randomwalks/dj

Comprehensive documentation for the YUI Library is found online at the YUI section of the Yahoo! Developer Connection website.

To supplement this online documentation, the YUI development team has begun drafting some cheat sheets — inspired by the handy references published by ilovejackdaniels, among others — that give you a one-page dashboard of documentation for each of the library’s components. When you find yourself elbow-deep in a coding problem, sometimes it’s quicker to turn to these rather than firing up a browser to review documentation and examples. Moreover, reviewing the cheat sheets can help you discover hidden gems you didn’t know were there. If you’re wondering, for example, what the syntax is for batching a function on an element collection, the Dom Collection’s cheat sheet might be enough to get you started:

These one-page references aren’t comprehensive, but we think you’ll find them valuable to have on hand. Today, draft references for each of the YUI Utility components (Event Utility, Dom Collection, Connection Manager, Drag and Drop, and Animation) are available:

• Download the references in PDF format
• Visit the YUI Library page on the Yahoo! Developer Network

Update 2006/08/03: I’ve updated the links here to point to the download area on the Yahoo Developer Network rather than at the YUI v.0.10 cheat sheet zip file. Since this post was made, YUI has incremented to 0.11 and a bunch of new cheat sheets have been added. The latest zip file should always be available from this location on YDN. -EM

Tags: Yahoo! User Interface Library, YUI, documentation, cheat sheets

Originally from Yahoo! User Interface Blog by Eric Miraglia reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 1:08PM

Originally posted by Eric Miraglia from Yahoo! User Interface Blog, on June 2, 2006 10:54 PM

via Art L!es, Issue #49 : The Sincerity Issue

Three Moments from the History of Sincerity
By Sina Najafi [excerpt]

[...]

I read that in 1908 Picasso threw a banquet at his studio for Henri "le Douanier" Rousseau. At the end of the night, in the company of Paris' avant-garde artists and writers, the self-trained painter of naïve scenes turned to Picasso and said, "You and I are the two most important artists of the age—you in the Egyptian style and I in the Modern one." Everyone there would laugh for a long time at this memory, and until his death, Picasso would claim that the banquet was a blague—a joke played by the cosmopolitan avant-garde on the naiveté perfected by the tollkeeper on the Seine. But in 1937, when Republican Spain asked Picasso to respond to the aerial bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, Picasso rejected everything he himself had innovated and produced a painting that draws heavily on Rousseau; more specifically, Rousseau's War, or Discord on Horseback, a painting that Alfred Jarry first admired at Salon des Indépendants in 1894 and reviewed in Le Mercure de France. Everything—from the warrior's broken body to the horse at its center—is done under the sign of Rousseau, who taught Picasso how to be sincere when the time for sincerity had come.

Originally from NEWSgrist - where spin is art by joy garnett reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 1:06PM

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on June 2, 2006 10:54 PM

Right on the heels of my Vox post, I came across these words from Rebecca Mead, in an interview given by friend of Hello, Typead Jason Kottke:

Anyone who read my story in the New Yorker will probably understand that I am more interested in bloggers as characters than I am in blogging as a -- yawn -- phenomenon.

Jason linked to the interview in response to her follow up to the You've Got Blog. What's striking to me is how prescient this seems in retrospect. Good blogging, like good films and novels, is character driven. When people treat it like a phenomenom or set of buzzwords, it bombs. When people treat it as a platform for learning about their friends and themselves, it's beautiful.

This leads me to the Sixth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival, which officially launched yesterday. The festival is a project of MediaRights, where I worked for three years, two of those years as Director of Technology. I produced three festival web sites (in 2004 SxSW gave us the best non-profit website award), so naturally I have a special place in my heart for this project. This year's festival may be the best one yet, and it's been awesome to see the momentum build from year to year, especially since I remember when the site was a fraction of the size and importance it is today. Some of the characters you'll find this year - a hip-hop group from Minnesota bringing a hidden camera into an interview with an army recruiter, a community in Michigan fighting the rising costs of water and, also in Michigan, Asparagus farmers talking about why eating (and growing) local food is so important.

