, but as I've noted before, I've been frustrated
trying to figure out the "right" or "best" way to develop web applications
in Python. I can and do use Python for command line utilities, but web
progamming is what I do and it's what I think about when I want to solve
a problem and have people use it.
Think about it this way: The web won the
API War. Which
programming language is going to give me the easiest meta-API for
programming to the the web?
Right now, it's PHP for commodity stuff and Java on the high end. Neither
of these are very attractive for the enthusist programmer. PHP is an
abomination, giving Perl a run for its money, and Java is heavy-weight and
hard to get cheap hosting. I would love to have another alternative. It
should have lots of developers so I know it's got a future. It'd be nice
if it was cheap to get hosting, too. Right now, Ruby on Rails is
winning the PR battle to be this platform.
Ian Bicking:
Why Web
Programming Matters Most.
Posted at 18:02
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When to buy a Mac (This isn't news, it's just for my own personal reference.)
This is cool:
Apple iPod Camera Connector
The iPod Photo finally has a reason for existence. With iPod Software 1.1
and this camera connector, you can now transfer photos directly from your
digital camera to the iPod, and then view them immediately. No computer
required!
Mac Rumors release tracker is the best
way to know when to buy a Mac, so you don't buy one right before a new
model comes out.
Posted at 16:33
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Fisheye I like the way it gives you a birds-eye view of the status of your code,
along with the usual features of
ViewCVS.
The source code browsing tool Fisheye
from Cenqua (makers of test coverage tool
Clover) looks impressive.
Posted at 12:37
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Band to Band
Band to Band rules!
Posted at 23:22
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Structured Blogging
Structured Blogging looks cool. It allows
you to add extra metadata to posts about different things, like movie or
book reviews so they can be displayed differently by the blog software.
Posted at 13:56
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Agent to the Stars I read John Scalzi's first novel
Agent to the Stars online. He wrote the
book as a "practice novel" at age 28 just in time for his 10 year high
school reunion (and making me feel inadequate) and has had it online since
1999. Now he's publishing a small run with a spiffy cover by Gabe from
Penny Arcade.
I've never read any books online before, but this one sucked me in. It's
light-hearted and a quick read. And Scalzi's
answering comments in a
guest book thread, which is really cool of him.
If you need a fun way to spend a couple hours, take a look.
Posted at 13:15
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Open Source Digital Asset Management Software I found two, both aimed primarily at libraries.
DSpace from MIT.
D-Lib Magazine:
DSpace: An Open Source Dynamic Digital Repository.
Fedora from Cornell and the University of
Virginia.
D-Lib Magazine:
The Fedora Project: An Open-source Digital Object Repository Management
System
Fedora seems to have weaker searching, which is important in big
repositories.
Call it professional curiousity. I spent some time looking into open
source digital asset management (DAM) software.
Posted at 11:17
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DVD versus CD Pricing
Dynamic Pricing: DVD versus CD Strategies. Why are sales of DVDs
increasing while sales of CDs stagnate? DVDs are price sensitive...and
cheaper.
Posted at 15:13
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Starkiller As bad as Star Wars is (let us admit, objectively), it's amazing how bad
it could have been. George Lucas could've subjected us to the Bogan
Force and the adventures of Annikin Starkiller and his lazer sword.
Still, it's interesting to look at the development of the story to see how
it changed.
The
story synopsis from May 1973 is barely recognizable, but some of the plot
elements and names are there. The
rough draft is also compelling in its own way, but very different from
the final product (in this version 6 star fighters nearly destroy the
Death Star because of its patheticly vulnerable design). The original
version of "May the force be with you" was "May the force of others be
with you" -- a stragely touching sentiment.
Via Society
Dome, with a true Star Wars fan's sense of dread about The Revenge of
the Sith.
Starkiller ("The Jedi Bendu Script Site") has
many of the drafts of the
Star Wars scripts, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Posted at 16:27
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Affluenza The author starts off by quoting a George Carlin routine:
Then there's this:
Interesting stuff (heh). The links at the bottom led me to the
website for the late 1990s PBS series
Affluenza. I knew there was a book of the same name, so I looked it up on
Amazon. I've been meaning to read it for a while (along with The Two
Income Trap). But considering the irony of a buying a book about how we
buy too much stuff...I checked it out from the library instead.
I enjoyed this Daily Kos diary about "affluenza":
Everything I Own,
Owns Me.
That's all your house is-a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it, and when you leave your house, you've got to lock it up. You wouldn't want to somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. That's what your house is-a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Sometimes you've got to move-got to get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore." George Carlin, A Place for My Stuff 1981
Since 1985, Marc Mirngoff, a professor at the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, has published an "Index of Social Health." Combining 16 indicators -- including infant mortality, high school graduation, and homicide rates -- the index is a holistic overview of how well the country is doing with respect to its population's quality of life. Perhaps not surprising to readers on this site, as the GDP has increased, the social health of the country has gone down--dramatically. Just think about it: divorce, for example, which can be emotionally devastating, usually creates two households--two rent payments, two sets of living room furniture, two sets of kitchen dishes, where before there were one. Divorce is good for the economy.
After 9/11, we were told to go shopping.
Posted at 16:58
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Duke Nukem Forever timeline It makes me feel sorry for the DNF team. No matter how good their game is
(if it's ever released, that is) it will never be able to live up to the
expectations set for it, and those set by its incredibly long development
time.
Duke Nukem Forever timeline: "The rovers Spirit and Opportunity were
proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully
landed upon Mars within the timeframe of Duke Nukem Forever's
development."
Posted at 12:07
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Debian No shit?
Slashdot:
Debian Leaders: We Need to Release More Often.
Posted at 10:37
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Mystery Meat Navigation When I worked at the U of M Libraries, we had this design firm that wanted
to do the website in these "non-representational icons" as they called it.
