randomwalks/dj

The odometer has clicked over, we're in a new decade. I'm trying to make a bit of sense of the previous year, so it's helpful to start by looking over a full year of blog posts like last time I did this.

These are some things that happened.

Soda

Our dog, Sodapop, died in August. The house feels much emptier, especially when I'm making pasta and expecting her to demand her perquisite of three to four noodles and a bit of bacon.

Blogging Fewer Dog-Eared Pages

A few years ago, I got into the habit of writing down the best stuff from the nonfiction books I read, and posting it all here as entries titled Blog All Dog-Eared Pages. A few friends like Chris and Russell and George have picked up on this, which made me very happy. Problem is I'm bad at habits, so my last such entry was all the way back in January, when I excerpted whole slices of the remarkable Process Of Government by Arthur F. Bentley.

I purchased a Kindle in late spring, and I think this has much to do with how this activity has petered out for me. Specifically, the Kindle and its good friend Instapaper have largely eaten my nonfiction reading, which means that there are no longer any pages to dog-ear. The counterintuitive part is that Kindle actually has an incredibly easy way to mark and save passages, with everything you highlight using the little joystick being dumped to a plaintext file called "My Clippings". In theory this should make the activity much easier, but since the medium is the message and all that blah, I'm now reading entirely different stuff than I used to. I read fewer non-fiction books and more non-fiction long-form online writings, the kind of stuff that fits into Instapaper. I'm not unhappy with this change in my intake, but I do like to be a little more demonstrative with the things I'm interested in, so I'm unhappy the change in my output. If there was a way to make the Kindle pump the clippings file back out on some schedule, that would be good. Having to plug it into a computer does not cut it.

I tried to do a "blog all clipped passages" once about film projection speed, but I don't yet have the hang of this.

Speaking

I spoke in front of large groups of people much, much more this year, mostly about maps and cartography. This has been incredibly fun.

(Photo by Kris Krug)

In March, Andrew Turner invited myself, David Heyman from Axis Maps and Elizabeth Windram (formerly) from Google Maps to a SXSW panel on Neocartography: all the new stuff happening in maps online. I talked a bunch about Stamen's work of course, and it was great fun to attend my first SXSW after hearing so much about over the years since 2003 or so. I'll be back this year, for Chris Heathcote's Maps, Books, Spimes, Paper panel. Excitement.

Shawn and I did two presentations of a workshop we're calling Maps From Scratch, once at ETech 2009 and again to a shockingly-packed room at Where 2.0. It must have gone pretty well, because Brady has invited us back to do it all over again in an expanded, two-session form. This was an interesting workshop to run, because we opted for a heavy hands-on approach with a genre of server-side GIS software not known for its ease of installation. We created an Amazon EC2 AMI for participants to use as a workstation, and it went pretty well - that's all still available at mapsfromscratch.com.

My solo presentation at Where 2.0 was Flea Market Mapping, building on some of the work I've been doing georectifying historical maps and explaining why that's a fun and easy and useful activity. I expect to do more work in that are this upcoming year, if all goes well.

I also went to Amsterdam in July for State Of The Map, where I described my work on Walking Papers (more on that below). This was great fun. Aside from the excitement of biking around Amsterdam for four days with Aaron and being hosted by A'dam expert traveler Ben Cerveny, the conference itself was my first mass exposure to the rabid OpenStreetMap community. My talk started out on mapping on paper generally before shifting to the Walking Papers project specifically.

Amsterdam made me switch bicycles, from mostly riding my Univega fixed-gear to a more relaxed single-speed with wide handlebars and an early 1980's Trek mountain bike frame. I'm very happy with it, can't find a photo though.

In October, the North American Cartographic Information Society invited me to deliver the keynote at their annual meeting, which was an incredible thrill and honor. I've not done this kind of central focus talk before, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to talk about online community and sharing to an audience of academic and professional cartographers, explaining some of the trends that have led to a strong and vibrant OpenStreetMap project. Slides and notes here.

Other events where I waved my hands in front of crowds included Interesting 2009, Web 2.0 Expo, dConstruct 2009 in Brighton, and a variety of visits to Stanford and UC Berkeley. All of it was by turns gut-wrenching and awesome.

Finally, in December Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman asked me to participate in An Event Apart here in San Francisco. The audience was much more of a mainstream web design crowd, and I was surprisingly engrossed by the other presenters, especially Luke Wroblewski's talk on HTML forms and Jared Spool's always-entertaining stories from his work for Amazon.com. I posted my slides as a giant, 28MB PDF file.

Being A Fan

I decided early this year that it was important and healthy to be more of a fan, so I've made a special effort to point out things that are awesome and worthy of attention. Early in the year, that meant moving pictures of the sky. More recently, that meant moving pictures of hands and drawings. Along the way, that's meant everyone I know who is doing awesome shit, with all the design and technology and music and video work that my friends have produced. Awesome awesome awesome.

Oakland Crimespotting

We added a PIE OF TIME to long-time research project Oakland Crimespotting, have you seen it?

And, we launched San Francisco Crimespotting with the enthusiastic participation of Jay and Kelly and the City of SF's technology department and some dude named Gavin. Shawn's responsible for the port from Oakland and keeping it running.

O'Reilly published my write-up of the project's technical and social structure in Beautiful Data, a new entry in their Beautiful series.

Walking Papers

Aaron linked to a computer-vision algorithm called SIFT way back in February or so, which caused bells to go off in my head. The result is Walking Papers, a project that connects paper-based mapping and annotation with the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap project through the medium of printing and scanning.

It started as a joke and a feasibility test, but I quickly saw that using technologies like SIFT and FPDF and QR Codes was totally going to work, so a few initial tests searching for pictures of gargoyles on scanned pieces of paper turned into a proper website and service actually used by people around the world. We've even gotten a few international volunteers to translate the site to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Italian! Thanks Jonas, Milo, Jonathan, Manuel, Hiroshi, and Emanuel!

Walking Papers opened some incredibly interesting doors to the international disaster response community, after Mikel suggested I attend a week-long hack session at Camp Roberts. Turns out, the use of such intermittently-connected technologies as paper and local networks is a super hot topic in these circles, and Walking Papers was one of a numbr of projects that's pushing some serious buttons at the DOD right now, for the kinds of people who need to make networking stuff work with a tent and a car battery and a USB key.

Break

At some point, I basically became overwhelmed with novelty, and decided to realign some priorities in favor of doing and showing instead of talking and stuff.

Fortunately, the holiday break has been a relatively easy one to curl up in, with a trip up to Washington to see some of Gem's family and a few old friends, followed by a week or so of being a total hermit here in Oakland. We spent New Years at the Chawazek house drinking champagne and eating dessert and talking about obsolete systems of measurement. I thought back to all the New Years Eves I've had over the years from the time I was making my own plans to just the other night. I feel like I've come somewhat full circle, with a few scattered trips to Poland and a whole string of raves thrown in the middle:

• 1993: Home in San Jose, probably with grandparents in town.
• 1994: Party. A friend's small house party in South San Jose. Sadly we didn't keep in touch after high school.
• 1995: Home. I was supposed to go out with friends, but my ride flaked and I didn't have a car so I just spent the evening angry and at home. This was my last New Years Eve as a high school kid.
• 1996: Party. My freshman year at UC Berkeley, I spent the winter break back in San Jose catching up with high school friends. This was fun, everyone was talking about where they ended up for college.
• 1997: Poland. I visited my mom for a few weeks, spent most of my time stressing about grades that turned out to be fine (A- in CS61A), and went to a small house porty for NYE. People there take their New Years Eve much more seriously, and dress nicely for the occasion. This was weird.
• 1998: Rave. Cloudfactory NYE at a rock climbing gym in Salinas.
• 1999: Rave. Cloudfactory NYE at a former planetarium dome storage building on the former Fort Ord near Monterey. Terry and I did live visuals, and the party was shut down at about 5:00am when the building's superintendent finally got antsy about the noise and the drugs.
• 2000: Rave. Cloudfactory NYE at that same Fort Ord building, but this time it went all night. A curtailed party seems to be more fun than a complete one, possibly because the element of randomness that a bust or sudden cancellation introduces?
• 2001: Rave. Cloudfactory + Infinite Beat at a warehouse in Millbrae near SFO. This was one of the last times I did live visuals at an event, but we pulled out all the stops with seven overlapping screens. I spent much of the night unhappy because I had recently had a crappy breakup and she was there, with the lighting guys in the other main party room.
• 2002: Poland. In a cabin in Zakopane with cousins on my dad's side. Vodka in little tiny shot glasses.
• 2003: Raves. Basically wasted this evening running around between a few different parties.
• 2004: Rave. Gem and I were living at Otherworld, so the big party was just outside our bedroom.
• 2005: Rave. Otherworld again, but this time we had our own apartment, where we escaped in the morning to spend the next day contentedly watching old episodes of Kids In The Hall.
• 2006: Poland. My grandfather passed away, I went there for the funeral and to Krakow with some back-in-the-day family friends for New Years.
• 2007: Friends. Up at Darren and Bonnie's for poker and drinking. This was my winter of terrifying back pain, but the injury stayed mostly quiet to allow me a nice evening out.
• 2008: Friends. Rented vacation house in Sonoma, near Charles Schultz Airport, stuffing ourselves with Aaron's cassoulet for four days. Contentment.
• 2009: Friends. Homemade pizza and board games in the Mission. Contentment.
• 2010: Friends. Goodtime fooddrinkery up near Buena Vista Park, including an extended conversation about old time weights and measures, e.g. the furlong and the dry vs. wet gallon. The presence of an iphone puts a new twist on this kind of talk. Contentment.

Resolutions

1. Health.
2. Mindfulness.
3. More fandom.
4. Preparedness.
5. Small pieces, quickly published.

Comments (2)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on January 2, 2010 9:25 PM

James Fallows is a fantastic blogger, and has a history of doing great reviews of software "thinking tools" like outliners and Ecco and The Brain, etc. He's back on the thinking tools warpath these past few days; pointing folks to Thinklinkr (a web-based collaborative outliner) and digging up some screenshots of GrandView, the DOS product that "many buffs consider...the best outliner ever invented.

Call it a new year's fetish, but I'm trying to get back into thinking tools. And it's depressing, because leaving aside the slew of everything buckets out there (all falling into the two- or three-paned note taking metaphor), there really hasn't been much advancement in tools that help you capture, organize and interlink random bits of data since, well, The Brain. Or am I missing something?

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on January 2, 2010 8:31 PM

Sandy Weill, former chief poohbah of Citigroup, tells us that he had nothing to do with the implosion of the sprawling behemoth. Everything he did was right, it was his...

Originally posted by Hi-Fi Holiday from Blogs.com: Economics Posts, on January 2, 2010 7:45 PM

“A lot of people telling me, since I quit from basketball, a lot of people telling me that I was as good as this, good as that. I didn’t look at myself that way. I get so many praises now. I didn’t know I was decent. I thought I was just an average player. They’re telling me I was more than average, they said I was a statement. That was a great comment, to hear that from people because I just took it as an everyday job and went to work… I was always myself, never looked for someone to give me a handout, just did it. A lot of people can’t go out with someone praising them. I wasn’t like that. I just went out and had fun, I had a good time, went everywhere, didn’t worry about this and that happening.”

-

Charles Oakley, SLAM ONLINE Interview

(via Steve)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on January 2, 2010 7:17 PM

Useless superpowers orig. from Jan 15, 2009
Selling Wants to buy Haves orig. from Dec 16, 2009

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Tags: post updates

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on January 2, 2010 7:11 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on January 2, 2010 2:37 PM

And so this is how Gilbert handles the world of Twitter: he signs up, while telling the world that he won't use the service until he attracts a million followers, an absurd and impossible number for a non-Tweeting D.C. athlete to ever reach. Aside from a few videos, he honors his pledge, slowly creeping to about 9,000 followers, fine by obscure blogger standards, but embarrassingly low for an NBA franchise player. At that rate, he would have retired before hitting a million. But then, on New Year's Eve, a matter of hours before international controversy will spill into his life, he starts Tweeting like crazy: writing things bizarre, provocative, hilarious and somewhat blue. And when, on New Year's Day, all sorts of gun stories about him take over the Internet, he posts 20 updates in seven hours, addressing long-ignored rumors of his fiancee's infidelity, igniting a torrent of angry responses, and attracting more than 2,000 new followers, a number that will continue to climb over the next few days. via voices.washingtonpost.com For you non-NBA fans, there was a standoff (with unloaded guns, supposedly) over Christmas in the Wizards' locker room. I think there are probably guns in every NBA locker room, but the Wizards want to void Arenas' contract. Arenas may very well get to a million followers.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on January 2, 2010 6:09 AM

Hope all of you had a nice decade and looking forward to this new one. I can tell you that we are very pepped to see what the turns of the web and cloud services takes us.

This first release of 2010 we bring you more advanced users good news, we just release a update of Pixlr Editor with the possibility to add Layer Masks. This is the first release of masks so the basic stuff should be there and will be updated later on.

Since masks are a very big deal this also means that to get masks into the application we had to go poking in all areas of the code, all from saving to resizing and painting. If you run into any bug or weirdness please please help us by submitting a bug report.

You find the mask in the "Layers" top-menu, in the right-click context menu of the "layer panel" and also the icon.

Other updates in this release:

• Fixes of a couple of bugs and glitches.
• The image will always open to fit on screen so you don't need to zoom out.
  
• You can now press CTRL+J to create a layer copy.
• If you save the same image you are working on often it will remember the type and name.

Thank you for this amazing year!

Cheers
Ola

Originally posted by dgtart from pixlr online image editor, on January 2, 2010 5:54 AM

Although we don't like to talk about it, it's hard not to speculate, when purchasing the work of a living artist, if the work will be worth more once the artist shuffles off the mortal coil. Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh takes that speculation to a new level by buying the life of an artist. He has entered a unique arrangement to film an artist's entire life until he dies. The French artist Christian Boltanski will be filmed 24 hours a day in his Paris studio. The Herald Sun reports that the video will be streamed live to Walsh's $70 million Museum of Old and New Art once it opens in 2011. Boltanski will be paid a fee until he dies so the longer he lives, the better a deal it is for him. Boltanski is currently 65. Boltanski has called the deal a game, to win he must stay alive at least eight years. Walsh is essentially gambling that he won't. Filming began yesterday.

Another article goes deeper into the terms of the agreement. Apparently if Boltanski dies within the first two years during the project, Walsh will pay Boltanski's next of kin a discounted price for the footage in installments over eight years. But should Boltanski live beyond the eight years, Walsh will pay full price. Should Boltanski die before the eight years the footage goes to Walsh but if he lives then it belongs to him. Boltankski wants to prove to Walsh, who says he never loses a bet, that no one can beat the odds all the time. In an earlier AFP piece, Boltanski said that Walsh told him he would die before the eight years are up because he never loses and while Boltanski conceded that he doesn't take the best care of himself he still is willing to bet with the man he calls a devil.

Filed under: Art

Your Money Or Your Life? French Artist Makes A Deal With The Devil originally appeared on Luxist on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Deidre Woollard from Luxist, on January 2, 2010 4:05 AM

 

I'm a big fan of Louise Penny, a Canadian author whose Three Pines books is about as lovely as a murder mystery series is going to get.  In her most recent newsletter, Penny linked to a blog called Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, written by Sarah Weinman, an LA Times crime fiction reviewer.  Weinman offered a great list of the best crime fiction of the decade, which includes Penny's Still Life as well as a number of other books I've been meaning to read, like the Stieg Larsson trilogy, Daniel Woodrell's Winter Bone (also recommended by The Oregonian's Steve Duin), Arnaldur Indridason's Jar City and Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, as well as a few books I've never heard of.  

She also reviews some intriguing books in the sidebar, such as Through the Heart by Kate Morganroth who "tells the fairy-tale minded to take their fantasies and shove it" and Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth, who offers "one of the most definitive fictional accounts of London just as it was about to swing."  I'm definitely looking forward to reading this blog further.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on January 1, 2010 9:00 PM

Why have mice and dogs not teamed up? If this does eventually happen, what will it mean for the blogging community?

What makes you think that mice and dogs are not teaming up as we speak? I for one anticipate this happening in the near future and have already registered FuckYeahMiceAndDogs in preparation for the emergence of the great Mice/Dogs Internet alliance. Long mice and dogs; short cats.

Ask me anything

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on January 1, 2010 5:52 PM

SpamAssassin gives any message sent in 2010 a default score of 3.2 because that date "is grossly in the future." But it gets better: they discovered and "fixed" this in June 2009... but never bothered to push out a release. Because being fixed in CVS is good enough, right? That's the Linux way.

You want "score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0".

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on January 1, 2010 4:19 PM

Why don’t you and Denton sit down and tag all those old posts from 2003 with your bylines to dispel the confusion of who wrote what once and for all?

I wish they would. But I don’t own Gawker, so it’s not up to me. It should be easy enough to do technically, since Nick and I had separate logins and some of the posts in the archives were imported from his personal blog. I would assume that metadata is still associated with the posts.

As a general rule, if it seems overly explanatory (i.e, “The Observer is a salmon colored newspaper…”), is about real estate, English people, or is a straightforward service journalism post about where to find the Best of Something in New York, Nick wrote it. Everything else, I probably wrote.

Ask me anything

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on January 1, 2010 3:50 PM

Remember a few days ago I wrote a few posts batting around The National Review's Marc Thiessen for his hapless attempt to explain why "shoe bomber" Richard Reid's case was any different from Xmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. This morning when I was at the playground with my family I noticed that Karl Rove had flagged for me on Twitter that Thiessen had responded with yet another rejoinder.

Thiessen makes the common mistake of believing that if you just pile enough facts on top of each other they will eventually amount to an argument. But it just doesn't. You can find Thiessen's post here. But the gist is that, contrary to my argument, the fact that President Bush had already okayed military tribunals in principle a month before Reid's arrest is irrelevant because the administration had not yet had sufficient time to promulgate policies and procedures for tribunals and military detention.