MediaRights and Vox are both going to be huge hits because they are character driven ideas made into websites, and they both solve real problems in our world. Vox and MediaRights both help people communicate with the world about the things that they feel passionate about. MediaRights puts these passions on DVD, streams them to millions of web visitors and tours them to six continents, and Vox helps you communicate not just with the world but also with those closest to you.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 12:16PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 2, 2006 10:54 PM

As Andre, Mike, and of course Mena have already said more eloquently than I can, Vox is out and it's fantastic.

Without sounding overly grandiose, Vox is the natural progression of the Internet as a social platform. The friends and family features are perfect - you only share what you want with who you want to. And just as Livejournal and Flickr augment your Internet life instead of trying to replace it, Vox plays nice with other open publishing platforms and blogging services.

I don't want to venture too into the world of the negative, but it's not secret that today the majority of web projects and applications are shamelessly mediocre. Too often social websites just become a series of chores and obstacles. List your friends, check for comments, don't miss that "important" piece of news - it's basically furniture dusting. Vox is the exact opposite - of course it rewards you for participation and sharing but it also doesn't punish you if you're simply too busy to spend time blogging - it's always fun.

I can't wait to see what it's like when more of my family and friends (and enemies!) are on Vox - my only frustration to date has been wanting to shout from the mountaintops about how great it is. Now that frustration is gone. Vox rocks!

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 11:26AM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 2, 2006 10:54 PM

The architect David Rockwell and the choreographer Jerry Mitchell collaborate to streamline the airport experience. NY Times

Originally from Archinect.com Feed reBlogged

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on June 2, 2006 10:54 PM

signs point to Typepad as the blog provider, which would be a big win  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 3:55PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on June 2, 2006 10:52 PM

I have never gotten very good at any of the popular shell scripting languages. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in Bourne sh scripts, Perl, awk, and sed. I was never one of those magical guys who could make anything happen in a few seconds. But I’ve always wanted that to change.

I’ve decided to learn Python. I want a fast-acting Swiss Army Knife at my disposal for splicing together the loose ends of my computer life.

Why Python? I don’t know it well enough to really sing its praises, but a number of influences caused me to veer towards this language (as opposed to say, improving my Perl or picking up Ruby):

1. A Killer App. NodeBox was the catalyst for this whole pursuit, though it has nothing to do with productivity, per se. I downloaded NodeBox on the recommendation of a friend, and was instantly blown away that such a tool exists at all. NodeBox makes it easy to programatically produce graphics on the Mac, exploiting the Quartz graphics capabilities of the system. Python happens to be the language for driving these amazing dynamic documents.
2. A Good Reputation. I started dropping Python references among groups of programmer nerds who I respect. Almost universally people either didn’t respond (people like me), or else raved about how great it was. About the only thing I ever hear people complain about with Python is its strict indentation rules. Hey. I’m a C programmer, but I have style. Indentation is OK by me.
3. Support From “The Man”. I’ll admit it, I am more likely to embrace something if Apple does it first. It’s just easier to get involved and stay involved with a technology when you know that there will be value-added by the most influential company in your little neck of the tech woods. Apple has included Python with Mac OS X as a standard part of the system, and even gone so far as to provide special Python bindings in frameworks like Quartz to facilitate the above-mentioned scripting tricks. I can embrace this language without worrying that its functionality on the Mac will suddenly disappear.
4. A Decent Tutorial. The biggest roadblock to learning for me is finding the start of a good path. If there is an incremental process I can follow to get better at something and eventually “know it,” then it’s much easier to tackle. The author of Python himself, Guido van Rossum, provides a short-and-sweet tutorial that made it easy for me to get to know Python.

I have a little trick with these “short chapters” tutorials. I keep a bookmark to the “next chapter” in my Safari bookmarks bar, and add reading it to my ToDo list for the following day. When I finish the chapter, I update the toolbar bookmark and wait until the next day. That way the learning is never overwhelming - just a few minutes aday, and it still only takes me a couple weeks to get through the whole tutorial.

This trick is OK, but while I was taking this tutorial, I got annoyed by having to constantly flash back and forth between the web page and my Terminal window. The Python tutorial introduces you to ideas that, if you’re anything like me, you immediately want to try out in the interactive shell. I decided to take a cue from Michael McCracken, who recently produced and distributed a dumbed down web browser just for reading Gmail.

