links.lmorchard.com

March 2010

194 bookmarks saved in March 2010

uWSGI

http://projects.unbit.it/uwsgi
"uWSGI is a fast (pure C), self-healing, developer-friendly WSGI server, aimed for professional python webapps deployment and development. Over time it has evolved in a complete stack for networked/clustered python applications, implementing message/object passing and process management. It uses the uwsgi (all lowercase) protocol for all the networking/interprocess communications. From the 0.9.5 release it includes a plugin loading technology that can be used to add support for other languages or platform. A Lua wsapi adaptor, a PSGI handler and an Erlang message exchanger are already available. "
#deployment #python #webdev #webserver #wsgi
archive.org #13119

The Shifted Librarian » Living in My Cloud

http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/03/30/living-in-my-cloud.html
"This week­end, I did some­thing really cool (for me). I got to watch a March Mad­ness game on my TV that CBS wasn’t show­ing in my local mar­ket on my TV, with­out pay­ing the cable com­pany. Life is full of short vic­to­ries, and this is one of mine. More impor­tantly, I real­ized I’m liv­ing in the heav­enly juke­box I used to talk about in my pre­sen­ta­tions years ago."
#cloud #home #media #server
archive.org #13116

NoSQL vs. RDBMS: Let the flames begin! – stu.mp

http://stu.mp/2010/03/nosql-vs-rdbms-let-the-flames-begin.html
"I guess what I’m saying is that my decision to use NoSQL, and I’m guessing others’ decisions to do so, has less to do with the fact that we can’t squeeze a few thousand writes a second out of MySQL and more to do with management and cost overhead. NoSQL solutions allow us to serve absurd amounts of data for a really, really low price. I’m happy to put my $/write, $/read, and $/GB numbers for my NoSQL setup against anyone’s RDBMS numbers. We’re not nearly as dumb as everyone thinks we are; I promise."
#costs #data #databases #expenses #nosql #rdbms
archive.org #13103

An open letter to conservatives « Russ' Filtered News

http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/an-open-letter-to-conservatives
"Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples – by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred."
#conservatives #politics #republicans
archive.org #13101

Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama | Feature | Television & radio | The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/mar/21/twin-peaks-twenty-years-on
"Twin Peaks was a sensation from the moment it first aired… and still, 20 years later, the influence of David Lynch's groundbreaking series can be felt in TV drama, from The Sopranos through to Lost. Here we relive its surreal appeal and ask six veterans of the show for their memories"
#anniversary #culture #davidlynch #entertainment #laurapalmer #tv #twinpeaks
archive.org #13100

Emoticons and Smileys on PLATO in the 1970s

http://platopeople.com/emoticons.html
"How were these things done? Well, on PLATO, you could press SHIFT-space to move your cursor back one space -- and then if you typed another character, it would appear on top of the existing character. And if you wanted to get real fancy, you could use the MICRO and SUB and SUPER keys on a PLATO keyboard to move up and down one pixel or more -- in effect providing a HUGE array of possible emoticon characters. So if you typed "W" then SHIFT-space then "O" then SHIFT-space then "B", "T", "A", "X", all with SHIFT-spaces in between, all those characters would plot on top of each other, and the result would be the smiley as shown above in the "WOBTAX" example. "
#computer #design #emoticons #geek #history #nostalgia #plato
archive.org #13097

1 GB - 1980 Vs. 2010

http://www.google.com/reader/item/tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/af3c414d90c2f778
I like the old 1GB design, It carries more weight.
archive.org #13096

Obama health insurance requirement taken from GOP - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100327/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_overhaul_requiring_insurance
"Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it. The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach."
#gop #healthcare #hypocrisy #politics
archive.org #13095

Daily Kos: Bartlett: Teabaggers Totally Ignorant About Taxes

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/27/851416/-Bartlett:-Teabaggers-Totally-Ignorant-About-Taxes
"So my conclusions: The ignorance (willful or otherwise) is deep. The anger (justified or otherwise) is high. Teabagger solutions are silly at best and dangerous at worst. But what bothers me more is that our side has been so woefully inadequate at laying out these facts. These are not sophisticated concepts and the words can be small."
#morons #politics #taxes #teabaggers #teaparty
archive.org #13091

Cox, McMillin woo reform foes with legal foolishness | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

http://www.freep.com/article/20100323/OPINION01/3230333/1322/Cox-McMillin-woo-reform-foes-with-legal-foolishness
"As a candidate for his party's gubernatorial nomination, Cox has every right to pander to the Tea Party adherents many believe will play a decisive role in August's Republican primary. As Michigan's top law enforcement officer, he should know better than to pursue his specious claim that Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority."
#healthcare #michigan #morons #politics #reform
archive.org #13090