But this claim hardly stands scrutiny. It was a cardinal rule of the administration's prosecution of the War on Terror that the commander-in-chief does not have to wait on administrative rulings or findings of fact to act in the nation's defense. His war power is plenary. More concretely, though, Padilla, who was sent to military detention, was arrested only 6 months after Reid. Was it really all worked out by then? And if so, remember that Reid pleaded guilty only in January 2003, a full six months later. If everything had been worked out in May 2002 (for Padilla), President Bush could have plucked Reid out of the criminal court system and given him the Padilla treatment before his case ever came to trial. But he didn't.

Thiessen's point about Padilla doesn't make much sense either. I said he was sent to military detention because we didn't have enough evidence for a criminal trial. He says, no, we didn't want to put him in a criminal court because the evidence would have allowed him to depose KSM and others then in CIA custody. In other words, I say six. And he says, Not so: it's half a dozen! This is just another way of saying we didn't have the evidence for a criminal trial.

More powerful though is the argument of Thiessen's NRO colleague Andy McCarthy, a former Assistant US Attorney with extensive experience in counter-terrorism prosecutions, who posted just after him. With a soft touch -- sort of tiptoeing around it -- McCarthy concedes that Thiessen's argument really doesn't hold up. McCarthy thinks that trying Reid -- and, for that matter, Zacarias Moussaoui -- in the criminal courts was just a mistake. A screw up. A bad decision.

In other words, McCarthy is saying Abdulmutallab should be tried before a military tribunal. And Reid and Moussaoui should have been too. Let's not pretend the cases are different or that we weren't able to send them to the brig then too.

This is all a perfectly consistent, reasonable argument. Not one I agree with, I think, for a number of different reasons. But still one that can stand on its own two feet and have its tires kicked without toppling or falling apart. What you really can't do is claim that the Reid decision made any sense -- but that Abdulmutallab has to be treated differently -- or that President Bush didn't have the ability to treat Reid differently than he did. The whole question can be smashed to pieces, which McCarthy clearly gets, if you're just willing to say: Bush made a mistake. But that seems to be beyond Thiessen's reach.

The lesson I draw from this is that if you want quality military tribunal/torture advocacy, go to the former prosecutor, not the speech writer. And for Karl Rove, happy to joust, but really, choose better proxies!

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on January 1, 2010 8:53 AM

On this day exactly twenty years ago I lost my mother and my youngest brother. I've written about this on previous January 1rsts. The date because of it's neatness — January 1, 1990 — gives me an absurdly simple way measure the the time from that day this one. Sometimes in conversation someone will ask how long ago they died, and I always resist the urge to give the questioner an exact tally with months and days attached. Stating the elapsed time so precisely seems too intense, but the calculation is automatic and needs no mental machinery. Recalling death anniversaries not just by years but also with months and days was something my grandmother would do. She carried around the dates of her 9 brothers and sisters who preceded her in death. None of her siblings, except maybe Tio Tibero, fell on easily divisible days.

At the age of 22, twenty years would have seemed an eternity to me, and yet nothing about those terrible days has faded. After being told the news and summoned home, I remember standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street and hailing a taxi. In the cab I spun one of the buttons on my shirt back and forth until it broke and held that button in a tightly clasped fist all the way back to Texas. On arriving to my house which was strangely full of people, an aunt hugged me deeply and whispered through tears that she would fix my shirt. Wordlessly I handed her the button.

Christopher would be 39. It's hard to imagine he's been gone a year longer than he lived. Back then I was skinny but he was skinnier. We both carried cameras everywhere. I can't picture him thick and middle aged as I am now, still lugging a camera around. When he comes to me in dreams he is always young. Sometimes 19, sometimes 12, sometimes 4. In those dreams am always 3 years older. We play, or torture each other, or look at stars as we often did. My 5 year old son, Raul Andres, with his mad creative bursts of bookmaking and deep love of robots channels him sometimes. And sometimes when I reading to Raul Andres I get the sense memory of myself at 8 reading to Christopher. Often I am reading from the selfsame heavily worn books we read as children complete with our childish crayon annotations. Raul Andres happens to love the same stories and laughs in the same places.

My mom would be 65. She was only 3 years older than I am now when she died. But at 42 my life with kids is just beginning, while at 45, her life with kids was ending. Was she really younger than me now when I left for college? She complained bitterly of empty nest syndrome when I left. The scope and shape of her life versus mine is hard to reconcile. These days in my dreams of her she is always 45 and I am whatever age I am. In those dreams I am going about my life and will suddenly notice her in the corner of the room watching silently. I find myself asking questions, trying to fill in the holes, but she vanishes when I approach. I wonder if she will remain 45 in those dreams when I am an old man.

The deaths left me keenly aware of time and it's strange fluxuations. In the immediate aftermath, my old life, the life of a few days before, was suddenly distant. Thinking a week or a month or a year into the future was impossible. With all my nerve endings exposed, I existed rather than lived suspended in an excruciating endless moment. For some months afterward, the date had a gravity which I orbited at various speeds without regard for anything else. I focused on the timeline. Days would tick by painfully and yet everything seemed to be moving at lightning speed. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, one day it was over. Through a mysterious combination of good friends, travel, art, and love I reached escape velocity. I woke up, blinked my eyes in the bright sunlight, and time itself was righted, the continuum of my own life while disturbed was comprehensible again, and I could appreciate my strange new life without being tethered to a catastrophic moment. I don't know exactly how it happened, but I think it was because I realized at that I had a choice and I choose to move forward.

Someone asked me the other day whether experiencing tragedy at a relatively young age had made me more or less able to deal with tragedy now. I answered, no. You can't compare loss. Each one is uniquely capricious and each one ricochets through family and friends in unpredictable patterns of destruction. The irony of tragedy is that it is the inverse of friendship and love. The more you give of yourself, the larger your network of potential grief, but then again, the more people you have to help pick you up when you fall. We're all more vulnerable than we know, but we're stronger too.

So it's been twenty years. Mom, Christopher, you'd barely recognize me now, but I'd hope you'd be proud of the family I've created. We have fun. I miss you guys.

Filed under: personal history
Tags: christopher, mom

Sponsored by:
TWO BLUE CARS: Your kid's favorite shirt.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on January 1, 2010 7:10 AM

©iStockphoto.com/galdzer

Happy New Year, serious eaters. May your 2010 be filled with lots of seriously delicious food (eaten in moderation, of course—this is, after all, a serious diet post) with people whose company you enjoy. That's in fact what we strive to do every day on Serious Eats, and to the extent that we succeed, it's largely because of the warm embrace we receive from the ever-growing community of serious eaters all over the world.

But this being a diet post, I hope you allow me to indulge in the age-old practice of New Year's resolutions.

They are a cliche—I know that. But nonetheless I am going to lay mine on you. (Plus, I know you are probably thinking about yours as well, so I want you to lay yours on me.) Between all of the serious eaters who read the diet posts we should be able to come up with a meaningful list that we can all pick and choose from.

No more of these guys.

Ed's New Year's Resolutions

1. No more empty calories. Bad chocolate chip cookies, bad potato chips, and bad ice cream have no place in a serious eater's life. I'm going to save my calories for seriously delicious things that are worth the calories.

2. I'm going to try not to give in to the "I may never get here again" rationalization for senseless binging. When it comes to food there is invariably a next time. That extra piece of perfect fried chicken is not necessary. It's in fact detrimental to my health.

3. Increase my exercise frequency to five days a week. Squash three times a week is not enough exercise for a serious eater like me. Whether it's weight training or biking or fast-walking I've got to pick up the pace.

4. Avoid participating in the Serious Eats taste tests at the outset. Carey and I seemed to figure out a system that worked for everyone by the end of her monthlong search for the best chocolate chip cookie in New York. Now it's up to me to make sure we implement that system in the taste tests to come.

5. Stay the course on my serious diet. My weight has been creeping up in the last few months. I have no excuses. The trend line is going to change.

Weigh-in

I'm afraid that my New Year's resolutions have come too late to help me much during this particular, ever-treacherous holiday season. We were in Boston for a few days taking a break, but I arrived in Beantown with a long list of places I wanted to try, so our break did not include a break from serious eating.

Here we go. 223. Up a pound from last week. That's it for the upward weight creep. See above for details.

Once again, happy new year, Serious Eaters, wherever you are.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on January 1, 2010 6:00 AM

At Frozen Perl 2010 in Minneapolis, I'm teaching a new master class based on my latest book, Effective Perl Programming, 2nd Edition. Perl has changed quite a bit since Joseph Hall wrote the first edition over 10 years ago. Josh McAdams and I have added a lot of new information as well as updated the existing material. In the one-day class for intermediate Perl programmers, I'll cover selected topics from the book, including: Working with Unicode in PerlTricks with filehandlesNew regex features in Perl 5.10 and laterPlaying with pack()Using closures to make things simplerand other topics as time allows Although the book hasn't been published yet, it is available for pre-order, and attendees to the class can get a sneak peek at the working manuscript as well as a soft copy of the course slides.

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by brian_d_foy (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on January 1, 2010 1:58 AM

Dear Friends of Arduino

On the first day of 2010 we look back at five amazing years where Arduino has gone from being an idea into our heads to become a widely used platform for hardware learning and experimentation.

We set out to build a platform that helps people get stuff done without having too much focus on the technology used to get it done. We’re pleased to see many people have managed to do just that.

We have faced a happy challenge as the platform has seen more widespread use. We get more and more very qualified contributions and valuable suggestions from a many different sources. It is difficult to satisfy everyone while avoiding the platform bloat that we sought to avoid in our original goals. We believe we have been quite successful at keeping Arduino true to its roots, incorporating suggestions and contributions but still keeping it simple. Arduino has reached a reasonable level of stability and reliability, and it’s time to crystalise the work done so far and to graduate, as the title in Italian says, to 1.0

What does this mean for Arduino?

We plan to stabilise the API and the current IDE so that for the foreseeable future the reference, the examples, the tutorials and the books you buy should stay consistent. This will help people who are teaching, wiriting tutorials and books to stay up to date for longer. We will obviously fix bugs and add new boards to the core as they appear and you should expect everything in 1.0 onward to work properly.

At the same time this allows us to open up other streams for developing “experimental” distributions that are more cutting edge that are more appealing to people with more experience that are willing to trade some stability with more performance and new features.

The schedule for 1.0 release will be as follows: we’ll start a public discussion on the API for 1.0 which will last into February. At that time, we’ll summariseall the suggestions, and incorporate those that we consider coherent with the philosophy of simplicity and ease of use.

In march, during the NYU spring break, we’ll meet up at ITP in New York to exchange notes and test our assumptions followed by a social event somewhere in town (we’ll have more details about this as we are organising it right now)

We should expect to be able to go “Uno punto Zero” by June.

We also recognise that our website has been in need of love for quite a while and we have started working on a new infrastructure where we’ll better integrate its three main elements (Main site, forum and playground) both graphically and technically. A new forum platform is in the works as we try to find a solution that will let us migrate all the immensely valuable content of the current forum without losing a single bit of it.

The main website will become, in the long run, a much more general resource for people learning about Physical Computing and Arduino. There are some amazing tutorials on the playground and around the web, collecting and organising them will provide us with a great resource for learners and we hope to recognize those contributions by including more of them in the main site

Hardware-wise we’re working on some new ideas on how to make Arduino even simpler to use and more affordable. At the same time we’re looking at how, applying the Arduino Philosophy, we can make some other areas of technology more approachable for everybody.

Today everyone of us is working on their new years resolutions, these are ours and we hope you’ll be excited as we are to work on it.

Massimo on behalf of the Arduino team

Originally posted by massimo from Arduino Blog, on December 31, 2009 11:07 PM

I apologize for the rather impersonal nature of a canned New Year's message, but the New Year's greeting is an essential part of Japanese etiquette and one which I feel compelled to preserve.

First of all, I want to thank all of the people in my life - my family, my co-workers, my friends as well as all of the animals and plants in my life for making this year yet another wonderfully stimulating and fulfilling year in my journey through life. I feel one year wiser and one year happier, looking forward to next year's challenges.

Working on Creative Commons and being part of an extremely successful year has been a joy. In the last year, we've seen the White House, Al Jazeera, Wikipedia and a wide variety of startup companies as well as established organizations begin using Creative Commons. The latest reports show over 350,000,000 pieces of content licensed under a Creative Commons license. In one of the most difficult financial environments yet, we've been able to meet our fund raising targets. The organization and the international network continues to grow in effectiveness and something that I am extremely proud to be affiliated with.

My new friends in the Middle East have helped to knock me out of my comfort zone and open my eyes to a whole culture and world view that had been completely missing from my consciousness and my life. The incredible generosity of my new network in the Middle East is humbling and inspiring.

My transition to Dubai is nearly complete having mostly finished moving into my apartment. I couldn't have done it without the help of all of my friends there and Mizuka's support. Dubai finally feels like home.

Although the credit crisis in Dubai is visible, I see a lot of opportunity in the Middle East and spending time and energy developing my network and understanding of the region feel "right" although it might seem contrarian to some.

I am also developing a wonderful relationship with the community of entrepreneurs in Singapore and the Singapore government and will be launching a bunch of activity there to try to help get the startup ecosystem going in Singapore. Singapore's a great meeting place for my friends from all over the world and I see it as a launch pad into the Middle East and Asia. I'll be setting up a small startup fund the first quarter of the year focusing on Singapore, the Middle East and Asia with some great partners including Pivotal Labs, IDEO, Digital Garage and my trusty new investment manager, James.

The company I co-founded and currently act as a board member for, Digital Garage, just moved out of our old digs that we've been in for the last 15 years into a shiny new building. (yay!) Digital Garage has been helping Twitter in Japan and working with the Twitter team to develop the market in Japan has been a joy and tremendously rewarding.

So, thank you again, my friends, for being there to inspire me and guild me through yet another great year and hope to see you all soon in Dubai or where ever our paths my cross.

Originally posted by Joi from Joi Ito's Web, on December 31, 2009 11:06 PM

Originally posted by Sarah Sosiak from sarah sosiak, on December 31, 2009 10:00 PM

Last pack of the year, last post of the year, last anything of the year, as soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to bed. I've thought it over very carefully and I think I've finally chosen a set of the year:

Allen & Ginter and Goodwin Champions are right up there with it, but I chose Topps206 for two reasons:

1) It's an all baseball set. I like the oddballs in my retro sets, but there's a purity to this set I find refreshing.

2) The short printed cards are variations that are technically outside the base set. This means that f I want to complete this set I could just go with the 1-300 base cards and call it a day. As someone with neither the time or the ca$h to be chasing a bunch of shorties, I appreciate this a lot.

So there it is, my set of the year even though I don't do award thingys on this blog. Let's open the last pack of '09 in its honor.

260 Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller either suffers from cripping social anxiety disorder or Topps is overusing the hell out of this pose. This is the 4th or 5th card where he's peeping over his glove.

64 Corey Hart

I tried so hard not to do this, really I did, but I can refrain no longer.

Corey Hart: Sunglasses at Night

(why the hell can't I embed a crappy Corey Hart video? Seriously WTF YouTube?)

198 Brad Nelson RC

Brad's a big 'ol dude playing first for the Brewers. I think they have one of those already. This is Brad's rookie card, but he made his debut in '08. Since Brad is hopelessly blocked at first, he played in the OF last year in his September callup.

282 Ian Kinsler Piedmont mini

This card is why I collect cards. Just look at how cool this is. THE BALL'S IN THE GLOVE!

Also: this. Topps nailed this card.

Phil Hughes Auto Redemption

Have you ever seen a miscut redemption card before? Wild and wacky schtuff. Is it just me or are there a bunch of redemptions in this set?

262 Tommy Hanson RC

PPPPPBBBBTTTTHHHHTTTBBBTTTTTTHHHHH!!!!!

This card makes me grin like an idiot.

Mantle Checklist 5 of 7

Ending the year on a Mick. I'm tempted to check this checklist just out of principle.

There it is, so long crappy 2009 and hello awesome 2010! Happy happy everbody!

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on December 31, 2009 6:16 PM

Since it’s no secret by now that The Girlfriend Experience is my favorite movie poster of the year and since I already selected a few of these for my Best of the Decade post I decided not to rank this selection of my twenty favorites of 2009—except aesthetically. Happy New Year, thanks for reading and here’s to more dazzling design in 2010.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Auteurs Notebook, on December 31, 2009 12:31 PM

Filed under: Developer

The very first book I bought for programming the iPhone was none other than Erica Sadun's iPhone Developer's Cookbook. It wasn't the first book of Erica's I had purchased -- years ago I bought her Desktop Video book -- but it was an excellent introduction into the secret world of iPhone development. If you recall, Apple's cloak of silence (aka the NDA all developers had to agree to) prohibited developers from even talking about how to write programs for the iPhone! Erica, as is her style, was rarin' to go with a book detailing common practices all developers would find useful, especially n00bs like myself.

I should note that InformIT, the publishers, also have sample chapters for a bunch of Mac and iPhone developer books available here.

So I'm very happy to say we are giving away five copies of the second edition of The iPhone Developer's Cookbook. To enter, you must be over 18, in the US or Canada, and leave a comment on this post. The rest of the rules are below. Good luck and get coding!

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment on this post.
• The comment must be left before Friday, January 8, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: one copy of iPhone Developer's Cookbook, 2nd edition (Value: US$40.49)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

TUAWWin a copy of the iPhone Developer's Cookbook originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Victor Agreda, Jr. from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 31, 2009 10:00 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from http://juliasegal.tumblr.com/, on December 31, 2009 8:29 AM

I knew he was coming back...

I never even took his RSS feed off my iGoogle page.

