April 2012

To do this, you need to enter about:config in Firefox's URL bar, then accept the warning when prompted. In the Filter box, type source.editor, which will show you three variables. Double-click on view_source.editor.external first, to change its Value to true. Next, double-click on view_source.editor.path, which will drop down a small sheet in which you enter the path to your preferred editor. The path must be a full complete Unix-style path, and point to the actual executable (not the app bundle). So for Coda, I used:

source: http://albumofrandom.tumblr.com/

Ever since the days of Fredric Wertham, people have been pointing out the homoerotic elements in Batman. There are hundreds of GIFs of Batman in his pink costume, or that famous scene where all the other DC heroes worry about their girlfriends, and Batman worries about Robin. There's even a Wikipedia entry on "Homosexuality in the Batman Franchise," complete with an image from a 1954 comic showing Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson apparently sleeping in the same bed. Top image: Frank Quitely/Playboy. So when Batman, Inc. writer Grant Morrison said in a Playboy Magazine interview that he thought the concept of Batman (not Batman himself) was gay, the fan reaction was muted. Here's what Morrison says: He's very plutonian in the sense that he's wealthy and also in the sense that he's sexually deviant. Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. I think that's why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn't care-he's more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid. He also points out that Wonder Woman was only really popular when she was having lots of bondage and strange lesbian stag-hunts. In any case, I've seen articles claiming that Morrison's comments caused a huge internet hub-bub... but I haven't quite been able to locate the hub-bub yet. There have been a few grouchy comments here and there, and a number of people pointing out that Batman is currently boinking Catwoman thus proving that indeed, "as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual." And a few other people have wondered what, exactly, the "pejorative sense" of gay is. The main critical comment I've come across thus far? Over at the Bleeding Cool forums, Phantom309 asks, "Why is Captain Picard about to crush all those characters?"

funny-pictures-uk: Cat toy force field [via]

Turns out git-svn works even for big projects

Turns out git-svn works even for big projects

NES, the shoulder bag. Have you ever wanted to be the guy carrying a notebook around in a hollowed out NES, with velvet glued to the inside and big lunch box clasps? And a little NES controller card case to go with it? I’d kinda want to get one of these to carry a third-party Famiclone in. Just because. Find: Nintendo DS/3DS release dates, discounts, & more See also: More Famicom junk

"Reports that a woman in northern Mexico is pregnant with nine babies are a hoax, health authorities said on Friday." [Reuters]

Rick Munarriz's 2007 Why the Kindle will Fail is now free of charge to Prime members. [Amazon via John Moltz]

The security theatre is getting surreal: The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics. An east London estate, where 700 people live, has received leaflets saying a "Higher Velocity Missile system" could be placed on a water tower. ... But estate resident Brian Whelan said firing the missiles "would shower debris across the east end of London". ... "It [the leaflet] says there will be 10 officers plus police present 24/7." Lunacy on stilts. (Oh, and let me add, the residents don't get any choice over having missiles billeted on top of their homes.) If one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it'll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city. Hmm. It's a good thing I'm a novelist who dabbles in technothrillers, not a terrorist. If I was a terrorist I'd be licking my lips, trying to work out how to trigger a missile launch. Using a motor-powered model aircraft, free flight design (no radio controls to jam) aimed vaguely towards the Olympic stadium, with a nice radio beacon or some sort of infra-red source (a flare, perhaps) on its tail to make it easy to track? These missiles will be the close-in option, because we know the RAF will already be flying combat air patrols over London; they won't have much time to evaluate threats or respond intelligently. So launch from the back of a panel van, like the IRA mortar attacks on places like Heathrow or 10 Downing Street. The twist in the scheme would be to aim past the missile launchers along a vector that would attract a hail of hypervelocity missile launches in the direction of, say, a DLR station at rush hour. Olympic security is out of control and irrational; the best solution would be to designate a permanent Olympic venue somewhere isolated — Diego Garcia would be a prime candidate — and hold the games there permanently so that they don't endanger life, limb and civil liberties. Alas, that would reduce the corruption corporate sponsorship opportunities, and the games are entirely about milking the host nation for money these days. Fuck the Olympics in 2012. (Oh, and incidentally it would be illegal for me to say this if I happened to live in London or my blog was hosted in England—the enabling laws for the Olympics override our basic civil rights, including free speech. Luckily I'm north of the border in a country that remains semi-free. But if a future independent Scotland even thinks about bidding to host the Olympics, you bet I'll be organizing street marches in opposition ...)

