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Voices without Votes | Americans vote. The world speaks.

2008 Sep 8, 10:23"Voices without Votes opens a window on what non-Americans are saying in blogs and citizen media about US foreign policy and the 2008 presidential elections."PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook vote politics government blog

Studio Walljump Announces Liight For WiiWare - WiiWare World

2008 Sep 5, 1:56This is the game from the same person I linked to previously who has a son named Link: "I'm very excited to finally announce our first game, Liight, for WiiWare! So... what is it? Liight is a puzzle solving game where the pieces are colored lights and the goal is to make cool music! Anyone can play! Just illuminate all the targets in each puzzle with light of the matching color... but it's not always so easy! You'll have to mix colors, cast shadows and make the most of your limited resources to solve these brain teasers. Solve 100 challenging puzzles! Create your own puzzles, and Share them with your friends via WiiConnect24. Host a Contest to see who can solve your puzzle the fastest. If you're ready, take on Nonstop mode, a whole new way to play where arcade-style scoring meets split-second strategy!"PermalinkCommentsliight game videogame nintendo wii wiiware

Internet Explorer Beta Feedback

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.PermalinkCommentsie blog ie8 bug development microsoft

Registry Reflection (Windows)

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.PermalinkCommentsmsdn registry development microsoft 64bit

INTOURIST Soviet Union Russia Labels - a set on Flickr

2008 Aug 29, 10:44Cool 30's Soviet Union tourist brochure logos and designs. "Intourist was renowned as the official state travel agency of the Soviet Union. It was founded in 1929 by Joseph Stalin and was responsible for managing the great majority of foreigners' access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union. It grew into one of the largest tourism organizations in the world, with a network embracing banks, hotels, and money exchanges. Some of the best Intourist labels and brochures produced during the 1930's were designed by A. Selensky. Some of the labels in this set are signed by him, including a rare constructivist style travel brochure I have included as well."PermalinkCommentsflickr photo propaganda graphic russia history design

JScript Deviations from ES3

2008 Aug 29, 10:31Differences between Microsoft's JScript and the ES3 standard with example output from all major browsers on each point.PermalinkCommentsmicrosoft development jscript javascript standard reference programming browser ie8 es3 compatibility

Patenting reincarnation - Knowledge Jolt with Jack

2008 Aug 28, 10:58"The patent is really bad, which is all part of the fun: Abstract: The invention consists of the process of reincarnation or rebirth resulting in immortality. Description: [0001] This invention resulted from my combining Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Newton's Second Law of Physics. [0002] Reincarnation is defined in Webster's Third New Inernational Dictionary as "rebith". Thus my invention is a process of rebirth or in other words immortality."PermalinkCommentshumor patent via:kris.kowal reincarnation

Why Verbs? - Not The User's Fault

2008 Aug 28, 11:15I can't say why this is funny: "First, the really big picture of what Ubiquity is supposed to be all about: It's a step towards a Web where verbs (i.e. functionality, i.e. commands, i.e. services) are first-class citizens. And that's why I'm thinking it should be renamed from Ubiquity to something like "Mozilla Verbs", maybe."PermalinkCommentsmozilla firefox ubiquity ui via:ethan_t_hein

rec.arts.sf.science qdFAQ

2008 Aug 26, 3:42Links to write ups on how much energy it would take to destroy the Earth or at least make it inhabitable in various fashions: "Destroying the Earth, It is often asked what it would take to shatter the Earth into little pieces. Erik Max Francis gives a rough answer. A less drastic measure would be to sterilise it by heating the outside. Brian Davis does the arithmetic, but I think he should have calculated what it would take to boil the oceans, which is a few thousand times more by my BotEC. Occasionally it is asked what would happen if you shot a fast-moving projectile at the Earth; I've written something up."PermalinkCommentsscifi science math

Tag Metadata in Feeds

2008 Aug 25, 10:13

As noted previously, my page consists of the aggregation of my various feeds and in working on that code recently it was again brought to my attention that everyone has different ways of representing tag metadata in feeds. I made up a list of how my various feed sources represent tags and list that data here so that it might help others in the future.

