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VJ Shantell Martin brings music to life with Intuos3 | Wacom Asia-Pacific

2008 Oct 15, 2:50VJ who does live illustrations on her Wacom tablet that's projected onto walls or crowds while DJ plays music: "An illustrator by training, Shantell's VJing style is to illustrate the music being played, mesmerizing the crowd with the line art drawn in time to the beat. She originates from London where she received a degree in graphic design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Moving to Tokyo in 2004, she began working as an illustrator and soon, the VJing scene found her."PermalinkCommentsmusic dj art vj wacom

Cadbury Bunny Sneaks Mint

2008 Oct 7, 2:49
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.
From: David Risney
Views: 328
1 ratings
Time: 02:01 More in Pets & Animals
PermalinkCommentsvideo

Business & Technology | Jobs with real authority: working on Microsoft's spell-checker | Seattle Times Newspaper

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 articlePermalinkCommentsmicrosoft office spell-check language

Drumline Meets Revenge of the Nerds - CollegeHumor video

2008 Sep 26, 10:34"Drumline Meets Revenge of the Nerds. UC Berkeley's Marching band is still only 16-bit."PermalinkCommentshumor video drumline berkley videogame nintendo

Sarah Palin's Hacked Yahoo Email Account Timeline

2008 Sep 18, 10:05Sarah Palin's Yahoo email addresses were hacked. I agree with the commenter: "I was just about to post how I feel bad for her despite disagreeing with most of her politics. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to attack her (or any politician), but this is clearly personal, not politics. From what I've read, this wasn't even the account she used for those communications she wanted to hide from subpoena, so the vigilante justice angle is BS. This is just plain mean." Although the last sentence of the following made me laugh: "A good samaritan in the /b/ thread reset the password account with the intention of handing it over to Palin, a process known on /b/ as "white knighting". This locked everyone else out of the account. The "white knight" posted a screenshot to /b/ of his pending message to one of Palin's contacts about how to recover the account, but made the critical mistake of not blanking out the new password he set."PermalinkCommentssecurity politics hack privacy government legal email yahoo

Register to Vote in Washington State

2008 Sep 11, 1:02Register to vote in Washington State online. "You must complete a voter registration form if you are registering for the first time in Washington or if you have moved to a new county. If you have moved within the same county, you may transfer your registration by completing a new form or contacting your County Auditor by mail, email, or phone. There is no registration by political party in Washington state."PermalinkCommentspolitics government vote washington elections registration

Re: [DNSOP] Public Suffix List

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."PermalinkCommentsidn domain firefox publicsuffix ietf mozilla tld

Birthday Weekend

2008 Sep 4, 11:30

A photo of the Seattle skyline in the distance over water.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.

PermalinkCommentsalki rambling camera weekend birthday nontechnical

Seattle Skyline and Street

2008 Sep 1, 9:35

sequelguy posted a photo:

Seattle Skyline and Street

PermalinkCommentsseattle washington alki waterspaceneedle

Seattle Skyline

2008 Sep 1, 9:33

sequelguy posted a photo:

Seattle Skyline

PermalinkCommentsseattle washington alki waterspaceneedle

Cadbury Hits Fireplace Shovel

2008 Sep 1, 4:45
Cadbury jumps out of her toy box hitting the fireplace shovel, and does a few other cute things.
From: David Risney
Views: 76
1 ratings
Time: 00:44 More in Pets & Animals
PermalinkCommentsvideo

Cadbury Nibbles Toy Box

2008 Sep 1, 4:17
Cadbury sits in and eats her box of toys. She enjoys eating her toy box more often than playing with any of the toys.
From: David Risney
Views: 343
2 ratings
Time: 00:16 More in Pets & Animals
PermalinkCommentsvideo

Hulu - It Takes A Thief - Full Episodes and Clips streaming online for free

2008 Aug 25, 3:02Episodes of the 60's TV show 'It Takes a Thief'.PermalinkCommentshulu tv video it-takes-a-thief

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

Dr. Horrible Link Roundup

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.

PermalinkCommentsdr. horrible doctor horrible humor link roundup

YouTube: YouTube File Hack (and Others) Download Clips to Your Desktop

2008 Aug 6, 2:56Online and offline YouTube link to video download and conversion tools.PermalinkCommentsyoutube video hack lifehacker flv converter

Dark Knight and Mariners Baseball

2008 Aug 4, 8:39

The weekend before last I saw Dark Knight with some friends from work and then we all ate at Z'Tejas after. Like everyone has said and as the name implies Dark Knight is... dark. Dark Knight was a little over the top at times as compared to Batman Begins but I really enjoyed it. Two times during the movie I thought it had ended but I was wrong. The Joker is both frightening (Cringe inducing line "Wanna know how I got these scars?") and humorous ("Where is Harvey Dent? ... You know where Harvey is? You know who he is?", as well as the pencil magic trick). I can certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Batman Begins. The previews included Burn After Reading a new Coen Brother's comedy that I look forward to, and Quantum of Solace which hopefully does the same thing Dark Knight has, keep up the new direction on the refreshed franchise.

Safeco Field Suite photoThis past weekend Sarah and I went to a Mariners baseball game. I think this is the first MLB baseball game I've seen in person. Sarah's company gave out tickets for the game and the use of a suite. Its a room half way up the stadium with comfortable chairs, a mini-fridge built-in to the marble counter-topped center table, and a big flat screen television with the game on it. I suppose that's in case you don't want to turn to the right and sit at the window, or walk out onto the balcony which features three rows of comfy chairs overlooking the field. Anyway there was free food and drinks and I met some of the people Sarah works with.

PermalinkCommentsbaseball batman nontechnical

Lively - Experience another dimension of the web

2008 Jul 9, 11:50Its Lively, Google's in browser Second-Life like thingPermalinkComments3d avatar google im lively online second-life

Salvador Dali on What's My Line? - Very Short List

2008 Jun 16, 12:51Salvador Dali's appearance on the 1950's game show "What's My Line" in which a panel must determine the occupation of a mystery guest using only yes/no questions. "...Watch the shamelessly self-promotional proto-Warhol's 1952 appearance on What's MPermalinkCommentsvideo gameshow 50s tv salvador-dali
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