The Tea Party's Rank Amateurism - Politics - The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/the-tea-partys-rank-amateurism/38077
"It's possible that if the Tea Partiers cleaned up their ranks--purged the birthers, publicly rebuked people like this guy, banned Hitler signs, loudly rejected any instances of racism--that they simply wouldn't have much of a movement left. Martin Luther King was trying to lead a black community that was demonstrably patriotic, and had, in the main, rejected political violence as a strategy. He could afford to be picky. In the case of the Tea Parties, it's possible that once you subtract the jackasses, you just don't have enough energy left."
#civilrights #jackasses #politics #protest #teaparty
archive.org #13089

Op-Ed Columnist - Going to Extreme - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/opinion/26krugman.html?emc=rss&partner=rssnyt
"For today’s G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan — not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side — Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions — are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern. "
#armageddon #gop #healthcare #krugman #politics #republicans
archive.org #13085

Op-Ed Columnist - An Absence of Class in the G.O.P. - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html
"For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich."
#america #conservatives #failure #gop #politics #republicans #teabaggers
archive.org #13083

New College Graduates To Be Cryogenically Frozen Until Job Market Improves | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-college-graduates-to-be-cryogenically-frozen-u,17034
"The bill, expected to swiftly pass in both houses, would facilitate the subzero preservation of any graduate of a two- or four-year educational institution. Sponsors of the initiative said that with the national unemployment rate at just under 10 percent, it only made sense for young job-seekers to temporarily enter a state of supercooled stasis. "
#economy #education #funny #unemployment
archive.org #13066

Computer Company Started In Garage 30 Years Ago Now In Smaller Garage | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

http://www.theonion.com/articles/computer-company-started-in-garage-30-years-ago-no,17124
"In the summer of 1980, MIT graduates Donald Faber and Peter Haberle moved into an empty two-car garage and started work building their first ever personal home computer. Almost 30 years later, what began as a humble two-man operation has since grown into an even more humble, even more cramped computer company, based out of an even smaller single-car garage."
#business #computers #funny #theonion
archive.org #13065

Mike Taylor - The Causes of Chaos

http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/advent/coc
"An image of the original game is available for download as a C64 tape-image file. I found this image, pirated, out there on the Internet. The people who did it rather sneakily removed my name, and that of the publisher, from the cracked version that's in circulation, so I've restored them in this version of the image; but if you want the cracked version, you can have it - my feeling is that if it weren't for these people stealing my game, I wouldn't have a running version of it myself. So they can have some credit. "
#c64 #gaming #ifiction #pirates #retro #yay
archive.org #13057

Pro Git - Smart HTTP Transport

http://progit.org/2010/03/04/smart-http.html
"I think HTTP based Git will be a huge part of the future of Git, so if you’re running your own Git server, you should really check it out. If you’re not, GitHub and I’m sure other hosts will soon be supporting it - upgrade your Git client to 1.7ish soon so you can take advantage of it when it happens."
#dvcs #git #hosting #http
archive.org #13054

My Head is in the Cloud

http://tweetagewasteland.com/2010/03/my-head-is-in-the-cloud
Been there for years myself, welcome to the cloud. This is part of why I'm so awkward away from an internet connection. "Now, after a few years of this, I realize that when I look up from the screen I know almost nothing. And maybe that would be fine if the absent phone numbers and upcoming dates were freeing space for deeper and more introspective thought. But I sense that my addiction to the realtime stream is only making room for the consumption of a faster stream."
#cloud #head #memory #mind #philosophy
archive.org #13053

Retro Fun - Yorkville - Toronto, ON

http://www.yelp.ca/biz/retro-fun-toronto#hrid:yn4OlajAdnSP9ZNI4fCUXw
"Sadness: Retro Fun appears to be closed. It had been a few years since last I was in Toronto, and this shop had been one of my favorite stops on the trip. Only place I've ever seen Whacky Packages trading cards, still in the package. Also, an official Knight Rider poster and random 80's toys."
#canada #fun #retro #sadness #toronto
archive.org #13050

Microsoft Borrows Palm's Advertising for Windows Phone 7 Series

http://www.everythingpre.com/blog/microsoft-borrows-palms-advertising-for-windows-phone-7-series/2010/03/18
"Did you see those great ads pushed out the other day from Palm? It looks like Microsoft, who forgot to borrow copy & paste or multi-tasking, has the same ad team or at least the same great idea. Now it’s time for Palm to creatively borrow a few elements from the Microsoft ad. How about adding a few different demographics and have the people in the ads carrying webOS phones."
#advertising #microsoft #mobile #palm
archive.org #13046