Learn Python is a simple Mac OS X application (GNU License, source included) that puts a web browser and terminal window into one application. The web browser points at the aforementioned Python tutorial on the web, and it remembers the last URL you went to, so you can trust it to remember which chapter you were at when you last quit.

It’s a Python-Tutorial Browsing Machine!

By almost every possible measurement, this project was a “waste of time.” But sometimes you’ve got to make the software you wish existed, just so you know it does. I rationalize the time as well-spent since it sets me up to easily crank out one-offs of a similar vein as I find a use for them. If I was really bored I would probably have added “value added” buttons to the UI for specifically navigating the document structure (e.g. next chapter, etc). But I think I’m done for now. Hopefully most of the bugs are ironed out.

I hope some of you will get some use out of this extremely narrow piece of work. At least it might encourage you to learn Python!

PS: Unhappy with the default version of Python that gets launched? Or wish you could use the tool as a ruby or shell scripting or whatever tool? I haven’t put any preferences in this application, but it would be easy enough to hack the sources. If you aren’t feeling up to hacking the sources, or don’t have the tools handy, you can specifically override the path of the launched tool by editing the file “Localizable.strings” in “Learn Python.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/”. Inside this file, change the line:

"/usr/bin/python" = "/usr/bin/python";

That will tell the application to use zsh instead of python. Replace the “/bin/zsh” with whatever you want.

Update (June 3, 2006): The download has been updated to version 1.0.3, which now defaults to a left-right orientation for the web and python shell panes. The setting can be changed back to top-bottom through the preferences dialog.

Update (June 4, 2006): Rodney Ramdas posted a modified version of the application that is targeted at learning Ruby, instead. I’ll probably use it to tackle Ruby, next!

Originally from Red Sweater Blog by Daniel Jalkut reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 4:19PM

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on June 2, 2006 10:50 PM

The board of Goldman Sachs has chosen Lloyd G. Blankfein as chairman and chief executive.

Originally from NYT > Home Page by JENNY ANDERSON reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally posted by JENNY ANDERSON from NYT > Home Page, on June 2, 2006 10:50 PM

Welcome to the Movable Type Beta blog! For those of you who haven't already heard (but perhaps still had this feed in your feed reader), we have some fabulous news: The beta test of Movable Type 3.3 is starting now!

We've been working hard over the last five months since the release of the hosted Yahoo Small Business version of Movable Type to incorporate not only all of those new features, but also many fabulous new ones that will literally change the way you blog (for the better, of course...).

Over the course of the next few hours, we'll be not only releasing the code, but also posting a great deal of information you need to know about the latest and greatest and the beta test itself. For those of you who participated in the Movable Type 3.2 beta, you'll be very familiar with the format. I'll briefly go over the salient details below.

A public, open beta

We held Movable Type's first public beta for the v3.2 release and, as I think everyone involved can attest, it was a fantastic success. So, we will repeat that and once we release the code, it will be available for anyone to download and test.

Versioned and nightly releases

Over the course of the beta test, we'll be releasing three to five versioned betas. These releases will have been tested by our QA team and should be very stable. These are the releases that most of you will want to download and test with.

In addition, we will be producing nightly builds containing all of the changes from that day. These releases will be run through automated tests but won't have the loving care and attention that the versioned releases get. Still, if you are blocked by a particular bug or just love living life on the edge, the nightlies are a great way to keep in sync with the action.

Public Subversion access

One of the most exciting new features we'll be adding to beta test itself is access to our version control system Subversion. With subversion access and the web-based Trac viewer at code.sixapart.com, you'll be able to not only see all of our latest commits but, if you're the type who loves running completely untested code, be able to get the up-to-the-minute changes as we commit them.

Access to the subversion repository will be added during the first week of the beta test at which point we will provide more information for those who are interested.

Beta feeds

For those of you who wish to keep up-to-date on the happenings here on the Beta Blog, we have two types of feeds for you:

• Full-text entry feed
• Full-text comment feed

Drop either of those URLs into your newsreader/aggregator and you can keep up with all of the latest developments and discussions about the new version of Movable Type. If you have any other feeds you'd like us to create, just leave us a comment.