Confirmed by Facebook, Tribe Cards and Stale Gum...

The Baseball Card Blog is Coming Back.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go behold the greatest post ever in all of cardbloggery.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on December 31, 2009 5:26 AM

Today is the last day for partial season ticket holders to renew.

Our crew should be gleefully entering our 25th year as Met seat holders. The Mets should be recognizing this accomplishment and our record of investing in the team.

Instead, the Loge13 refugees - 12 seats strong -- are not renewing today. We will possibly renew later, if the Mets make some reasonable accommodations. The folks we have spoken with in the ticket office are very nice so far. But we'll see.

The New York Times has a timely story on the subject today. There are probably many thousands of people ignore this extended deadline today. Do the right thing, Mets.

Here be the article:

With the Mets on the verge of signing Jason Bay to fill one of their biggest needs, a left fielder, the question arises: Who, literally, will notice Bay next season?

One of the biggest complaints from Mets fans about Citi Field last season was the obstructed views from the seats in left field. From the highest of the three decks, many fans could not see the left fielder, the warning track or the fence, and sometimes could not see the center fielder, either. Fans in the lower decks also struggled to see plays in left field, and often had to crane their necks to watch replays on televisions hanging above them.

Mets executives have defended Citi Field's geometry, saying that the partly obscured views of the field are the tradeoff for putting fans closer to the action.

In good times, a debate over stadium sight lines would be a footnote. But these are not the best of times. Many Mets fans are frustrated by the team's dismal 2009 season and by their uncertain prospects in 2010. Other than Bay, the Mets have not made any big off-season moves.

Fans have also voiced concerns about the cost of tickets. That issue, combined with the discontent over the team and some of the views, has left some fans in no mood to renew their season-ticket plans by Thursday's deadline, which had already been extended earlier this month.

"For the life of me, I don't know why I'd want those seats again," said Len Jokubaitis, who had a Saturday plan with two seats in the top row of Section 531 in left field. He was one of more than two dozen fans who talked to The New York Times about their ticket plans for 2010. "I wish the team well and I'd love to see them turn it around, but I just don't think they are worth it right now."

Jokubaitis said he would go to fewer games next season and search for single-game tickets on StubHub. He is willing to pay more than face value for those tickets, he said, because he will be freed from the risk of being left with tickets he cannot resell, something he said happened repeatedly last year.

Fans sitting in the outfield are not the only ones making other plans. Ominously for the team, fans like Jamie Schreck are also taking a pass. He had two seats in the Metropolitan Bronze level last season that cost an average of $150 per ticket. But the team's poor play, the relative lack of free-agent signings and the slim resale market for his seats persuaded Schreck to opt for single-game tickets in 2010.

"I'll probably go to the same amount of games that I did last year, but I'll remove the stress of having to get rid of the 50 or 60 games that I don't want to go to," he said.

Acquiring Bay, he said, will help the team. But, he added, "there's got to be a very strong chance of them going to the playoffs year after year to justify these prices."

To induce fans like Schreck to buy new plans, the Mets cut ticket prices by as much as 20 percent on some seats. The price of Schreck's seats, though, fell just 3.3 percent. In the sections farthest from home plate, where many holders of partial season tickets plans sit, prices were mostly unchanged.

That includes the Promenade Reserved sections in deep left field, where tickets cost as little as $11 a game.

Mets officials declined to say what percentage of their season-ticket holders have renewed their plans, or what impact they expect the Bay signing will have on ticket sales. The team, of course, may still make some significant off-season moves, but even that might not satisfy every disgruntled fan. For instance, one fan named Jay, writing on The New York Times's Bats blog, listed an array of reasons for not renewing his tickets on the promenade level, including the location of his seats and the lack of access to some of the stadium's clubs.

What seemed to really set him off, though, was the team not meeting his request for a Johan Santana bobble head doll.

"Well, it's been two years and I reminded him every time I spoke with him," Jay wrote on Bats Blog about his conversations with a Mets ticket-sales representative. "But he has no problem calling me every week or so asking when I'm going to renew."

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on December 31, 2009 3:36 AM

Rapper Skillz has spoken up on his new "Rap Up 2009" song and explained the process behind putting together the annual hip-hop headlines wrap up.

[Visit SOHH.com for more information]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from SOHH.com Dailies, on December 31, 2009 2:30 AM

I had no idea. Brian Oberkirch: "Zack's bike shop immediately gets you over that hump by making the pieces parts of a good bike pretty understandable. It feels like an Apple store in there - your new bike is the star, and you're encouraged to daydream about it. It's Lego-like fun. Even for someone like me who can't figure out mechanical things at all, you end up armed & ready to make choices about things, & you don't feel like you're just along for the ride. Lots to learn from this little bike shop. Only later did I learn that the supergeniuses at Adaptive Path had worked on it. Ok, makes more sense. They totally hit the nail."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on December 30, 2009 8:53 PM

Originally posted by Will from A Test Of Will, on December 30, 2009 7:36 PM

Shared by Buster
I loved this game.

Play this game through. It's worth it.

via andy

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Andre's Notes, on December 30, 2009 3:50 PM

And not just any soccer ball...the official match ball for the 2010 World Cup.

Tags: how to   soccer   sports   video

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on December 30, 2009 2:58 PM

via www.youtube.com

Originally posted by Alaina from alaina browne lives here, on December 30, 2009 1:51 PM

    

The Book Design Review has offered up their top book designs of the year, which you can even vote on on their website.  The front runner, and my favorite, is Columbine, which has a desolate, 28 Days Later feel and gives off an austere, unsentimental, Scandinavian vibe. 

At the same time, due to its light color scheme and its abundance of sky, there's something dimly hopeful about the cover to me.  There's an ambiguity that tells me this is not going to be an ordinary, sentimental true-crime book, and when you stop to think about the subject matter, that's no small feat on the part of its designer, Henry Sene Yee.  If the many stellar reviews it has garnered are correct, this is one book you can judge from its cover.

(Thanks, David.)

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on December 30, 2009 1:30 PM

, originally uploaded by amolho4.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on December 30, 2009 1:25 PM

This is a rather accessible look at the consequences of bad API design. Interestingly enough, the main example revolves around the inappropriate use of side effects. The last section concludes with cultural changes the author feels is necessary to improve the situation. via lambda-the-ultimate.org

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on December 30, 2009 12:49 PM

In 1944, Popular Photography magazine asked several people, including photographers Berenice Abbott and László Moholy-Nagy, to speculate about the future of photography.

Their opinions differ. Yet somehow all seem to feel that the second hundred years will see the camera put to use as never before with the amateur often leading the way.

Tags: photography

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on December 30, 2009 9:48 AM

Google seems to be releasing or acquiring new products almost daily. It’s one thing for a couple of programmers to hack together a side project. It’s another thing for Google to put gobs of time and money behind it. The best way to predict how committed Google will be to a given project is to figure out whether it is “strategic” or not.

Google makes 99% of their revenue selling text ads for things like airplane tickets, dvd players, and malpractice lawyers. A project is strategic for Google if it affects what sits between the person clicking on an ad and the company paying for the ad. Here is my rough breakdown of the “layers in the stack” between humans and the money:

Human - device – OS – browser – bandwidth –  websites - ads – ad tech – relationship to advertiser – $$$

At each layer, Google either wants to dominate it or commoditize it. (For more on the strategic move known as commoditizing the complement, see here, here and here). Here’s my a brief analysis of the more interesting layers:

Device: Desktop hardware already commoditized. Mobile hardware is not, hence Google Phone (Nexus One).

OS: Not commoditized, and dominated by archenemy (Microsoft)!!   Hence Android/Google Chrome OS is very strategic. Google also needs to remove main reasons people choose Windows. Main reasons (rational ones – ignoring sociological reasons, organizational momentum etc) are Office (hence Google Apps), Outlook (hence Gmail etc), gaming (look for Google to support cross-OS gaming frameworks), and the long tail of Windows-only apps (these are moving to the web anyways but Google is trying to accelerate the trend with programming tools).

Browser: Not commoditized, and dominated by arch enemy! Hence Chrome is strategic, as is alliance with Mozilla, as are strong cross-browser standards that maintain low switching costs.

Bandwidth:  Dominated by wireless carriers, cable operators and telcos. Very hard for Google to dominate without massive infrastructure investment, hence Google is currently trying to commoditize/weaken via 1) more competition (WiMAX via Clearwire, free public Wi-Fi) 2) regulation (net neutrality).

Websites/search (”ad inventory”): Search is obviously dominated by Google. Google’s syndicated ads (AdSense) are dominant because Google has the highest payouts since they have the most advertisers bidding. This in turn is due largely to their hugely valuable anchor property, Google.com. Acquired Youtube to be their anchor property for video/display ads, and DoubleClick to increase their publisher display footprint. On the emerging but fast growing mobile side, presumably they bought AdMob for their publisher relationships (versus advertiser relationships where Google is already dominant). The key risks on this layer are 1) people skip the ads altogether and go straight to, say, Amazon to buy things, 2) someone like Facebook or MS uses anchor property to aggressive compete in syndicated display market.

Relationships to advertisers:  Google is dominant in non-local direct-response ads, both SMB self serve and big company serviced accounts.  They are much weaker in display. Local advertisers (which historically is half of the total ad market) is still a very underdeveloped channel – hence (I presume) the interest in acquiring Yelp.

This doesn’t mean Google will always act strategically. Obviously the company is run by humans who are fallible, emotional, subject to whims, etc. But smart business should be practiced like smart chess: you should make moves that assume your opponents will respond by optimizing their interests.

Originally posted by chris from cdixon.org - chris dixon's blog, on December 30, 2009 8:50 AM

Sean Parnell: Chicago's weather.

40 below (-40C)
Hollywood disintegrates.
Chicago's Girl Scouts begin selling cookies door to door.

Via David Jacobs.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on December 30, 2009 8:42 AM

John Maeda's Life Countdown: "How many more springs might I see?"

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on December 30, 2009 7:36 AM

From TPM Reader MF ...

Thiessen's explanation is preposterous even on its own terms. Per their respective Wiki entries, Reid was arrested on December 22, 2001, after trying to bring down AA flight 63. Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002, and was (in Theissen's words) "taken out of the criminal-justice system, declared an illegal enemy combatant, and transferred to the Charleston brig for interrogation" on June 9, 2002. Reid remained in the civilian criminal sytem through his January 2003 guilty plea in a Boston federal court.

Following Thiessen's "logic," the US had clearly "figured out that we had other options than handing [terrorists] over to law enforcement" as of June 9, 2002, the day Padilla was sent to military prison. Why couldn't the government have likewise "taken [Reid] out of the criminal-justice system" during the seven months between June 2002 and Reid's guilty plea in January 2003?

It just makes no sense.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 30, 2009 7:21 AM

I’m speaking at two conferences in early 2010, as indicated by the badges in the right side column.

First is CodeMash in Sandusky, OH, January 13-15. I’m doing one four-hour “precompiler” tutorial on iPhone programming, and two sessions.

No, of course they’re not done yet. But here’s a bit of what I’m planning:

• Introduction to iPhone SDK – I’ve decided that rather than put up some slides to walk through the basics, I’m going to teach the entire tutorial in Xcode and Interface Builder. This means I need to not only write my examples in advance (duh), but to pull together a bit more of a script so I know where to stop and explain things: “Objective-C uses square braces for method calls, which are really better thought of as message dispatches”, “IBAction is synonymous with void, but tells Interface Builder it’s OK to accept a connection to this method”, etc. I’m also thinking about how to cover the most truly useful material in four hours. I think I’d like to do the trivial browser in the first hour to do basic project building, IB, coding, etc., a tabbed app in the second hour to play with multiple view controllers, and a navigation app in hours 3 and 4, since those are so bread-and-butter. The nav app might use the webservice of the conference’s session list… if I think we can really pull off tables, networking, and XML parsing in two hours. Gonna have to rehearse to convince myself it can be done in a group setting in that kind of time.
• How Do You Do That on iPhone? – This is just going to be a grab-bag of non-obvious techniques that you can’t get from the docs and instead have to learn from forums, programming guides, word-of-mouth, etc. Things like custom table cells and building the “full” and “lite” versions of your app with one Xcode project (hint: understand how “targets” work).
• Oh Crap! I Forgot (or Never Learned) C! – In a way, this is the last gasp of a book that I wrote 100 pages of before it just ended up not happening. My thesis was that for all the developers who never learned C, or did but forgot, it’s a real bitch to be thrown into the world of pointers and malloc and life without objects, especially when the premier guide to the language was last updated during the Reagan administration, and contains no-longer-helpful analogies to Fortran and Pascal. The idea of the book was to be a C primer that you’d work through with the iPhone SDK, not in order to learn the iPhone APIs right away (we already wrote that book), but so that there would be a specific workbench, freely and easily available, for learning the C language (this is where K&R basically says “use cc on the command-line and if that doesn’t work, go ask a sysadmin.”). The session is going to survey the language from the point of view of scripters and other modern-day programmers, with particular attention to memory-management concerns, and idioms that are unique to C (things like setting up “context objects” for callbacks, because you don’t have closures).

Then, in April, I’ll be at 360iDev in San Jose (register with my special link), speaking on the topic of Core Audio. The talk, Core Audio: Don’t Be Afraid To Play It LOUD is one where I’m going to try to play up the fun factor a little more, and embrace the fact that Core Audio is a goddamned hard API to master. If you can do anything in Core Audio, you should feel awesome, and I’ve found that small successes in this API make you want to learn more. Oh, and bonus points if you catch the reference in the session title.

BTW, more news on the Core Audio front in an upcoming post…

Originally posted by cadamson from [Time code];, on December 30, 2009 7:04 AM

As we move forward into a new decade, SOHH spoke with Rick Ross, Rakim, Juvenile and DJ Webstar to find out what their favorite album of the past ten years is.

[Visit SOHH.com for more information]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from SOHH.com Dailies, on December 30, 2009 6:30 AM

One of the most interesting aspects of roster construction in today’s major league baseball is the bullpen , and how it revolves around the closer. The closer position has reached mythical status in today’s MLB, exemplified by Mariano Rivera. Since 1996, the game for the Yankees has been to find a way to lead after eight innings, and then turn the ball over to the undisputed best one-inning pitcher in the history of the game.

Rivera may rank behind Trevor Hoffman in terms of career saves, but Mo’s 14 year span of dominance is unprecedented. And yet, he only ranks 76th on Sean Smith’s list pitchers by WAR. Hoffman is all the way down at number 209. For me, the idea that a role with such a seemingly low value can placed in such a high regard evokes some sort of curiosity.

Today, we look at how the position of the closer has evolved since the inception of the save, the statistic which will forever linked with the closer. The save was introduced in 1969, but the idea of the one-inning closer which we are so familiar with did not immediately catch on. Goose
Gossage, for instance, is specifically noted as having the ability to earn a multiple inning save with regularity. In today’s game, on the other hand, it is an event when a closer is called upon to make a two inning save. Let’s take a look at the average innings per game finished for those pitchers with 30 saves or more since 1969. Games is used instead of saves to account for blown saves as well as games entered that weren’t save situations.

Two things jump out right away. First, the sheer numbers of 30 save guys ballooned in the 90s and the new millennium. Second, as we already knew, for the most part, “closers” pitched much more innings in the early parts of what we can call the “Save Era.” The correlation between IP per game is high, with R^2 = .56. We especially see this decline around 1986, when the average IP/G for these players drops from 1.51 to 1.32. Tom Henke’s 34 save season in 1992, in which he pitched 57 games and 55 2/3 innings, was the first 30+ save season with less than 1 IP/G.

Things have been relatively constant since the strike of 1994. From 1995-2008, the average IP/G for 30 save closers ranged from 1.03-1.07, with only two pitchers (Danny Graves in 2002 and Ryan Dempster in 2005) going over 1.25. The role of the closer has now been quite well-defined, and the Goose Gossage style of pitcher is dead.

Here, we can see the undeniable effect that the save has had on the game of baseball. The way teams build rosters is different. The way managers attack game strategy is altered. The market for relief pitchers has changed. Between these and other changes, we’ve seen one simple statistic dramatically effect the way the game is played.

Originally posted by Jack Moore from FanGraphs Baseball, on December 30, 2009 5:00 AM

Note: Lee Zalben, a.k.a. "the Peanut Butter Guy" is the creator of the Peanut Butter & Co., a New York sandwich shop with a national line of nut butters. Every week he chimes in with some nuttiness. Take it away, Lee!

[Photograph: Lee Zalben]

Champagne and foie gras—perhaps this is how you rang in the New Year during the stock market's boom times. But for 2010, you might not have the ducats to put on such a rich spread. And even if you can, perhaps you're opting for a less showy celebration.

So if you aren't going to splurge on Krug or Veuve Clicquot, why not opt for some California sparkling wine or some affordable Spanish cava? And if you've got a sweet tooth, Italian moscato d'asti is a nice dessert wine with some bubbles to tickle your tongue.

And instead of foie gras? Well, what about peanut butter? It's rich, it's spreadable, it's savory and sweet at the same time. Put it on some toast points and voila—instant decadence (and guilt free, to boot).

Still not convinced? Consider this: wine is fermented grape juice. And grapes are "J" in the classic PB&J. Happy new year, eaters! Got any nutty finger foods planned for your parties?

