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Fixie
Automatically-generated filler content on demand!
javascript  webdev 
21 days ago
Man charged with 11 felonies in 9 hours
What a busy guy.
crime  bizarre 
6 weeks ago
Building the Worst Linux PC Ever
Running inside an ARM emulator on an 8-bit microcontroller, "it takes two hours to boot up to a bash prompt... [and] the effective clock speed is about 6.5 kilohertz.
linux  hacks 
8 weeks ago
All or Something
David Heinemeier Hansson captures the ambivalence I have towards my profession.
business  37signals  programming 
february 2012
NY Times: Why College Students Leave the Engineering Track
The article suggests that "maybe students intending to major in STEM fields are changing their minds because those curriculums require more work, or because they’re scared off by the lower grades, or a combination of the two." That sounds about right -- when I was in college, I worked my ass off day and night for lousy grades.
education  engineering  business 
january 2012
Krugman: Nobody Understands Debt
"Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.

"This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways."
economics  politics  nyt  krugman 
january 2012
Do You Make These 5 Database Design Mistakes?
"Look, everyone makes mistakes. It’s true. But not all of us have the chance to make mistakes that end up costing millions of dollars in hardware and production support costs."
sql  rdbms  programming 
january 2012
Underscore.php
This is awesome! Brian Haveri ported the popular Underscore.js to PHP 5.3, rejuvenating the entire language with a much-needed set of clean and elegant utility functions. And I can't wait to be able to use this with PHP 5.4's new array syntax.
php  webdev  programming 
august 2011
MacWorld: Four Lion Terminal hacks
Why does Apple add more annoying crap to each version of OS X?
osx  mac  apple 
july 2011
How Many Words Do You Know?
My score: 31,900.
education  english  language 
july 2011
A Walkthrough of the standard C abort(3) Function
If you understand what the headline means, this link is for you. Read it immediately and be amazed.
programming  unix  c 
july 2011
The Onion: Minnesota Bars Running Dry
"I guess this is where the tourist slogan ‘Escape to Wisconsin to get completely shitfaced’ really pays off."
humor  minnesota 
july 2011
Skeleton Adaptive CSS Grid Framework
This CSS grid framework makes extensive use of media queries, so it adapts to different screen sizes. I haven't built anything with this, but it looks excellent.
webdev  css  mobile 
july 2011
How to Centre and Layout Pages Without a Wrapper
Kroc Camen shows you how to eliminate wrapper divs from your HTML5 layouts.
html5  webdev 
july 2011
Scott Adams: How to Get a Real Education at College
"Remember, children are our future, and the majority of them are B students. If that doesn't scare you, it probably should."
business  career 
april 2011
A Collection of Examples of 64-bit Errors in Real Programs
A fascinating collection of 64-bit errors found in C and C++ programs. Each example includes a discussion of the code's original intent, what went wrong, and why the error went unnoticed when compiled on a 32-bit OS.
programming 
march 2011
Freakonomics: Detroit is Dying… Quickly
"After New Orleans, which lost 29 percent of its population in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Detroit's 25 percent loss is the largest percentage drop in the history of an American city with more than 100,000 people. Just ten years ago, Detroit was the tenth largest city in the country. Demographers at the Brookings Institute now believe it might have fallen all the way to 18th, with just 713,777 people. That's the smallest it's been since 1910, just before the automotive boom brought millions of well-paid jobs and turned Detroit into the Motor City. It's hard to imagine, but up until 1950, Detroit was the fourth biggest city in America. In 1960, it had the highest per-capita income in the U.S."
economics  detroit  politics 
march 2011
The Oatmeal: "What I Think Obama Is Meeting with Jobs, Schmidt, and Zuckerberg About"
That sounds about right.
humor  technology  internet 
february 2011
Havoc Pennington: Asheville, Off the Tech Hub Grid
Good information about Asheville, North Carolina from Havoc Pennington, who lives there.
asheville  cities  career 
january 2011
Gallery of 'The End' screens from MGM movies
More 'The End' screens. These are great.
design  typography  movies 
january 2011
Gallery of 'The End' screens from Warner Bros. movies
Great examples of old-school typography.
typography  design  movies 
january 2011
Stereo Stack: Vintage LP Stereo banners
Beautiful, old-school graphic design.
design  music  typography 
january 2011
Forbes.com: Is Microsoft Suddenly Cool?