Easy bug submission

In Movable Type 3.2 beta test, we accepted bug submissions over email. In retrospect, this was suboptimal mainly due to the massive amount of interesting spam we received directly into our bug tracker. So, we've made a slight alteration this time around by creating a bug submission form which accepts file uploads, like screenshots. Mmmmmmmm. screenshots....

Support for the beta

Just as with the Movable Type 3.2 beta, all Movable Type 3.3 beta distributions are officially unsupported software. While we'd love to be able to help everyone who wants to give it a spin, the Movable Type team will be focused on solving issues or problems arising from the software itself, and thus, we're unable to provide assistance with "normal" support issues.

A Beta test forum

At the end of the Movable Type 3.2 beta, I asked for feedback about what we could do better next time around. A number of you told us that you would love to see the creation of a forum on the Movable Type Community Forums specifically to facilitate discussion between testers about the beta with regards to technical issues, bugs, general questions or even just community conversation. Well, we couldn't have agreed with you more and hence, the 3.3 Beta forum will be available to all as a place to hang out and discuss things amongst yourselves.

It should be pointed out that this forum does not replace the need to report bugs through the official channels. There is no guarantee that something you post in the forums will be seen by anyone on the Movable Type team. Please make sure to be diligent about reporting bugs through the bug submission form and encouraging your fellow beta testers to do the same.

No perpetual betas!

We're also making one significant change in the process: We're tightly constraining the beta test to less than three weeks, to make feedback more directed and have more structure around milestones. Basically, we want to make it easier for you to know where you stand in the beta process, without having to wonder, "Is it ready for me to start really testing yet?" The answer will be "yes".

We'll be posting the code and a whole lot more soon. In the meantime, read the very important known issues and release notes for beta-1. Also, leave us a comment, say howdy and get ready to test!

Originally from Movable Type Beta Weblog by jallen reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 7:38PM

Originally posted by jallen from Movable Type Beta Weblog, on June 2, 2006 10:48 PM

I know I'm going to get mail about my five-star rating for this movie, but it cannot be helped. One summer when I was a kid, a friend and I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- no joke -- every single day for a span of 2 months. I still know every line by heart, the timing, inflection, everything. If there were a Broadway production of this movie, I could slide effortlessly into the role of either Bill S. Preston, Esq. or Ted Theodore Logan, no rehearsal needed.

In my high school physics class my senior year, we had to do a report on something we hadn't learned about in class -- which, I discovered when I got to college, was a lot -- and I did mine on time travel. I went to our small school library and read articles in Discover and Scientific American magazines about Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, quantum mechanics, causality, and wormholes. To illustrate the bit about wormholes, I brought in my well-worn VHS tape of Bill and Ted's (a dub of a long-ago video rental) and showed a short clip of the phone booth travelling through space and time via wormhole. I got a B+ on my presentation. The teacher told me it was excellent but marked me down because it was "over the heads" of everyone in the class...which I thought was completely unfair. How on earth is Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure over anyone's head?

(Rating: 5.0/5 stars)

Originally from kottke.org reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 6:39PM

Originally from kottke.org, on June 2, 2006 10:48 PM

Red Sweater Blog: “Learn Python is a simple Mac OS X application (GNU License, source included) that puts a web browser and terminal window into one application. The web browser points at the aforementioned Python tutorial on the web, and it remembers the last URL you went to, so you can trust it to remember which chapter you were at when you last quit.”

Originally from ranchero.com by Brent Simmons reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 6:13PM

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on June 2, 2006 10:48 PM

Looks like Processing for Python on OS X.

Originally from random($foo) reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 8:29PM

Originally from random($foo), on June 2, 2006 10:45 PM

A recent article on my father and making peace. Excerpt:

Generally, say people who know him, Ahtisaari is a good listener. "He didn't lead from the front, saying 'this is how we are going to do it,' " recalls Damien Kingsbury, an Australian academic who advised the GAM delegation at the Helsinki talks. "He wasn't a one-man show, and he listened to the other parties."