Countercomplex: Defining Computationally Minimal Art (Or, taking the "8" out of "8-Bit")

http://www.pelulamu.net/countercomplex/computationally-minimal-art
"The defining element is LOW COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY, as expressed in all aspects of the audiovisual system: the complexity of the platform (i.e. the number of transistors or logic gates in the hardware), the complexity of the software (i.e. the length in bits of the program code and static data), as well as the time complexity (i.e. how many state changes the computational tasks require). A more theoretical approach would eliminate the differentiation of software and hardware and talk about description/program length, memory complexity and time complexity."
#80s #8bit #art #generative #graphics #music #retro
archive.org #13042

In Ann Arbor, Beer Begets More Beer

http://www.concentratemedia.com/features/annarborbreweries0095.aspx
"If someone took the time to draw out all the connections between craft brewers in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area, it might look like the incestuous family tree the back country people in Deliverance scrawled in their family bible. But even the most seasoned beer connoisseur probably wouldn't be able to taste those connections while sampling a pint from one of the many local brewpubs and microbreweries. "
#annarbor #beer #breweries #michigan
archive.org #13040

geewax.org | Agile git Workflow

http://geewax.org/2009/11/21/agile-git-workflow.html
"Agile" is kind of a dirty word in some circles, but this describe some actually agile ways to deal with revision control using git. "When we started using git to manage our source code at work, we actually jumped in a little bit too fast. It seems like there is a lot of writing about how you can do lots of really neat things with git, but no real guide about one particular way of using git for your project. This post is going to describe how we use git day to day on a reasonably large “agile-style” project."
#development #git #process #productivity #tips #tutorial #workflow
archive.org #13033

Welcome to A & C Games Online

http://www.acgamesonline.com
"We buy, sell, trade Video Games and consoles and accessories (NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, XBOX, PSP, Gameboy, Nintendo DS, XBOX 360, PS3, Atari, PC, and more, even Neo Geo AES, MVS, CD and PC Engine, japanese imports and arcade sticks) "
#canada #gaming #retro #store #toronto
archive.org #13026

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400, eSATA + USB2 external Solutions up to 2.0TB - Plug & Play Quad Interface

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
"All Mercury Elite-AL Pro models are ideally configured for Audio, Video, Digital Photography, Professional Music, Graphics, General Data and Back-Up applications, and are Prosoft Engineering Data Backup Certified for Mac or NovaStor NovaBACKUP® for Windows. "
#harddrives #hardware #storage #wishlist
archive.org #13022

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Bus Powered FireWire, Bus Powered USB 2.0, and eSATA Portable Hard Drive Solutions

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
"High-Performance 2.5" 5400RPM, 7200RPM, and SSD solutions with up to 64MB data buffers gives you maximum storage in an ultra-portable, totally bus powered design. Stylishly engineered in a sleek, impact-resistant acrylic enclosure, the Mercury On-The-Go Pro incorporates shock-isolation technology to give maximum protection for your precious data inside. The Mercury On-The-Go Pro is a true must-have for users like you who are seeking High-Performance and Highly Reliable storage weighing less than 11 ounces and that is small enough to fit in your shirt pocket."
#harddrives #hardware #storage #wishlist
archive.org #13021

The Official Palm Blog: Palm webOS games get Unreal

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2010/03/palm-webos-games-get-unreal-.html
"At the annual Game Developers Conference this week, Palm and Epic Games are demonstrating Unreal Engine 3 on Palm webOS. Unreal Engine 3 powers Epic's popular Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War along with many other titles from leading game developers. Licensees of Unreal Engine 3 will soon be able to build games for Palm webOS. "
#gaming #palm #pdk #unreal #wow
archive.org #12999

Packrati.us = Twitter + Delicious

http://packrati.us
This is what I wish Delicious had done with Twitter. pinboard.in has this built-in, by the way. "This site provides a simple bookmarking service. We follow your twitter feed, and whenever one of your tweets contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you. We'll even add a delicious tag identifying the sender if you like."
archive.org #12989

Packrati.us = Twitter + Delicious

http://packrati.us
This is what I wish Delicious had done with Twitter. pinboard.in has this built-in, by the way. "This site provides a simple bookmarking service. We follow your twitter feed, and whenever one of your tweets contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you. We'll even add a delicious tag identifying the sender if you like."
#bookmarking #delicious #services #twitter
archive.org #12968