No.
technology  business  microsoft 
december 2010
"It Tastes Like Regret"
Paul Kafasis describes his experience with Four Loko. [Via Daring Fireball]
humor  alcohol  mistakes 
november 2010
A List Apart's 2010 Survey For People Who Make Websites
It's that time of year, folks.
webdev  survey  web  webdesign 
october 2010
Urwid: Console User Interface Library for Python
Yes! I've been looking for something like this since 2003.
python  console  unix  cli  ncurses  tty 
october 2010
"How the Hell Do Software Developers Get Groupies?"
All the cool kids use Ruby.
php  ruby  humor  rant  xtranormal 
august 2010
The Classic Unix Horror Story
In this totally awesome story, a team of old-school Unix badasses recovers from a `rm -rf /` without reinstalling the system or even rebooting the machine. The author asks, "if you were placed in the same situation, and had the presence of mind that always comes with hindsight, could you have got out of it in a simpler or easier way?" I wouldn't have gotten out of it at all.
unix  sysadmin  story  awesome  badass 
august 2010
Steve Jobs Responds to the Antenna Issue: "Just Avoid Holding It In That Way."
What a dick.
apple  iphone  stevejobs  asshole 
june 2010
Dan Gillmor: This Mac Devotee is Moving to Linux
So is this one.
osx  linux  ubuntu  apple 
june 2010
Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Writing Great Documentation
Yes! Do this stuff.
django  programming  development  documentation 
june 2010
Socrates and Glaucon on the Home Shopping Network
The main characters in Plato's Republic use the Socratic method to sell the EZ-Klean mop.
philosophy  humor  plato  socrates  glaucon  mcsweeneys 
may 2010
Old New Thing: If Windows 3.11 required a 32-bit processor, why was it called a 16-bit operating system?
"With Enhanced mode, there were actually three operating systems running at the same time. The operating system in charge of the show was the 32-bit virtual machine manager which ran in 32-bit protected mode. As you might suspect from its name, the virtual machine manager created virtual machines. Inside the first virtual machine ran... a copy of Standard mode Windows. [snip] The other virtual machines each ran a copy of MS-DOS and were responsible for your MS-DOS sessions. Recall that Enhanced mode Windows allowed you to run multiple MS-DOS prompts that were pre-emptively multi-tasked. These other virtual machines ran in a variety of modes, but spent most of their time in virtual-86 mode."
windows  dos  history  computing  microsoft 
may 2010
T=Machine: Entity Systems are the Future of MMOG Development
These fascinating and well-written blog posts from 2007 explain a model of software development that is very different from the OOP approach I learned in school and have always used in the workplace.
software  programming  development  cs  computerscience  architecture 
may 2010
Geez Mom!
Why do you have to embarrass me in front of everybody?
humor 
may 2010
Dateline: Silver Age
Check out these old headlines from fictional, silver-age comic books.
comics  humor  blogs 
may 2010
A Typical Day at the Illinois Poison Center
Fascinating.
medicine  health  interesting  illinois 
april 2010
0to255
"A simple [Flash-based] tool that lets users find variations of any color."
css  design  webdev  color 
april 2010
Beaker Gets Flamed off the Internet
Some people just can't carry a tune.
humor  youtube  muppets 
april 2010
David Mamet's Memo to the Writers of 'The Unit'
I wish David Mamet had sent a similar memo to the people who write *24.*
awesome  tv  drama  fiction  humor  profanity  allcaps  writing 
april 2010
The Footnotes of Mad Men
Required reading if you're a fan of the show.
1960s  television  history  design  advertising  culture 
march 2010
YouTube: The Downfall of Agile Hitler
Even Hitler knows to write unit tests.
programming  downfall  hitler  humor 
march 2010
HOWTO: Dial a Rotary Telephone
"As dial telephones were introduced -- replacing operator service -- instructions were shown in movie theaters as to how to use the new instruments."
telephones  retro  tutorial  youtube 
march 2010
Stack Overflow: Community Open Source Ad for Drupal
Well, I guess it's an accurate summary of what Drupal is all about.