Originally from Ahtisaari by Marko Ahtisaari reBlogged

Originally posted by Marko Ahtisaari from Ahtisaari, on June 2, 2006 10:45 PM

david brought me this book of stencils from china. hundreds of animals, interpreted in red, on newsprint.

ruth sent me 5/21/06 boston globe article, the DORE Center treats kids w/ attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, certain learning disorders using physical activity, coordination & balance, as alternative to medication. "It's dealing directly with the source of the difficulties. If someone has a stone in their shoe, they don't take an Advil," says David Pfeil, DORE. lots of anecdotal evidence; ruth herself told me of family who takes child for vigorous swimming every morning before school, no program, just tried it, & this works. seems a fine idea, and i'll recommend.

medications. the reason i am so opposed, besides worm hallucinations, is because children's brains are blobs of mush & drugging em is brain murder. it's EASIER for me, and thus i extrapolate, 10,000x easier for parents, when a hyperactive short person is drugged up rather than ripping up my office, but i hate the look and feel of drugged kids. there is one, you know, a feel. i wanna shake them. maybe community of zombie kids, is the seed for my next children's book.

waggish just posted on his favorite gnostic children's books, by the way. daniel pinkwater...

as adults it's not the same. 6 feet under on demand, the final season, now; last night dr and i watched billy going off lithium and seroquel, becoming much sexier initially, decompensating fast. george too, poor george. but billy reminds me of an early love affair with a tall comedian, much older than i, whom i adored, and visited frequently in the mental hospital, when i was so, so young. manic depression is different from attention defecit; psychosis, it's much more complicated, and this is why, i work with children.

Originally from serenalarogers by serenalarogers reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 9:31AM

Originally posted by serenalarogers from serenalarogers, on June 2, 2006 11:18 AM

This has got to be in the running for the strangest blog post ever: "Our hearts are aching as we have learned that the young woman we have been taking care of over the past five weeks has not been our dear Laura, but instead a fellow Taylor student of hers, Whitney Cerak." It's a case of mistaken identity; Laura died 5 weeks ago and was buried as Whitney. I can't imagine what that would feel like for either family.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 11:15AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 2, 2006 11:16 AM

Congrats to Gandi registrar for the new version !

domain, gandi, v2, registrar, rh

Originally from yann@typepad by Yann reBlogged

Originally posted by Yann from yann@typepad, on June 2, 2006 8:52 AM

The exciting and much awaited Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS release is here.

Read the release notes for information regarding what is new, hardware requirements etc.

Do everyone a favor, and use a torrent to download the cd or dvd images. This page listing all the Ubuntu torrents should be helpful. Choose and use the “6.06″ torrents and not the Dapper torrents, since that is the final version.

The -alternate- cds are the old style install cds that can only be used for installation. The -desktop- cds are cds that are live cds, with the live cd installer. Read the cd image renaming announcement if this is not clear enough. The -dvd- images are 2 gigs in size, so besides the two cds mentioned above, there might be a little bit of extra packages on it. If you have a dvd writer, and have a bad internet connection at home/work then I guess the DVD image makes more sense.

What makes Dapper so cool is that it is stable, inclusive of different languages/hardware/requirements, and that is stable The extra six weeks did see a lot of bugs getting fixed, so this has to be the best Ubuntu release to date. You can recommend it to friends, family and linux experts with confidence.

Read the Known Issues before you start your install/upgrade so you are prepared. Refer to the Burning ISOs to CDs guide if you have trouble with burning the .iso files that you get after downloading.

As usual, there are “server” install cds too, useful for installation on servers. The PowerPC and AMD64 architectures are supported, as before. The SPARC (SUN) cds are not out yet, they will be once the certification process is complete.

Writing this post took a long time, and it would all be worth it if only I had a local Dapper Release Party I could attend. Maybe I should focus my energies more on creating a web of Ubuntu users locally so that by the time Edgy Eft is released, I can have a party to go to to have fun.

Originally from Ubuntu Blog by ubuntonista reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 2:37PM

Originally posted by ubuntonista from Ubuntu Blog, on June 2, 2006 8:50 AM

VeloNews.com | L'Equipe stands by Armstrong story

French sports daily L'Equipe, a corporate cousin of the Tour de France, came out in defense of its August 2005 story accusing Lance Armstrong of EPO use in the 1999 Tour. The story led the UCI to appoint an investigator to check into the claims, and his report, released yesterday, vindicates Armstrong.

