have browser, will travel

links for 2008-05-14

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:35:50 GMT

MUTO - An Ambiguous Animation Painted on Public Walls

Must see.

(tags: animation graffiti art video cool)
Erlang does have shared memory

(tags: erlang programming concurrency mnesia ets shared-memory)

Already fit person wants to get fitter using Wii Fit

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:51:36 GMT

Engadget: Wii Fit: the 30 day test starts today

"I'm not exactly known for my physical coordination, and in school I always came pretty close to flunking PE -- so really, I'm kind of Nintendo's ideal customer."

This guy is six feet fall, 174.5 pounds. Put simply, he's scrawny. His goal is to lose five pounds in a month using Wii Fit. No, I don't think he's Nintendo's ideal customer.

How about someone who's actually... I dunno.... NOT fit?

links for 2008-05-10

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:34:25 GMT

If You Aren’t Using Firefox Smart Keywords, You Aren’t Smart (Or A Keyword)

(tags: firefox extensions keywords productivity search tips)
Hidden OS X feature: Twitter integration

Apparently there's a "Twitterverse" screen saver example in the developer tool examples. It's a Quartz Composer file. Quartz Composer is one of the most amazing technologies I've ever seen, I wish I had time to learn more of it.

(tags: quartz qtz quartzcomposer twitter screensaver leopard macosx examples programming)

Obituary: Tony Eng lived a magical life

Fri, 09 May 2008 06:50:04 GMT

Victoria Times Colonist: Obituary: Tony Eng lived a magical life

"A meeting of the Victoria Magic Circle last night turned into a memorial for one of its most accomplished members, Tony Eng, who died Sunday at the age of 61."

So sad. :-(

Tony is a legend in Victoria. I went to school with one of his nephews (if I rembember correctly, it might have been his son, but I'm not 100% sure) and I remember going to Tony's Trick & Joke shop downtown with my him to buy tricks.

The one I remember most vividly was the little plastic pellets that were meant to go in cigarettes to give the smoker a terrible taste. I put them in my mom's cigarettes when I was about 14 or so... man, did I get in trouble! Mom said her taste was screwed up for weeks, LOL!. I guess that was my guerilla warfare tactic for getting Mom to stop smoking at the time. ;-) Didn't work then, but she did eventually stop.

R.I.P. Tony, you were amazing, and we'll miss you.

links for 2008-05-09

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:40:34 GMT

A 17-year-old Ottawa high school student invents way to identify and cure the flu.

(tags: flu science health canada students competition)

What have we become?

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:46:28 GMT

Yahoo! News: Myanmar survivors emerge desperate for help

"An AFP reporter who reached the remote southern delta hardest hit by the storm, which left more than 60,000 dead or missing, said there was virtually no food or fresh water in this ruined town blanketed by the stench of death."

Where is the international appeal for help for Myanmar? When the tsunamis hit in December 2004, the media attention was huge and instant, and the international aid was just as big. I remember Apple's home page had a big Red Cross symbol on it appealing for its customers to donate. Amazon.com was also helping collect donations. Right now neither company's site has any reference to this event.

Now there are 60,000, maybe 100,000 dead in Myanmar and nobody is talking about it. Have we become so desensitized to human tragedy that even something of this scale can cause the world to shrug its shoulders and carry on with whatever they were doing?

Do I have to say it... this is at least twenty 9/11s, in terms of death-toll?

links for 2008-05-07

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:35:19 GMT

Who Will Tell the People?

(tags: politics america economy technology education nytimes)
Oleg's great way of explaining delimited continuations

(tags: programming continuations)
Continuations in the JVM

(tags: java continuations jvm programming)
A Comment on “Multilanguage Programming”

(tags: languages programming philosophy ide tools)
Phun - 2D physics sandbox

(tags: design education phun game science physics)
An Under-Appreciated Fact: We Don't Know How We Program

(tags: programming productivity process management)
Distributed programming with Jabber and EventMachine

(tags: eventmachine xmpp distributed ruby jabber programming erlang)
Rule 110

"The Rule 110 cellular automaton (often simply Rule 110) is a one-dimensional two-state cellular automaton"