My RESTful Web Services Cookbook has been out for nearly 26 months. From Feb 2010 till the end of 2011, O’Reilly sold 13,052 copies (both print and eBook format combined, per the royalty statements received to date) of this book. Given that O’Reilly’s eBooks are DRM free, I would like to think that several thousands more copies were downloaded for free on torrent sites, but there is no way to know. Writing this book was a painful exercise. I spent most of 2009 writing the drafts – at that time Yahoo allowed me to spend about 20% of my time for nearly 4 months to write the first draft (for which they own the copyright of the book). It was painful because REST was about style. Not having seen all aspects of the style work in reality, I was not fully convinced about parts of the style. Separating style from protocols was a time consuming yet learning exercise. How could I say that following such and such Roy Fielding’s constraint leads to evolvability without dissecting evolvability into concrete details? The last thing I wanted was to write a book that paints a nice picture with the benefits one would get out of REST without discussing the specifics. I wanted to avoid handwaving at all cost. In these two years, I changed quite a bit. I no longer actively engage myself in discussions about REST. I unsubscribed out of rest-discuss in 2011. I don’t even subscribe to Roy’s idea that REST APIs must be hypertext-driven or that “A REST API should spend almost all of its descriptive effort in defining the media types”. What I learned in these two years were the following: Don’t confuse styles with protocols. Understand what you are going to interoperate with and make tradeoffs as necessary. Interoperating between style deviations is more important than arguing for style adherence. Interoperability is partly a protocol problem and partly a software problem. Architecture styles are guides, but protocols specify rules. Roy’s REST codifies (to some extent reverse-engineeres) the Web into a set of constraints. Constaints are what they are – guides sans context. They are subject to tradeoffs. They postulate benefits when applied. But protocols are different. They set ground rules for different systems to work together. Just like you don’t start driving on the left side of the road (in the US), you don’t break TCP or HTTP’s messaging formats. When you break such protocols, you prevent networked systems from working together. But we tend to mistake the style (i.e, REST) for the protocols. I made that mistake several times (shame on me!) in the past, and I still see it being made. I took care to avoid this while writing the book, but I may not have succeeded fully. Strong belief in a style often leads to zealotry. This is no different from the zealotry we see in socio-political debates. Yet not all Protocols are the same. I tend to view protocols making up a pyramid. Where a protocol stays in this pyramid shows how widely it helps interoperability. / / / /______ Towards the bottom are protocols that strive for the widest range of interoperability possible. TCP is an example. HTTP is another example. As you go up the pyramid, the amount of relevance and influence a protocol carries becomes narower. For instance, I would keep RFC 2616 towards the bottom of the pyramid, but an RFC like 5023 (AtomPub) towards the top. AtomPub’s reign of influence was limited then and is even now. I would similarly place a media type like application/json towards the bottom, and a type like application/my-grand-fathers-facebook-profile+json at the top. A perspective of where a protocol belongs in this pyramid certainly helps ration energy. So, would I write this book differently now? I certainly would. I would change the title to something along the lines of “Recipes to Build Client Server Apps Using Web Protocols”, though the editor might ask me to change to include some current trending words. I would emphasize even more on protocols. I would cut down or clearly demarcate the parts of the book that suggested design styles (such as designing formats). I would spend a big chunk on how to interopere without necessarily agreeing on the style. If you’ve read my book, and built some interoperable Web based systems, you might come to the same conclusion as I did. If that happens, I count my book as a success.

This post aims to provide an overview of how to create a highly functional and easy to configure Text Triumvirate for those new to this tool chain. I try to focus on aspects of how to integrate zsh, vim, and tmux with particular focus on my experiences with two common problems—copy/paste functionality and color aesthetics.

Last week's blog entry on Amazon's ebook strategy went around the net like a dose of rotavirus. And, as we can now see from Tor's ground-breaking announcement I…

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

Last year we set up landfill.amo to give contributors an easy base to set up the addons.mozilla.org site. Easy is relative here, of course, but it was a big leap over what we had at the time. Kumar leapfrogged that milestone by adding Vagrant configuration scripts to our repository. Now you can have a running version of AMO on your local system in about 3-5 commands[1]. Check out the steps to install AMO with Vagrant to see how. I set it up on OS X last week and aside from waiting for the download it only took a few minutes. Drop by #amo on IRC if you run into any troubles. [1] Setting this up on Windows is apparently more difficult although one contributor did find success after fighting with it for some time. Edit: Updated the installation instructions URL

Last year we set up landfill.amo to give contributors an easy base to set up the addons.mozilla.org site. Easy is relative here, of course, but it was a big leap over what we had at the time. Kumar leapfrogged that milestone by adding Vagrant configuration scripts to our repository. Now you can have a running version of AMO on your local system in about 3-5 commands[1]. Check out the steps to install AMO with Vagrant to see how. I set it up on OS X last week and aside from waiting for the download it only took a few minutes. Drop by #amo on IRC if you run into any troubles. [1] Setting this up on Windows is apparently more difficult although one contributor did find success after fighting with it for some time. Edit: Updated the installation instructions URL

(AP) — Plans are moving forward for a Detroit statue of the fictional crime-fighting cyborg RoboCop.

