PHP scripts, under Apache, only run with files set with 644 permissions, in 755 directories.

If had know this 6 hours ago, I’d be a much happier man.

This might come in handy for people who have apps working perfectly in their local machines, but which cause 500 (Internal Server Errors) when uploaded to the production site, because of changed permissions. And also as a forever-to-be-kept note to myself.

I had not seen click-keyboards for entering credit card numbers before this, and I’m not even sure if it doesn’t add to the complexity of the form rather than simplifying it, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I believe users could feel more secure about entering their credit card info the same way they enter password in banking sites and the 0000-0000-0000-0000 mask that is filled as you click helps you keep track of where you are in the number, which is nice.

Spotted here. BTW: you should perhaps consider joining donating too; it’s a worthy fight, probably one of the worthiest.

I had one free hour, the desire to try and do something silly to play with the Twitter API and inspiration arrived from something the people at the Haznos blog did. So I crafted this little app that translates your twitts from Portuguese (or whatever language you wrote in) to ‘Mussum’s Language’. Built entirely on the frontend, using jQuery and the Twitter API.

It’s a joke, an experiment and an homage, something very unpretentious I put together in an hour. You can check it here.

* For foreigners: Mussum was an important comedian in Brazil during the eighties who passed away in 1994. He had a very unique way of speaking, especially of ending words, and it’s on his speech that the translation algorithm is based.

The picture:

That is an incredible building. Makes you feel pretty small.

Attention to detail is quite inspiring:

• The rocket on Earth is positioned (and ready to go!) on Minneapolis, where he lives;
• If you take some time to scroll down, the rocket will actually take off and crash on the moon;
• As you scroll up and down, the last menu item changes from ‘earth’ to ‘moon’ and vice-verse, instead of ‘header’ and ‘footer’ or something like that.

I must also add that Zack writes some pretty interesting articles, as the one because of which I landed (pun intended) on his website: Fun with CSS Transforms in Firefox 3.1 and Webkit.

This is no big deal really, just something that had been sitting in iPhoto for a while and ought to be shared.

Yesterday, Gwen Bell helped show how much of a joke this is. People’s attention span is now so short that an hour is all we can devote to the only planet we can live on. An Earth Day messes with people schedules, so let’s squeeze this demonstration into prime time and hope the Earth cools down.

By all means, don’t take me the wrong way: showing that you care about the problem and is at least trying to do something is somewhat praiseworthy. But believing an hour is enough can probably be the biggest mistake of the generations alive today. If by 9:30 you have all your lights back on, all your energy-inefficient appliances plugged in, nothing has changed.

So, please, if you want to actually try and make a change, do something that works for the long term. Here are a few suggestions:

• Replace all of your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescents. You’ll leave some extra money at the cashier once, but will save on every bill, and won’t need to replace them for some six years;
• Use a public means of transportation or ride a bike, especially if alone, instead of driving a car;
• Be a pain in your friends’ asses, insisting on how important it is to change these bulbs and mainly these habits, and that every tiny change makes a world of difference.

Seeing global warming as a foreign problem, as something that is happening ‘to the Earth’, as something that is happening to distant forests or remote seas, is dumb.

If you end up turning your lights off, please, light up your mind.

In this engaging TED talk, he explains the principles which guide his work, and offers a much brighter possibility of future to big cities (and also a little something in the end that makes it quite worth watching.

I think it’s interesting to relate some of the knowledge he shares on urban planning to principles that are rising in the software development mentality, such as the ones stated by the guys at 37signals:

• Fail fast and cheap
• Don’t waste time planning when you could be building something
• Big budgets are not the solution (they can sometimes be the problem

Hope it’s enjoyable.

The pressure on Obama as an agent of change is sure tremendous, but at the same time is full of hope. Perhaps the new White House website (of which CNN talked a lot earlier today) helps make the future look better.

This is their robots.txt file as of January 13th, and this is today’s.

At least this representative difference from the administration that brought you the Patriot Act and other amenities Obama’s administration can claim.

(Sorry for not posting the links earlier; I’ve been having a few problems with the writing page in the new Wordpress 2.7)

input:focus, textarea:focus {outline:none;}

you can get rid of that blue feathered outline Safari adds to form input controls. Starting with that you can style the borders in a more pleasent way, since there will be no more blue stuff messing with your style.

On a side note, it’s also worth noting the difference between border and outline: border affects the item’s dimensions (adding a border on hover moves the flow of elements) while the outline doesn’t affect the dimensions (which is the reason Apple buts the blue focus thing on this property, and not border).

Johnatan Hoefler reflects on Giovanni Ostaus’ 441-year old bitmap font and the future of the pixel.

Entirely designed as an animation seen from an isometric perspective, the video’s visual language makes it concise and very clear. I believe it could be understood even without subtitles.

I suggest paying special attention to the transitions during the animation: they’re not only very clever from a design point of view, but they also convey the notion of how each of these problems are deeply intertwined, and must be dealt with in a holistic approach.

Well, now the standard is going somewhere.

This must be crazy helpful for anyone writing a poem. Or perhaps a rap song.

PS: I don’t find the need for rhymes much often, since my blog and e-mails are usually in prose. But the rest of Wiktionary has become a critical tool for me. It has even become a quick search in Firefox, so whenever I type def word, it opens the definition for that word in the browser.

(…) RSS is a little like radio. Every blog and many news services ‘broadcast’ a tiny little signal that you can’t hear, but your RSS reader can. (It’s like a radio tuner). You tell the RSS reader which blogs and news feeds you like, and whenever it senses that signal, it goes out and grabs the post for you. Quick and free. With a good reader, you can easily keep up with 100 blogs in less than an hour.

I’m definitely using this explanation the next time someone who’s not into technology asks me what’s an RSS feed (or when I want to convince this person of how useful it is, which is probably a more frequent situation).

Seth also points to The Ultimate RSS Toolbox, a round up of more than 120 RSS tools. But I must say since I got to know Google Reader, I’ve been in love with it,

Via Seth Godin’s blog.