VeloNews translates L'Equipe:

“There is nothing to retract from the revelations,” L'Equipe said in an editorial that concluded: “For our part, we remain convinced of the need to battle without compromise against the mafialike tendencies that still and always threaten the sport of cycling. Both in the method and the substance, L'Equipe stands firm.”

How can the paper continue to defend its story when the UCI's investigator, Emile Vrijman, so completely shredded it?

Vrijman, a lawyer and former head of Holland's anti-doping agency, is applying a legal standard to the evidence. By that standard, there's no story here. Armstrong's samples were handed over without a strict chain of evidence being established, there was ample opportunity (and motivation) for someone to spike the samples or for contamination to skew the results, and there's no corroborating sample to verify that the tested samples haven't been inadvertently (or intentionally) swapped.

L'Equipe, on the other hand, doesn't need a conviction in a court of law to believe they have a solid story. When it comes down to it, they've established a reasonable suspicion that a number of samples that most likely came from Armstrong in 1999 contained EPO. Am I convinced? No. Do I add this to other circumstantial evidence, both pro and con, when considering whether Armstrong may have used EPO in his career? Yes.

Big picture is that nothing can touch Armstrong on this. The samples were provided with the proviso that they could not be used for future disciplinary action, and their strength as evidence has been severely compromised.

VeloNews is also making available the complete Vridjman report.

Originally from Tour de France 2006 by Frank Steele reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 4:35PM

Originally posted by Frank Steele from Tour de France 2006, on June 2, 2006 8:48 AM

New York City food nerds, alert! Mark June 21st off on your calendar and take out your credit card, you are about to buy a ticket to see former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford talk at the NYPL with...

Originally from A Full Belly by Lia Bulaong reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 4:12PM

Originally posted by Lia Bulaong from A Full Belly, on June 2, 2006 8:48 AM

invite-only, and incredibly sexy; if you think it's just another social network, you're missing the point  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 6:41PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on June 2, 2006 8:46 AM

Meg blasts the NY Times for keeping blogs behind the Times Select paywall. "Michael Pollan is doing some of the most interesting and important writing about food right now. He's doing it frequently and it's being published in the easiest possible manner for massive distribution and influence. But only the Select few can see it. Even if I paid to access it, I couldn't share it with my readers. So much potential unrealized."

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 5:48PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 2, 2006 8:46 AM

"Nicholas Negroponte showed off the latest prototypes of the fabled $100 PC. It's not longer a $100 PC, however. The ruggedized, two pound Linux desktop (Fedora) system, with mesh networking will sell for about $130 to $140 (sans shipping)...

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 8:09PM

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on June 2, 2006 8:36 AM

Some background on how Al Gore's global warming presentation got so polished. Also references Spike Jonze's Al Gore video from 2000 which pictures Gore as anything but stiff. Some backstory on the Jonze video.
Update: More on Gore's use of Keynote.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 7:32PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 2, 2006 8:36 AM

When I was sixteen or seventeen or something like that me and a friend wandered into a steak shop in West Philly that we'd heard tell of. The place was called Abe's and there was a room in the back that was possibly smaller than the office I sit in today. It was packed and it stank so bad of sweat and beer and stank, but OH! the girls were really cute and kind of fucked-up looking with mismatched knee socks and interesting hair and thrift store dresses held together with safety pins.

And there was music! and it wasn't played very well, but it was played fast and hard and it was being played by PEOPLE I KNEW! And those PEOPLE I KNEW were playing short fast songs about not having money and going to the Jersey shore and Bitchin' Camaros. And, oh man, I had found SOMETHING, that in its attempt to be unimportant had managed to be worthwhile.

Anyone could do this. This is the simple most important thing I've learned in life. Anybody can do this.

Fast-forward a while to this thing called the Web. And again, anybody can do this. The early days (at least what I define as the early days) of the web gave me that same feeling as that stanky steak house. People had no idea what to do on the web, so they would try ANYTHING, and it was fucking glorious. People were failing in amazing wonderful ways. So then blogging tools show up and it becomes that much easier for someone to just start TALKING. Anyone can publish.

