July 2009
Russia launches six satellites simultaneously... →
Space!
Six small satellites were launched Wednesday aboard a Dnepr rocket, delivering spacecraft into orbit for organizations in four countries. Credit: TsENKI The 111-foot-tall booster, a converted ballistic missile now used for satellite launches, shot out of the underground silo in Kazakhstan at 1846 GMT (2:46 p.m. EDT).
I weighed in at 215 today. Down a total of 25lbs now since March. 200 is well in sight ;)
Applescript to share item from NNW to Tumblr
mike3k:
on urlencode(x) set TheCode to do shell script “python -c ‘import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])’ ” & quoted form of (x) return TheCode end urlencode tell application “NetNewsWire” set item_title to (title of selectedHeadline) set item_url to (permalink of selectedHeadline) set item_content to (summary of selectedHeadline) set q_title to my urlencode(item_title) ...
Email Client Popularity: iPhone now "bigger" than... →
Lots of really good data if you’re in the business of sending out newsletters on a regular basis. It’s also very sad that Outlook is so dominant. The real surprise is the market share of the iPhone:
The iPhone now caters for 5.78% of the email client market, breezing past Gmail to become the 5th most popular email client in the world.
White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters →
“All that changed last month. ‘Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,’ Mr. Waldrep said.
Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.”
inessential.com: Anatomy of a feature →
‘Oh, it’s easy, just a quick http call. I could write a script to do it in like 20 seconds.’
NetNewsWire 3.2 beta: Google Reader syncing →
NetNewsWire 3.2b6 syncs with Google Reader, adds a new Send to Instapaper command, and shows off a brand-new app icon by RogueSheep.
Monkey Herds Goats; Farmer Approves →
sunlightlabs's django-mediasync →
One of the more significant development roadblocks we have relates to local vs. deployed media. Ideally all media (graphics, css, scripts) development would occur locally and not use S3. Then, when ready to deploy, the media should be pushed to S3. That way there can be significant changes to media without disturbing the production web site. To make this easier, I wrote some additions to the...
“It’s a simple offer — pick two meals, pay for one. Starting in...”
– Maggiano’s wants you to get EVEN FATTER
The best way to load external JavaScript →
Chained views with django-catalyst →
An interesting idea. I’ve never personally used Catalyst, so this is new to me:
Adds chained views to Django (similar to chained actions from Catalyst).
Here’s, basically, how it works:
Consider the following:
/user/30/article/25/delete
And then you write:
one view that gets all users for “/users”
one view that gets user with ID 30 for “/30”
one...
More of what's new in Django 1.1 →
1.1RC was released last week and it looks like the final release will be coming down the tubes sometime between today and Friday. There’s a lot more than the 4 things listed in the linked article, but I am particularly fond of the Admin updates, particularly the admin actions:
The basic workflow of Django’s admin is, in a nutshell, “select an object, then change it.” This works well for a...
WatchWilliam Shatner reads a portion of the Palin farewell speech as it was originally intended. (via Kurt)
Today’s 5k run was a little different than normal. In most of my previous runs, I try run as fast as I can maintain for a good period of time—6mph for 10 minutes has been my best—and I tend to gradually slow down towards the end (closer to 5mph) and then run the last 400 meters at my top speed at that point, which seems to be around 6.5mph at the end of my 5k.
Instead of just running the 5k...
Fresh Direct Delivering More Groceries, and Fewer... →
Fresh Direct, which is a grocery delivery service like Peapod, delivers groceries in cardboard boxes to their customer’s doorsteps. For a while these were all manually packed and it was pretty ineffcient. The Times article claims they made 2 millions deliveries last year and used 5 million boxes. The average order consumed 3.5 boxes, because of the way their warehouses were setup, which...
Fabric, Django, Git, Apache, mod_wsgi, virtualenv... →
Fairly in-depth tutorial on getting started with a Django project using what’s in the title.
This particular fabric file makes setting up and deploying a django application much easier, but it does make a few assumptions. Namely that you’re using Git, Apache and mod_wsgi and your using Debian or Ubuntu. Also you should have Django installed on your local machine and SSH installed on both...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-7-26)
I… um… have no excuse ;)
Owl City (305)
The Maine (53)
Cartel (35)
Discovery (22)
Girl Talk (16)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
This is why martingordon makes the big bucks ;D
I’ve been using the official Google Notifier for my main Gmail account for a while now. I tried this out because of the multiple account support, but stopped using it because of the nasty icon and the need to drill into menus to see email titles.
Instead, I created multiple account “support” in the official notifier by making two copies of the...
AT&T is auto-turfing Twitter, complaining about... →
AT&T or someone associated with AT&T is being really dumb. At least randomize the messages and space them out! Geez…
Gmail Notifr →
I’ve been using it for a little bit and it’s definitely an improvement beyond Google’s official notifier—most notably in its support of multiple Gmail accounts.
Gmail Notifr is a RubyCocoa application that lives in your menu bar and has the following features:
Support multiple accounts! (new in version 0.3.0)
Support Google hosted account.
Check mail at a specified...
Recreating the THX Deep Note with SuperCollider →
Some cool details about how Dr. James Andy Moorer created the original sound:
It was generated in a mainframe computer called ASP (Audio Signal Processor) which was able to synthesize the sound in real-time.
It took 20000 lines of C code to write a program that generated the score for the ASP to play. The generated score was consisting of 250000 lines of statements which were to be obeyed by...
Why markets can’t cure healthcare by Paul Krugman →
Paul Krugman lays it out:
One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow’s Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care, which demonstrated — decisively, I and many others believe — that health care can’t be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow’s argument.
His conclusion is pretty definitive:
There are, however, no...
