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 14, 11:14Similar in concept to the Pirate Bay suggestion of encrypting all TCP/IP connections if both server and client support it: "Obfuscated TCP is a transport layer protocol that adds opportunistic
encryption. It's designed to hamper and detect large-scale wiretapping and corruption of TCP traffic on the Internet."
internet tcp encryption security google privacy opensource cryptography network ssl 2008 Oct 13, 2:40Watch out for too good to be true washing services (or free network traffic anonymization): "The laundry would then send out "color coded" special discount tickets, to the effect of "get two loads
for the price of one," etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was
coded. While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle -- every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in
the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue." From the comment section of Schneier on Security on this topic: "Yet another example of how inexpensive, reliable home washers and dryers help
terrorists. When will we learn?"
security history laundromat ira terrorism bomb 2008 Oct 13, 11:52"Some of the questioners said they were scared of an Obama presidency, and one woman said she couldn't trust Obama because "he's an Arab." McCain shook his head. "No ma'am, he's a decent family man,
a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."
politics obama mccain article 2008 Oct 10, 1:43A blog comment included the phrase 'hard-core conlangers' which at first glance sounds dirty, then based on the context I thought it was made up, but of course Wikipedia has the actual answer: "A
conlanger ... is person who invents conlangs (constructed languages)."
language klingon nerd wikipedia conlang 2008 Oct 10, 1:32Xkcd providing answers to questions that I forgot I had, like what is the answer to the lawn-sprinkler question from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. "Feynman used to tell a story about a simple
lawn-sprinkler physics problem. The nifty thing about the problem was that the answer was immediately obvious, but to some people it was immediately obvious one way and to some it was immediately
obvious the other. (For the record, the answer to Feynman problem, which he never tells you in his book, was that the sprinkler doesn't move at all. Moreover, he only brought it up to start an
argument to act as a diversion while he seduced your mother in the other room.)"
humor feynman comic blog xkcd physics science math 2008 Oct 10, 10:11"Once inside Banksy's pet store, you discover such things as breaded fish that swim in a large round bowl while hot dogs are living the high life under heat lamps in cages near the cash register."
banksy cultural-disobediance art pet-store nyc animal video 2008 Oct 7, 2:49
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Cadbury the bunny takes a moment from hiding under the chair to eat some mint. She comes out just to grab some mint and then goes back under the chair repeatedly for two
minutes.
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video 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 Oct 3, 5:29I thought the disemvowelment of trolls was a pretty funny punishment -- much better than simply removing the comment: "Disemvowelment is - obviously enough - the act of removing the vowels from a
passage of text, as well as a pun on the word 'disembowelling'. A number of blogs and websites do this to offensive text which has been placed in their 'comments' section. ... This site exists
because I couldn't resists the challenge of trying to re-emvowel disemvowelled text. This is a challenging task, as the disemvowelled word 'dg' may well have been 'dog', but also 'dig', 'dug',
'doge', diego' and so on. I have a first cut of this functionality at the re-emvowel link at the side of the page. A more advanced version is in progress."
tool disemvowelment web comment forum troll language 2008 Oct 2, 9:37Cool graphical ANTLR IDE! They didn't have this the last time I used ANTLR. "ANTLRWorks is a novel grammar development environment for ANTLR v3 grammars written by Jean Bovet (with suggested use
cases from Terence Parr). It combines an excellent grammar-aware editor with an interpreter for rapid prototyping and a language-agnostic debugger for isolating grammar errors. ANTLRWorks helps
eliminate grammar nondeterminisms, one of the most difficult problems for beginners and experts alike, by highlighting nondeterministic paths in the syntax diagram associated with a grammar."
antlr ide graph grammar tool free download development opensource java 2008 Oct 1, 1:49One of the values in this enum is named 'STGC_DANGEROUSLYCOMMITMERELYTODISKCACHE'. After reading (and re-reading to make sure I word broke correctly) I'm left with the lingering impression that I've
had an extensive conversation with whoever named this variable. Anyway, I thought it was a fun name.
humor software msdn microsoft reference 2008 Sep 30, 11:05Article on the team that owns the Office spell-checker: 'But, the team asked itself, should "calender" be flagged, or squiggled - have the red squiggly underline that indicates a misspelling? Yes,
because letting it go through as correct "more often masks the really common spelling error that people make for calendar."' I didn't even realize they had written calender rather than calendar in
the article
microsoft office spell-check language 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 27, 7:18"Nikon has launched the Coolpix S60 in addition to the four S-series compact cameras. This 10MP digital camera with 3.5" touch-panel LCD and 5x zoom lens, has Vibration Reduction along with features
such as time-lapse movies, in-camera retouch and HDMi output."
nikon camera digital photography photo review 2008 Sep 26, 2:22This made me laugh: "People think of goths as weirdoes who take vampires too seriously, and therefore they can't help being worried on some level that a crazy goth might, you know, want to make them
bleed. Whereas steampunks are - what? Weirdoes who take pocket-watches too seriously? What are they gonna do, vehemently tell you what time it is?"
steampunk article goth scifi geek via:ethan_t_hein 2008 Sep 24, 1:44"Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. You shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a
high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution."
microsoft research image photo panorama tool free ice stitching 2008 Sep 23, 2:15
The names in the following anecdote have been changed. Except for my name
(I'm Dave).
I got a new laptop a while back. I had it in my office and Tim came in to ask me something but paused when he saw my laptop. "Oh, is this one of those new touch screen laptops?" he asked, the whole
time moving his hand towards my laptop and punctuating his sentence by pressing his finger to the screen. "No" I responded.
Walking down a hallway I heard Winston, one of our managers, say, "Hey Tim!" Winston catches up to me and asks, "Are you almost done with the XYZ bug?" I realized Winston was talking to me and got
my name wrong but I figured I'll ignore it and perhaps he'll realize his mistake. Winston continued "I just talked with some people who say they're blocked and waiting for Tim to finish the XYZ
bug." "Dave" I said helpfully attempting to diplomatically correct Winston since he apparently hadn't realized his error. "No, it was Jeremy and Bill." Winston said naming the people he had talked
to who were waiting for me to fix the XYZ bug. At this point I decided it would be easier to just answer his question and end the conversation than to get into this whole thing. As far as I know,
Winston has not gotten my name wrong at any other time.
work nontechnical 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
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