2009 Jun 22, 3:12HTML5's mime-sniffing is getting moved to an IETF doc: "Many web servers supply incorrect Content-Type headers with their HTTP responses. In order to be compatible with these servers, user agents
must consider the content of HTTP responses as well as the Content-Type header when determining the effective media type of the response. This document describes an algorithm for determining the
effective media type of HTTP responses that balances security and compatibility considerations."mimemime-sniffingietfhttpw3chtml5technical
The weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the
new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my
new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do
more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep
her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!
While at Home Depot I had trouble finding what I was actually looking for, but I did find everything I needed to terminate the Cat5e cables that are wired in the house. Each room has a wall plate
with two RJ45 sockets, both sockets wired to Cat5e cable. One of the cables per plate was already hooked up to a standard phone service punchdown board and the other cables per plate were all
hanging unterminated next to the punchdown board. So now I've terminated them all with RJ45 connectors and hooked them up to my hub, wireless router, cable modem, etc. I had the same sort of fun
setting all that up as I did playing with model train sets as a child. Hopefully no therapy will be required to figure out why that is.
2009 Jun 12, 9:16"This ad from the March 9, 1931 Simpson's Leader-Times (Kittanning, PA) is in no way subtle. The consequences of using recorded music at theatre performances rather than live musicians are, "Monotony
in the theatre - corruption of taste - destruction of art." Yikes."via:ethan_t_heinmusicadvertisingtechnologyrobotcopyright
2009 Jun 12, 9:02"Because linking to sources and resources is the key gesture to being a citizen of the Web and not just a product on the Web...If, on the other hand, you want to embrace the traits that make blogs,
Twitter, and so many other online communication tools a vital part of the daily life of your readers, your news site shouldn't feel like an endpoint in the conversation. It should feel like the
beginning."via:sambrookjournalismnewsinternetwebarticlelink
2009 Jun 8, 3:40I didn't hear about this at the time, but a sixth Hitchhikers Guide novel will be written by Eoin Colfer. This article has some quotes from Eoin about it and big-shoe filling is addressed. Also in
the article is a clip of the voice actor of Arthur Dent from the radio series as Arthur Dent complaining about being brought back to life that had been played on BBC Radio.hhgttgdouglas-adamseoin-colferand-another-thingbooknewsaudio
2009 Jun 4, 11:08"For our latest mission, Agent Lathan gave out 2,000 high fives by standing next to a subway escalator during the morning rush. Five additional agents spread out along the adjacent stairs, holding
signs that prepared commuters for the upcoming high five fun."humorimprov-everywherehigh-fiveescalatorvideoyoutubenycsubway
2009 Jun 3, 3:40The New Super Mario Bros for the Wii looks cool. I always wanted the multiplayer featured here in the previous games.for:hellosarahmariowiinintendovideovideogame
I watched the new Star Trek movie Thursday morning, along with many others who work on Windows. Microsoft rented out a theater and played the movie on all screens. I greatly enjoyed the movie!
Spoilers follow... I'm obviously not the biggest Star Trek nerd (or at least TOS nerd) since I didn't even pick up on the fact that Kirk's dad being dead was a discrepancy from the TV series. I
only figured out the alternate time-line stuff when they killed most of the Vulcans. I was just surprised they didn't set right what once went wrong by the end of the movie with some more time
travel magic to bring back Vulcan. On that note, I'm pretty sure the Spock-Spock conversation at the end, is Nimoy Spock sending Sylar Spock off to school so that Nimoy Spock can get freaky
repopulating the Vulcan race. Although at first after his 'two places at once' comment I thought he was saying... something else. Also, was the main evil guy a random miner turned psycho? And his
crazy looking spaceship that destroys the Federation fleet was just a mining vessel from the future? Once they invent time travel anybody can get drunk, go back in time, and conquer Earth.
2009 May 6, 12:56Time lapse photography from the perspective of a large ship at night in Texas. "The camera was fastened to an outside rail and set to take a photo every six seconds. Quicktime then assembled the
photos into a .mov file that plays back at 12 frames per second. So, one minute of movie time represents 72 minutes of trip time on the channel. The first half begins just below the Port of Houston
Authority Turning Basin (the very end of the channel) and continues down to Green's Bayou."flickrvideophotographytravelcameratexasshipboat
Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to
watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share
movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.
If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and
writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and
reality.
I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.
A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high
score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the
villain.
2009 Apr 15, 7:33The emulator behind those cool script based Mario hacks. "FCEUX is a cross platform, NTSC and PAL Famicom/NES emulator that ... gives the best of all worlds for the casual player, the ROM-hacking
community, Lua Scripters, and the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Community."emulatornintendovideogamesoftwareprogramminggame
2009 Apr 15, 7:30Another cool Mario hack via some sort of awesome emulator: "...the FCEUX emulator includes a second LUA script that turns Super Mario Bros. 3 into the DS game Nintendo never made. The hack disables
direct control of Mario completely, and only allows you to manipulate him (and protect him from the rest of the world) via mouse-drawn lines ala the DS's Kirby Canvas Curse and Atari's The Chase."gamevideomariosmb3videogameemulator
2009 Apr 13, 12:20Cat door that opens only for the owner's cat's collars containing particular RFID tags. When opened a photo is snapped and twittered. "Best use of Twitter, the Tweeting Cat Door"rfidtwittercathumorprogramminggeekdiyautomation
2009 Apr 7, 1:59A URL shortening service that tries to find the normal form (which hopefully translates to shorter in length) of a URL via
via:connollytinyurlcanonicalnormalizeuriurl
This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of
magnitude less time than what I spent on the Baroque
Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain
macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not
exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.
On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated
into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long
out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description
of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.
Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft
horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a
government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.
Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a
different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard
series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in
Bob's universe.
The weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the
new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my
new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do
more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep
her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!
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