In an attempt to satisfy hunters left wanting due to hunting bans in parts of England, UK Paintball is now offering a "fox hunt" where participants target a human dressed in a fox suit. (I just hope this doesn't turn into open season on furries.) Does the idea remind you of Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game," about a rich man who hunts human prey on his private island? Turns out, the two gents who invented paintball in 1976 were inspired by Connell's story! UK Paintball's "Fox Hunt" (via Metro.co.uk)

Dan sez, "Macaroni and cheese seems like a pretty docile product -- I mean, it's just pasta and orange powder in a box. But Kraft and others use the fun macaroni shapes to help market the products, and to protect their marketing tool, they often seek patents for their shapes. Yes, patents. And... they get them. A Google Patent Search shows about 2,000 patents for shaped pasta." Cooked to Perfection (Thanks, Dan!)

New shirt day! I have a feeling this one'll sell out, so if you want it soon, please order soon.

Mitt Romney was reeling when he heard that aliens from Planet Zeeba were backing President Obama and forming a super-Pac. He wanted to reach out to other “minority” Americans. He met with the Werewolf Association and a prominent Vampire Pac, but both of them rejected Romney. He looked into the Ghost Lobby, but they were also unimpressed with Romney.

Mitt Romney was reeling when he heard that aliens from Planet Zeeba were backing President Obama and forming a super-Pac. He wanted to reach out to other “minority” Americans. He met with the Werewolf Association and a prominent Vampire Pac, but both of them rejected Romney. He looked into the Ghost Lobby, but they were also unimpressed with Romney.

source: http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

source: http://shawnblanc.net/2012...

thisfeliciaday:

Normally I don't go in for canine cosplay, but I have to admit that Blitzen the American Eskimo looks especially dashing in this Number Eleven costume. It must be hard to get those witty quips out when you have to hold your sonic screwdriver in your mouth. Dogtor Who [Lisa Sikorski via Fashionably Geek]

A cat born with his back legs back to front has been given a new lease of life after pioneering surgery. Corky was found by little boy dragging himself along a pavement in Fargo, North Dakota, and was taken into a shelter, where he was due to be put down. Corky the night before he had surgery.YouTube link. But Gail Ventzke and Carol Stefonek, co-founders and directors of CATS Cradle Shelter, heard about the brave moggy and were intent on saving his life. The seven-month-old kitten suffers from a congential deformity known as ‘Bilateral Arthrogryposis', which causes his legs to be the wrong way round. His limbs were also criss-crossed like a corkscrew, leading staff at the shelter to name him Corky. The courageous kitty learned to drag himself around on his two front paws at the CATS Cradle shelter, until Gail and Carol asked for the help of a local vet. Corky after surgery.YouTube link. Dr. Dan Burchill of Castleton Veterinary Services invented a surgery to bring Corky's back legs the right way round. Corky is still in bandages but thanks to intensive physical therapy sessions he's doing well.

“I never thought I’d have to pay you! I bought the coffee whenever we met AND I baked you a cake on your birthday!” - The most thoughtless AND thoughtful response to $2,000 in overdue fees I’ve ever received.

Client: Do you charge? Me: Yes. Client: Money?

How much do I love this DIY cell phone? Quite a bit! I’m not trading in my iPhone for this (yet) but I love the idea of being able to order parts from SparkFun and Adafruit and dropping in a SIM card and having a mobile phone for under $200. I can also imagine that such hardware could be incorporated into various projects where voice or text communication could come in handy. I know that some folks attach phones to balloons or incorporate them into other remote monitoring systems… so what if you could extend this simple DIY phone hardware to be exactly what you want to fit your project? I also love many of the other projects I’ve seen from the High-Low Tech group at MIT. (If only I could have met some of the people involved with the group while I was at MIT last month!)

How much do I love this DIY cell phone? Quite a bit! I’m not trading in my iPhone for this (yet) but I love the idea of being able to order parts from SparkFun and Adafruit and dropping in a SIM card and having a mobile phone for under $200. I can also imagine that such hardware could be incorporated into various projects where voice or text communication could come in handy. I know that some folks attach phones to balloons or incorporate them into other remote monitoring systems… so what if you could extend this simple DIY phone hardware to be exactly what you want to fit your project? I also love many of the other projects I’ve seen from the High-Low Tech group at MIT. (If only I could have met some of the people involved with the group while I was at MIT last month!)

The only thing that could make this better would be if you could actually watch your poop plummet. (Please do not click through; this web site does one of those horrible pop-up "CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!!eleven" things and do not deserve your ad impressions. Also there's no additional info. Designer's web site is even more worthless.) This penthouse in Guadalajara, Mexico, designed by Hernandez Silva, features a dizzying bathroom with a glass floor over an abandoned elevator shaft with a 15-floor drop. Mirrored from jwz.org.

Slice the avocados in half and discard pits. Scoop the flesh from the peels. Mash the avocados, then add the lemon juice. Mix well. Spoon into a gallon sized zip top bag, squeezing out all the air before sealing. Freeze up to one year.

Slice the avocados in half and discard pits. Scoop the flesh from the peels. Mash the avocados, then add the lemon juice. Mix well. Spoon into a gallon sized zip top bag, squeezing out all the air before sealing. Freeze up to one year.