Tag markup from various sources
Source Feed Type Tag Markup Scheme One Tag Per Element Tag Scheme URI Human / Machine Names Example Markup
LiveJournal Atom atom:category yes no no , (source)
LiveJournal RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes no no technical
(soure)
WordPress RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes no no , (source)
Delicious RSS 1.0 dc:subject no no no photosynth photos 3d tool
(source)
Delicious RSS 2.0 rss2:category yes yes no domain="http://delicious.com/SequelGuy/">
hulu

(source)
Flickr Atom atom:category yes yes no term="seattle"
scheme="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/" />

(source)
Flickr RSS 2.0 media:category no yes no scheme="urn:flickr:tags">
seattle washington baseball mariners

(source)
YouTube RSS 2.0 media:category no no no label="Tags">
bunny rabbit yawn cadbury

(source)
LibraryThing RSS 2.0 No explicit tag metadata. no no no n/a, (source)
Tag markup scheme
Tag Markup Scheme Notes Example
Atom Category
atom:category
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
category/@term
Required category name.
category/@scheme
Optional IRI id'ing the categorization scheme.
category/@label
Optional human readable category name.
term="catName"
scheme="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme"
label="category name in human readable format"/>
RSS 2.0 category
rss2:category
empty namespace
category/@domain
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
category/text()
Required category name. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories.
domain="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme">
MSFT
Yahoo Media RSS Module category
media:category
xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
category/text()
Required category name.
category/@domain
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
scheme="http://dmoz.org"
label="Ace Ventura - Pet Detective">
Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ace_Ventura_Series/Ace_Ventura_-_Pet_Detective
Dublin Core subject
dc:subject
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
subject/text()
Required category name. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
humor

Update 2009-9-14: Added WordPress to the Tag Markup table and namespaces to the Tag Markup Scheme table.

PermalinkCommentsfeed media delicious technical atom youtube yahoo rss tag

Flickr: Seattle Municipal Archives

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."PermalinkCommentsvia:swannman photo flickr seattle history public-domain

Microsoft launches 3D wonder Photosynth for consumers | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET

2008 Aug 22, 5:35Photosynth now available and easy to use: "Photosynth, a technology demo from Microsoft Live Labs, has graduated from its "ooh, that's pretty" status to being a viable Web service for consumers. The technology, which takes a grouping of photographs and stitches them into a faux 3D environment, can now be implemented with photos you've taken on your digital camera or mobile phone, and converted right on your computer. Previously, the process of stitching these photos together took weeks of processing on specially configured server arrays. With its latest version, Microsoft has managed to shrink that into around the time it takes to upload your photos."PermalinkCommentsvia:felix42 photosynth photos photography 3d microsoft free tool

Mike's Digital Home : How To: Share Recorded TV with other Media Centers

2008 Aug 21, 10:40"I see a lot of questions in the Media Center newsgroups and forums asking how to access recorded TV from another Media Center in the house. This is fairly easy to accomplish. In this entry I'll walk you through it in Vista; XP is almost the same except for some of the steps for sharing and securing the folder."PermalinkCommentstv vista windows mce sharing mediacenter dvr howto

Deriving a Non-Recursive Fibonacci Function Using Linear Algebra

2008 Aug 20, 10:51

In my Intro to Algorithms course in college the Fibonacci sequence was used as the example algorithm to which various types of algorithm creation methods were applied. As the course went on we made better and better performing algorithms to find the nth Fibonacci number. In another course we were told about a matrix that when multiplied successively produced Fibonacci numbers. In my linear algebra courses I realized I could diagonalize the matrix to find a non-recursive Fibonacci function. To my surprise this worked and I found a function.
The Nth Fibonacci value is (1 + sqrt(5))^N - (1 - sqrt(5))^N all over sqrt(5) * 2^N
Looking online I found that of course this same function was already well known. Mostly I was irritated that after all the algorithms we created for faster and faster Fibonacci functions we were never told about a constant time function like this.

