2008 Sep 8, 7:00A brief history of user agent strings in web browsers, culminating in: "And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and
all browsers pretended to be Mozilla, and Chrome called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13, and the user
agent string was a complete mess, and near useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion abounded."
humor internet browser mozilla google chrome user-agent ie 2008 Sep 8, 6:51Neil prints out brain cross sections from an MRI and pastes them onto a set of wooden cubes forming a model of his brain. "Last month I took a left-right MRI scan, reconstructed it, and rerendered
top-bottom and front-back scans... Another method to visualize a complex 3D object is to build a model. The dimensions of the MRI data cuboid are almost exactly 3x4x5. Accordingly, I obtained 60
one-inch cubes ... arranged them appropriately, varnished the 94 outside faces, printed nine carefully selected cross-sections and their mirror images, sliced the prints into 266 squares and glued
them to the correct internal faces."
art design brain toy model wood 2008 Sep 4, 11:30
This past weekend Sarah and I went to Salty's on Alki. I had never been
down to the Alki area so that was fun and I took a few photos while we were there. It turns out they were the last few photos I'll be taking with that camera as it turned itself
on in my pocket and the lens extension mechanism broke for the inner most lens. So now I'm looking for a new camera, preferably one that has a lock mechanism so I can't accidentally turn it on in
my pocket. The dinner was good and Salty's has a great view. On an unrelated note, the next day we went to an Audi dealership and test-drove the new 2009 A4 which was fun. I'm happy with my car but
Sarah's feeling antsy.
alki rambling camera weekend birthday nontechnical 2008 Aug 28, 10:57Apparently we've got some videos showing off IE8 features. Some are the kind you would expect: informative with music. Others are trying to be funny. Those aren't nearly as lame as I would have
expected.
video microsoft ie ie8 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."
scifi science math 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."
via:felix42 photosynth photos photography 3d microsoft free tool 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 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.
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.
technical mathml fibonacci math 2008 Aug 20, 9:48Apple will or will not license the canvas tag? 'Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") believes it has intellectual property rights ("IP Rights") relative to WHATWG's Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft,
dated March 24, 2005, Section 10.1, entitled "Graphics: The bitmap canvas". At this time, Apple reserves all rights in its IP Rights and makes no representations as to Apple's willingness or
unwillingness to license these IP Rights. However, in the event that the Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft, dated March 24, 2005, becomes part of a formalized draft standard at W3C or IETF, for
example, Apple is prepared to address the disclosure/licensing rules of such organizations.'
apple patent html ip html5 canvas whatwg browser browser-war 2008 Aug 15, 4:02VS debugs XSLT. Didn't know that. Neat. "You can use the Visual Studio debugger to debug XSLT. The debugger supports setting breakpoints, viewing XSLT execution state, and so on. The debugger can be
used to debug a style sheet, or to debug an XSLT transformation invoked from another application. XSLT debugging is available in the Visual Studio Team System and the Professional Edition."
Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to pass in parameter values... I just ended up setting the default value for my param elements. Otherwise, cool.
debug visual-studio microsoft msdn reference xsl xslt xml 2008 Aug 14, 4:52"French street artist ZEVS ... now also has a home in the art world and had his first exhibition in Asia: Postcapitalism Kidnapping at Hong Kong-based gallery Art Statements, documenting how ZEVS
cleverly distorts the logos of big brands. For PingMag, he explains their visual power."
graffiti culture art cultural-disobediance interview streetart guerilla 2008 Aug 14, 9:25"When a savage creature known only as the Adversary conquered the fabled lands of legends and fairy tales, all of the infamous inhabitants of folklore were forced into exile. Disguised among the
normal citizens of modern-day New York, these magical characters have created their own peaceful and secret society within an exclusive luxury apartment building called Fabletown. But when Snow
White's party-girl sister, Rose Red, is apparently murdered, it is up to Fabletown's sheriff, a reformed and pardoned Big Bad Wolf, to determine if the killer is Bluebeard, Rose's ex-lover and
notorious wife killer, or Jack, her current live-in boyfriend and former beanstalk-climber."
comic read download free via:boingboing fiction 2008 Aug 10, 3:33
Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog is an Internet only show you may have already watched and heard everything about. If you missed this
somehow, its a musical by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) staring Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring super villian who can't get up the courage to talk to his laundromat crush. Its
very funny, fairly geeky, and on the Internet so of course I've enjoyed it thoroughly and have some links to share. It surprised me how many blogs that I don't usually see posting the same things
telling me about it: first on Eric's blog, then The Old New Thing,
and even Penny-Arcade.
Dr. Horrible's again available online via Hulu with commercial interruption.
Check out the official fan site. They link to such things as the owner of Dr. Horrible's house.
He had appeared on Monster House, a reality show about remaking people's homes like Monster Car or Pimp My Ride is about remaking folk's cars, and had his house turned into a evil scientist's lab.
Consequently its a perfect fit for Dr. Horrible and in return the owner appears in one of the final scenes and in the credits as the 'Purple Pimp'. Apparently the purple suit is his. Also on his
blog you can find out what's happened on that big chair that appears in the show. All I'll say about that is, good thing Neil Patrick
Harris wears a lab coat while sitting on it.
At the recent Comic Con some attendees took video of the Dr. Horrible
Comic Con panel (video clips contain spoilers) some of which I've grouped together. Besides the videos containing the creators and stars of the musical who are all hilarious (see Felicia Day's comment on twittering) there's also some excellent bits about a possible second installment and information on the impending DVD. To
finish off this series of Dr. Horrible links check out this Venn Diagram of Felicia Day's work.
dr. horrible doctor horrible humor link roundup 2008 Aug 6, 3:44Read shirt then visit comic for full appreciation. "Okay! If you were reading this comic where T-Rex had a great idea for a tattoo, but wanted to 'test drive' it first, then this is the shirt for
you! It is also the shirt for you if you want a shirt that is essentially like wearing foreplay."
humor tshirt clothing 2008 Jul 29, 2:40"The Home of the Internet-enabled Home. We are an Open Community in the Home Automation and Domotics space. We believe an Open Source approach can revolutionize the way people create, install, and
maintain software in the industry."
hardware java opensource remote software home automation 2008 Jul 10, 4:43"The goal is to implement IP-transport encryption in a way that is transparent both to the IP-layer (including nodes in the network path) and to the applications that benefit from the encryption."
Seems like a good idea to me.
cryptography encryption internet privacy security ip wiki 2008 Jul 9, 10:11"I, Sam the Eagle, present a musical salute to America." Seems appropriate for Colbert Report.
via:kris.kowal humor muppets video youtube parody 2008 Jul 9, 9:59Lively is apparently a coming soon Google app that's like a web page embeddable version of Second Life.
via:felix42 second-life lively google webservices web2.0 2008 Jul 7, 5:26"888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph. The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day."
apple prank wired article phone education steve-wozniak 2008 Jul 3, 1:32"Finally he cut the tape entirely, whereupon the world disappeared. However, it also disappeared for the other characters in the story... which makes no sense, if you think about it." That's what I
thought when I read that story
article essay fiction scifi philip-k-dick via:mach3
Some rights reserved