Originally posted by Lee Zalben from Serious Eats, on December 30, 2009 4:00 AM

More from Ben Hammersley on that last thing: "In other words, Vogue's printing presses and relationship with COMAG are both lovely, but in a digital world ultimately worthless: it's the combination of the creative and ad-sales teams upstairs and the rights-owned archive in the basement that gives it value now and in the future. Only one of these things is replicable by others. So why do everything you can to keep metadata intact? Because it's from this information that new products can be automatically created, at a scale and rapidity that would be impossible otherwise. With every piece of metadata that you don't throw away, you gain a factor more potential ways of slicing through your content and delivering it as a separate product, simply as a result of a database lookup."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on December 30, 2009 12:30 AM

Originally posted by Will from A Test Of Will, on December 29, 2009 7:35 PM

TPM is now in its tenth year of publication. November 13th, 2010 will be the site's ten year anniversary.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 29, 2009 6:42 PM

This FAQ is for members of the media and fans of the NBA who want to know more about the salary cap, trade rules, and other aspects of the NBA's 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement. There is a lot of information here

 Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by yatta to nba basketball - More about this bookmark

Originally posted by yatta from Delicious/yatta, on December 29, 2009 5:50 PM

Google's new Chrome browser only came out a few weeks ago for Macs. So even though Chrome's been out for a year for PCs, I've been using it for a few weeks. When I first downloaded it I liked it but then found two things I really didn't like and seemed like deal breakers.

First, unlike Safari, which is my primary browser, Chrome organizes tabs at the top of the browser in a way that leaves very little space to 'grab' on to to move the browser around. if you have more than three or four tabs open at a time, it gets really unwieldy. Also annoying is no clear way to organize your bookmarks. But the first one is the one that really seemed like a deal-breaker on the user-experience front.

But then something funny happened. I kept using it anyway. And now I'm using it probably 2/3 or more of the time, probably more, with the rest of the time using Safari -- but I'm not sure if that's anything more than the fact that Safari is still set as my default browser.

Why I'm using it more I'm not completely sure. But it's definitely a case where my first impression told me one thing but my own actions are telling me another. I think it's that it just seems 'lighter', a cleaner, faster experience. But, again, I'm trying to reason back from the fact that I find myself using it more rather than finding particular features that I find superior to Safari or other browsers.

What's your experience with Chrome? Positive and negative.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 29, 2009 4:04 PM

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I'll have gained another follower or two on Twitter. Within an hour, I'll have added more followers than 99% of Twitter users ever have. On a typical day, I'll have averaged 100 new followers every hour. It's not that I'm great at writing tweets or because of any effort or merit on my part; It's because I'm part of Twitter's list of suggested users.

The Suggested User List has been one of the most controversial and misunderstood parts of the explosive growth of everybody's favorite cerulean social service, though the company has loudly hinted that its life is limited. So I thought I'd explain a little bit about what Twitter is like when you're on the list. I'll explain the surprising impact that being added to the list has on replies and retweets. And at the bottom of this post, I'm even offering up a chance for people who are curious about being on the list to win some prizes, too.

What is the list?

Twitter's Suggested User List works in a fairly simple way. When a new user signs up for Twitter, they're presented with a list of about 20 "default" accounts to follow. These recommendations are a random subset of a full list of over 400 suggested users. In addition, the full list appears on the Twitter site itself, so if any user clicks on "Find People" at the top of their Twitter page, they're only one click away from choosing to follow some suggested users.

It's obvious why the team created these suggestions; If you just signed up for Twitter and weren't following anyone, it'd be a pretty boring service. Social applications have provided plenty of precedent for the practice of suggesting content or connections, but Twitter's exceptional success and the fact that tweets are seen more as a new medium rather than merely a feature of the Twitter service have made the suggested user list into a polarizing reminder of the company's power over the service.

What's not obvious is why I was picked as a suggestion. I have a number of friends at Twitter, including about half a dozen let's-grab-dinner-when-you're-in-town level of friends. As Biz noted, I was an early an enthusiastic fan of the service. And I'd like to think I'm not a terrible tweeter — my updates are a mix of interesting links that I find, random thoughts, brief reviews/mentions of music and media that I like, and promotion for the projects I'm working on. But I'm obviously not a better tweeter than 99 million other Twitter users, I never asked to be on the list, and it's never been explained to me why I was chosen. Ultimately it's clear that the decision of whom to feature is essentially an arbitrary choice by Twitter , and that at best, I represent something they'd want to show new users.

A list of suggested contacts makes perfect sense when a service has about 10,000 users, to help them get started in an unfamiliar space. But it's a system that starts to strain a bit once a service reaches 10,000,000 members. (Or even, as it appears, nearly 100 millon members.) Of course, the folks at Twitter had no way of knowing they'd leap from a five-digit user count to a nine-digit one faster than anybody else on the web ever has. Combine Twitter's support for user-defined lists on the service and the criticisms of the list that have surfaced, and it's easy to see why Twitter's announced that the list's days are numbered. I'd be shocked if it doesn't disappear entirely in 2010.

So, I don't have any real issue with the fact the list was made in the first place; If I were a Twitter shareholder, I'd fully expect the team to design the best possible experience for new users. (If I were a substantial Twitter shareholder, I'd buy a round bed and fly it through space like Snoop Dogg. But I digress.)

I do have some misgivings about the effect of the list, though. In addition to showing how much control Twitter has over the medium they've created, the list also causes some pretty uncomfortable and awkward distortions. It conveys remarkable privileges to the few hundred of us who are members. A lot of celebrities, some past their prime, have pointed to their enormous numbers of followers on Twitter as evidence that they still command some sort of passionate following online. Other nascent talents have had their profiles raised by becoming "Twitter stars", with their thousands or even millions of followers held up as proof of strong demand for their ideas.

A Dutch kid sold his Breaking News account to MSNBC, and Kim Kardashian is famously selling her tweets for $10,000 a pop. But I've been able to determine that having hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers is basically only a measure of having been on the suggested user list, and doesn't consistently indicate any intent from Twitter users at all. So, not to take away from Breaking News or Kim Kardashian, but there are people making a significant amount of money simply by virtue of having been on the suggested user list.

And it turns out, those suggestion-heeding followers might not actually be paying any attention at all.

The Power of Suggestion

I had no advance notice I was going to be added to the list. I went out for coffee with a friend, and returned to find a few hundred emails in my inbox, all of them notifications from Twitter that someone had followed me.

To my surprise, and to the disbelief of nearly everyone who's asked me about it since, i wasn't immediately excited or thrilled to have won the Twitter jackpot. For the first weekend, I wasn't sure what to do with all these new followers, and I didn't update my status at all for 2 or 3 days after I first got added to the list.

Now, that's pretty unusual behavior for me — I've been blogging for ten years, and I'm fairly public within the tech industry. I don't get nervous standing in front of thousands of people when speaking, and over the years my blog's gotten a pretty significant number of subscribers as well, yet I never had any similar concerns here. So what changed? Well, I tend to use social services in a more personal way than my public blog post. And, honestly, the sheer rate at which people follow a suggested user on Twitter's list is overwhelming. Let's look at the velocity with which a suggested account accrues new followers.

Here's a chart of my new followers, courtesy of TwitterCounter;:

The small flat area at the extreme left of the graph is what my growth rate looked like before I was on the list. It doesn't seem like it, but that was actually an uncommonly high rate of new followers. For contrast, I did a comparison with Chris Messina, who accrues new followers at about the same rate I had been, writes about similarly geeky topics as I do, and actually started wtih more followers than I did:

Yes, compared to being on the suggested user list, a very popular normal Twitter user's growth looks pretty much flat. That's how different it is. Nevertheless, after a few days of being on the list, I decided I was going to just tweet the same way I always had, and not overthink things too much.

Finding Meaning

People who accept the suggestions of the list are almost all new Twitter users, and have barely formed a model of how Twitter works. In some cases, due to the extraordinary amount of hype around Twitter, they've barely formed an idea of how the web itself works before signing up for Twitter and becoming one of my ostensible followers.

There's precedent for this sort of "bundled content", of course. The crappy "shovelware"; programs that come with most Windows PCs are a perfect example — they often nag users, are frequently of little value, and often detract from the experience. I often update with non-sequitirs about stuff like peanut butter jelly time, so I have to imagine that a regular Twitter user seeing my updates must see me like a notice that their new Windows computer has cleaned up the icons on their desktop.

Of course, services like Amazon and iTunes feature content as well, but these are usually pretty straightforwardly analogous to endcap displays in retail spaces like a grocery store or Walmart; The stores sell placement and brands that want exposure pay for the real estate.

After just a few days of being on the list, though, I made an interesting discovery that offers a dramatic distinction from buying featured position in an online store: Being on Twitter's suggested user list makes no appreciable difference in the amount of retweets, replies, or clicks that I get.

Once in a while, I get confused replies from people asking who the hell I am, but for the most part they don't interact with me at all. The replies, retweets and conversations that happen for me on Twitter have the same frequency and volume that they would have had if I'd never been added to the list. I'm sure celebrities (whether on the suggested user list or not) get a disproportionately high number of people trying to catch their attention, but for a normal person, being on the list just adds followers, not real connections.

Twitter followers who come from the suggested user list don't form real relationships or respond to the suggested users like "normal" followers do. If I'd have continued gaining followers at the rate I had been before being on the list, I'd have about 10% as many followers, but I suspect I'd have exactly the same number of replies and retweets. Before being on the list, a typical link that I tweeted would get between 250 and 500 clicks; After being on the list that hasn't changed at all.

And for me, that's a little off-putting. I feel very much like I've earned the readers who subscribe to this blog. When I meet someone at an event and they tell me they've read a post of mine, or that they regularly read my blog, it's still a thrill, even after a decade, because there is some core sincerity to the exchange, a real basis to the relationship. With Twitter, it's hard for me to tell whether someone's made a decision to follow me because they find my ideas interesting or entertaining, or if they just were too lazy to change the defaults when they signed up.

I'm not complaining; I know a lot of people would love (or think they'd love) to be on the list. I've had some remarkable bits of serendipity, like my next door neighbor discovering me on the list. But I also missed the notification that my cousin was following me on the service because there's too much noise for me to turn on notifications. For the way I use the web, I value meaningful connections much more than I do sheer volume of followers.

Adding to the feeling that these aren't "real" connections is that almost nobody has gotten more than 200,000 followers or so without being on the suggested user list. I'd be curious to know the most popular account that's never been on the list, but at the very least the combination of prominently featuring follower count as a "score" on people's profile pages while also having the only path to earning a high score being an arbitrary selection through an opaque process is a recipe for leaving a lot of people frustrated or mystified. Indiscriminate followers might be of some value for a business that just wants to have a lot of people to talk to, but for an individual, being on the list only has value to those who want to brag about the number. I'll admit I've been tempted to use my follower count as a credential in my work lately as it's taken me to less tech-savvy corners of Washington, D.C., but the fact that the number is meaningless made me feel it'd be dishonest and would misrepresent my actual influence.

Because I've been privileged enough to be on the list, I've tried to use the power for good. I am very happy that I'll be able to promote my work with Expert Labs to a larger audience, though I don't think I have any way to translate this audience into followers of @expertlabs. I have also tried to promote worthy efforts by my friends or to support charities. But there's also generally a continuous stream of requests from spammers and schemers and just plain icky hustlers who want, expect or even demand that I promote their work to my large follower base. Explaining to them that these followers don't click on links, reply or retweet requests does nothing to dissuade them, unsurprisingly.

So if I had a choice in the matter and knew then what I know now, would I choose to be on the list? I'm not sure, but I think probably not. But, since I am, I wanted to try to do something interesting before either the suggested user list disappears or I ask (As Jay Rosen did) to be removed from the list.

Open to Suggestions

I want to see what interesting information we can tease out of my place on the suggested user list. There are a number of questions that immediately pop to mind, which I don't have specific answers for:

• Has the rate of replies or retweets per day (or per week) increased as much as my follower count has?
• Do I get more favorites from users, proportionate to the number of new followers?

I suspect there are lots of other bits of data that I think could be compelling, and the good news is that we might have a way to process some of that data. I've been running Gina Trapani's smart little Twitter application ThinkTank (formerly Twitalytic) since before I was added to the suggested user list. The app can pretty easily be customized to return whatever data queries we're interested in. As a result, I have an archive of all my followers, tweets and replies going back for months. So I'm proposing a simple contest to solicit ideas for what information people are interested in mining from the account of someone on the suggested user list, and I'll provide a prize to one random person who suggests and idea, as well as one random person who contributes code to help.

Here's the prizes and how to participate:

• Have a question or specific bit of data that you'd like to know about an account on the Suggested User List? Submit it to Twitter with the hashtag #sulidea and one random person who makes a suggestion will get a $25 Amazon gift certificate.
• If you're a programmer, watch ThinkTank on GitHub, commit any updates you have to the project, and one random person who commits code to the project will win a 500 GB portable hard drive. It's really cute!

I'll run the contest until January 15th, and then just pick a winner at random from people who tweet or submit code. I think there's great potential to discover some surprising insights about how the suggested user list really works.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on December 29, 2009 3:34 PM

One thought process seems to be that Jason Bay and agent Joe Urbon were silly to take what could be a heavily back-loaded contract from the Mets in favor of Boston’s deal which offered more cash upfront. The idea stems from this Peter Gammons piece which includes this nugget of information:

While the Mets offer is four [years] for 65 [million], it’s so backloaded that I’ve been told by Mets people that it’s far less than what the Red Sox were offering in present-day value

Present-day value is important because $100 today is more valuable than $100 a year from today. If the two offers were equal in dollars, however constructed differently, with one deal being front-loaded and the other back-loaded, then the agent should have his player sign the front-loaded contract. That scenario doesn’t match reality though. Boston reportedly offered four years and $60M while the Mets offered four years and $66M. More present-day value or not, Urbon and crew were correct to take the Mets offer. Here’s why.

Let’s assume Boston offered Bay 4/$60M split evenly across the four seasons; which is to say $15M in 2010, 2011, and so on. Meanwhile New York’s offer is more in total dollars, but most of the payout is located in the final two seasons. For our purposes, let’s say the money breakdown is 10/15/20/21. Using the time value of money formula and a discount rate of one’s liking, you can quickly figure the adjusted totals in present-day value. In this example, Boston’s deal is worth roughly $56M while the Mets’ offer is worth nearly $61M, or a spread in $5M, almost identical to the unadjusted spread.

Say one gets really aggressive with the discount rate and bumps it to 10% with the same contract breakdown. The Boston offer would be worth $52M in present-day value while the Mets’ offer worth $56M. Closer, but still no cigar. Keep that discount rate and get creative with the back-loading, say, 7/12/22/25; it’s even tighter at $52M and $55M. Still though, the Mets offer is worth more.

Barring some really ridiculous discount rate or extensive back-loading of the contract, there’s just no way around it. New York offered more dollars.

Originally posted by R.J. Anderson from FanGraphs Baseball, on December 29, 2009 3:00 PM

Over on PVRblog today, I got to briefly explain how TiVo changed television for me, alongside some of my favorite web folks. Caterina has my favorite quote: “It’s not hard to find someone to sleep with, it’s hard to find someone you’d WANT to sleep with. It’s not hard to find something to watch, it’s hard to find something GOOD to watch.” Yup, the 2000s were the decade of DVR.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on December 29, 2009 10:36 AM

One of the most difficult things to get right in movies about aliens or the future is matching the cultural and technological sophistication of a people with their environment and history. In Avatar, the Na'vi are portrayed as a Stone Age tribe, living in relatively small groups and essentially ignorant or uninterested in technology beyond simple knives and bows. But the Na'vi are also very physically capable, obviously very intelligent, aware of their global environment, well-nourished, healthy, omnivorous, adaptive, and even inventive. They have domesticated animals, are troubled by few serious natural predators, can live in different environments, have easy access to many varied natural resources (for sustenance and building/making), and can travel and therefore communicate over long distances (dozens if not hundreds of miles a day on their winged animals).

And most importantly, the Na'vi have regular and intimate access to a moon-sized supercomputer -- a neural net supercomputer at that -- that connects them to every other living thing on their world and have had such access for what could be millennia.

It just doesn't add up. The Na'vi are too capable and live in an environment that is far too pregnant with technological possibility to be stuck in the Stone Age. Plot-wise it's convenient for them to be the way they are, but the Na'vi really should have been more technologically advanced than the Earthlings, not only capable of easily repelling any attack from Captain Ironpants but able to keep the mining company from landing on the moon in the first place.

Rating: 4.0/5.0 Tags: Avatar   movies

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on December 29, 2009 9:10 AM

via woorkup.com

May have to get some drafting tables for the office.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on December 29, 2009 8:46 AM

Matt Haughey gets some help from web superstars for his last post before the transition  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on December 29, 2009 8:23 AM

General Manager: Omar Minaya
Scouting Director: Rudy Terrasas

FanGraphs’ Top 10 Prospects:
(2009 Draft Picks/International Signees Not Included)

The Major League squad may still look a little rough around the edges but the minor league system is starting to round into shape. The first four players on the list all received consideration for the top spot, while the last six could all face big breakout seasons. The ‘09 draft did not infuse much talented into the system.

1. Fernando Martinez, OF, Majors
DOB: October 1988 Bats: L Throws: R
Signed: 2005 non-drafted international free agent (Dominican Republic)
MLB ETA: Now 40-Man Roster: Yes Options: 2

Although some have already, it is far too early to give up on Martinez. Just 21 years old, the Venezuelan outfielder just needs to have a healthy season. When he did get on the field in ‘09, he hit .290/.337/.540 with an ISO of .250 as a 20 year old in triple-A. That is pretty darn impressive. He reached his ‘08 total in home runs in about half the at-bats. Martinez actually had a career-high OPS of .877 in ‘09. He also kept his strikeout rate below 20% at 18.8%, but it would be nice to see more patience at the plate (5.9% walk rate). At the MLB level, he was over-matched and hit just .176/.242/.275 in 95 at-bats. With a career line against southpaws of .237/.308/.392, he has some work to do against lefties. Despite that, he still has a chance to be a very good player.