(tags: cellular automata theory turing computation programming research)
Erlang Template Engine (Prototype)

(tags: erlang programming template)
Codeholic's Codex: Reluctant Sorting Algorithms

(tags: algorithms erlang programming sorting)
Announcing Teh - the minimalist blog tool using Google App Engine

(tags: appengine programming python teh blog)
The Power of the JVM

(tags: java jvm groovy jruby programming bytecode optimization compiler dynamic)
11.4 Mergesort (parallel aglorithm)

(tags: programming parallel algorithms hypercube merge sorting mergesort)
For all you know, it's just another Java library

(tags: advocacy scala programming java lift fud)
Free Chapter from Douglas Crockford’s “JavaScript: The Good Parts”

(tags: books free javascript programming)
Ruby has a distribution problem

(tags: ruby programming deployment gems)
The Programming Languages Zoo

(tags: languages programming education ocaml compiler optimization)
Sneaking Ruby Through Google App Engine (and Other Strictly Python Places)

(tags: appengine bytecode compiler programming python ruby)
EazyErl ! Learn erlang the easy way !

(tags: erlang blog programming tutorial)
FATPETS: Fault Tolerant Parallel Erlang TCP/IP Stack

(tags: concurrency erlang parallel tcp programming networking)
Nokia Job posting: Software Engineer-SAN000000BL

Nokia is looking for a talented Server Software Engineer with strong C++ and/or Erlang skills to help develop our next-generation mobile gaming platform.

(tags: erlang server c++ games programming jobs)
UTF8 For Erlang

(tags: encoding erlang unicode utf8 programming)
Why OO Sucks

(tags: advocacy oop programming philosophy armstrong erlang)
Princeton University - Melting defects could lead to smaller, more powerful microchips

(tags: hardware microchips heating nanotech defects laser)

Back up and running, basically

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:14:50 GMT

I woke up with a resurgent head/chest cold this morning. That's what I get for going on the ice four times with a cold I kept telling myself was 'finished'.

Today I installed the other software I needed on my MBP and restored my data from the backup. The new drive is extremely fast, I'm really happy with it.

I think I'm going to set up rsync backups again. That's what I used for backups before Leopard. I'll probably do Time Machine backups too, because I like the simplicity of its interface for restoring particular files, but based on what I've heard from friends, I don't trust it for a full system restore.

It's nice to have my environment back up and running: Mail, iCal, Address Book, Firefox, and at the moment, Eclipse.

I haven't re-installed all the apps I use regularly yet, I'll install those on an as-needed basis.

Watching Dallas vs. San Jose, installing software

Mon, 05 May 2008 03:10:20 GMT

Check out my Twitter feed for info about my experience with backing up my machine.... short version: backup to USB2 drive failed at about 90% completion after over 10 hours of copying, bought a FireWire 800 drive and finished the backup and verify in 1.5 hours.

I installed Mac OS X this afternoon after finishing the backup, and after a busy day I'm finally installing software. I have installed Xcode/WO, iWork, iLife, and finished all the software updates. Still have to install Office, CS3 and all my other apps, as well as my documents/media.

I'm doing all this while watching the marathon Dallas vs. San Jose game on TSN. It's now intermission between the 3rd and 4th overtime periods. Wow, and I was feeling sorry for myself being on the ice for 4 of Cyan's hockey practices this weekend. Not anymore!

Re: Spam bounces 'o plenty

Sun, 04 May 2008 17:50:13 GMT

Here's a new term I hadn't heard before: "Backscattering". That's what the pros call it when you get mail delivery failure messages as a result of your email address being used in spam's "From:" header...

PC World, May 2, 2008: 100 E-mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered.

Bastards. Someone remind me, spammers have no human rights protection, yes? They're clearly enemy combatants, just waiting for their own comfy cot at Gitmo.

Spam bounces 'o plenty

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:11:41 GMT

I've got dozens of "Mail delivery failed" messages in my Inbox this morning, looks like a spammer decided to use my email address as the "From:" address. Gee, thanks.