I recently found my paper depicting this and thought it would be a good thing to use to try out MathML, a markup language for displaying math. I went to the MathML implementations page and installed a plugin for IE to display MathML and then began writing up my paper in MathML. I wrote the MathML by hand and must say that's not how its intended to be created. The language is very verbose and it took me a long time to get the page of equations transcribed.

MathML has presentation elements and content elements that can be used separately or together. I stuck to content elements and while it looked great in IE with my extension when I tried it in FireFox which has builtin MathML support it didn't render. As it turns out FireFox doesn't support MathML content elements. I had already finished creating this page by hand and wasn't about to switch to content elements. Also, in order to get IE to render a MathML document, the document needs directives at the top for specific IE extensions which is a pain. Thankfully, the W3C has a MathML cross platform stylesheet. You just include this XSL at the top of your XHTML page and it turns content elements into appropriate presentation elements, and inserts all the known IE extension goo required for you. So now my page can look lovely and all the ickiness to get it to render is contained in the W3C's XSL.

PermalinkCommentstechnical mathml fibonacci math

Braid Recommendation

2008 Aug 14, 9:38

Braid screen shot. By gamerscoreblogI recently finished Braid, the Xbox Live game, and a comparison with Portal is helpful. From a screen shot Braid looks like a normal 2D platformer, but that's like looking at a screen shot of Portal and saying its a first person shooter. While the scaffolding of the game-play may sort of fall into that category, the games are actually about exploring the character's ability and solving puzzles. In Portal the ability is bending space and in Braid its bending time. However, whereas in Portal there is one space bending mechanism, the portal gun, Braid's protagonist explores several different time bending techniques including, most prominently, reversing time, but also time dilation, multiple time-lines, and other odd things.

Similar to the difference in game-play, while Portal has a strict simplicity to its visual style, Braid is much more ornate, like you're playing in an oil painting. Without seeing video of the game, or playing the demo (which is available for free on Xbox Live) its difficult to convey, but it is quite lovely and the animation adds quite a bit. Both games too are rather short leaving you just a bit hungry for more and have an interesting plot and an ending that I'd hate to spoil although Braid replaces Portal's humor with melancholy. If you enjoyed Portal and Twelve Monkeys then I'd recommend Braid.

PermalinkCommentsbraid game videogame portal nontechnical

Blown to Bits - Blog Archive - John McCain's Technology Policy

2008 Aug 14, 5:01Thoughts on McCain's technology policy. '...Example: (a) "John McCain will focus on policies that leave consumers free to access the content they choose"; (b) "He championed laws that ... protected kids from harmful Internet content"; ... BUT the "policy" fails to note that the laws referred to in (b) have been overturned by federal courts because they unconstitutionally make (a) impossible.'PermalinkCommentspolitics mccain internet policy

Metro Logos From Around World

2008 Jul 29, 12:58The logos places from all over use to denote Metro stations.PermalinkCommentsmetro graphic design logo

Advertising: Microsoft Hires Too-Cool Ad Agency In Brilliant/ Dumb (?) Move

2008 Jul 11, 1:35Furious George comments: "Extensive focus group testing shows that having Seth Rogen present as a relatable everyman enhances positive feelings about the possibility of having sex with Megan Fox, and hence, using Windows."PermalinkCommentsad advertising microsoft

With Lively, Google tries its own 'Second Life' | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET

2008 Jul 9, 9:59Lively is apparently a coming soon Google app that's like a web page embeddable version of Second Life.PermalinkCommentsvia:felix42 second-life lively google webservices web2.0

w/ extra duck. - a set on Flickr

2008 Jul 1, 12:13Famous pieces of art with a yellow rubber duck added.PermalinkCommentsart humor flickr paintings duck
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