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Who you calling boring?

2009 Jun 2, 4:00"A notice was sent out by the real estate department with the provocative subject line Campus notification - Building 7: Marking Boring Locations."PermalinkCommentshumor english language boring

What happened to me and the new girl (or: "The girl who cried Webmaster") - The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

2009 Jun 1, 2:03Wow, read this without expectations of what its about. This is the second identity-theft/Internet/personal-relationships story I've read. It makes me think we need VeriSign to do cert verification for personal relationships but then I must remind myself that this must not be very common...PermalinkCommentsvia:swannman identity identity-theft story psychology web blog joey-devilla

Persuading Microsoft to Implement Canvas - Processing.js Blog

2009 May 27, 3:01"The Microsoft Connect service is a web-platform for communication between Microsoft Software Engineers and their developer community... Unfortunately the sign-up and feature request process is a little confusing, and long-winded, so I have put together a guide to help people get to the right place."PermalinkCommentsmicrosoft internet ie ie8 ie9 html5 canvas humor reference screenshot

Data.gov: Unlocking the Federal Filing Cabinets - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

2009 May 26, 11:28"But Data.gov is different. It is primarily for machines, not people, at least as a first step. It is a catalog of various sets of data from government agencies. And the idea is to offer the data in one of several standardized formats, ranging from a simple text file that can be read by a spreadsheet program to the XML format widely used these days for the exchange of information between Web services. Other data is presented in formats that are meant to feed into mapping programs."PermalinkCommentsdata nytimes xml government

An Extraordinary Home. This 3 ++ bedroom 2.5 bathroom Single Family located at 601 Dolores Street, Mission Dolores, San Francisco, California is presented by John L. Woodruff III & Marcus Miller, MA Realtor/Broker Associates of Hill & Co. Real Estate.

2009 May 19, 1:43Lovely, although a bit out of my price range. "Formerly the Golden Gate Lutheran Church, this stunning Gothic Revival style building is now one of the most extraordinary and largest single family homes in San Francisco."PermalinkCommentsfor:hellosarah photo house home church california san-francisco flickr slideshow via:boingboing church-home

Joho the Blog - [berkman] Kenneth Crews on academic copyright

2009 May 13, 10:17"Harvard's Office for Scholarly Communication has brought Kenneth Crews of Columbia Law School to talk about "Protecting Your Scholarship: Copyrights, Publication Agreements, and Open Access.""PermalinkCommentsharvard kenneth-crews berkman david-weinberger blog copyright talk live-blog

HTML 5 - Links - Link Types

2009 May 4, 12:06"The following table summarizes the link types that are defined by this specification. This table is non-normative; the actual definitions for the link types are given in the next few sections."PermalinkCommentshtml html5 w3c link reference standard url uri

Category:Astronomical observatories in Washington (U.S. state) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2009 May 3, 8:07Wikipedia's list of observatories in Washington.PermalinkCommentswikipedia list todo observatory washington tourist

Paintmap | Painting the world

2009 May 3, 4:45Google Maps mashup that maps the real world locations featured in famous paintings.PermalinkCommentsvia:mnot painting art google mashup map

Nedroid Picture Diary - party cat

2009 May 3, 4:32Be sure to start with the first one! Vaguely reminds me of Slurms McKenzie, the original party worm.PermalinkCommentshumor web cat cute comic party party-cat via:mattb

InfoQ: HTTP Status Report

2009 Apr 29, 12:34"In this presentation, recorded at QCon San Francisco 2008, HTTPbis WG chair Mark Nottingham gives an update on the current status of the HTTP protocol in the wild, and the ongoing work to clarify the HTTP specification."PermalinkCommentshttp httpbis protocol ietf reference video authentication cookie uri url tcp sctp mark-nottingham via:ericlaw

Penny Arcade! - Further Education

2009 Apr 27, 3:47FYI: the official title of the 'backslash' is 'reverse-solidus', according to Unicode, ISO 10646, etc. Much cooler name IMO.PermalinkCommentspunctuation comic humor penny-arcade reverse-solidus back-slash

stamen design | big ideas worth pursuing

2009 Apr 23, 4:46Some lovely data visualizations. Is their Crimespotting visualization supposed to look like the map interface from GTA3SA? "Since 2001, Stamen has developed a reputation for beautiful and technologically sophisticated projects in a diverse range of commercial and cultural settings."PermalinkCommentsblog web art visualization information interactive interface portfolio mashup