2. Ike Davis, 1B, Double-A
DOB: March 1987 Bats: L Throws: L
Signed: 2008 1st round – Arizona State University
MLB ETA: Mid-2011 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3

A lot of eyebrows were raised (including mine) when Davis hit zero homers in his ‘08 debut, which spanned 239 plate appearances. He responded to the criticism in a big way in ‘09 and split the year between high-A and double-A while slugging 20 homers and 31 doubles. At the higher level, the first baseman hit .309/.386/.565 in 233 at-bats. He posted a wOBA of .426 and an eye-popping ISO of .256. Davis also showed a willingness to take a walk (11.2 BB%) but his strikeouts started to get out of hand (29.0 K%). He has some work to do against lefties, as seen by his OPS split: .672 against left-handers compared to 1.000 against right-handers. One caution about Davis’ breakout season: He’s a slow-footed player that posted a BABIP of .350 at high-A and .381 in double-A, so we’re likely to see his batting average come down in 2010, especially if the strikeout rate remains high.

3. Jenrry Mejia, RHP, High-A
DOB: October 1989 Bats: R Throws: R
Signed: 2007 non-drafted international free agent (Dominican Republic)
MLB ETA: Late-2011 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3
Repertoire: 90-96 mph fastball, curveball, change-up

Mejia did not turn 20 until after the season ended and he reached double-A as a teenager, which says a lot about his potential. The right-hander began the year in high-A where he posted a FIP of 2.52 and allowed 41 hits in 50.1 innings. He showed good control with a walk rate of 2.86, but that jumped to 4.67 BB/9 in 44.1 double-A innings. His strikeout rate of 7.87 also increased with the promotion, though, to 9.54 K/9. Mejia allowed just two home runs on the season, thanks to a ground-ball rate just shy of 60%, which is outstanding for a flame-thrower. He dominated left-handed batters, as seen by his 10.71 K/9 rate against them, and they hit just .247 against Mejia despite a .354 BABIP. After making just 19 starts in 2009, the talented youngster should open 2010 back in double-A but he could reach the Majors by the end of the season, if needed.

4. Wilmer Flores, SS, Low-A
DOB: August 1991 Bats: R Throws: R
Signed: 2007 non-drafted international free agent (Venezuela)
MLB ETA: Mid-2012 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3

Another young player, Flores is just 18 years old and he spent much of the year playing in low-A ball at the age of 17. Overall, he had a ‘foundation year’ with a line of .264/.305/.332 in 488 at-bats. His BABIP was just .305 so we can expect to see a bump in that in the future even though he lacks blazing speed. Flores has raw power, but he posted an ISO of just .068. He needs to show more patience at the plate after posting a walk rate of just 4.3% but he handled the bat well and struck out just 14.8% of the time. Because he profiles as a third baseman down the line, Flores will need to focus on getting stronger and driving the ball more (12.5 LD%) in 2010. He’ll likely be pushed up to high-A this coming year.

5. Jonathon Niese, LHP, Majors
DOB: October 1986 Bats: L Throws: L
Signed: 2005 7th round – Ohio HS
MLB ETA: Now 40-Man Roster: Yes Options: 2
Repertoire: 88-92 mph fastball, cutter, curveball, change-up

Many Mets were cursed by injuries in ‘09 and Niese was one of them. A torn hamstring tendon ended his season prematurely in August after he had made just five MLB starts. Despite that fact, Niese left a solid impression after posting a 3.25 FIP in 25.2 innings. His most effective pitch was a newly-honed cutter. Earlier in the season, the southpaw showed his MLB-readiness by posting a 3.38 FIP and 55% ground-ball rate in 94.1 triple-A innings, while also showing good control with a walk rate of 2.48 BB/9. Niese should be healthy and ready to go in spring training so he has a good shot at winning a spot in the MLB starting rotation.

6. Brad Holt, RHP, Double-A
DOB: October 1986 Bats: R Throws: R
Signed: 2008 supplemental 1st round – University of North Carolina – Wilmington
MLB ETA: Late-2010 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3
Repertoire: 89-94 mph fastball, curveball, splitter

Holt had two distinct seasons in ‘09. After a dominating pro debut, he opened ‘09 by posting a 3.18 FIP in nine high-A starts. He also posted a strikeout rate of 11.22 and showed solid control (2.70 BB/9). Moved up to double-A, though, Holt struggled with a 5.01 FIP (6.21 ERA) and allowed 58 hits in 58.0 innings, despite a BABIP of just .292. His walk rate rose to 3.57 BB/9 and his strikeout rate plummeted to 6.98 K/9. He also struggled with the long ball (1.40 HR/9), and his ground-ball rate on the season was poor at 38%. Holt, 23, will certainly return to double-A in 2010 and look to conquer the league in his second try.

7. Ruben Tejada, SS, Double-A
DOB: September 1989 Bats: R Throws: R
Signed: 2006 non-drafted international free agent (Panama)
MLB ETA: Mid-2011 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3

The organization has been extremely aggressive with the slick-fielding shortstop. Despite hitting just .229/.293/.296 in high-A in ‘08, the Mets promoted Tejada to double-A in ‘09 and he hit .289/.351/.381 in 488 at-bats. His wOBA jumped from .277 in ‘08 to .346 in ‘09. He also showed improved base running and was successful in 19 of his 22 attempts. Tejada is a free swinger, who posted a walk rate of 7.0% but struck out just 12.1% of the time. He should move up to triple-A in ‘09 but he’s currently blocked by incumbent shortstop Jose Reyes. Luckily for Tejada, the veteran player was injury-prone in ‘09. The youngster could also slide over to second base.

8. Josh Thole, C, Triple-A
DOB: October 1986 Bats: L Throws: R
Signed: 2005 13th round – Illinois HS
MLB ETA: Now 40-Man Roster: Yes Options: 3

This converted catcher has his share of doubters, but he’s done nothing but hit over the past two seasons with a batting average above .300. He even received a 17-game trial in the Majors at the end of the season and hit .321/.356/.396 in 53 at-bats. At double-A, Thole hit .328/.395/.422 in 384 at-bats. The left-handed hitter has walked more than he struck out for three straight seasons and posted a BB/K at double-A of 1.24. He doesn’t need to be platooned, as he actually has a better career batting average against southpaws (.317 vs .284). On the down side, Thole has little power and posted an ISO of .094 in the minors and .075 at the MLB level. Defensively, he’s still learning the position but he improved his throwing in ‘09 and nabbed 30% of runner trying to steal.

9. Kirk Nieuwenhuis, OF, Double-A
DOB: August 1987 Bats: L Throws: R
Signed: 2008 3rd round – Azusa Pacific University
MLB ETA: Mid-2011 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3

Nieuwenhuis’ first full pro season was a success, as he hit .274/.357/.467 in 482 high-A at-bats, while also playing a solid center field. The speedy player also stole 16 bases in 20 attempts and showed surprising power with an ISO of .193. His strikeout rate was high at 28.1% but he offset that a bit with a solid walk rate at 11.1%. He has work to do against southpaws after hitting just .235/.294/.348. The outfielder received an eight-game trial in double-A and he should head back there in 2010.

10. Jeurys Familia, RHP, Low-A
DOB: October 1989 Bats: R Throws: R
Signed: 2007 non-drafted international free agent (Dominican Republic)
MLB ETA: Late-2012 40-Man Roster: No Options: 3
Repertoire: 88-94 mph fastball, curveball, change-up

Familia is a hard-throwing right-hander who is still quite raw. However, despite being basically a one-pitch pitcher in ‘09 (the fastball), he more than held his own in low-A ball at the age of 19. In 134.0 innings, he allowed just 109 hits, thanks in part to a .283 BABIP. He showed good control for his age with a walk rate of 3.09 BB/9 and his strikeout rate was modest at 7.32 K/9. His ground-ball rate was just shy of 50% at 48.8%. Familia did not allow a home run to a left-handed hitter all year (217 batters) but his strikeout rate was just 4.83 K/9 against them. If Familia can continue to grow as a pitcher, he could be a real breakout candidate in 2010.

Up Next: The Baltimore Orioles

Originally posted by Marc Hulet from FanGraphs Baseball, on December 29, 2009 8:00 AM

One more push for The League, easily my favorite show of the season. Not that I'm watching a lot of anything. It has the man-factor of Entourage, except it doesn't feel like it was made for dudes who read Maxim. In public.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Ta-Nehisi Coates, on December 29, 2009 6:00 AM

If this seems a little like the promise of the “interactive multimedia” that was the CD ROM, it is. The difference here is the library of titles, with more than a million available.

via www.wired.com

It's déjà vu all over again.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on December 29, 2009 5:53 AM

From Recipes

Note: You may know Carolyn Cope as Umami Girl. She stops by on Tuesdays with ideas on preparing fruits and vegetables.

[Photograph: Carolyn Cope]

One of the first lessons you learn in culinary school is the unyielding power of mispronounced French words. Culinary French don't sound purdy, but it can inspire a vast range of emotion, from dread to desire, among the clog-wearing set.

This method works beautifully with just about all root vegetables.Few words wield more fury than the unassuming-sounding tournage, the name for the meticulous cutting of vegetables out of hand into small, seven-faced footballs, often for hours at a stretch. If the ability to tourne carrots, turnips, and potatoes is not particularly relevant for the vast majority of professional chefs these days, schools don't see that as reason to cancel the plumage-fest that its teaching inevitably becomes.

You might not think this topic bears heavily on the home cook, but it does. Because of tournage, home cooks have been robbed blind of one of the simplest and most delicious methods of cooking winter's abundance of root vegetables. The classic French practice of glazing is quick and rewarding and produces a surprisingly elegant result (which bears little resemblance to the cloying dishes sometimes called glazed vegetables in the United States).

More Whispers

Stracciatella Soup with Spinach »
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For whatever reasons to do with peacocks and machismo and what have you, the perfectly proper way to glaze root vegetables requires that you tourne them first. But chopping them into bite-sized pieces gets you 99 percent of the way to perfection with maybe one percent of the effort. I'm no Good Will Hunting, but that looks like 100 to me.

French glazed vegetables are cooked in a shallow bath of water fortified with small amounts of butter and sugar. One of the few tricks to glazing (and it's a trick home cooks should learn anyway, since it's widely applicable and cheap as hell) is to cover the cooking vegetables with a cartouche, a circle of parchment paper with a hole cut out of the middle. This method makes the cooking liquid evaporate slowly, giving the vegetables time to cook through gently and leaving you with just the right amount of glaze. Unlike tournage, cartouche is the kind of poorly pronounced culinary French that you'll want to keep in your vocabulary.

This week I've glazed carrots because that's what we had in our crisper, but this method works beautifully with just about all root vegetables, from turnips to parsnips to beets to pearl onions. If you're combining vegetables into one dish, classic technique would have you cook each separately to ensure perfect tenderness, but if you cut them all about the same size, it's perfectly reasonable (I'd say a lot more so, in fact) to cook them all together. Just be sure not to crowd the pan beyond a single layer, or the veggies won't brown properly.

Almost-French Glazed Root Vegetables

- serves 2 -
If the carrots are much thicker at their bottoms than their tops, cut the bottom segments in half lengthwise to ensure even cooking.

Ingredients

• 5 medium carrots peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (or other root vegetables, to yield about 2 cups)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup water
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley and/or chives, for garnish

Procedure

1. Prepare a cartouche by cutting a circle of parchment the size of your sauté pan with a circular hole in the center. This is a good tutorial, except that you should snip off the pointy end of the triangle to make a hole in the center for steam to escape. (If this sounds like poorly pronounced French to you right now, it will make more sense after watching the short video.)

2. Melt the butter in a medium, heavy-bottomed sauté pan (preferably not non-stick) over medium-high heat. Add the carrots and toss to coat with butter. Sprinkle with the sugar and some salt and pepper. Pour in water to go about halfway up the carrots, not more than 1/2 cup. Cover with the cartouche and adjust the heat to maintain a brisk simmer. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the carrots are just tender on the outside and still a bit too firm in the center.

3. Remove the cartouche, return the heat to medium-high, and cook the carrots uncovered, shaking the pan occasionally, until they brown in spots and the liquid is reduced to just enough glaze to coat the carrots, about 5 minutes. Garnish with chopped parsley or chives (or other herbs of your choice) and serve.

About the author: Carolyn Cope writes Umami Girl and manages a CSA in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Originally posted by Carolyn Cope from Serious Eats, on December 29, 2009 3:00 AM

The holidays are proving to be a ridiculously slow time for baseball news as most teams and notable free agents bide their time and hope for a rapid economic turnaround. So, what does any good blogger do when pressed for content, especially if the main persona of said site has an unabashed love for one particular team? Why, pictures of Derek Jeter of course.

There he is! Be still my beating heart.

(Insert other charged comments centered around liquids and beverages.)

Originally posted by J from 3:10 To Joba, on December 29, 2009 3:00 AM

Retired construction worker Wally Wallington believes he has uncovered the secret of building Stonehenge, and to prove it, he's building a demonstration model in his backyard. (via @ebertchigago)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on December 29, 2009 2:15 AM

After selling PVR Blog on eBay for $12K+, Matt Haughey posts his final item, 2000s: The Decade of DVR, which has dot-com celebs (Heather Armstrong, Chris Anderson, Nick Denton, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis) reminiscing on how the DVR has changed their life. My favorite is Caterina Fake's:

A guy said to me once, "Wow! As a woman, you can get laid whenever you want!" and I said "Yeah and I can eat dirt whenever I want too!" For years there was a Blinkx advertisement on 101 between Silicon Valley and San Francisco with a tagline that said something like "Find something to watch," which I thought was one of the stupidest taglines I'd ever heard. It's not hard to find someone to sleep with, it's hard to find someone you'd WANT to sleep with. It's not hard to find something to watch, it's hard to find something GOOD to watch.

Originally posted by rex@fimoculous.com (Rex Sorgatz) from Fimoculous.com, on December 28, 2009 8:00 PM

Go run to the announcement about Devel::NYTProf v3.0. Marvel at the code profiling goodness.

Highlights include:

• Ability to profile opcodes, which means...
• NYTProf can now profile slow regular expressions
• More detailed stats on BEGIN blocks
• Treemap of subroutines
• Tracking of which subs called which other subs
• Graphing of sub calls
• Improved report output
• Ability to merge profile runs, such as when a process spawns other processes like mod_perl code does.

Already I have found that my regular expression compilation is taking 6% of the runtime in my sample runs in ack. I had no idea.

Just amazing. Go try it now, and buy Tim Bunce and the other contributors a beer.

Originally posted by Andy Lester from Perlbuzz, on December 28, 2009 3:53 PM

Blog posted here.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on December 28, 2009 3:33 PM

evangotlib:

I forgot who recommended Crude World to me but it was someone on Tumblr.  I just finished it.  Pretty much a must read.  Peter Maass dives into the complex, violent, Kafka-esque and stunningly lucrative world of oil.

The book is both history lesson and current events lecture.  I learned quite a bit…mostly that what I thought I knew about oil was either wrong or so superficial as to make me dangerously ignorant.  I will not let that happen again.

Hardcover version is here.  Kindle version is here.

I’ll leave you with this excerpt:

“Power” is a vague word.  It can mean gasoline or knowledge or the authority to order an execution.  Oil is unique because it can be transformed into so many types of power—it can make lights burn and planes fly; it can turn wildcatters into millionaires and nations into superpowers.  This is a problem as well as an attribute, because when power is measured in the hundreds of billions of barrels, and when it can be controlled by one man or one institution, it can be too much of a good thing.

—Peter Maass, Crude World

Credit to Denton, YM or me, maybe.  It is an excellent book.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on December 28, 2009 3:32 PM

There's a serious race debate going on with Avatar which I've kinda avoided. As to the question of why we keep seeing these "white guy goes native" flicks, I think the answer is pretty obvious. Historically, most of the people watching the movies have been white (I bet that's changing) and, most importantly, the people making the movies are themselves white. When the natives get cameras--or when we're all natives--then the natives will make flicks about saving themselves. Until then, we're probably doomed to be passive scenery.

More interesting to me is the constant comparisons with Dances With Wolves. I need to go back and see this flick, but I remember liking it a lot and feeling like Kevin Costner was actually pretty respectful of the "natives" and their traditions. But it's been a long time and I could be wrong. One scene that sticks out for me happens toward the end. Kevin Costner is captured and on his way back to be tried. But the natives actually save him, instead of the other way around.

I haven't seen Avatar, so maybe the comparison is apt. But I never thought of Dances With Wolves as "white guy saves natives." I thought it was clear, from the start, that the native were not going to be saved.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Ta-Nehisi Coates, on December 28, 2009 11:53 AM

The discussion of Helping Perl Packagers Package Perl glossed over a couple of points I find incredibly important. Granted, I neglected to mention BSDPAN or Gentoo's g-cpan or projects such as GoboLinux's /System/Aliens.

Yet there's more.

Working with CPAN can prove difficult in a couple of ways. The first is initial configuration:

• Do you want to install or upgrade distributions which may conflict with the system Perl 5 and any system utilities?
• Do you have permission to install into system directories?
• Which mirror repositories are best to use?
• Which utilities do you have installed that the CPAN client may want to configure or to use?
• Do you want a local installation location?
• Do you want an application-specific installation location?

That's why a smarter CPAN client configuration system is useful, and that's why an OS-specific or distribution-specific configurations would be helpful.

The other place where CPAN can be troublesome is installing distributions with non-Perl components. Consider, for example, bindings to libxml. A CPAN distribution needs to indicate somehow that it expects a specific version of a shared library called libxml.so or libxml.dylib or libxml.dll.

The CPAN client could avoid a lot of fragile, platform-specific guessing if it could ask the local packaging system for the appropriate information about that dependency. It could even invoke the local packaging system to install it.

There are dependency versioning concerns; this represents a lot of code to write and some complexity. Yet it also merges two separate systems which perform essentially the same function.

Integration with the packaging system also means that distributions which have components which require compilation can depend on packages including the header files for Perl 5 and any shared libraries, as well as a compiler and make utility and linker and....

