July 2009
33 posts
“This research has important practical implications. It suggests that there are...”
– An Easy Way to Increase Creativity: Scientific American
dfdeshom / daypi-python / overview — bitbucket.org →
Python bindings to query the DayLife API (http://corp.daylife.com/daylife_api). We need this at work and the original code was too ugly to work around. BSD.
WatchContexts Crawler » Mary Pattillo on the Obama family and the black middle class
Tutorial — Django Solr →
Looks very cool. We’ve been using pysolr and some custom commands to administer solr and this looks like what we need.
What's new with Apache Solr - Importing data from... →
“One of the (many) unfortunate side effects of choosing a career in software...”
– Coding Horror: Nobody Hates Software More Than Software Developers
Charges dropped against black Harvard scholar →
Still black!
Solr: Relevancy and Case Matching, Ranking Terms,... →
For example,
Lengthen, Then Strengthen
→
Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax →
“There’s no certainty like that of adolescent emotions.”
– Nightmare Brunette: On Timing
CommonQueryParameters - Solr Wiki →
Things you can pass to solr on the url
“in our obsession with the risks of pedophilia, we can no longer look at the...”
– Naked Kids Polarize Clothed Adults - Childhood nudity - Jezebel
Why are modern scientists so dull? →
“It appears that Obama and his administration, while educating themselves...”
– Kate Harding
The Easy Way to Extract Useful Text from Arbitrary... →
“Unless the W3C gains some kind of enforcement power, the implementors will...”
– Re: Codecs for and from Ian Hickson on 2009-07-07 (public-html@w3.org from July 2009)
Vendor Veto [On the the HTML5 video codec debacle] →
2 things that I didn’t realize until now:
the spec is at the mercy of the implementors. If Mozilla, Apple, etc won’t implement it, it effectively does not exist
Working in committees always sucks, which is why congress seems to suck so much.
Why I (A/L)GPL →
Extreme Thinking →
The natural sciences have a reputation for posing special challenges to the way we think and learn: they are a form of “extreme thinking”. In this essay physicist Michael A. Nielsen discusses some of the challenges facing researchers in the natural sciences, and how those challenges shed light on other tough learning situations.
“He was in a philosophical mood, and got particularly hung up on the idea of...”
– Nightmare Brunette: Ports
SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And... →
Django Design Patterns →
This is a collection of patterns which we have found occuring commonly with Django. All of these either make collaboration easier, coding simpler or code more maintainable.
Anti-Paparazzi Clutch Bag →
The bag is equipped with flash and sensor. When sensor detect camera flash, it will send out a brighter flash to blind the camera just like the one above. It is activated by powering it on and then tilting the clutch.
On McNamara
tomjen: May he rot and burn in hell, and may all the world forget he ever lived.
noonespecial: We went to Iraq, didn't we? I'd say we forgot him straightaway.
(See http: //news.ycombinator.com/item?id=691088)
The lies of The Fog of War. - By Fred Kaplan -... →
Knowing these bits of historical background doesn’t undermine the film’s power. To the contrary, it heightens the poignancy of McNamara’s life, clarifies the true depths of his tragedy—the full psychic distress of an intellectual in power when the foundations of both his intellect and his power crumble.
“Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora in Quicktime by default (as used by...”
– Ogg codecs dropped from HTML5 [LWN.net]
“The accuracy of these algorithms is positively disturbing. Using a separate pool...”
– New algorithm guesses SSNs using date and place of birth - Ars Technica
“Male lust is an ignorant, blind, bullying thing – an immediate need, as real as...”
– John Walsh, Desire: What really turns us on? written for The Independent on February 14, 2009. (via narratrix)
“we are all publishers now”
– michael_dorfman on “We are Writers Now”
Unobtrusive JavaScript →
Obvious idea for an obtrusive language. Now with a fancy name!
somebody implemented diff in PHP and spelled... →
(via giles)
“But the one shining and enduring truth of all search engines is this: most of...”
– John Shade - Microsoft Buys a Verb 