Then came business. Then came professional blogging, then came the books on HOW TO BLOG, and there are ways to blog in order to maximize your Google Adsense revenue, and hell you're just gonna grab the RSS feed anyway. And man oh man it got boring. And worst of all, it scared people away. Blogging, talking, writing on the web became something for professionals. Not something anybody could do at all.

So I've been playing with this thing called Vox, built by the fine people at Six Apart. It looks like a fine place to dive into writing online and deciding it's just for your friends to see and not worry about what you're saying too much. And to be honest, it feels a little messed up and a little chaotic and I get lost in it a bit. But it's FUN and it's filled with PEOPLE YOU KNOW. And I hope they never fix it up too much. Learning that 4th chord leads to a lot of trouble you don't need.

Originally from Mule Design : Off the Hoof by Mike Monteiro reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 7:14PM

Originally posted by Mike Monteiro from Mule Design : Off the Hoof, on June 2, 2006 8:36 AM

Check out Regina Lynn's new column, Sex Trumps Game, over on Wired.

Next week, I'm speaking at the Sex in Video Games Conference in San Francisco. But unlike the other speakers, I'm not going to talk about games.

I'm going to talk about sex and the activities that surround it online -- flirtation, courtship, rules, jealousy, attachment, love and breaking up, not necessarily in that order.

Originally from Sex & Games by BrendaBrathwaite reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 8:55AM

Originally posted by BrendaBrathwaite from Sex & Games, on June 2, 2006 8:35 AM

What is it about developers that they can be handed a nice, tight, clean design crafted with pure, validating, perfect XHTML/CSS and butcher it to hell and back so that it looks absolutely nothing like the original?

To them I say: Give me a tire iron, access to your "nothings-wrong-with-it" application code, and I'll show you how Piccaso would have built it.

Originally from Airbag Industries reBlogged on Jun 1, 2006, 9:22PM

Originally from Airbag Industries, on June 2, 2006 8:34 AM

How do I get rid of the curry smell in my new apartment.

Answer.

Originally from Turbanhead.com by Administrator reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 11:07PM

Originally posted by Administrator from Turbanhead.com, on May 31, 2006 11:41 PM

From the Google AdSense Blog:

What can I do with the AdSense API?

Using the AdSense API, you can enable users to perform a variety of AdSense functions without leaving your website, including the following:

- Create an AdSense account
- Manage an AdSense account
- Create and modify AdSense for content ad units and link units, AdSense for search boxes, and Referrals
- View detailed reports to monitor performance and earnings

How does the AdSense API benefit your site and users?

By making it easy for publishers to sign up for AdSense and generate revenue, the API offers another compelling reason for publishers to choose your service over a competitor's--and remain loyal to you. The AdSense API is great for publishers who don't want the hassle of setting up their own accounts or dealing with cutting and pasting HTML snippets.

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 1:55PM

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on May 31, 2006 11:41 PM

they're heavily moderating the sites allowed to use it, for good reason  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 3:42PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on May 31, 2006 11:38 PM

Erik Benson's awesome Morale-O-Meter is now publicly available! My favorite tool since Allconsuming (or maybe LoB). Just don't stab to close to Buzz, that man is wild. (like you needed a webapp to tell you that)

Link: http://morale.erikbenson.com/

Originally from Laughing Meme reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 3:19PM

Originally from Laughing Meme, on May 31, 2006 11:38 PM

Today's New York Times looks at soldiers' food care packages in Iraq. Reminds me of the story my grandmother tells of mailing my grandfather his favorite molasses cookies during World War II. Unfortunately by the time they arrived on his ship in the South Pacific, they were moldy and inedible.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 3:05PM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 31, 2006 11:38 PM

Simply Google, a one-pager for navigating and searching all of Google's offerings.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 5:36PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 31, 2006 11:37 PM

Folks, the much awaited Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS) is to be released tomorrow, the 1st of June. Once it is released, and the news hits the vine, you can be sure download times will be much more than they are right now - and they aren’t so great right now.