(A lot of this problem goes away if a project such as a port of ctypes from Python to Perl 5 appears. Dependency resolution is still an issue, but the need for a compilation environment disappears in many cases.)

The CPAN infrastructure -- with local::lib configured -- has an advantage over most packaging systems I've used on free Unix-like operating systems, in that CPAN allows parallel installation of potentially conflicting libraries. This is a limitation of packaging systems.

Of course, none of this works on operating systems without packaging systems, so Windows and Mac OS X users again have trouble. At least the improved CPAN configuration (and better distributions of Perl 5) as well as a ctypes system will help them anyway.

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd love to see an easy way to package a Perl 5 application and its dependencies to create a package for a modern free Unix-like system....

Originally posted by chromatic from Modern Perl Books, a Modern Perl Blog, on December 28, 2009 11:47 AM

Filed under: iPod Family, Developer, iPhone, SDK

iPhone developer Emanuele Vulcano has been working on a new iPhone OS data exchange protocol called SwapKit [Apple Dev account required for link]. Hosted on GitHub, SwapKit provides App Store-friendly application-independent ways to publish data with custom metadata for sharing between applications.

SwapKit can automatically find all other SwapKit-using applications on a device and determine which of those applications can perform specific actions on that data. For example, a developer might send a string to the first Twitter-ready client it finds and request that client to post the string as a new tweet. SwapKit basically offers a Mac-style LaunchServices for iPhone.

Open source and provided under the MIT license (basically "use however you like"), SwapKit remains in early development. The screencast shown above demonstrates basic SwapKit features, demoing both sending and receiving functionality.

TUAWiPhone devsugar: SwapKit originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Erica Sadun from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 28, 2009 11:30 AM

August used to be a missionary somewhere overseas, trying to do good works in places where good works are seldom seen. One day he returns home to his native Denmark, and walks in on his sister Christina while she’s in the middle of one of her porno shoots. She wants nothing to do with him, especially now that she’s about to have her daughter. When August asks her if the girl deserves a better life than what she’s created, she shouts “Plenty of other people need salvation—go and find them!” and slams down the phone in his ear.

Five years later Christina’s dead of a drug overdose, and August has renounced his vows. His new mission is not to preach to anonymous flocks but to do his best to bring up Christina’s five-year-old daughter, Mia. She’s been living in and around the nebulous pseudo-family of people that sprung up around her mother’s porno production mini-empire. August plans to take Mia out of that environment, keep her safe under his wing, and do right by her. He winds up doing wrong by almost everyone around him, himself included. amazon.com=B002C8YSD8

 
August returns home to give his deceased sister's daughter a new life...

The bare outlines of the plot for Princess make it sound like a revenge thriller of the kind you’d see coming from Andrew Kevin Walker (SE7EN, Zodiac, 8MM). That it is a mix of animation and live action, about 85% to 15%, makes it feel more like the kind of project Ralph Bakshi might have tackled back when it was still marginally possible to finance and release an R- or even X-rated animated film in theaters in the U.S. Impossible today, maybe, but home video (and online streaming) has made it possible for most any movie to find its respective audience in time. Princess could serve as a test case. No American studio would have financed it—and it’s a minimal production, even by European standards—but it’s bold and smart and even touching in ways that many entirely live-action films are not.

Mia is “rather grown-up for a five-year-old,” as the brothel-owner puts it. This is the mildest way to say Mia has seen things no five-year-old deserves to see. She’s withdrawn, uncommunicative. She eats cereal straight from the box, and confides more in her stuffed rabbit named Multe than she does in any adult. She sports bruises that cannot come from rough-housing with other children, because she never does that. She touches August inappropriately. She knows entirely too much about things adults do with each other without a hint of tenderness. August looks at all this and tries to put a lid on his anger, but he cannot, and the more he sees the more his blood boils.

 
... which turns out to be a rampage to even scores against those who wronged her.

Christina’s associates don’t think much of August. When he attempts to defend his ecclesiastical work by saying “I did my best,” the owner of a brothel and one of Christina’s friends, retorts: “Hardly. Then she wouldn’t be dead.” The answers he gets back from them about what happened to Mia make him seethe, too. It’s not anyone’s fault. You can’t protect Mia from reality, they say. No, he wants to shout at them: this is a little girl, and there are some things in this world that are simply wrong. These same people built a hideously inappropriate shrine for Christina after her death, one which Mia can’t see for what it is because she’s … a girl, a five-year-old girl. She deserves a life outside of all this, and he is sure he is the one to give it to her. Then comes a moment where he tears a total stranger out of his car and beats him half to death for soliciting a prostitute.

August wants revenge. Not just on the people who did this to Christina and Mia, but on the buying and selling of sex as a whole. The local gang of sleaze-merchants will do nicely as interim sacrificial lambs, though. And so he threatens their business, sets their warehouses on fire, slashes the face of one man with his own knife. Then he does something truly shocking that sets the tone for the entire final third of the film: He invites Mia to come along on one of his rampages, and lets her take her own revenge on one of the men who abused her. She cheerfully agrees. She, like Uncle August, has no idea what is truly being unleashed here.

 
Animation meets live action in a way that hasn't been seen since Ralph Bakshi retired.

Call Princess an “animated film” and you miss half the point. The fact that it is animated (with about 15-20% live action sprinkled throughout) is an artistic choice, like black-and-white versus color. Animation was their way of telling a story that might not have lent itself to being filmed realistically, for any number of reasons. At one point Multe, Mia’s toy, comes to life in August’s eyes, and it’s not funny or cute—it’s downright horrifying, because he’s become that much more split off from reality. It’s another trailmarker on his road to hell. Most of the animation’s minimal—about on the same level as a TV show like The Simpsons—but it’s used well, and interleaved with live-action clips (shot on August’s own video camera) that serve as a framing and grounding device. All of the things that happened in those moments were a whole lifetime ago.

Much has been made elsewhere of how the movie is an indictment of the porn industry, but I don’t think director Anders Morgenthaler’s subject of attack is porn per se. That’s just the arena for all that goes on. What he’s more concerned with is how moral absolutes and gray areas collide, how it becomes possible to say things like “everyone involved was an adult” or “they knew what they were doing” and have those words ring hollow. There’s a moment on one of the old videotapes, one which Mia watches with horror, where a stoned and hysterical Christina threatens to kill Mia if August doesn’t leave them alone. We, and Mia along with us, are forced to ask: Did Christina know what she was doing then? Did anyone around her know? Did they care? Anyone, that is, except for August, whose response was to damage Mia in his own way, whether or not he realized it? The conclusion of the film is an embodiment of Hitchcock’s old homily about suspense being a bomb under a table waiting to go off—which, now that I think about it, sums up August himself. Nobody expects him to explode quite in the way he does, him included.

Originally posted by Serdar from Genji Press, on December 28, 2009 11:25 AM

If you spent most of your Christmas morning tearing and swearing as you tried to get the packages open, you may be wondering if all of this wasteful packaging is really necessary. Consider these facts about the role of packaging in our consumer economy. One third of our waste comes from packaging from the 430 billion dollar global packaging industry. That’s larger than the global auto manufacturing industry. So what can you, as an individual, do about it? Here is one look at the disposable stuff that comes with a famous 11.5 inch doll, herself an icon of American consumer culture.

Embed the above image on your site

budget planner – Mint.com

Originally posted by WallStats.com from MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice, on December 28, 2009 11:19 AM

The Baltimore Orioles have a difficult task ahead of them the next few years with three juggernauts ahead of them in the American League East. However, since Andy MacPhail took over baseball operations in 2007, the Orioles have positioned themselves for a bright future. Part of this is manifested in their crowded, young, and skilled outfield.

The two best players in the outfield are right fielder Nick Markakis (26 in 2010) and center fielder Adam Jones (24). Combining ZiPS, CHONE, and my own projections for offense and Jeff Zimmerman’s UZR projections and CHONE’s TotalZone for defense, Markakis projects as a +21/150 hitter in 2010, and +2 defender in right field for about 3.6 WAR.Jones’ projections vary more widely, but he comes in at about +9/150 hitting, +1 fielding (both Jones and Markakis had surprising down years defensively in 2009) for about 3.2 WAR. Those are the obvious guys. For the remaining outfield spot, the Orioles have three candidates: Nolan Reimold, Felix Pie, and Luke Scott.

The 26 year-old Reimold will probably begin 2010 in left field, assuming he recovers well from ankle surgery. Reimold came on strong in 2009, projecting at about +12/150 offensively. His defense was less impressive, and he projects as a about a -6/150 defender in left field. Overall, that’s about about a league-average player. Still, there’s a lot of uncertainty in his defensive projection, and he is young.

While Reimold is the popular choice to start in left field, it’s not obviously the correct choice. While Felix Pie projects as the worst hitter in the group a -4/150, he’s also as good or better than Jones as a center fielder (+2), which would translate to about +12 in left field. So he projects as about a league average (2.0 WAR) player, and is the second-youngest player in the group (only to Jones). While he probably won’t ever be the superstar people though he would be become before the Cubs started jerking him around (as is their tradition), he’s young, good, and has little enough service time that it’s understandable why other teams are interested in obtaining him, and also why the Orioles have so far refused to sell him for a bag of magic beans.

Scott is the odd man out in this situation, but it’s hardly due to a lack of talent. As a hitter, he projects at +11/150. Despite being primarily a designated hitter in 2009, his past performance in the field suggests that is a waste of his talents, as he projects as +2 in left field — clearly better than Reimold. Overall, that makes Scott about a 2.5 WAR player.

The Orioles are in an enviable position of not only having excess talent in the outfield, but not necessarily having to trade any of them. Scott is an underrated player, but given his age (32), arbitration status, and the Orioles overall situation, he should be the first to go. But it’s not as if his arbitration award will be onerous relative to his value. If he’s willing to move to first base (despite his defensive ability), that would fill a hole for the Orioles. But he might have the most value in trade to a team that needs a left fielder, where his skills are best utilized as a 2-2.5 WAR outfielder rather than a 1-1.5 WAR DH.

Pie is the wildcard, as he’s barely older than Jones, and perhaps the most defensively skilled player of the group. Baltimore has understandably committed to Jones in center given his superior bat (although Pie has better plate discipline). While Reimold is the popular choice to start in left, Pie’s far superior defensive skills make him more than just a fourth outfielder. For the future, the Orioles might be best off trading Pie and/or Scott for prospects and/or filling another area of need in the majors. On the other hand, especially in Pie’s case, he’s young, cheap, and skilled enough that they don’t have to trade him, and can certainly find something for him to do around the office. Not many teams find themselves in such a comfortable situation.

Click here to enter your projections for the Orioles various outfielders.

Originally posted by Matt Klaassen from FanGraphs Baseball, on December 28, 2009 11:00 AM

It's rare that Easy Ed Levine and his team of earnest food lovers pan a restaurant. But when they do, it's pretty fun. Click through to see a slideshow of their five least favorite meals of the year. [SE]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater NY, on December 28, 2009 10:50 AM

Filed under: Odds and ends, App Store, iPod touch

Well, Merry Christmas to the iPod touch! According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, iPod touch downloads from the App Store saw a nice 1000% jump on Christmas Day, presumably due to all of those new iPods being unwrapped from under the tree.

That surge sent iPod touch downloads up above iPhone downloads for the first time ever. Considering that teens and pre-teens are heavy on the app usage, Flurry speculates that a lot of those iPods went to younger users, who than ran to the App Store and started marathon downloads.
Overall, the App Store saw download increases of 51% compared to November.

There was good news for up and comer Android too: the Android market saw a healthy 20% bump in app sales, largely helped by sales of the Motorola Droid. A full 49% of Android app sales were for the Droid.

But Motorola can't celebrate quite yet; App Store downloads are still running 13 times higher than the Android market. With all the publicity over the iPhone, it's good to remember that the other device behind a lot of the momentum driving the App Store is the iPod touch. Who knows, maybe an iPhone OS based tablet will make the numbers even more impressive.

[Via MobileCrunch]

TUAWiPod touch passes iPhone in holiday app downloads originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Mel Martin from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 28, 2009 10:30 AM

After six years of publication, SocialDesignZine is shutting down. The blog on social design was set up inspire and provoke a discussion within the Italian design community.

The founders maintained an aggressive publication schedule (nearly daily!), hosted offline typographic tours, published two beautiful books of selected posts and comments, an exhibition, and a publication on civic branding culminating in the Più Design Può conference in May 2009. Unfortunately, though the site receives a good amount of traffic, an active community of commenters never really materialized and the daily maintenance had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Still, it’s a high note to end on.

I had the great pleasure of meeting the site’s publishers Gianni Sinni and Andrea Rauch at the conference in Florence and was impressed with the depth of their politics and the ease at which they integrated their civic commitment with their studio practice. Now that they are free of the daily publication schedule, I look forward to seeing what new endeavors they develop. Grazie a Andrea e Gianni.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on December 28, 2009 8:54 AM

[Image: Good.is]

Good magazine reminds you what produce to buy locally with this colorful guide to the seasonality of ten common fruits and vegetables around the United States.

Related
Worldwide Meat Consumption Infographic
Sources of Food Poisoning Infographic

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on December 28, 2009 8:30 AM

I generally love NFL tiebreaker talk. I don’t think this is very unusual either … I think many people secretly and not-so-secretly love tiebreaker talk. If this team wins and that team loses and the other team wins and so on … it’s a blast.

Trouble is, this year tiebreaker talk isn’t much fun. It should be fun because in the AFC there are five teams that are 8-7 and three more teams that are 7-8 and this should create all sorts of mayhem.

But it doesn’t. That’s because the New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens have their playoff fortunes in their hands. If they win, they’re in. Baltimore certainly will win. The Ravens play at Oakland, and while the Raiders have had some fun this year taking out Pittsburgh and Denver in ridiculously improbable games, the Raiders stink. The Raiders have been outscored by 174 points this year, most in the AFC. It seems extremely unlikely to me that the Raiders will beat Baltimore, even at home. So, 95% chance, Baltimore is in.

The Jets play CIncinnati, and that’s a bit trickier. The Bengals are a good football team, probably better than the Jets. But the Bengals have nothing to play for, and they looked awful against the Chiefs Sunday when they DID have something to play for. The Jets were given a great gift Sunday when the Colts decided to throw their perfect season in the garbage for reasons that are curious at best.* The Jets will probably beat Cincinnati with the playoffs on the line.

*I guess I understand the reason the Colts decided to tank the game by pulling their starters in the third quarter and putting an overmatched quarterback named Curtis Painter in the game. I guess it makes moderate sense to try and keep your players rested and healthy because it’s the Super Bowl is what matters, not a perfect season. If Peyton Manning or Reggie Wayne or someone that important had gotten seriously hurt in the fourth quarter of a meaningless game against the Jets, I suppose everyone would be raking coach Jim Caldwell over the coals for going after a perfect season when there are more important things involved.

But if that’s the case: Why play Peyton Manning at all? Why start him in the second half? Why allow Reggie Wayne to dive for a ball? My own gut feeling is that it’s a slippery slope to play as if afraid of injuries. Football is a dangerous game, and if you want to be good at it you have to play fearlessly. Something about the Colts’ decision to bench their best players in the middle of a perfect season seems to cut against that fearlessness.

And then there’s another point, one best described in Bull Durham: “I love winning, man. You know what I’m saying? It’s, like, better than losing?” Every pro football player knows how much better a week is after a win than after a loss. Look, I don’t know if momentum can carry a team in the playoffs. But it sure seems to me that a team that decided to go for the perfect season would be a scarier team to face in the playoffs than a team that lost at home to the Jets (and they could lose again this week — what’s the point in starting Peyton Manning in bleeping BUFFALO? Why even have him make the trip?). It seems that an undefeated team would be much scarier to play than a team that decided it was better to lose with a 14-0 record than put its wittle precious pwayers in harm’s way.

If the Colts win the Super Bowl, people will always wonder if they could have gone undefeated and made their case for greatest team ever. If the Colts don’t win the Super Bowl, Jim Caldwell’s decision will live in infamy in Indianapolis for a long time. I understand the decision, but I don’t agree with it.

So, you have two clear playoff favorites — the Jets and Ravens. But here’s the thing: If one of those teams lose, then Denver is next in line. And Denver plays Kansas City at home, which is probably the surest victory in the NFL this week. The Chiefs have not won at Denver since 2000 — when Gunther Cunningham was coach. They usually get humiliated there, and that was true even when the Chiefs had good teams.. In 2003, for instance, they started the year 11-1 and got destroyed in Denver 45-27. Now the Chiefs are just plain horrendous — there is no reason to believe that the Chiefs will stay within three touchdowns of the Broncos.

So, that’s pretty much it. The only complications come about two of those three teams lose — and I just can’t see that happening. So it’s not even fun this year to try and figure out how Houston or Pittsburgh can get in or what would happen if we have seven 8-8 teams.

Originally posted by Joe Posnanski from Joe Posnanski, on December 28, 2009 7:17 AM

1. Shaftment.
2. Hand or handbreadth, commonly used to represent the width of the palm, sometimes including the thumb when closed against the palm.
3. Palm, sometimes also represented by four fingers held together, which is slightly less than the true width of the palm at the knuckle.
4. Span.
5. Finger or fingerbreadth.
6. Digit, slightly less than a finger.

(via redfox)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on December 28, 2009 7:05 AM

It is not very controversial to state that “Moneyball” was a divisive book. Michael Lewis wrote some things that can only be interpreted as denigrating to the scouting community, painting a picture of an out-of-touch collection of old men being replaced by smarter, better analysts. It should have been no surprise that people who considered themselves scouts, or had a lot of respect for the profession, were offended by some of the stuff Lewis wrote.

I wonder how different the book would be if it written today, though, because we are currently in the midst of a market correction based on statistical analysis agreeing with long held scouting beliefs. Defense is at a premium while high strikeout sluggers are struggling to find offers, and this charge is being led by the “smart teams” that Lewis would espouse are doing things the right way.