The Final Cut has been an international underground electronic music enigma since emerging from the late 80's Detroit underground. Final Cut began when Anthony "Asrock" Srock, then a radio and club DJ, began collaborating with then-unknown techno DJ Jeff Mills.

@potch: Whitespace is for losers, and ASI seems too magical. SemiSpace™- leave nothing to chance. https://t.co/eTnRJTm7

@intothefuzz: Think I'm gonna convert my music collection to cassette tapes. http://t.co/Y5GGdCwd

Pretty sure there are very few people who have heard this song and have it in their iTunes library :/

┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻ ┬──┬ ﾉ(° _°ﾉ) (╯°Д°）╯︵/(.□ . )

Holding a hot cup of coffee warms your hands on a cold day--but it may warm your heart as well. Two experiments, reported in the 24 October issue of Science, suggest that the physical feeling of warmth makes people judge others more favorably and act more generously.

@darkuncle: the Mac App Store needs a wishlist feature like the iTunes store has.

“Big Hy” — his handle among many loyal customers — would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Various utility files to expand the features of MultiMarkdown 3.0 — Read more

Wired called them, digital graffiti and John Carmack spoke of them at QuakeCon 2011 but they remain little known. A recently released full-length documentary (download) gives a portrait of the creative digital subculture from 80s to the present day.

I think it is a sign that as developers we are either terribly bored or we are out of ideas when we start to go down to bickering about violating accepted ways of development. We should concentrate on building amazing tools and experiences for users out there rather than smugly trying to undo conventions we’ve been following for years now. The web standards movement was not about enforcing arbitrary code syntax on poor developers who now have to type a few keys more. It is about making code predictable, extensible and easy to explain to newcomers. Confusing these matters doesn’t help the cause of making a new generation of developers embrace the web as a platform. Don’t be that guy.

I think it is a sign that as developers we are either terribly bored or we are out of ideas when we start to go down to bickering about violating accepted ways of development. We should concentrate on building amazing tools and experiences for users out there rather than smugly trying to undo conventions we’ve been following for years now. The web standards movement was not about enforcing arbitrary code syntax on poor developers who now have to type a few keys more. It is about making code predictable, extensible and easy to explain to newcomers. Confusing these matters doesn’t help the cause of making a new generation of developers embrace the web as a platform. Don’t be that guy.

It's viewscreens all the way down. (via george takei) Tags: Star Trek

Over the weekend an interview with Google founder Sergey Brin was published in the Guardian. In it he says some things, about the open web, that are very true. He says that Google was built out of the open web. And this part he doesn't say, but is also true. If Google is going to continue to thrive, so must the open web. However, Google is moving away from the open web. Most of its investments are going to create a competitor to Facebook, although they deny it's just a competitor. From the point of view of the open web their system is just as opaque as Facebook is. Just as problematic. I'm not suggesting that Google shouldn't compete directly with Facebook. They can do what they want. But they're big enough and rich enough that they could make investments in the open web at the same time as they invest in their fortress. If they really put their hearts in it, and their checkbook, and make a commitment to support open formats and protocols that gain traction, no matter where they come from, I have no doubt that the open web will flourish, and perhaps that will mean their silo will founder. I suspect that this is why, as an organization, they don't want to make these investments. But Brin is independent, powerful, an imaginative and a skilled techologist, and frankly rich enough, to do what he wants no matter what his organization dictates. Maybe he'll read this. If so, since he is a computer scientist, as I am, let me put my advice in technical terms. If I need an API to access my data it's not good. If I hold my data in my own space, where I can do with it as I please, and at the same time it can be part of the structures Google builds, whether it is a search engine or a discussion board, then it works. Then we can try out a million ideas, and they can build off each others' momentum, and they all have a chance to be the next collaborative phenomenon. If APIs control access to the data, if my program logic has to flow through someone else's pipes, then there will be monoculture, and that never thrives. There are countless examples in the history of computers that illustrate this principle. If you want to know why it doesn't work, just observe how decisions are made inside Google. Brin is one of the few people who really could make a difference in the battle for online freedom. I hope he takes the next step and in addition to noticing there's a problem, does something to solve it.

Today, an American electronics company can only be exempt from China’s rare earth export quotas by manufacturing within China. So that’s what most companies, including Apple, are doing. The only other solution is for us to stop consuming so much—an option that people rarely find appealing. Not as appealing as a retina display, at least.

Today, an American electronics company can only be exempt from China’s rare earth export quotas by manufacturing within China. So that’s what most companies, including Apple, are doing. The only other solution is for us to stop consuming so much—an option that people rarely find appealing. Not as appealing as a retina display, at least.

Pick your favorite editor: Marked's flexible Markdown preview will show you the final output of your document as you work, and its writing tools make your life easier from concept to publish.

Classically Trained French Chef Tom Teknos, along with his partners Stavros Adamopoulos & Maurice bring their concept of a brunch cafe to Downtown Detroit. We believe in the importance of revitalizing Downtown, and our customers are an integral part in helping us play our role in the rebirth of this wonderful city. Come join us!