Gravatar - Globally Recognized Avatars

2009 Apr 20, 3:37Web service that hosts avatar images for things like blog comments. The image is ID'ed by a hash of the user's email address. Auto generated or if the user signs up, the image can be whatever they upload. Lots of plugins for different blogging platforms.PermalinkCommentsblog web photo avatar image authentication identity icon hash

Bunny Identity Theft

2009 Apr 13, 1:11These have been popping up all over the internet, but I just had to share them with you in time for Easter. I'll take one of each in my Easter basket!PermalinkCommentscute cat bunny easter photo for:hellosarah

ioanghip - Tweeting Cat Door

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"PermalinkCommentsrfid twitter cat humor programming geek diy automation

Flickr Visual Search in IE8

2009 Apr 10, 9:48

A while ago I promised to say how an xsltproc Meddler script would be useful and the general answer is its useful for hooking up a client application that wants data from the web in a particular XML format and the data is available on the web but in another XML format. The specific case for this post is a Flickr Search service that includes IE8 Visual Search Suggestions. IE8 wants the Visual Search Suggestions XML format and Flickr gives out search data in their Flickr web API XML format.

So I wrote an XSLT to convert from Flickr Search XML to Visual Suggestions XML and used my xsltproc Meddler script to actually apply this xslt.

After getting this all working I've placed the result in two places: (1) I've updated the xsltproc Meddler script to include this XSLT and an XML file to install it as a search provider - although you'll need to edit the XML to include your own Flickr API key. (2) I've created a service for this so you can just install the Flickr search provider if you're interested in having the functionality and don't care about the implementation. Additionally, to the search provider I've added accelerator preview support to show the Flickr slideshow which I think looks snazzy.

Doing a quick search for this it looks like there's at least one other such implementation, but mine has the distinction of being done through XSLT which I provide, updated XML namespaces to work with the released version of IE8, and I made it so you know its good.

PermalinkCommentsmeddler xml ie8 xslt flickr technical boring search suggestions

Awesome Spokesmen Billy Mays and Vince Offer

2009 Apr 8, 4:06
Vince Offer photo from onebutan-iphoneBilly Mays photo from onebutan-iphone

There can be no doubt that infomercial pitchmen Billy Mays and Vince Offer are awesome, but how can I decide which is my favorite?

Infomercial Performance.
Among other things they sell Zorbeez and ShamWow respectively, both of which are absorbant towels so first up I can get a somewhat apples-to-apples comparison on informercials for comparable products. Thankfully someone has created a Vince Offer vs Billy Mays youtube video featuring these informercials.

Billy has an upbeat yell to everything he says while Vince has an endearing condescension to his "You followin' me camera guy?" In the end I must give this one to Vince Offer.

Extracurriculars.
Billy Mays has a new show Pitchmen on the Discovery Channel, a reality show involving folks pitching inventions to the pitchmen Billy Mays and someone else. Vince Offer was arrested for assaulting a prostitute. A clear win for Billy.
Intra-pitchman Interactions.
Billy has challenged Vince to a pitchman-off which on the surface sounds like a point for Billy, but if you listen to the challenge Billy says that Vince attempted to extend the olive branch. Billy Mays calls out Vince on the Adam Corolla Show
PermalinkCommentspersonal2 infomercial stupid vince offer billy mays

The Old New Thing : Clap and the filter graph claps with you

2009 Apr 7, 12:45"First, you started up the application and picked a video clip. The video clip just sat there. As you started clapping, the video clip started playing. If you clapped at about 80 beats per minute, the video clip played at its normal speed. If you clapped faster, the video clip ran faster. If you clapped slower, the video clip ran slower. If you stopped clapping, the video clip stopped. It was freaky cool. Totally useless, but freaky cool."PermalinkCommentshumor clap video raymond-chen filter-graph reference-clock

Mark Finkle's Weblog - Firefox 3 - Web Protocol Handlers

2009 Apr 7, 12:12HTML5's registerProtocolHandler seems to come from a cool FireFox 3 feature: "With web protocol handlers, the web application can register the specific protocol it wants to handle. Firefox will then prompt the user to choose which of the registered applications (web or desktop) it should use to handle the action. Any protocol, real or imaginary, can be used - mailto: is only one example, webcal:, tel: and fax: are others."PermalinkCommentsfirefox uri scheme protocol mozilla html5 registerProtocolHandler
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