2008 Mar 17, 1:25
I've switched from using my own home web server of which one of the harddrives died, to using NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, an actual real live web hosting
service. So far I'm very happy with them and they give me almost exactly what I had on my own home server: ssh access, vim, php, java, etc. etc. The only notable things they don't do are (1) cron
jobs which I use currently and (2) SSL which I don't use currently. I can replace my cron job usage and I suppose I'll have to reevaluate my web hosting if I ever need SSL. At the moment many of
the server side things like Vizicious will be unavailable. I'll work on getting those working again at some point.
technical webhosting webserver server homepage 2008 Mar 6, 11:43'The package also proclaimed that it "holds all digital cameras small enough to fit".' 'It wasn't until I got at home that I noticed the inscription, "Unit automatically becomes portable when
carried".'
humor blog article language 2008 Feb 26, 2:24
At the grocery store the other day Sarah and I attempted to find shallot for a recipe, but I can't
tell the difference between shallot, sweet onions, yellow onions, etc. etc. We found something that we decided was the closest we'd find in the store and I believe we picked correctly because at
checkout the cashier rang it up as shallot.
I think this could be
a practical problem that the 20q Pocket Mind Reader should be able to solve: obtain the name of an unidentified object. When we got home
I decided to test the 20q Pocket Mind Reader on shallot. Unfortunately, it told me I had an onion, but I think if these were designed for identifying unknown objects based solely on information you
can obtain by looking at it, rather than requiring knowledge of seeds, where it grows, etc. it would do better. Or I could just ask someone who works at the grocery store.
onion shallot toy 20q random 2008 Jan 30, 1:55Periodic table with each element represented as a its own painting by different artists.
via:boingboing science periodic-table-of-elements art visualization 2008 Jan 3, 12:29This is me on Swivel a site like Many Eyes that does social data table and data table visualization sharing.
proldfile me data database visualization social 2007 Dec 26, 5:45Miscellaneous thoughts I had that would have been relevant many months ago:
- A History Channel program had a reenactment of a 1920's archaeologist discovering a stone tablet, sending the tablet to a warehouse, etc. all behind the voice over giving the dry facts. The
reenactor hammed it up a bit and I would have rather had clips from Indiana Jones in the background. If they're already not showing me the archaeologist who discovered the tablet, they may as well
show me one who will be entertaining.
- There are many parodies of the Get a Mac ads and so when I saw a UK Get a Mac ad I payed attention to see what the joke was. I was
disappointed by the 'parody' because it was a conventional Get a Mac ad with different actors. Apple localized their Get a Mac ad campaign in this fashion in the UK and in Japan. I've got a
playlist of the US, UK, and Japan's version of the Piechart ad. Ranking the lovable bumblingness of the PC I give the order
UK, Japan, then US and ranking the sumgness of the Mac I give the order UK, US, then Japan. But don't take my word for it, view
the ads for yourself.
-
Yahoo Pipes lets users generate an RSS feed altering service that runs on Yahoo's server using a GUI. This is very different from Microsoft's Popfly which allows users to component-ize and share javascript utilities that run client side on a webbrowser. Both have the awesome power of buzzword associations
like 'Web 2.0' and 'Mashup' but in my mind Yahoo Pipes is for server side RSS feed modification and Popfly is about client side javascript webpages. And neither will allow me to run an arbitrary
XSLT =).
popfly apple personal history-channel indiana-jones pipes mac technical microsoft mashup yahoo nontechnical 2007 Dec 24, 12:41These days it seems like there's a social sharing website for everything representable as bits. Like
Scribd for (mostly legal) documents,
SciVee for scientific research videos,
Wordie for words, and
Kuler for color themes. Kuler seems
like a ridiculous website (overkill) but I had been meaning to update my homepage's color design and Kuler has an
RSS based REST API.
The API lets you obtain things like the most recently added color themes or the most popular or all themes containing the color dark red, etc... So of course rather than update my website's design I
hooked up my css to the color themes coming out of Kuler. Select my main page's color theme from a
list of random Kuler themes. As I'm sure
the regular readers can guess I use
an xslt and blah blah blah... It looks OK with
Silver Surfer and
Happy Hipo but in general
changing the colors this way doesn't produce something pretty.
When reading about Kuler I found that they may have stolen the whole idea wholeslae from
ColourLovers. They discuss
the thievery in an article on their blog. I would have switched over to ColourLovers out of principle but
they don't have an easily accessible API.
colourlovers color xslt theme homepage technical kuler design 2007 Dec 5, 1:43Found my grandfather's patent: Donald Risney, February 13, 1973, BOAT TRANSPORTER. Abstract: A cross piece clamped and tied to the ends of a boat, rotatable about the short axis thereof, and
longitudinally movable about the long axis thereof for lifting
patent family donald-risney boat 2007 Nov 19, 12:35Two weekends ago I went down to California for Angie and Kane's
going away party. It was fun despite going to a country western club. It was a very large place with plenty of space for line dancing, a dentist chair turned into a make-margaritas-in-your-mouth
chair, and of course a mechanical bull. Surprisingly, I did not fit in.
This past weekend Sarah and I went to the
EMP and SciFi Museum. The last time I was there was for the Star Trek convention (I'm cool) and Sarah hadn't been before. We also ate in the attached diner which
was acceptable.
emp seattle nontechnical 2007 Nov 13, 8:47
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Cadbury hears something, slowly.
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video 2007 Oct 18, 4:54Traffic info for portable devices with small screens.
traffic washington seattle travel 2007 Sep 1, 4:32
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The child in front of me kept staring at me.
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I've been told that family members after reading my webpage which contains some technical related material would turn to my cousins webpage. So, in an effort to not drive away
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video 2007 Jul 6, 5:25How to convert video files to something suitable for the Zune.
dvd zune hack video convert audio article howto 2007 Jul 2, 9:51Microsoft Surface Parody - "The future is here and it's not an iPhone. It's a big-ass table."
video humor microsoft iphone surface table parody 2007 Jul 2, 9:04Build a device to remotely lock shopping carts.
article humor electronics shopping-cart wireless diy via:swannman 2007 Jun 18, 10:49"Nature Precedings is trying to overcome those limitations by giving researchers a place to post documents such as preprints and presentations in a way that makes them globally visible and citable."
science research journal nature database collaboration archive community