humor  drupal  php  webdev  programming 
march 2010
Publishers Push Back Against Steve Jobs' Anti-Flash Propaganda
They make good points, but I don't think they see the larger issue. Even if Flash existed on the iPad, existing Flash content still wouldn't work properly on those devices. Many Flash user interfaces (including most Flash video players I've seen) respond to mouseover events, but the iPad has no mouse cursor and therefore no elegant way for the user to trigger that event. If Apple were to release a Flash-enabled iPad, do you really think that all Web developers everywhere would scramble to redesign every Flash interface that relies on mouseover events to operate? I didn't think so.
apple  webdev  whiners  flash  ipad  iphone 
march 2010
Apple's Share of PC Revenue and Profit
Wow. While only 7% of the PC industry's revenue goes to Apple, the company grabs a massive 35% of the industry's operating profit.
pc  apple  business 
march 2010
List of Helicopter Prison Escapes
It's a surprisingly effective method of escaping prison.
prison  wikipedia  trivia  knowingishalfthebattle 
march 2010
Betting on the Blind Side
Hedge fund manager Michael Burry saw the financial crisis coming and made a fortune with credit default swaps.
banking  economics  investment  vanityfair 
march 2010
FreeBSD 8.0 Released
I'm a little late to the party on this one, but a new version of FreeBSD has been released. I'm looking forward to using ZFS without having to use Solaris and am especially excited to see FreeBSD running under Xen. Maybe this means I'll be able to get FreeBSD slices from Slicehost.
freebsd  os  unix  bsd 
november 2009
Jack Kirby's Inglourious Basterds
Check out these covers for a hypothetical '70s-style comic book adaptation of the Tarantino film.
tarantino  comics  inglourious-basterds 
november 2009
Apple's Mistake
Paul Graham explains why Apple's hostility towards iPhone developers is harming them in the long run.
iphone  apple  programming  mobile 
november 2009
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
Simon and Garfunkel perform "the Sounds of Silence" in this clip from 1966.
music  youtube  paul-simon  paulsimon  1960s  60s 
november 2009
The Symphony of Science
"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."
music  science  geek  astronomy 
october 2009
Excuse me, Princess!
Link's famous catch phrase from the Legend of Zelda cartoon is remarkably annoying. I liked some real crap when I was a kid.
cartoon  annoying  zelda  youtube 
october 2009
xkcd - A Webcomic - Scary
Touché, Randall Munroe. Touché.
xkcd  comics  humor 
october 2009
Cracked.com: A Review of the Pirated Copy of Windows 7 I Bought On eBay | Cracked.com
A hilarious review of Windows 95 as if it were the upcoming Windows 7. I hated Windows 95 so much that I wiped my drive and learned to use Unix, but the OS was an important step forward for most users.
humor  microsoft  windows  windows95  windows7 
october 2009
The Rails State Machine
Rails does pretty much everything now. As awesome as this sounds, I kind of wish it weren't baked into Rails, since this is something that would be useful outside of web programming.
rails  webdev  ruby  state_machine 
august 2009
Dustin Curtis: You should follow me on Twitter here.
As the forcefulness and personal identifiability of the phrase increased, the number of clicks likewise increased. "You" identifies the reader directly, "should" implies an obligation, and "follow me on twitter" is a direct command. Moving the link to a literal callout "here" provides a clear location for clicking. I tried other permutations that dulled the command, used the word "please" in place of "should" and made the whole sentence a link. None of them performed as well as the final sentence.
optimization  communication  ui  webdev  webdesign  marketing  language  psychology  twitter  usability  writing 
july 2009
Dairyland Youth: 'Monkey Repellent Pants'
My friend Dave is in a punk band called Dairyland Youth. He and his brother Dan just finished a stop-motion animated music video for one of their songs.
music  minneapolis  punk  rock  punkrock  stopmotion  animation  musicvideo 
july 2009
Homemade Ginger Ale
Here's a nice recipe for making your own ginger ale.
food  gingerale  diy 
june 2009
The Atlantic: What Makes Us Happy?
"Last fall, I spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, hoping to learn the secrets of the good life. The project is one of the longest-running—and probably the most exhaustive—longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years."
science  psychology  health  happiness  life  relationships 
may 2009
Spartanburg Spark: Because Spartanburg Matters
My hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina is growing up and now has its own left-leaning alternative opinion blog. I hope this takes off and becomes something like City Pages and Vita.MN here in the Twin Cities.
spartanburg  southcarolina  sc  blogs 
may 2009
Skimmer
Skimmer is a great Adobe Air application that pulls together all of those social media applications that you're using. It was developed for Fallon here in Minnesota by the fine folks at Sierra Bravo.
web20  lifestream  adobe  air  aggregator 
may 2009
Penny SMS
This service provides a convenient XML-RPC API to send text messages. The service only costs a penny for each text message sent.
webdev  sms  mobile  phone 
april 2009
Is the Supremacy of Object-Oriented Programming Over?