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

Robohash is a easy web service that makes it easy to provide unique, robot/alien/monster/whatever images for any text. Put in any text, such as IP address, email, filename, userid, or whatever else you like, and get back a pretty image for your site.

Robohash is a easy web service that makes it easy to provide unique, robot/alien/monster/whatever images for any text. Put in any text, such as IP address, email, filename, userid, or whatever else you like, and get back a pretty image for your site.

He saved all the videotape he took in October 1985 of his brother running and jumping around their old neighborhood, footage that he rotoscoped into the animations for his Apple II game Prince of Persia. He saved all of the meticulous journals he kept of the production process, documenting each tiny step of the creation of the landmark hit game.

He saved all the videotape he took in October 1985 of his brother running and jumping around their old neighborhood, footage that he rotoscoped into the animations for his Apple II game Prince of Persia. He saved all of the meticulous journals he kept of the production process, documenting each tiny step of the creation of the landmark hit game.

When people create HTTP APIs, one of the common decisions is about what format to use, usually revolving around “JSON or XML?”

The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of parsable metadata about photos such as the camera's settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they don't output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content.

The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of parsable metadata about photos such as the camera's settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they don't output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content.

This is not better than the initial media reports. This is worse. This is an epic textbook in official-violence failure.

Ryan Anson/Bloomberg News Marc Andreessen in 2011. 10:46 a.m. | Updated Added link to Ben Horowitz’s blog post on the subject. 3:53 p.m. | Updated Added comment…

Ryan Anson/Bloomberg News Marc Andreessen in 2011. 10:46 a.m. | Updated Added link to Ben Horowitz’s blog post on the subject. 3:53 p.m. | Updated Added comment…

Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what's interesting, happening, and cool in their focus. Curators tend to have a unique and consistent point of view--providing a reliable context for the content that they discover and organize. To be clear, Pinterest both creates tools to organize the noisy web and, at the same time, creates more instances of information in a different context. So it's both part of the problem, and a solution. The trick is finding the Pinterest pinboards that you like, and tune out the rest.

Making strings in templates localizable is exceptionally easy. Making strings in Python localizable is a little more complicated. The short answer, though, is just wrap the string in _().

"When the consumer is paying for a slice of pizza and given the choice between a bigger slice and a smaller one, it is human nature to want the bigger piece. If you’re an owner of a pizza business, convenience store, the head nutritionist of your school cafeteria, or any other business selling pizza by the slice, you realize that cutting your pizzas into equal slices is very important, by not a simple task."

"When the consumer is paying for a slice of pizza and given the choice between a bigger slice and a smaller one, it is human nature to want the bigger piece. If you’re an owner of a pizza business, convenience store, the head nutritionist of your school cafeteria, or any other business selling pizza by the slice, you realize that cutting your pizzas into equal slices is very important, by not a simple task."

@hotdogsladies: @lmorchard “What’s with all the screaming?”

@sparklebunny: @lmorchard To put it in terms you understand: the opposite of what happened to Rush.

Yesterday, Google+ launched a significant redesign , and in that post, high-up Googler Vic Gundotra wrote that More than 170 million people have upg

Interxion today unveiled “sleeping pods” at its London data center campus, allowing staff to sleep amongst the racks to ensure that the facility will be fully staffed throughout the Games. allowing engineering staff to stay on site 24/7 should congestion on the travel and road networks become too severe, making it difficult for critical staff to travel to and from the site in a timely fashion.

Interxion today unveiled “sleeping pods” at its London data center campus, allowing staff to sleep amongst the racks to ensure that the facility will be fully staffed throughout the Games. allowing engineering staff to stay on site 24/7 should congestion on the travel and road networks become too severe, making it difficult for critical staff to travel to and from the site in a timely fashion.

When people write critically about Facebook, they often say that “you are the product being sold,” but I think that by now we all get that. The digital substance of our friendships belongs to these companies, and they are loath to share it with others. So we build our little content farms within, friending and upthumbing, learning to accept that our new landlords are people who grew up on Power Rangers. This is, after all, the way of our new product-based civilization — in order to participate as a citizen of the social web, you must yourself manufacture content. Progress requires that forms must be filled. Thus it is a critical choice of any adult as to where they will perform their free labor. Tens of millions of people made a decision to spend their time with the simple, mobile photo-sharing application that was not Facebook because they liked its subtle interface and little filters. And so Facebook bought the thing that is hardest to fake. It bought sincerity.

Quicken Loans has started the website www.valleytodetroit.com to promote the Motor City to Yahoo workers axed last week. Quicken’s businesses include mortgages, venture capital and sports graphics.

Quicken Loans has started the website www.valleytodetroit.com to promote the Motor City to Yahoo workers axed last week. Quicken’s businesses include mortgages, venture capital and sports graphics.

The way we got to this point, this place where we’re all friends and don’t tolerate sexist and homophobic behavior, is in no small part thanks to booze. If we want to continue to expand this community and make the rest of the world a more tolerant place we’ll have to continue to value the personal over the professional.