The Mariners focus on defense under Jack Zduriencik is a well known story by now. But, they aren’t the only ones heading that direction. The Boston Red Sox signed Mike Cameron to replace Jason Bay and have made their interest in Adrian Beltre well known. The A’s signed Coco Crisp and currently have an outfield with three center fielders penciled in as starters. Defensive specialists Adam Everett, Alex Gonzalez, Jack Wilson, Placido Polanco, and Pedro Feliz have all signed, while the guys who provide value with their bats are still sitting on the market.

The teams that use statistical analysis the most are doing what their scouts have been recommending for years. Stats geeks are validating the insights of scouts. If Lewis was following the game right now, documenting stories from inside a “smart” front office, the tone would have to be dramatically different, even if the point was still the same – good teams spend money on undervalued assets.

Timing really is everything. That Lewis chose to write the book when on base percentage was undervalued created a division between stats and scouting that simply would not exist if the book was written today. With the new found appreciation for defense and its place in a player’s total value, stats and scouts agree more than they disagree at the moment.

Perhaps the subtitle for the sequel to Moneyball should be “Why The Fat Scout Was Right All Along”.

Originally posted by Dave Cameron from FanGraphs Baseball, on December 28, 2009 7:00 AM

Shared by Bud
The gdata python client api looks updated to 2.0, but examples are incomplete.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from code.google.com, on December 28, 2009 6:07 AM

• Above: Photograph/Scan by Steve Poxson.
• Cows be tweetin [via @kasekaiserina]
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Originally posted by (author unknown) from Eat Me Daily, on December 28, 2009 5:45 AM

This Christmas, just like the last one, happily, I got a gift of a stack of thrift store baseball cards from my wife’s aunt. She also gave me four large microbrewery beers and a game called “Classic Baseball” that included about 50 cheaply produced 1989 baseball cards, a small cardboard game board in the shape of a baseball diamond, a die, and three Parcheesi-esque game pieces. There were no directions on how to play the game, but on the back of each card, below statistics that show the player’s 1988 output and his career totals, there are five trivia questions labeled S, D, T, HR, and R. After Christmas my wife used the cards to quiz me, and I stumbled along at a 50/50 pace at first and then, after polishing off most of the microbrews, I started to heat up. I came up with the correct answers for all the questions on the back of this Gregg Jefferies card, though I had to take a couple stabs at the third question before getting it right.

S (T-F) Carl Yastrzemski appeared in at least 3000 M.L. games.

D I was the last player to hit 50 HRs in a season. Who am I? [Note: Remember, the cards were produced in 1989.]

T Who was the Career Strike Out King, prior to Reggie Jackson?

HR Name the only M.L. player killed by a pitched ball?

R Dwight Gooden is sometimes referred to as whom?

I don’t know what to do with the game board and die and game pieces, but the cards will be going into the shoebox with all my cards from my childhood. I like these new arrivals, as they throw light on a section of baseball history that is otherwise not represented in the box of cards that stopped growing in 1981. And even after I stopped worshipping the gods, I still relied on baseball to measure my life by. So seeing players from the late 1980s and early 1990s, which is where the players in the thrift store stacks from Aunt Celia are always from, brings back that time in my life, when I was edging into my twenties, leaving college, starting to see what the world had in store for me.

Gregg Jefferies occupies a small but key place in my internal baseball-compassed map of the world. By the time I started living in New York, fresh out of college, in 1990, Jefferies (just a few months my senior) had already begun gathering blame for the flagging fortunes of the New York Mets.

Jefferies had been drafted in the first round by the Mets in 1985, the same year the team arrived as a force in the National League, winning 98 games behind a young, talented core that seemed destined to lead the team to championship contention for years to come. The promise of the team arrived the following year, the Mets winning 108 games and a World Series title. That year, Jefferies, just 18 years old, blitzed the minors at the A and AA levels with a combined .353 batting average with 32 doubles, 11 triples, and 16 home runs in 125 games. He hit .367 in the minors the following year, earning a late-season cup of scorching coffee (3 hits in 6 at-bats) with the big club, and in 1988, the year depicted in this “Classic Baseball” card, he came up to the Mets in late August and sparked the team to a dominating 24-7 finish to the season by hitting .321 with 8 doubles, 2 triples, and 6 home runs in 29 games. The 20-year-old kept up the hot hitting in the playoffs, playing in all seven games of the team’s series loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, in which he hit .333 with a .438 on-base percentage. Despite the loss, the future still seemed bright for the Mets, in large part because of the great expectations created by the young switch-hitter.

As the would-be dynasty of the Mets began to unravel due to poor trades, drug problems, and aging, the spotlight of fan hopes for the team fell on Gregg Jefferies, and Gregg Jefferies proved to be something less than the sawed-off shotgun version of Mickey Mantle that he had first appeared to be. Unfortunately for him, the disappointment around his failure to meet nearly impossible expectations was compounded by his being something of a polar opposite of the Mets at their 1986 peak. Compared to those Mets, who collectively had spilled over with the volatile, abrasive, magnetic personality of a band of outlaws, Jefferies seemed almost robotic. Worse, his dogged pursuance of a metronomic consistency in his game came across as bordering on selfish, as if all he cared about was the health of his batting average and not about “doing the little things” it took to win. Also, he was well short of being a wizard with the glove, and his inability to put an ironclad claim on a fielding position added more marks against him in fans’ minds. As he bounced from position to position he kept supplanting the incumbent at the position, and it was almost as if he was an eraser, removing one player after another who had been on the 1986 team. I don’t think this is actually how it went down, i.e., that as he switched from position to position he sent one after another ’86 champ packing, but I’m pretty confident that I’m getting the general subjective view of Jefferies correct: he replaced the ’86 Mets. It was hard for Mets fans to look at Gregg Jefferies’ youthful, slightly pudgy face and his underwhelming batting average and not feel a little cheated.

So by the time I got to New York City to start my adult life, Gregg Jefferies had become something of a human bad luck charm. If it had been colonial Salem, he probably would have been deemed a witch and tossed onto a bonfire. Nowadays such offenders are shipped to Kansas City. The following season the erstwhile future of the Mets returned to the National League, with the Cardinals, and hit his stride, vying for the 1993 N.L. batting title and hitting over .300 for three years in a row. He kicked around for a few more years beyond this admirable peak, and hung it up in 2000 with 1593 total hits and a .289 career batting average. (A few years later, he somehow even garnered two Hall of Fame votes.) But I’ll always remember him as a young guy who couldn’t get it together back when I was a young guy who also couldn’t get it together. You’d think I’d have thought fondly of him, or at least empathized with his plight, but I razzed him along with everyone else. Even to this day I can’t help looking at this 1989 “Classic Baseball” card of him laying down a bunt and think that he is in the midst of a humiliating failure. In truth, the ball has probably already made contact with his bat, and he has ably carried out his task. But it just seems more fitting to think that the ball is still on its way from the pitcher, and that Jefferies has sorely miscalculated in his gyrations, and in the next moment the ball will punch him in the stomach and he will crumple to the dirt in a heap as mockery and derision rain down from the stands. 

Originally posted by Josh Wilker from Cardboard Gods, on December 28, 2009 5:30 AM

I don't think Newt Gingrich necessarily speaks for the GOP these days. But he said over the weekend that he's sure every Republican in 2010 and 2012 will run on a pledge to repeal Health Care Reform. And though he was less definitive, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said close to the same thing. Now given the relative unpopularity of the bill at this moment (which I strongly suspect will change) and its extreme unpopularity among partisan Republicans, that's not a very surprising statement. What's interesting to me, though, is that Democrats started saying last week that they plan to run on the same platform -- namely, that if you vote for Republicans they'll repeal Health Care Reform.

In a sense, none of this should surprise us. This is pretty much how things should be -- you get the main issue of the day and the different parties vote for and against. But it's pretty seldom that's the case. It's not that common that both parties think the same issue is a winning one for them.

I think Dems can win this issue if they pick out the changes that are overwhelming popular -- bans on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, etc. But what has to be worrisome from a Democratic standpoint is the issue Gingrich focuses in on here ...

I suspect every Republican running in '10 and again in '12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill. The bill--most of the bill does not go into effect until '13 or '14, except on the tax increase side; and therefore, I think there won't be any great constituency for it. And I think it'll be a major campaign theme.

How do you develop a constituency for a bill before people have seen it in effect?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 28, 2009 4:48 AM

Each year, scores of pedestrians and cyclists die on New York City streets, while thousands are injured. Though the total number of road fatalities is trending down, those who get around the city on foot and by bike have seen their casualty rate rise.

Incidents of vehicle-inflicted violence are so frequent that many go unreported in the papers or on TV news, even when the outcome is death. Based on Streetsblog coverage, media stories and reader accounts, what follows is a record of those known to have lost their lives in 2009.

The victims listed below were killed on their way to and from work, church, or the corner store, while taking their dogs for a walk or coming home from a birthday party. They were grandparents, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, best friends. Many died alone or anonymously, their names never appearing in any public forum. Others were mortally wounded within sight of loved ones. With few exceptions, thanks to lax enforcement and scattershot prosecution of weak traffic laws, their killers are behind the wheel today. Of the 66 pedestrians, seven cyclists and one wheelchair user known to have died since January, in only 12 cases was the driver reportedly charged for taking a life.

As this list is undoubtedly incomplete, please use the comments to share remembrances of those named here, and the names and stories of those we missed.

Suzette Blanco, Janine Brawer, Miguel Colon, Yvette Diaz

• Howard Adrian, 84, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 23 on Staten Island; Driver Not Charged (Streetsblog)
• Ibrihim Ahmed, 9, Pedestrian, Killed Jan. 6 in Queens; Driver Charged With Suspended License (Streetsblog 1, 2, 3)
  
• Suzette Blanco, 20, Pedestrian, Killed June 7 in the Bronx; 1 Driver Charged With DWI and Leaving Scene, 1 Driver Hit-and-Run (News, Post)
• Janine Brawer, 17, Pedestrian, Died Nov. 19 on Staten Island; Drivers Not Charged (Advance)
• Donald Bryan, 31, Pedestrian, Killed in Queens Aug. 23; Driver Not Charged (News, Courier)
• Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara, 26, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 11 in Queens; Drivers Not Charged (City Room 1, 2)
  
• Francisco Chapul, 21, Pedestrian, Killed in Queens Nov. 14; 1 Driver Hit-and-Run, 2 Drivers Not Charged (Post, NY1)
• Miguel Colon, 37, Pedestrian, Killed July 12 in the Bronx; Driver Charged With Manslaughter, Homicide (NYT, News)
  
• Angela D'Ambrose, 15, Pedestrian, Killed Oct. 8 in Queens; Driver Not Charged (Post, News)
• Concetta DiBenedetto, 78, Pedestrian, Killed in Queens Nov. 19; Driver Not Charged (Post)
  
• Yvette Diaz, 28, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 15 in the Bronx; Hit-and-Run (News)
• Li Qun Fang, 43, Pedestrian, Killed March 12 in Queens; Hit-and-Run (News 1, 2) 

Concetta DiBenedetto, Li Qun Fang, Marilyn Feng, Paula Jimenez

• Marilyn Feng, 26, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 7 in Manhattan; Driver [Jersey City PD] Charged With DWI, Manslaughter (News, Post)
• Kyle Francis, 13, Pedestrian, Killed May 18 in Brooklyn; Driver Not Charged (News, Post)
• Joshua Ganzfried, 9, Pedestrian, Killed Sept. 12 in Brooklyn; Driver Charged With Suspended License (News, Post)
• JoAnne Hayden-Weissman, 55, Pedestrian, Killed April 16 in Queens; Driver Not Charged (Streetsblog)
  
• Linda Hewson, 50, Pedestrian, Killed Sept. 26 in Manhattan; Driver Driver Charged With Manslaughter, DWI (Post, MT)
• Javier Jackson, 79, Pedestrian, Killed Oct. 8 in Manhattan; Driver [NYPD] Not Charged (Post, News, NY1)
• Hugo Janssen, 73, Pedestrian, Killed Dec. 13 in Brooklyn; Hit-and-Run (News, Post, NY1)
• Paula Jimenez, 34, Pedestrian, Died Aug. 30 in Queens; Driver Charged With Homicide (News, Post)
• Jerome Johnson, 48, Pedestrian, Killed June 12 in Manhattan; Hit-and-Run, Charges Unknown (News, Post)
• Seth Kahn, 22, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 4 in Manhattan; Driver [MTA Bus] Charged for Failure to Yield (Streetsblog)
• Matthew Kim, 30, Pedestrian, Killed July 3 in Queens; Hit-and-Run (Post, News)
• Violetta Krzyzak, 38, Pedestrian, Killed April 27 in Brooklyn; Driver Charged With Manslaughter, Homicide (Streetsblog 1, 2)

James Langergaard, Harry Lewner, Diego Martinez, Eliseo Martinez

• James Langergaard, 38, Cyclist, Killed Aug. 14 in Queens; Driver Not Charged (Streetsblog)
• Harry Lewner, 58, Pedestrian, Killed Dec. 17 in Brooklyn; 1 Driver Charged With Leaving Scene, 1 Driver Not Charged (NY1, Gothamist)
• Vivian Long, 73, Pedestrian, Killed May 26 in Manhattan; Driver [Access-A-Ride] Not Charged (News)
  
• Diego Martinez, 3, Pedestrian, Killed Jan. 22 in Manhattan; Driver Not Charged (NYT, Streetsblog)
  
• Eliseo Martinez, 32, Cyclist, Killed Sept. 7 in Brooklyn; No Known Media Reports (Ghost Bikes)
  
• Virginia McKibbin, 65, Pedestrian, Killed Dec. 2 in Brooklyn; Driver [MTA Bus] Not Charged (Post, NY1)
• Julian Miller, 45, Cyclist, Killed Sept. 18 in Brooklyn; Motorcyclist Also Killed (The Local 1, 2)
• Virginia Montalvo, 71, Pedestrian, Killed April 7 in Queens; Hit-and-Run (News, NYT)
• Hayley Ng, 4, Pedestrian, Killed Jan. 22 in Manhattan; Driver Not Charged (NYT, Streetsblog) 
  
• Drana Nikac, 67, Pedestrian, Killed Oct. 30 in the Bronx; Driver [Off-Duty NYPD] Charged With DWI, Homicide (R'dale Press)
• Robert Ogle, 16, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 1 in Queens; Driver Charged With DWI, Manslaughter (News, NYT, Post)
• Axel Pablo, 8, Pedestrian, Killed Aug. 13 in Manhattan; Driver [Yellow Cab] Not Charged (Post, News)

Julian Miller, Drana Nikac, Hayley Ng, Robert Ogle

• Alex Paul, 20, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 1 in Queens; Driver Charged With DWI, Manslaughter (News, NYT, Post) 
• Nathan Pakow, 47, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 26 on Staten Island; Driver Charged With Homicide (Streetsblog)
  
• Pablo Pasaras, 27, Cyclist, Killed Aug. 8 in Queens; Driver Charged With Homicide (Streetsblog, Gazette)
  
• Sonya Powell, 40-42, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 27 in the Bronx; Driver Charged With Leaving Scene and Suspended License (News, Post, NY1, WABC)
• Ysemny Ramos, 29, Pedestrian, Killed March 27 in Manhattan; Driver Charged With DWI, Manslaughter (NYT, News)
• Solange Raulston, 33, Cyclist, Killed Dec. 13 in Brooklyn; Driver Not Charged (News, Post, Bklyn Paper, Gothamist)
• Luis Rivera, 22, Pedestrian, Killed Oct. 31 in the Bronx; Driver [MTA Bus] Not Charged (AMNY, News)
• Lillian Sabados, 77, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 25 on Staten Island; Driver Charged With Leaving Scene and Suspended License
  
• Peter Sabados, 78, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 25 on Staten Island; Driver Charged With Leaving Scene and Suspended License (NYT)
• Edith Schaller, 87-88, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 30 in Brooklyn; Drivers Not Charged (News, Post)
• Susanne Schnitzer, 61, Pedestrian, Killed April 8 in Manhattan; No Known Media Reports (NYT, Streetsblog)
  
• Juan Sifuentes, 67, Pedestrian, Killed July 15 in Brooklyn; Hit-and-Run (AP)

Axel Pablo, Nathan Pakow, Sonya Powell, Solange Raulston

• Matvey Smolovich, 25, Pedestrian, Killed May 26 in Brooklyn; Driver [School Bus] Not Charged (News)
• Catorino Solis, 48, Pedestrian, Killed Dec. 21 in Manhattan; Driver Charged for Unlicensed Operation and Moving Violations (News)
• Andrzej Suchorzepka, 48, Pedestrian, Killed Aug. 2 in Queens; Hit-and-Run (News)
• Dan Valle, 26, Cyclist, Killed Feb. 18 in Brooklyn; No Known Media Reports (MTR)
  
• Vionique Valnord, 32, Pedestrian, Killed Sept. 27 in Brooklyn; Driver [NYPD] Charged With Manslaughter, DWI (NYT)
  
• Dorothea Wallace, 38, Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 3 in Brooklyn; Driver [Off-Duty NYS Corrections] Charged With Suspended License (News, Post, NY1)
• Fred Wilson, 66, Pedestrian, Killed Sept. 12 in Brooklyn; Driver Not Charged (News, Post, Post)
• Hui Wu, 26, Pedestrian, Killed Feb. 20 in Brooklyn; Driver [MTA Bus] Not Charged (News, NY1)
• Stanislaw Zak, 65, Pedestrian, Killed June 9 in Brooklyn; Driver Charged With Manslaughter, Homicide (News, Post)
  
• Unnamed Cyclist, 72, Killed June 27 in Brooklyn; Driver Not Charged (News, Bklyn Paper)  
• Tina [Surname Unknown], Pedestrian, Killed Sept. 12 in Manhattan; Driver Not Charged (News)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Jan. 21 in Brooklyn; Hit-and-Run (Post)

Ysemny Ramos, Peter and Lillian Sabados, Edith Schaller, Hui Wu

• Two Unnamed Pedestrians, Killed April 8 in Manhattan and Queens; Hit-and-Runs (News)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, 20, Killed April 15 in Manhattan; Driver Charged With DWI (Post)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed May 15 in Manhattan; Driver [Yellow Cab] Not Charged (News)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed May 26 in Queens; Driver Not Charged (News)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed July 26 in the Bronx; Hit-and-Run (News)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Aug. 2 in Manhattan; Hit-and-Run (NYT, News)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Aug. 9 in Brooklyn; Driver Not Charged (News)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Oct. 22 in Queens; No Known Media Reports (Gothamist)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 15 in Queens; Driver Not Charged (Streetsblog)
• Unnamed Pedestrian, 48, Killed Nov. 15 in Brooklyn; Hit-and-Run, Driver Not Charged (Post)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, Killed Nov. 15 in the Bronx; 1 Driver Hit-and-Run, 1 Driver Not Charged (News)
  
• Unnamed Pedestrian, 79-80, Killed Dec. 15 in Brooklyn; Driver [Ambulance] Not Charged (Streetsblog)
• Unnamed Wheelchair User, Killed Sept. 1 in Brooklyn; Charges Unknown (News) 

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog New York City, on December 28, 2009 4:00 AM

Note: If you are unfamiliar with sous-vide cooking (and really, is anyone unfamiliar with it any more?) I'd suggest you quickly read our previous piece about it to get a quick overview first.

