2008 Oct 22, 12:54
Electronic devices shouldn't fail, they should just sit wherever I place them and work forever. A while back my home web server started failing so I moved over to a real web hosting service. And
this was the home web server I built from pieces Eric gave me after my previous one died during the big power failure the year before. The power socket on my old laptop has come undone from the
motherboard so that it can no longer be powered. Just a week or two ago my Xbox 360 stopped displaying video. The CPU fan on my media center died. I also want to put my camera and GPS in this list,
but the camera died due to accidentally turning on in my pocket and the GPS was stolen so those aren't the devices just arbitrarily failing.
boring personal complaining nontechnical 2008 Oct 13, 2:35"The robotics community outdid itself once again at DARPA's 2007 Urban Challenge. This contest featured all the challenges of the original Grand Challenge, along with a few new ones: the vehicles
navigated a simulated urban environment and were required to interact with human-driven vehicles while obeying all traffic laws. Six teams successfully completed the course, with Boss, a car
developed at Carnegie Mellon, claiming the prize." Sure, sure but when will they fly?
article robot car science technology transportation ai 2008 Oct 11, 12:44GPL Java Prolog library. "tuProlog is a Java-based light-weight Prolog for Internet applications and infrastructures."
development java language jvm prolog tuprolog logic programming 2008 Oct 5, 9:17
Sarah asked me if I knew of a syntax highlighter for the QuickBase formula language which she uses at work. I couldn't find one but thought it might be fun to make a QuickBase Formula syntax highlighter based on the QuickBase help's
description of the formula syntax. Thankfully the language is relatively simple since my skills with ANTLR, the parser generator, are rusty now and I've only
used it previously for personal projects (like Javaish, the ridiculous Java based shell idea I had).
With the help of some great ANTLR examples and an ANTLR cheat
sheet I was able to come up with the grammar that parses the QuickBase Formula syntax and prints out the same formula marked up with HTML SPAN tags and various CSS classes. ANTLR produces the
parser in Java which I wrapped up in an applet, put in a jar, and embedded in an HTML page. The script in that page runs user input through the applet's parser and sticks the output at the bottom
of the page with appropriate CSS rules to highlight and print the formula in a pretty fashion.
What I learned:
- I didn't realize that Java applets are easy to use via script in an HTML page. In the JavaScript I
can simply refer to publicly exposed methods on the applet and run JavaScript strings through them. It makes for a great combination: do the heavy coding in Java and do the UI in HTML. I may end up
doing this again in the future.
- I love ANTLRWorks, the ANTLR IDE, that didn't exist the last time I used ANTLR. It tells you about issues with your grammar as you create it,
lets you easily debug the grammar running it forwards and backwards, display parse trees, and other useful things.
java technical programming quickbase language antlr antlrworks 2008 Oct 2, 9:37Cool graphical ANTLR IDE! They didn't have this the last time I used ANTLR. "ANTLRWorks is a novel grammar development environment for ANTLR v3 grammars written by Jean Bovet (with suggested use
cases from Terence Parr). It combines an excellent grammar-aware editor with an interpreter for rapid prototyping and a language-agnostic debugger for isolating grammar errors. ANTLRWorks helps
eliminate grammar nondeterminisms, one of the most difficult problems for beginners and experts alike, by highlighting nondeterministic paths in the syntax diagram associated with a grammar."
antlr ide graph grammar tool free download development opensource java 2008 Oct 1, 1:08A weekly summary of the going-ons in the WHATWG usually on the topic of squabbles in HTML5 esp. what to do about the alt attribute in the img tag. Interesting stuff on charsets.
development software whatwg html5 html specification feed rss user-agent w3c 2008 Sep 16, 7:54
I just upgraded to the Zune 3.0 software which includes games and purchasing music on the Zune via WiFi
and once again I'm thrilled that the new firmware is available for old
Zunes like mine. Rooting around looking at the new features I noticed Zune Badges for
the first time. They're like Xbox Achievements, for example I have a Pixies Silver Artist Power Listener award for listening to the Pixies over 1000 times. I know its ridiculous but I like it, and
now I want achievements for everything.
Achievements everywhere would require more developments in self-tracking. Self-trackers, folks who keep statistics on exactly when and what they eat, when and how much they exercise, anything one
may track about one's self, were the topic of a Kevin Kelly Quantified Self blog post (also check out Cory Doctorow's SF
short story The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away featuring a colony of self-trackers).