I dissected all of Hitchcock's Rear Window and stiched it back together in After Effects. I stabilized all the shots with camera movement in them. Since everything was filmed from pretty much the same angle I was able to match them into a single panoramic view of the entire backyard without any greater distortions. The order of events stays true to the movie's plot.

I dissected all of Hitchcock's Rear Window and stiched it back together in After Effects. I stabilized all the shots with camera movement in them. Since everything was filmed from pretty much the same angle I was able to match them into a single panoramic view of the entire backyard without any greater distortions. The order of events stays true to the movie's plot.

If there is one place that should be an enjoyable experience to shop, it’s Radio Shack. Where else can you go and find Arduino boards, wire, solder, and light bulbs (and sockets) for every occasion? Damn few, places, that’s for sure. Unfortunately heading into a Radio Shack is always more painful than it should be. Yesterday JoDee and I braved the local Radio Shack to find some flashlight bulbs. We tried Home Depot, but they didn’t have exactly what we wanted. But, nearby was a Radio Shack. JoDee gruntled “they look like they have more phones than bulbs”, but we persisted. We walked in, past the advertising for new phones, phone service, and iPads, over to the parts area to look for the bulbs. We were surrounded by wire, solder, and parts, and intently looking at things not-phone related, when suddenly one of the associates popped into the hallway. “Let me ask you about your phone service”. “And this is why we hate coming to Radio Shack” is what went through my mind, but JoDee quickly retorted “We’d rather you didn’t”. He persisted, but JoDee deftly let him know that this line of questioning would prove futile. One of my big pet peeves with shopping at Radio Shack is that I can’t get in and or out of the store without being pestered about a phone, or some stupid battery bullshit. It’s like going to Game Stop and being asked if I want a warranty on a Nintendo DS cartridge. I get really tired of the up-sell bullshit in these stores. And inevitably, Radio Shack always has some stupid battery club, or other battery-related nonsense going on that they try really, really hard to sucker you into. It’s like the ebb and flow of the tides. And lo, when we proceeded to the check-out: “We’ve got some batteries here that…” God Dammit, NO! No, I don’t want your batteries. No, I don’t need a fucking phone. NO, I don’t need a warranty, NO, I DON’T WANT TO SAVE 10 FUCKING PERCENT BY OPENING A GOD DAMN CREDIT CARD! I just want the items that I came into your store to purchase. I’m perfectly capable of looking at your counter and seeing the packs of AA batteries carefully laid out, looking for a home. I can see quite clearly that you sell cell phones. Every time I go to Radio Shack, I hope that things change, and they don’t try to sell me a phone, or batteries, and every single time I leave Radio Shack, I vow that until they cut out this bullshit, I’ll never go back. I want to love Radio Shack. I want to learn to solder, and wire up all sorts of bizarre little contraptions, and put them in blue boxes to show off to my friends. Maybe it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, and maybe I should just “get over it”. But, as the adage goes: “the customer is always right”. And right now, I’m dreading the next time I go to Radio Shack. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

If there is one place that should be an enjoyable experience to shop, it’s Radio Shack. Where else can you go and find Arduino boards, wire, solder, and light bulbs (and sockets) for every occasion? Damn few, places, that’s for sure. Unfortunately heading into a Radio Shack is always more painful than it should be. Yesterday JoDee and I braved the local Radio Shack to find some flashlight bulbs. We tried Home Depot, but they didn’t have exactly what we wanted. But, nearby was a Radio Shack. JoDee gruntled “they look like they have more phones than bulbs”, but we persisted. We walked in, past the advertising for new phones, phone service, and iPads, over to the parts area to look for the bulbs. We were surrounded by wire, solder, and parts, and intently looking at things not-phone related, when suddenly one of the associates popped into the hallway. “Let me ask you about your phone service”. “And this is why we hate coming to Radio Shack” is what went through my mind, but JoDee quickly retorted “We’d rather you didn’t”. He persisted, but JoDee deftly let him know that this line of questioning would prove futile. One of my big pet peeves with shopping at Radio Shack is that I can’t get in and or out of the store without being pestered about a phone, or some stupid battery bullshit. It’s like going to Game Stop and being asked if I want a warranty on a Nintendo DS cartridge. I get really tired of the up-sell bullshit in these stores. And inevitably, Radio Shack always has some stupid battery club, or other battery-related nonsense going on that they try really, really hard to sucker you into. It’s like the ebb and flow of the tides. And lo, when we proceeded to the check-out: “We’ve got some batteries here that…” God Dammit, NO! No, I don’t want your batteries. No, I don’t need a fucking phone. NO, I don’t need a warranty, NO, I DON’T WANT TO SAVE 10 FUCKING PERCENT BY OPENING A GOD DAMN CREDIT CARD! I just want the items that I came into your store to purchase. I’m perfectly capable of looking at your counter and seeing the packs of AA batteries carefully laid out, looking for a home. I can see quite clearly that you sell cell phones. Every time I go to Radio Shack, I hope that things change, and they don’t try to sell me a phone, or batteries, and every single time I leave Radio Shack, I vow that until they cut out this bullshit, I’ll never go back. I want to love Radio Shack. I want to learn to solder, and wire up all sorts of bizarre little contraptions, and put them in blue boxes to show off to my friends. Maybe it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, and maybe I should just “get over it”. But, as the adage goes: “the customer is always right”. And right now, I’m dreading the next time I go to Radio Shack. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Data migration is a complicated problem. It’s one of those things nobody wants to do, because it’s mostly tedious, not engaging, and also important to get right. Often times you have to compromise. I’ll talk a bit about the history of SUMO’s data, decisions the product and development team have made regarding its migration, and things I’ve learned from the experience.