Between now, and the time Dapper is released, there will be a few more updated packages, but you can always update the packages later, as you normally would.

The new way to upgrade from Breezy to Dapper is quite convenient. Just follow the instructions.

Of course, you can increase the download speed by using a mirror, as I previously wrote in the 22x faster upgrade post.

Prepare to be awed by Dapper!

Originally from Ubuntu Blog by ubuntonista reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 4:11PM

Originally posted by ubuntonista from Ubuntu Blog, on May 31, 2006 11:37 PM

From a post at the Bee Blog, Saryn got 24 out of 25 correct on the written test. Sweet. Also from the Bee Blog: Vegas likes Saryn.

Originally from Mr. Sun! by Mr. Sun reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 12:42PM

Originally posted by Mr. Sun from Mr. Sun!, on May 31, 2006 12:42 PM

Last night I was watching a bit of Emeril Live on the Food Network. Half-listening to the episode about grilling, I suddenly tuned in when I heard Emeril say, "When it's young it's called cilantro, and when it's old it's called coriander." That surprised me, as I always thought it was simply a localization issue: cilantro in North America and coriander everywhere else. Clearly it was time to do some research.

First stop, my trusty Larousse Gastronomique whose entry sits under the heading CORIANDER (CILANTRO). It says it's "[a]n aromatic umbeliferoius plant used both for its dried seeds, either whole or ground and its leaves." Further on it notes "[c]oriander leaves, sometimes know as Arab parsely or Chinese parsley in France and as cilantro in the United States..." There is no mention of age. I check Wikipedia's entry on coriander and it says a lot about the history of the plant, its various uses and parts, and nothing about any difference in name as it relates to the age of the plant.

Verdict? Emeril is wrong! Or rather, being a bit misleading. Both articles note the seeds are commonly called "coriander" (rather than "coriander seeds") and the leaves are referred to as "coriander leaves." Since the seeds are dried before they are used, it is a fact that they are older than the fresh green "coriander leaves" or cilantro one finds in salsa. So technically Emeril is correct. But is that really what he meant?

He would have done better to say something along the lines of: "Cilantro and coriander are the same plant, but in the US we use the term cilantro when referring to the fresh leaves, and coriander usually refers to the dried seeds of the plant." Maybe that's too much to say on TV, or maybe his audience doesn't care that much. Maybe I care too much. But it seems to me that if you're going to educate people about food, you should try to be as accurate as possible.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 12:53PM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 31, 2006 12:41 PM

Maciej takes George Will to task on bilingual ballots. Will thinks bilingual ballots are "a mockery of the rule of law" because you need to speak English to become a citizen. Maciej says, "the insinuation that voters might want ballots in Spanish because they are cheating, lazy, bad people is malicious and wrong. You choose Spanish on your ballot for the same reason you might choose it in an ATM transaction - not because you have contempt for American civil society, but because you don't want to make a mistake."

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 10:13AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 31, 2006 12:41 PM

If you are not currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan: stop everything immediately and get yourself a copy. It's that good, and that important.

I've been reading it for a week now, and had expected to write a review when I'd finished but it's taken me longer than I anticipated to get through it. There's so much to chew on I find I just stop reading mid-paragraph to think about everything he's saying. And really, it's so eye-opening that it's foolish for me to wait until I'm done to tell you: if you care about food, read this book.

Here's a small sampling from some of the pages I've dog-eared:

Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest. (p 108)

"The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary [of Agriculture] Glickman said. "It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality."...Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. (p 179)

Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate....Yet growing the food is the least of it: only a fifth of the total energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around. (p 183)

[T]here are no pigtails in industrial hog production. Farmers "dock," or snip off, the tails at birth, a practice that makes a certain twisted sense if you follow the logic of industrial efficiency on a hog farm. Piglets...are weaned from their mothers ten days after birth (compared with thirteen weeks in nature)...[b]ut this premature weaning leaves the pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a need they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them. (p 218)

Our food system depends on consumers' not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring...[o]f course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds. (p 245)

So fight the indifference, and fight the ignorance. Go read The Omnivore's Dilemma. No book has changed the way I think about food and food production more than this.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 31, 2006, 10:11AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 31, 2006 12:41 PM