2009 Apr 7, 5:26"According to an exclusive interview Penn gave to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, he's been asked to serve in the Obama administration as as the associate director of the office of public
liaison." Spoilers in the link.
kal-penn house tv politics 2009 Feb 4, 4:16From Sorting it all Out wrt the weather gadget in Vista's sidebar, this link to China's laws on weather forecast: "Article 22 The State applies a unified system for the issue of public meteorological
forecast and severe weather warning... No other organizations or individuals may issue to the community such forecast or warning." "Article 25 When the media, including radio, television, newspaper
and telecommunication, issue to the community public meteorological forecast or severe weather warning, they shall use the latest meteorological information provided by a meteorological office...
Part of the revenues from the distribution of meteorological information shall be drawn to support the development of meteorological service." Whether an application is legally allowed to provide a
weather forecast is not an attribute I would have imagined necessary for a localization API.
via:michael-kaplan china law legal politics weather forecast localization 2009 Feb 3, 11:15"r2719 specifies that browsers should not allow scripts to set document.domain to anything on the Public Suffix List, such as "com" or "co.jp". Essential background reading on why this is dangerous:
Untraceable XSS Attacks. Most browsers already block this attack, e.g. Firefox since 3.0. [Background: Re: Setting document.domain]"
html5 tld publicsuffix dns security html internet web reference w3c 2009 Jan 14, 2:03Google Maps now has a public transit route finder. Would have been useful in Munich and certainly will be useful here at home since they cover the Seattle area including the east-side. "I'm pleased
to announce the launch of the Transit Layer on Google Maps in more than 50 cities around the world making it easier for citizens and tourists around the globe to access public transportation line
information in their cities."
google map travel bus traffic seattle redmond munich transportation maps public-transportation transit 2008 Dec 30, 1:03"Introducing Make: television, Coming in January 2009: A new national series from MAKE magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television"
pbs tv make diy community hack via:boingboing 2008 Nov 15, 12:45Lame: "Question: Is it possible for us to write custom gadgets for the home screen like the clock or the Google search box? Is there a public API for this purpose? ... No, such an API does not exist
and won't exist in 1.0."
development google android g1 howto 2008 Oct 29, 3:45Apparently the government routinely suppresses patents when they fear the invention may harm national security. 5002 total patents suppressed at the end of FY07 according to PTO. "...U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office's record of the number of patent applications kept from public scrutiny under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, which allows the government to lock up a patent application on
national security grounds, even if the inventor has no connection to the government."
patent wired article government security 2008 Oct 14, 12:50Cardboard filter that turns video monitors into an array of large color-changing boxes applied to public video billboard ads: "Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art."
art streetart cultural-disobediance subway graffiti advertising nyc diy howto 2008 Oct 10, 3:35Apparently thanks to the Open House Project, US legislation can now have real and permanent links. I'm kind of surprised that legislation would exist so freely on the Internet without real links. The
Open House Project is "a collaborative effort by government and legislative information experts, congressional staff, non-profit organizers and bloggers to study how the House of Representatives
currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."
internet url link uri politics 2008 Oct 7, 12:21
Last Thursday I saw a bunch of college friends that I hadn't seen in a while, despite all of us working at Microsoft, and Saul and Ciera who were visiting. We had dinner at Typhoon! which I haven't
been to in quite a while. Daniil and Val brought their cute child. I got to see Charlie and Matt who I'm not sure I've seen since my 25th birthday. There was much nerdiness. I need to remember to
organize such a night myself sometime in near future so I don't have to wait another year to see them.
On the weekend Sarah and I went out to dinner at Carnegie's, a former
public library in Ballard, Seattle that's now a restaurant. I saw the restaurant's website in Matt's delicious links and thought it looked interesting. The exterior and entryway look like a public
library, but just inside its redone as a sort of modern version of french classical with a bar and two dining rooms. No pictures since my replacement camera only arrived today, but there are
photos available. They serve french cuisine which was good and
not as expensive as I would have expected. An interesting place, although its a bit of a drive and I'm not sure if we'll be going back soon.
carnegies personal restaurant weekend nontechnical 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 Sep 30, 10:46A rogue group of knitters 'tag' public objects and places with knit pieces. See thier gallery. "tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around
everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings."
humor art graffiti streetart knit cultural-disobediance 2008 Sep 29, 2:33A short post on the topic of those irritating high fructose corn syrup commericals: 'Really, there's no way that you could make something called "high fructose corn syrup" sound good for you. Which
is why, instead of irritating the public with defensive commercials featuring gross, brightly colored "juice," the Corn Refiners Association should just call "high fructose corn syrup" something more
appealing: like "Deliciosity," or "Yummy Tummy Syrup," or "So You Think You Can Sweeten?" or "Fun Sugar"'
humor onion video corn-syrup corn propaganda tv commercial 2008 Sep 23, 1:19The economic bailout program written as 419 spam. "I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800
billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you."
humor politics economics satire spam via:boingboing 2008 Sep 23, 1:11"...a film crew and a renowned scientist are plunked down on a busy city street corner, and an impromptu Q&A session with the public ensues." I like the concept. Two videos on the topic
video science education physics nyc via:boingboing 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
|
Carnivore
Eat at least ten different kinds of animals.
|
|
Make Friends
Meet at least 10% of the residents in your home town.
|
|
Globetrotter
Visit a city in every country.
|
|
You're Old
Survive at least 80 years of life.
|
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 15, 1:23A repository of free public domain classical music. I'm enjoying 'Pictures at an Exhibition - I. Gnomus' right now. The site makes it easy to download, play in place, or copy HTML for embedding a
particular piece.
classical music public-domain copyright free mp3 2008 Sep 10, 1:32Discussion on IETF DNS mailing list about Mozilla's Public Suffix list and what they should do ultimately. "I'm inclined to suggest: Gather and hard-code your list into Firefox, and also provide a
mechanism by which domain authorities can publish information which overrides your list for their domain."
idn domain firefox publicsuffix ietf mozilla tld 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 Aug 26, 6:13Anteaters hate art. Its true. I blame the public school system.
art humor anteater via:ethan_t_hein
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