Data migration is a complicated problem. It’s one of those things nobody wants to do, because it’s mostly tedious, not engaging, and also important to get right. Often times you have to compromise. I’ll talk a bit about the history of SUMO’s data, decisions the product and development team have made regarding its migration, and things I’ve learned from the experience.

The key parts are the get_urls function and the admin_update_feeds view. The get_urls method returns the urls for this admin to which we are adding our custom view. The custom view does the updating of the lifestream feeds and returns the user to the Item model's changelist view. We get the url for that view by calling reverse with the pattern "<namespace>:<app>_<model>_changelist" which in our case is "admin:lifestream_item_changelist" since the django admin uses the admin namespace.

A clever idea, first reported by Gareth a couple years ago: Architects are trying to figure out how to use quadrotors to haul and place individual bricks. The above link is in French; here’s a Google translation. In 2011, Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea launched a pioneering project around training dynamic and robotic procedures applied to architecture. Belonging to the younger generation of architects exploiting the digital tools in the architectural design and construction, Gramazio & Kohler join the engineer Raffaello D’Andrea, whose work concerns the study of algorithms and development of systems autonomous innovation. Together, they hired Flight Assembled Architecture, an architectural research on the potential of a revolutionary assembly tool, revealing joint spatial and material previously unpublished. Flight Assembled Architecture is the first installation entirely by flying robots. Designed as an architectural structure on the scale of a “vertical village” of 600 meters, Assembled Architecture Flight testing a new paradigm of design and manufacturing, through a physical process of automated dynamic training. This project builds on the simultaneous use of multiple mobile agents. Considered as tools for adaptive production, these flying robots are programmed to interact and to capture, transport and assemble the modules to build architectural structures. They synthesize and the pragmatism of Gramazio & Kohler Architecture and visionary approach to Raffaello D’Andrea in engineering dynamics. The FRAC Centre supports this new project, which will then in its collections devoted to experimental architecture. This collaborative project will be exposed only to the FRAC Centre in Orléans. After an initial phase of several days devoted to assembly and assembly by robots flying a model of 6 m high and 3.5 m in diameter – made of polystyrene foam modules 1500 prefabricated – the exhibition will the “megastructure” in its final form, and a film performance and restoring the entire design process. [Via BLDBLOG]

Obviously, "brogrammers" aren't the only ones in our community who enjoy alcohol. Ryan correctly points out that drinking is widespread, yet "brogrammers" are, thankfully, a small though obnoxious minority. So we can ask bigger questions - What is it about alcohol that we like? What does it do to us? Then finally, how should we incorporate it into community events?

Obviously, "brogrammers" aren't the only ones in our community who enjoy alcohol. Ryan correctly points out that drinking is widespread, yet "brogrammers" are, thankfully, a small though obnoxious minority. So we can ask bigger questions - What is it about alcohol that we like? What does it do to us? Then finally, how should we incorporate it into community events?

This stuff just has to be awful. "Each Pocket Shot is sealed in a near unbreakable, flexible, squishable, pocket stuffable pouch making them perfect for active activities, outdoor adventures, and glass restricting venues."

"Talk about being ungrateful. Talk about turning a nice gesture into a media opp for yourself and your agenda."

"Talk about being ungrateful. Talk about turning a nice gesture into a media opp for yourself and your agenda."

Linux Tycoon is the premier Linux Distro Building Simulator game in the universe. (Truth be told: It’s probably the only Linux Distro Building Simulation game in the universe.)

"Without a fully functional system, he said, he found it difficult to navigate normally. He said he fell at least twice in the airport, once passing out after hitting his head on what he described as a pile of fire extinguishers in his way. He boarded the plane in a wheelchair."

Let's keep this short. Too few websites log JavaScript errors. Let's build a simple system to track client-side errors.

Let's keep this short. Too few websites log JavaScript errors. Let's build a simple system to track client-side errors.

Because when I would spend my time flinging zingers at Matt Mullenweg about the merits of Movable Type vs. WordPress, you know who was winning? Mark Fucking Zuckerberg. Facebook won the blogging wars. The web became a more closed place than if either Movable Type or WordPress had evolved into the tool that powered social networking.