Photographs by Robyn Lee and Tam Ngo.

Reviews of the newly introduced SousVide Supreme—the $449 home version of the $1,000 machines that the world's best restaurants have been using for the last decade or so—have been streaming in from all over the internet, and so far they seem to be ranging from excellent to complete sell-out.

I got my own in the mail, and had it for about a month, during which time I cooked over 35 distinct food items in it, low temperature and high temperature, protein and vegetable, long (two days plus) and short (30 minutes) cooking times. I tested it at every point with a probe thermometer and monitored its temperature over the course of three days.

I put it through every sort of abuse a home cook might inflict upon it, and I'm glad to report that it does everything you'd expect a sous-vide machine to do. It holds its temperature (in all my testing, only one item ended up overcooked—an egg that was cooking in the bottom of a machine set at 140°F with at least a dozen other bags of food in it), it holds it indefinitely and evenly, and despite a lack of a pump in there, it somehow manages to circulate water all around the food (I am told via a sophisticated computer that controls convection currents in the unit—no wonder it's so expensive). After the jump, check out photos of more than 20 foods with the sous-vide treatment, and read the pros and cons of the machine.

That said, the SousVide Supreme has the same limits that any sous-vide cooking has: your food will not get browned, and it will not develop any of the flavors associated with cooking methods that keep your food exposed to air, or that allow sauces to slowly reduce (such as braising, stewing, or roasting).

The other downside is that the Sous-Vide Supreme provides everything you need except the sous-vide part. For that, you'll have to buy your own vacuum sealer. While an industrial grade chamber vac, or a good FoodSaver might be nice, I found that the Reynold's Handi Vac they provided was more than adequate. Sure, there was the occasional bag that didn't seal (but that was easy to catch and fix), but the advantages were numerous: reusable bags (less wasted plastic!), cheap, portables, and the ability to add liquid ingredients, thanks to the well-designed double-seal on the unit.

The greatest advantage for me is the fact that the sous-vide machine allows you to cook and hold as many different proteins as you'd like, making it possible to cook a 12-course meal for six people out of an apartment kitchen, with every protein coming out perfectly cooked—a nearly impossible task with traditional cooking methods. Of course, such elaborate meals take plenty of forethought.

For example, say I wanted to cook a meal that starts with a dish of slow cooked eggs, followed by halibut, followed by duck, and finally with a poached apple. The day before, I'd have to set my machine to 183°F and drop in the apples. The next afternoon, I'd lower the temp to 140°F and put in my eggs. A few hours later, I'd set the machine to 120°F and add the duck.

Finally, just before the meal, I'd lower it to 115°F, and drop the halibut. So by the time my meal starts, every dish is already cooked and being held at 115°F—hot enough to eat, but cool enough not to cook further. To serve, I just open up the appropriate bag for the course, finish the plate, and I'm good to go. Like I said—the machine will save you lots of work, but still expect to do just as much, if not more planning.

It's an exciting time for home cookery as home cooks are becoming more and more sophisticated and knowledgeable (I hope in small part due to the efforts of the present writer), and are demanding the ingredients and technology to suit their needs.

It may be some time before sous-vide becomes as standard as say, the microwave, but give it a couple of years, a few more cookbooks, and a slight reduction in price (economies of scale are bound to help), and we might be seeing what amounts to a full-on paradigm shift.

For details on some of the more interesting dishes, click through the photo gallery at the top.

Originally posted by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats, on December 28, 2009 3:30 AM

(as encountered while staying in a hotel room last night)

1. “The Finn” from Neuromancer
2. Matthew McConaughey’s character in Fool’s Gold

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on December 28, 2009 2:20 AM

“The future is stupid.”

- Jenny Holzer, in a NY Times interview

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on December 27, 2009 8:44 PM

In this post, I present a complete Cocoa Touch iPhone application implemented with unit tests for all created code. I'll look at setting up build and debug targets and executables for both Application and Logic tests, and show you some of the differences between Application and Logic tests.

The code for this post is an iPhone version of the Mac post I presented last week.

Xcode unit testing targets for the iPhone

Like Mac unit testing, unit testing targets on the iPhone are generally divided into two types:

• Logic tests — these are run in a executable that is separate from your application. The separate build can be easier to manage, faster to build and is easier to run objects in isolation since it avoids the application setup. However, you cannot test components which rely on the application (which is most user interface components). Generally, this type of test target is intended for libraries, frameworks and testing the back-end (model components of model-view-controller) of your application.

  Logic tests are easily run at build-time or from the command-line, which is helpful for continuous integration or automated test processes.

• Application tests — these tests let the application load first and are subsequently loaded into the existing application. This means that the full application environment is available to your tests. In many cases, controller tests and view tests need to be run as application tests since they are reliant on the full environment.

  Application tests allow your application to be tested in a more realistic environment, reducing the chance that environment or integration level issues will be missed. They are normally run as a separate step (not as part of the build) and therefore may be less convenient for tests that need to be run every time.

In last week's post on Mac development, I covered the Application Tests exclusively. For the iPhone, I will cover both. The reason for this is:

iPhone Application Tests will only run on the device.

This is annoying. It means that you must have a device connected to your test machine via USB to run Application Tests and endure the slow copy-to-device and slow gdb interaction speeds. Apple could have allowed the simulator to perform the same bundle injection but they have not.

There are alternatives to this approach. You could probably run a regular iPhone application in the simulator and invoke SenTestingKit manually after your application starts. There's also Google's Toolbox for Mac has an iPhone Unit Testing approach that runs in the simulator.

But I'm going to keep to the default OCUnit approaches used in Xcode, so I'll show you how to configure both Application Tests and Logic Tests and I'll show you the sorts of tests that will run in both and which will require the full Application Test to run.

To be clear: if you want to run Logic Tests for your Mac applications, you can follow almost exactly the same approach that I present here. For Mac applications though, since you can invoke the ApplicationTests from the command line (as a post-build step or integration step) I would not normally consider the hassle of maintaining an extra build target and executable worth the effort.

iPhone project configuration

Unit testing targets

After you've created a blank project, use the "Project→New Target..." menu item to add two new "Cocoa Touch→Unit Testing Bundle" Targets to the project. These will be the ApplicationTests and LogicTests bundles.

Be wary of target memberships: When you add bundle resources and sources-to-compile to the original project, also add these to the LogicTests target but do not add them to the ApplicationTests target. Testing-specific files should be added to the LogicTests target and the ApplicationTests target but not to the original project.

As with the Mac project configuration, that's sadly not enough to make it work.

First, drag your original application's target onto the ApplicationTests and LogicTests targets to create a dependency (force the application to build before the unit tests).

Then delete the Run Script phase of the ApplicationTests testing target. It's only for logic tests and won't work for application tests.

Then edit the ApplicationTests target's settings (Right click→Get Info) and set the "Build→Linking→Bundle Loader" for all configurations to:

$(CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR)/WhereIsMyPhone.app/WhereIsMyPhone

where "WhereIsMyPhone" is the name of the application you're unit testing. As with the Mac setup, this step lets the testing target link against the application (the ApplicationTests target doesn't include the original source files and we don't want linker errors when compiling). Unlike the Mac setup, we don't need to set the "Unit Testing→Test Host" (since we can't run using the build-time step).

On the build configuration, also add APPLICATION_TESTS to the "GCC 4.2 - Preprocessing→Preprocessor Macros". This will let us flag certain tests for running in the ApplicationTests bundle but not the LogicTests.

It'd be nice to use the OCMock framework but the iPhone doesn't allow dynamic linking. Instead we need to take the OCMock source code from, OCMock on GitHub, take the non-test-related files and add them directly to both unit testing targets' "Compile Sources" phases. To get it to compile for the iPhone you'll need to replace isEqualTo: in OCMConstraint.m with isEqual:, the import of <objc/objc-runtime.h> in OCPartialMockObject.m with <objc/runtime.h> and the typeof in OCMArg.h with __typeof.

Debugging setup for the ApplicationTests target

To run the application tests, we need to make a copy of the original iPhone application's target (Right Click→Duplicate) — give it a name like "WhereIsMyPhoneTesting" to distinguish from the original "WhereIsMyPhone" target.

Separate targets again: You will need to keep the duplicate in sync with the original. This means that all source files and resources added to the application should also be added to the testing target.

With all these separate targets, it's worth noting that you don't need to add to each target separately — when you're adding a new file to the project, you are normally given the list of targets and you select the checkboxes for the appropriate targets all at once. Don't add test files to the application and don't add application files to the ApplicationTests target and everything will work.

Drag the ApplicationTests target onto this duplicate (to make the duplicate dependent on the application testing bundle). Also drag the application testing bundle (in the Group Tree under Products named ApplicationTests.octest) to the new "WhereIsMyPhoneTesting" target's "Copy Bundle Resources" phase.

Finally, in the settings for the "WhereIsMyPhoneTesting" target, for all Configurations set the "Build→Packaging→Product Name" to something distinct from the original target (e.g. change "WhereIsMyPhone" to "WhereIsMyPhoneTesting").

iPhone application tests only work on the device.
To run the iPhone's application unit tests, you must build and install onto a device. They will not load in the simulator. Yes, this is annoying. Please request simulator support for Application Tests in future iPhone SDK releases if this bothers you.

Debugging setup for the LogicTests target

For the logic tests, we don't create another target but we do need to create a custom executable ("Project→New Custom Executable...") named "DebugLogicTests" or similar with a path relative to the Current SDK of:

Developer/usr/bin/otest

This is Apple's test harness and will handle the work of running the LogicTests bundle headlessly in the iPhone Simulator.

You also need to set the Arguments and Environment for this executable to work. Double click the DebugLogicTests item in the Executables section of the Group Tree and edit the Arguments tab to look like this:

The sample iPhone application

As with last week, the sample application is a recreation of my earlier post, WhereIsMyMac, this time written for the iPhone using a test-first approach to development.

With so much discussion about how to set up the Xcode project, I might keep the discussion of the tests themselves quite brief. If you want to know more about the implementation of the tests, they are almost identical to last week's — I deliberately chose this application because the implementation is very similar on the Mac and iPhone — so I encourage you to read through the writing of the tests from that post.

The only significant differences between the iPhone and Mac applications are that the Window Controller from last week is a View Controller in the iPhone version, NSTextFields are now UILabels and the UIWebView that the iPhone version contains is simpler than the WebView on the Mac, so the mainFrame access never occurs on the iPhone.

There is no application for the LogicTests

What I'll focus on this time, are the differences between the Mac and iPhone tests and implementations. Here's an example:

#ifdef APPLICATION_TESTS

- (void)testAppDelegate
{
   id appDelegate = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
   STAssertNotNil(appDelegate, @"Cannot find the application delegate.");
}

#endif

On the Mac, this code was almost the same (NSApplication instead of UIApplication). The big difference is that I've wrapped the entire test in #ifdef APPLICATION_TESTS since the application delegate does not exist in the logic tests, we must ensure this test is only run for application tests (we added the APPLICATION_TESTS preprocessor macro to the ApplicationTests target only).

LogicTests are a different bundle

The next big difference is that the actual application code, which runs out of the mainBundle in the regular application, runs out of the LogicTests.octest bundle that otest loads in the LogicTests target. To make code that accesses the bundle work the same, independent of where it is running, all NSBundle access is handled by class.

For example, the code in WhereIsMyPhoneViewController.m that generates the HTML to send to the UIWebView fetches the structure of the HTML from a file with:

[[NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]]
    pathForResource:@"HTMLFormatString"
    ofType:@"html"]

Previously, I would have used [NSBundle mainBundle] here but that code failed when run in the LogicTests. The [NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]] will find the bundle that contains the class whether it is the main bundle or the LogicTests.octest bundle loaded by otest.

Many UIKit classes won't work without the UIApplication

Trying to add code to pass the tests in this project revealed that other tests would have to be conditionally excluded from LogicTests as well:

• The default loadView method will fail — so the testLoadView method is #ifdef'd out.
• Any attempt to alloc/init a UILabel will fail. I don't know why but because of this, all tests on the labels must be #ifdef'd.

Generally, don't expect anything from the UIKit framework to work in your Logic tests. Other frameworks will almost always work (in this application, the CoreLocation and Foundation frameworks work without issue).

Within UIKit, some elements will work — for example, UIWebView didn't have any issues in my testing. Exactly which user-interface objects will fail in the LogicTests bundle (without an actual running application) is never really clear until you try but these failures are why you still need to run the Application Tests to verify against — the Application Tests are a more authoritative result for anything in UIKit.

Conclusion

Download the complete WhereIsMyPhone-WithUnitTests.zip (85kb).

This project includes code from the OCMock framework, which is Copyright (c) 2004-2009 by Mulle Kybernetik. OCMock is covered by its own license (contained in the OCUnit/License.txt file in the download).

The code for this post is largely been a repeat of last week's post for the benefit of iPhone programmers. You can have a look at the differences for yourself but I deliberately chose this project because the iPhone and Mac implentations are so similar.

I have taken the time though to show you how you can maintain a LogicTests target (in addition to the application-wide ApplicationTests target) that can test most of your project outside the application environment — including most of the user-interface controller code. The purpose is to sidestep the "device-only" limitations of the current OCUnit testing for the iPhone but also to show how you could set up build-time unit tests for part of your application, without necessarily applying this approach to your entire project.

Originally posted by Matt Gallagher from Cocoa with Love, on December 27, 2009 1:59 PM

Instead of writing about my feelings about Dexter Season 4, I've decided to display them in a very poorly done graph.

Originally posted by Liz from Lather Rinse Repeat, on December 27, 2009 11:49 AM

l: ‘chronic city’ uk edition by miriam rosenbloom
r: ‘cheers! a history of beer in canada’ by david gee

we bring you another best of the year lists, this time it’s the book design review’s favoutrite book designs
of 2009. the list includes some of their picks from the world of book jacket designs. the list includes
everything from penguin classics to contemporary non-fiction. the collection has a strong partiality
towards minimal design and strong graphic layouts. the list is a good indicator of where book design
trends were this past year and perhaps, points to where they are going. while you can simply look at the
designs, readers have also voted for their favourites, with the design for ‘columbine’ by henry sene yee
as the overall favourite.

http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-favorites-of-2009.html


l: ‘valkyrie by jason booher
r: ‘the great perhaps’ by jamie keenan


l: ‘columbine’ by henry sene yee
r: ‘perforated heart’ by jason heuer


l: ‘experimental geography’ by kelly blair
r: ‘the penguin book of gaslight crime’illustration by jaya miceli

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on December 27, 2009 11:00 AM

Not going to do any editorializing here; just going to do some non-fancy math. James Joyner asks:

There have been precisely three attempts over the last eight years to commit acts of terrorism aboard commercial aircraft. All of them clownishly inept and easily thwarted by the passengers. How many tens of thousands of flights have been incident free?

Let's expand Joyner's scope out to the past decade. Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides a wealth of statistical information on air traffic. For this exercise, I will look at both domestic flights within the US, and international flights whose origin or destination was within the United States. I will not look at flights that transported cargo and crew only. I will look at flights spanning the decade from October 1999 through September 2009 inclusive (the BTS does not yet have data available for the past couple of months).

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Again, no editorializing (for now). These are just the numbers.

Originally posted by noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right, on December 27, 2009 8:58 AM

I’ve heard this conversation at least 10 times:

Roadie Tech Type #1: “Hey - what if they made the iPhone a Power Meter head unit?”

Roadie Tech Type #2: “Never happen - iPhone will never support ANT+”

Roadie Tech Type #1: “But that would be awesome if it did”.

That may be true, but it looks like Pedal Brain maybe ready to span that gap with their iPhone mount that includes ANT+ comm support.

It’s still very early as they just launched their public site last week, but it sounds promising. Does this mean no need to lug around a Windows machine any more to upload and analyze your data? We’ll stay on this and hopefully get a chance to test it out and see how the software suite works together. I doubt I’ll ever want to race with an iPod sticking out from my handlebars, but it sure seems great for training.

Originally posted by Andrew Martin from Bike Hugger, on December 27, 2009 5:55 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from lather rinse repeat, on December 27, 2009 5:09 AM