2014 Apr 28, 9:39
Internet Archive lets you play one of the earliest computer games Space War! emulated in JavaScript in
the browser.
This entry covers the historical context of Space War!, and instructions for working with our in-browser emulator. The system doesn’t require installed plugins (although a more powerful machine
and recent browser version is suggested).
The JSMESS emulator (a conversion of the larger MESS project) also contains a real-time portrayal of the lights and switches of a Digital PDP-1, as well as
links to documentation and manuals for this $800,000 (2014 dollars) minicomputer.
computer-game game video-game history internet-archive 2014 Apr 8, 7:01 2012 Aug 28, 4:38
When they went to the Moon, they received the same per diem compensation as they would have for being away from base in Bakersfield: eight dollars a day, before various deductions (like for
accommodation, because the government was providing the bed in the spaceship).
theatlantic:
Apollo 11’s Astronauts Received an $8
Per Diem for the Mission to the Moon
The astronauts of Apollo 11: Intrepid explorers. Inspirational heroes. Government employees.
Read more. [Image:
Reuters]
humor space nasa moon government 2012 Feb 10, 8:51
“Two million-dollar projects, a major political speech involving Kickstarter, an amazing band launching a project for a comeback 20 years in the making… the list goes on. Here’s a
minute-by-minute breakdown of the day’s events.”
kickstarter video humor game video-game 2011 Dec 30, 1:41
‘to avoid getting taxed as “dolls,” rather than lower for “toys”’
humor xmen toys legal 2011 Jul 10, 5:49"The ‘analog dollars to digital dimes’ problem doesn’t actually seem to be a problem. It seems to be a feature of reality. Digital revenue per head is not replacing lost print revenue and, barring
some astonishment in the advertising market, it never will."
news media journalism clay-shirky 2009 Aug 18, 4:19
Before we shipped IE8 there were no Accelerators, so we had some fun making our own for our favorite web services. I've got a small set of tips for creating Accelerators for other people's web
services. I was planning on writing this up as an IE blog post, but Jon wrote a post covering a
similar area so rather than write a full and coherent blog post I'll just list a few points:
- The first thing to try is looking for developer help for the web service, specifically if there's a REST-ful URL based API. For example, Bing Maps has great URL API documentation that would
be enough to create an Accelerator.
- The Accelerator XML is very similar to HTML forms. If you can find an HTML form for the web service for which you want to create an Accelerator, you can view the HTML source and create an
Accelerator based on that.
- I created the FormToAccelerator extension based on the previous idea. You can
use the extension to create an Accelerator from an HTML form, or just use it to create the start of one and edit it manually after.
- If the page doesn't use an HTML form, you can start up an HTTP debugger like Fiddler, use the web service from the normal web
page, and then in Fiddler see if you can find a REST-ful looking URL you can use.
- When looking to create a preview for your Accelerator, see if the web page for the web service has a mobile version or a version that's intended to embed in other web pages via an iframe. On
this same line, iPhone apps make great Accelerators usually with lovely previews.
- If there's no mobile or embeddable version and the only thing wrong with the normal web page for the web service is that the useful information doesn't fit in the preview window then see if you
can find an HTML tag with a name or id near the useful information, and stick a '#' fragment pointing to that tag onto the preview URL template.
- Without a reasonable REST-ful API you can use a combination of Google's "site:" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" to find the most relevant page on a particular site.