For someone like me with a medium length attention span the data collection needs to be completely automatic or I will lose interest and stop collecting within a week. For instance, Nike iPod shoes that keep track of how many steps the wearer takes. I'll also need software to analyze, display, and share this data on a website like
Mycrocosm. I don't want to have to spend extreme amounts of time to create something as wonderful as the Feltron
Report (check out his statistic on how many daily measurements he takes for the report). Once we have the data we can give out achievements for everything!
Achievements for Everyday Life
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Carnivore
Eat at least ten different kinds of animals.
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Make Friends
Meet at least 10% of the residents in your home town.
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Globetrotter
Visit a city in every country.
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You're Old
Survive at least 80 years of life.
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Of course none of the above is practical yet, but how about Delicious achievements based on the public Delicious feeds? That should be doable...
self-tracking data achievements 2008 Sep 3, 12:44This is the public site for logging and tracking IE8 Beta bugs. Read access is available to all. Write access requires acceptance into the Technical Beta program. Check the blog for info on joining
that.
ie blog ie8 bug development microsoft 2008 Sep 3, 9:49Notes on how COM classes are registered on 64bit versions of Windows. Whole swaths of the registry (among other things) are redirected to a subnode named Wow6432Node when you're a 32bit process
running on a 64bit Windows.
msdn registry development microsoft 64bit 2008 Aug 29, 10:31Differences between Microsoft's JScript and the ES3 standard with example output from all major browsers on each point.
microsoft development jscript javascript standard reference programming browser ie8 es3 compatibility 2008 Aug 26, 10:03"A new system devised by Carnegie Mellon University researchers aims to thwart man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks by providing a way to verify the authenticity of self-signed certificates. The system,
which is called Perspectives, uses a distributed network of "notary" servers to evaluate the public key of a target destination so that its validity can be ascertained."
security ssl pki certificate man-in-the-middle 2008 Aug 25, 11:39"The Seattle Municipal Archives documents the history, development, and activities of the agencies and elected officials of the City of Seattle. Strengths of the records include those documenting
engineering, parks, urban planning, the legislative process and elected officials. Holdings include over 6,000 cubic feet of textual records; 3,000 maps and drawings, 3,000 audiotapes; hundreds of
hours of motion picture film; and over 1.5 million photographic images of City projects and personnel."
via:swannman photo flickr seattle history public-domain 2008 Aug 21, 11:24
I had an idea for a Facebook app the other day. I wondered who actually looked at my profile and thought I could create a Facebook app that would record this information and display it. When I
talked to Vishu though he said that this wasn't something that Facebook would be too happy with. Indeed the Platform
Policy explicitly disallows this in section 2.8. This explained why the app didn't already exist. Its probably for the best since everyone assumes they can anonymously view Facebook profiles
and would be irritated if that weren't the case.
On the topic of assumed anonymity, check out this article on the aggregation and selling off of your cell phone data including your physical
location.
technical facebook privacy cellphone extension 2008 Aug 19, 4:45Finally, .NET executables from a share! =)
dotnet development microsoft blog article 2008 Jun 26, 5:43A bit of history on US phone numbers from the source: "AT&T developed the North American Numbering Plan in 1947 to simplify and facilitate direct dialing of long distance calls. Implementation of
the plan began in 1951."
phone att phone-numbers reference 2008 Jun 25, 2:50A few interesting interface ideas for a dual-display reading device.
video book interface ui 2008 Jun 25, 11:59Cool hack but I'd be irritated if my photos we're messed up. "a camera-like device that implants messages in a sub-visible spectrum on its object. These messages are invisible to the naked eye, but
are clearly visible when photographed. "
video photography humor camera hack 2008 Jun 24, 9:57
sequelguy posted a photo:
A WWII poster proclaims: "Save to beat the devil! Buy vicotry bonds" depicting a stylized Hitler as the devil looking concerned.
canada art poster hitler wwii victoria devil royalbritishcolumbiamuseum 2008 Jun 12, 3:24A nice in browser regex tester. Give a sample string and a regex and the matches are highlighted.
regex javascript programming development 2008 Jun 10, 4:52"...we were able to generate hundreds of real DMCA takedown notices for ... nonsense devices including several printers and a (non-NAT) wireless access point."
security bittorrent copyright dmca legal mpaa piracy printer research riaa washington
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