Amazon S3 Experiment at an end for now – Jason DeFillippo

http://jpd.me/2008/12/30/amazon-s3-experiment-at-an-end-for-now
"If I finished putting my archives on S3 it would cost me well over $200 a month. I’m not even going to get into much deep math here because all I gotta tell you is that there are 1 TB USB 2 External drives on Amazon for under $150. So I can buy a new TB every MONTH, copy a backup to it and ship it offsite and let it sit and it’s cheaper than S3"
#amazon #backup #s3 #storage
archive.org #12987

Stepping up to carboys - Realbeer.com: Gregg Smith

http://www.realbeer.com/library/authors/smith-g/homebrew.php
"The implication for the home brewer is cleaner beer, and the application is the glass carboy. Most homebrewers start off with a kit which contains a food grade plastic fermenter. It will serve as a reliable primary vessel for several brews but note: it does have a limited life. The reason big commercial brewers don't line their tanks with less expensive plastic also applies to you. Over several cleanings the plastic acquires small scratches. Although nearly invisible to the naked eye these will act as the breeding ground for all types of beer infections. Even microscopic sized scratches are potential beer ruining trouble spots. Glass surfaces are smoother and more durable and should lead you to switch eventually to glass carboys as both your primary and secondary."
#carboys #fementers #gear #homebrewing
archive.org #12965

World of Warcraft - Beating the RNG Boss

http://www.iamcal.com/beating-the-rng
"One of the hardest bosses to fight is the RNG, or Random Number Generator. While the tactics are fairly straight forward (try, try, try again), defeating this boss can take a lot of patience. Lots of players don't understand quite how this boss fight works, so i'll attempt to explain. A few months back, I created a World of Warcraft addon called BunnyHunter, to help you track your progress when farming for rare pets."
#addons #nifty #pets #wow
archive.org #12954

:: Commodore C64 Modifications ::

http://www.bigmech.com/misc/c64mods/index.html
"In early June, 2006 Prophet64 made the bold move of releasing its SID music software on C64 cartridges. This completed the transition of the C64 from a computer system dependant on floppy and/or tape drives, to an independent piece of pro audio studio equipment. Could the union of Prophet64 with the C64 as a musical instrument be further improved upon? I thought so. The following pages explain what I have done."
#c64 #circuitbending #commodore64 #hacks #hardware #mods #music #retro #sid
archive.org #12945

cloudkick | blog: 4 Months with Cassandra, a love story

https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/mar/02/4_months_with_cassandra
"At Cloudkick we track a ton of metrics about our customer's servers and it's quite a challenge to store such massive amounts of data. Early on, we made the decision to avoid using tools like RRDTool, so we could provide a more holistic look at infrastructure. We had two firm requirements: we wanted to show trends on a macro-level and to have very low latency so our users would never wait for graphs to build. We initially used PostgreSQL, but as we added billions of rows, the performance quickly degraded. We used cron jobs that would roll up the data on intervals to trade storage for throughput and lower latency. With clever partitioning, we were able to stretch the system to a certain point, but beyond that we faced issues of needing a much bigger machine and faster rotational disks to accommodate our business requirements; that's when started looking at other solutions."
#cassandra #databases #nosql #python #webdev
archive.org #12941

Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana - Newsweek.com

http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554
This sounds so much more funny when read with a REALLY sarcastic voice. "Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."
#culture #future #history #internet #predictions #rant #retro #stoll #wrong
archive.org #12937

Lallafa’s Blog » OpenCBM on Mac

http://lallafa.de/blog/opencbm-on-mac
"OpenCBM is a library and a set of command line tools that allow to control old Commodore IEC devices like the famous 1541 floppy disk drive. You can transfer disk image to and from old discs. As modern computers do not provide a IEC connector, OpenCBM allows to control adapters that attach to your PC. Older PCs use parallel port cables (like the XA1541 or XS1541) and newer ones use a USB adapter (XU1541 or XUM1541). This pages shows you how to use OpenCBM on your Mac. As modern Macs only support USB connectors and no parallel ones, we focus on setting up the XU1541 or XUM1541 devices."
#64 #commodore #hardware #mac #oldschool #opencbm #osx #retro #xum1541
archive.org #12931

Retrode - Home of the world's first USB reader for classic console games.

http://www.retrode.org/wordpress
"This web site is dedicated to my USB reader for 16-bit games, the Retrode (was: snega2usb). Feed your SNES or Mega Drive / Genesis emulator with games from your original cartridges! The project started as a little proof of concept for myself, but eventually turned out way larger (and cooler!) than that."
#gaming #hacks #hardware #nintendo #retro #roms #sega #usb
archive.org #12928