- The value of a name and value pair need not consist of only a single Accelerator variable. You can get creative and put other text in there. For instance, I implemented a Google currency conversion by setting the query to "{selection} in US Dollars".
technical accelerator ie8 ie 2009 Apr 1, 9:32'To help stem the downward spiral of the United States economy Congress has proposed a new dollar symbol. "Updating fonts on the world's computers and devices would be a huge economic stimulus" said
one representative after a late night session of the newly formed House Subcommittee - Font Economic Stimulus Technology Relief (FESTR). "The dollar is a shadow of its former self and the new design
reflects this."'
art design humor font dollar-sign typography government economics 2008 Nov 21, 3:52I like the melted ice cream truck. "Our Australian friends 'The Glue Society', a group of artists, designers and projecteers, have created these amazing series of sculptures and films where they've
created chair rainbows on the frozen tundra, a curb-side wrap party, gratuitous nudie pictures for airplanes passing by, a house of crates, and a blow-up doll's vacation paradise."
streetart art prank culture nature photo sculpture ice-cream-truck via:boingboing 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 Aug 18, 11:29"A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why
did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money."
podcast audio economics npr radio mortgage 2008 Jun 25, 12:26
The weekend before last was Sarah's birthday and as part of
that, last weekend we took a trip to Victoria, BC. I've got a map of our trip locations and photos. Not all the
photos are on the map but they're all in the trip photo set on Flickr. It turns out there's a lot of tourist intended
activities right around our hotel which was in the inner harbor and downtown Victoria area. As such we didn't get a rental car and did a lot of walking.
On the first day we checked out the Royal British Columbia Museum which had
some interesting exhibits in it and the Undersea Garden which was interesting in that its like a floating aquarium but was a bit grimy. There was a group of Japanese tourists next to us during the
undersea show in which a diver behind the glass in the ocean would pick up and parade various animal life. The group all repeated the word starfish in unison after the show's narrator and one of
the tourists was very excited to see the diver bring over the octopus. The diver made the octopus wave to us while it desperately tried to get away.
We flew in and out of the Victoria International Airport
which is a smaller sized airport. Although we needed our passports we didn't need to take off our shoes -- what convenience! The US dollar was just a bit worse than the Canadian dollar which was
also convenient. The weather was lovely while we were there and I only got slightly sun burned.
victoria canada vacation nontechnical 2008 Mar 23, 12:38
The move of my website to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is mostly complete except for a few server side things not working yet: RandomGrammar and parts of Vizicious. I'm still very happy with the
NearlyFreeSpeech.NET hosting and so far I've only spent a few cents on hosting. At this rate I'll only spend a few dollars a year.
I've moved all my pages to use the same CSS and hooked it up with cookies to my Kuler color options so now changes to the color theme will
stick and apply to all my pages. I haven't figured out the caching for this yet so you may have to refresh to see changes to color applied.
nearlyfreespeech.net technical webhosting kuler homepage 2008 Jan 13, 11:07
Sarah and I got an exercise bike on sale and when attempting to put it together found that it was missing a bag of about ten different screws. The manufacturer website said we could order
a replacement bag for thirty dollars (!!) but since the instructions listed the various kinds of screws we needed I figured we could just go to a hardware store and buy them.
We started at Home Depot because I didn't know better. The screws are all listed in metric sizes which is apparently uncommon and a helpful senior worker forwarded us to McLendons whose stock was better but we were again redirected this time to Tacoma Screw Products.
Tacoma Screw Products is great! See them for your hardware needs first! The store has a back area with every kind of screw ever. I felt a little out of place as as all the customers looked like
contractors. The employee who helped me explained the various options I had in screws as the bike instructions weren't as explicit as they could have been. In the end I bought all my screws for
only one dollar (much better than $30!) and they all fit correctly.
screw bike personal tacoma screw products nontechnical 2007 Dec 23, 2:02purchase gift doll 2003 Mar 8, 8:15Finals week is closing in quickly. This quarter seemed to go by faster than usual. With the end of the quarter almost here I've got a variety of assignments to finish. Today is supposed to be the day
I work on them all, but I'm easily distracted. For instance, I had read Ken Thompson's
Reflections on Trusting Trust a few days ago. As the author
suggested, I tried writing
my own self-reproducing program. Rather than brevity, I went for clarity and good style. That was my intent
anyway. Now I'm avoiding work by writing in this journal. Last night I lost my money fairly early on during poker. After that Scott gave me a dollar which, surprisingly, lasted me much longer than
the previous five. Though despite that, It was a good time.
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