When all is said and done, I'd say that Mass Effect 2 wound up being my favorite of the three Mass Effect games. It wasn't so much the story, the characters, or the gameplay that put it over the top—it was the TV show-like structure.

What the Betamax Case Teaches Us About Readability The Betamax SL6500! I totally had this model!!! Several really smart people in our industry are arguing very…

Haven’t most April fools jokes got a bit silly lately? They’re more just funny than actually fooling you. This year, I thought I’d raise the bar with a completely fake MMO Asteroids, but I could never imagine so many of you would be taken in. I’m so sorry.

Haven’t most April fools jokes got a bit silly lately? They’re more just funny than actually fooling you. This year, I thought I’d raise the bar with a completely fake MMO Asteroids, but I could never imagine so many of you would be taken in. I’m so sorry.

It's a presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers and inspired by the idea behind prezi.com.

Favorite: Mass Effect 3 - Ending Movie Comparison - All the Colors, by Crosscade Watch and compare the various ending movies of Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3's ending movies reuse most of the same movie clips outright or are just a recolored version. I've pieced together the endings so that the reused clips run side by side to empathize how similar they are. From Left to Right, the endings are as follows: Destroy Good, Destroy Bad, Destroy Vaporization Control Good, Control Bad Synergy Good (there is no bad version of this) Bioware's poor attempt at an ending to this outstanding series is a huge let down. It is almost universally agreed by gamers that the endings are not consistent with or are worthy ending to the Mass Effect Trilogy. Let Bioware know that they need to fix this lazy ending. An interesting read on how the ending let down the fans: http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/ Music: Mass Effect 1 - Victory Mass Effect 1 - Vigil

Favorite: Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong. - Mordin Solus Death, by Ilidor9 The title says all. Enjoy ;) (See it on 1080p) If you want to see a very goog ending of Mass Effect 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtagiqfhvI Se vuoi vedere una fantastica ending di Mass Effect 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtagiqfhvI

The Stair of the Dog 2022 is a prototype stairlift created by pet and home insurance company More Th>n to highlight the issue of pet obesity. According to Daily Mail, More Th>n predicts “that over half of the nations dogs will be overweight by 2022.” via Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome images via Daily Mail

The Stair of the Dog 2022 is a prototype stairlift created by pet and home insurance company More Th>n to highlight the issue of pet obesity. According to Daily Mail, More Th>n predicts “that over half of the nations dogs will be overweight by 2022.” via Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome images via Daily Mail

Here's a rare complete photographic catalog of Uzay, the Turkish bootleg Star Wars figurines, which are delightfully shonky and off-model. No line of unlicensed Star Wars figures is as sought after as the Turkish line known as Uzay. Produced sometime in the latter part of the 1980s, the primary charm of the Uzay figures lies in their blister card art; not only are the card images incredibly cheesy, at their best they border on the psychadelic. To some collectors, a figure like the Imperial Gunner, the blister card of which shows the figure standing beside a cleverly-photographed calculator, is just too goofy to resist. And don't get me started on the Chewbacca blister. Do you think they really have gourds on Kashyyyk? Trying to complete a set of Uzay carded figures is a daunting task; it might even be impossible. For one thing, the figures are exceedingly rare. Although certain figures, such as the AT-AT Driver and Stormtrooper, have turned up on the collector's market with some degree of frequency, others, among them the mysterious Head Man figure, are thought to be one-of-a-kind pieces....and their owners are often not easily persuaded to sell. Additionally, the packages of these figures are quite fragile; their bubbles, for instance, are made from a very weak and brittle plastic, which often breaks given the slightest abuse. In short, if you're a collector who wants to start collecting Uzay figures, you'd better be prepared to 1) spend a lot of money, and 2) accept lesser-condition pieces when the situation necessitates it. But don't worry, such concessions are made in the interest of collecting high quality, beautiful merchandise, right? Um...right? The Comprehensive Guide to Uzay Carded Figures (via IZ Reloaded)

Writing for Screen Trade Magazine Joe Paletta, CEO of Spotlight Theaters, announces that cinemas will begin to eliminate the premium charges on 3D movies and raise the prices of 2D movies to make up the difference. This gives me the rage. 3D movies give me a headache and eye-strain, and I actively avoid them. I hate the idea that I'd be charged a premium on the few 2D movies I can find in order to subsidize 3D screenings. As Roger Ebert put it, "Oh, no! In a move to recoup their unwise investment in 3D, theaters discuss, and I quote, 'patrons will have a single price for both 2D and 3D films. 2D prices will increase and 3D prices will decrease.' In other words, punishing those who dislike 3D." Among the bigger changes will probably see the 3D-upcharge disappear. 3D charges will help increase the overall ticket-price but, as an industry, I think we’ll see a blend begin to emerge in 2012, where patrons will have a single price for both 2D and 3D films. 2D prices will increase and 3D prices will decrease. Joe Paletta - screentrade (Image: 3D glasses, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mattneale's photostream)