Dean Wampler's blog post highlights some of the difficulties with OOP. He doesn't really have a problem with OOP itself, just our blind reliance on it for all these years.
oop  programming  java  scala  fsharp  ocaml  couchdb  bigtable 
april 2009
IE6 Update
"IE6 Update looks like IE’s Information Bar, but instead of offering your visitors an ActiveX plugin, it offers a browser update." I don't think I'll be deploying this on any of my sites, but I admire the project's devious intent.
ie6  webdev  browser  html  microsoft 
april 2009
Jakob Jenkov: Flex Tetris Tutorial
Jakob Jenkov shows you how to implement a simple Tetris clone with Adobe Flex.
actionscript  flash  flex  adobe  programming  webdev  tutorial  tutorials 
april 2009
Paul Graham: Why TV Lost
"The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium."
paulgraham  tv  internet  mediaconvergence  media  convergence 
march 2009
Dave Woods: CSS Fixed Footer
Dave Woods explains how to make footers stick to the bottom of your browser window.
design  css  webdev  webdesign  howto  tutorial  tutorials 
march 2009
Solutions Log: Use Django’s Permalink Decorator with Generic Views
Wow, this makes my life much simpler. Named URL patterns remove all of the pain and suck associated with Django's permalink decorator.
django  python  webdev  programming 
march 2009
Huffington Post: The Funniest Picture You'll See Today
When you're searching the Interwebs for pictures to use on your TV news program, make sure those images haven't been Photoshopped by teenagers.
humor  tv  screwups  krispykreme  doughnuts 
march 2009
15 jQuery Plugins to Fix and Beautify Browser Issues
I'm generally not a fan of using JavaScript to fix display issues, but I've done it before (screw you, IE6 PNG translucency) and I'll probably end up doing it again. These jQuery plugins cover most of the frustrating situations I've encountered.
jquery  javascript  css  design  webdesign  webdev 
march 2009
Why HTML
James Bennett makes the case for using HTML 4.01 Strict instead of XHTML.
web  webdesign  webdev  html  xhtml 
march 2009
jQuery Captify Plugin
Captify is a jQuery plugin that shows nice-looking image captions on mouseover. It looks really slick and the author claims that it works in Internet Explorer.
jquery  javascript  web  webdev  captify 
march 2009
Make Safari 4 Look Like Safari 3
Garrett Murray explains how to make Safari 4 look like Safari 3.
safari4  safari  apple  tips  macos  macosx  osx 
february 2009
Banjo Tablature for the Blind
From Boing Boing: "With a folk banjo style like frailing students usually learn the mechanics of playing long before they dive into music theory so access to tab is a big deal for beginners. With some input from Ruud I was able to come up with a simple system that he would make sense in Braille. I posted information on the new tab system on my web site, and musicians from all over have started to transpose frailing banjo songs and exercises into this new format."
braille  banjo  tablature  boingboing  music 
february 2009
Wil Wheaton saw Watchmen and liked it.
Apparently, Wil Wheaton has seen the upcoming Watchmen movie and "fucking loved it." That's encouraging, but I'm still apprehensive.
watchmen  comics  wilwheaton  movies 
february 2009
django-annoying
This Django application attempts to eliminate some of the annoying things about the Django framework.
django  python  programming  webdev 
february 2009
Nightmares!
Warren Ellis with teh funny.
coldplay  music  warrenellis  nightmare 
february 2009
Gizmodo Claims the Windows 7 Taskbar Beats the OS X Dock
If the Windows 7 Taskbar is a sign of things to come, Microsoft might be dangerously close to building the first operating system since MS-DOS 6 that doesn't make me want to punch my computer screen. I'm still not convinced that Windows 7 won't be a colossal screw-up (these are, after all, the folks who brought you the Red Ring of Death, the new crappy XBox Live user interface, and Windows Vista), but at least it looks like they managed to get *something* right.
windows7  ms  microsoft  windows  usability  software  computing  os 
february 2009
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