Fortunately, we put the kibosh on that idiotic idea.
Mystery Meat
Navigation
Posted at 13:41
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Wild Parrots
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph
Hill looks like a really cool movie.
Posted at 12:14
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Life Posters JWZ liked it, so he
wrote something similar with Perl.
This is cool:
How to
make a Life Poster with iPhoto.
Posted at 23:39
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Best retort ever
Hitchhiker's Guide
FAQ:
The Daily Mail says this movie is a dog and will bomb
Yeah well, the Daily Mail also praised the Fascist movement. Their judgement hasn't improved much since then.
Posted at 17:42
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Just say no to DRM This is why I refuse to by digital files "protected" by DRM, no matter how
nice the deal seems to be. There's no telling when the terms are going to
change.
MP3 now, MP3 tomorrow, MP3 forever!
(Yes, yes. I did finally give up on my 5 year boycott of DVDs, proving
that I do have limits. At least those are physical items that can't be
taken away -- as long as at least one DVD player or DeCSS exists.)
Inquirer: Apple squeezes iTunes
customers.
Posted at 11:39
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Tiger, April 1st
If an Apple rumor site posts that Mac OS X 10.4
"Tiger" is going to be
available April 1st, should you believe it?
Posted at 13:36
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No heat The heat in my apartment building stopped working sometime yesterday.
brrrr
Current temperature in my living room: 53.8 degrees F.
Posted at 11:59
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GroupServer After fighting with Mailman to get it to be a newsletter, not to mention being sick to death of its
pathetic archiving (courtesy the world's lamest program,
Pipermail), I'm ready to give GroupServer a shot.
A colleague turned me on to GroupServer, an open source clone of Yahoo
Groups's basic functionality: web accessable mailing list archives, file storage area, web-based
administration.
Posted at 00:21
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404 Zen "You have reached a destination that does not exist."
Surfing around the Minnesota GOP website, I reached
a state of 404 Zen with this message:
Posted at 21:16
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Startups He says it's easier than you think.
I've often wanted to start my own company, but I have a couple things
going against me.
1. A lack of good ideas (and how to make money off of them). I have lots
of ideas that I would love to work on, but my communist Free Software
sensibilities always nag me. I also tend to have ideas that I want to sell
to people (like non-profits and political campaigns) that don't have any
money.
2. I am not particularly fond of working all the time. I want to have a
life, too. Working 80 hours a week for any period of time is insane. It
leaves you with no personal time. However, if I was working on something I
was really into, I'd probably be willing to work more.
Paul Graham (aka, Startup Millionaire) has a new essay about
How to Start a Startup.
Posted at 18:27
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Writing good emails This makes me remember the article about how some absurd percentage of
business email users were (essentially) functionally illiterate. Their
emails were impossible to understand, which resulted in a huge chain of
miscommunication as people replied wondering what they were talking
about...and of course the people replying couldn't write either...
More and more, I think the ability to communicate effectively is the most
important thing in business. It is a skill sadly lacking among many people
I've worked with.
Stever (weird name) Robbins writes a good article about
how to write your
emails for maximum effectiveness. Doing things like he suggests makes
a big difference in making sure your message gets through to your
recipients...and it's amazing how few people follow these guidelines.
Posted at 13:36
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Wine Heh.
Tbogg: "Mrs. T gives a hearty 'thumbs-up' to ZD Wines Pinot Noir. I, on
the other hand, recommend the iced tea since I don't drink alcohol and, at
$12.50 per glass, have no intention of ever starting."
Posted at 10:02
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Nerd Jokes
There's a thread on the Joel on Software forum about
computer
nerd jokes which gave me a chance to contribute my favorite:
A manager, engineer, and software developer are returning from a company retreat in the mountains. As they drive down the steep mountain road, their brakes fail, and their car careens down the slope. By some miracle, the car catches on a guiderail and comes to a stop.
They get out of the car to inspect the damage and figure out what to do next.
The manager says, "We must formulate an Action Plan that will utilize the Synergy of our three diverse skill sets to solve this problem. First, let's gather some requirements..."
From underneath the car, the engineer says, "No, that's a waste of time. I can see the brake line came off. I've got my leatherman right here. I'll just fix it and we can be on our way."
"Well," says the software developer, "before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the mountain and see if it happens again."
Posted at 15:28
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Court Watching (might need to read about
"Sandy Says" decisions to get that one)
Jack Balkin: "My Prediction on the Ten Commandments Case: Justice
O'Connor upholds five, strikes down five."
Posted at 01:11
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Battlestar Galactica What I was really impressed with was the physics. Asside from the standard
SF deviation of FTL drives and the unstated existence of FTL
communication, the space physics are very realistic.
The space ships have inertia. When their thrusters stop, the ship keeps
moving. They flip around while still moving and attack. The fighters have
gas thrusters to maneuver.
The weapons are kenetic: hypervelocity projectiles and nuclear-tipped
missles. It would be interesting to see some laser weapons presented in a
realistic way, but BSG doesn't have them at all.
It's really cool to see a SF show present space combat realisticly.
I'd be even more impressed if the show delt with the problems of
light-speed sensors and communications. And then there's my favorite hobby
horse, ever since I read
Flying to Valhalla by Charles Pellegrino, the ultimate space warfare
weapon: accelerating a ship/object to near-c and crashing it into your
favored target (planet, sun, ship, whatever). Because it's flying nearly
as fast as light, it's impossible to detect until it's too late. Because
of relativity, the mass is huge. F=ma, so such a weapon would be very
powerful.
A friend loaned me the new (2003) Battlestar Galactica mini-series to
watch. The show's OK. The acting isn't all that great...but, come on, we
are talking about the Sci-Fi Channel here.
Posted at 21:40
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