Officially Lucky

Street Farmer

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:05:57 -0500

A great story from The New York Times about this man:

Who composts, grows tons of food, and engages the urban Milwaukee community in city farming:

It was one of those April days in Wisconsin when the weather shifts abruptly from hot to cold, and Allen, dressed in a sleeveless hoodie — his daily uniform down to 20 degrees, below which he adds another sweatshirt — was exactly where he wanted to be. Show Allen a pile of soil, fully composted or still slimy with banana peels, and he’s compelled to scoop some into his melon-size hands. “Creating soil from waste is what I enjoy most,” he said. “Anyone can grow food.”

Um… (via 704 Race)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:47:31 -0500

Um… (via 704 Race)

Big Dinosaurs were big (via upload.wikimedia.org)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:15:26 -0500

Big Dinosaurs were big (via upload.wikimedia.org)

Unique Watch (via reddit.com/pics)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:13:39 -0500

Unique Watch (via reddit.com/pics)

A photo of me, today, July 4, 2009.

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:54:57 -0500

A photo of me, today, July 4, 2009.

Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died. (via stubod2001)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:49:03 -0500

Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died. (via stubod2001)

topherchris: With apologies to The Huffington Post, and...

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:16:40 -0500

topherchris:

With apologies to The Huffington Post, and everyone else.

"In Obama’s view, pronouncing someone’s name or hometown correctly is a simple way of showing..."

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:47:43 -0500

“In Obama’s view, pronouncing someone’s name or hometown correctly is a simple way of showing respect, they say. It’s a sort of baseline diplomacy. That’s particularly so in foreign relations, where aides say the president will privately practice pronouncing a leader’s name a number times before saying it publicly.”

- Carol E. Lee at Politico.com

Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:30:33 -0500

Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin?:

Uh oh!

CNN and other major news outlets have reported that Sarah Palin has abruptly resigned as governor of Alaska. The suddenness of her announcement raises the question about whether Palin resigned to avert a major scandal. One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd.

(via The Daily Beast)

Are "deleted" photos really gone from Facebook? Not always...

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:43:51 -0500

Are "deleted" photos really gone from Facebook? Not always...:

chrbutler:

When you delete embarrassing photos from sites like MySpace and Facebook, they don’t disappear immediately. In fact, more than a month after we deleted two test images from the sites, they are still accessible to the world.

Leonard Nimoy is fabulous (via fuckyeahleonardnimoy)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:39:13 -0500

Leonard Nimoy is fabulous

(via fuckyeahleonardnimoy)

"3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go—didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0..."

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:29:15 -0500

“3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go—didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0 update, but it was really easy to code.”

- Joe Hewitt

Django Design Patterns

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:53:57 -0500

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. None of them are design patterns in the sense of GoF design patterns. We call them design patterns as none other seem closer or more convinient. These are guidelines, which need to be overriden (very commonly, in some cases). Use your judgement when using them. As PEP8 says, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

(via jmdj)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:22:05 -0500

(via jmdj)

"XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML..."

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:20:33 -0500

“XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5 2009-07-02: Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML.”

- Archive of W3C News in 2009

Uh hey I’m trying to work here (via 704 Race)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:42:19 -0500

Uh hey I’m trying to work here (via 704 Race)

Excellent, gracefully degrading for just about everyone.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:41:00 -0500

Excellent, gracefully degrading for just about everyone.:

A really neat technique for providing embedded, video to almost every browser (including MobileSafari) using HTML5 when appropriate. No browser sniffing, no JavaScript required. The only issue I see is that the amount of code to provide all of this is bordering on unwieldy and definitely is ugly. Otherwise, its a brilliant solution to what is quickly becoming a huge headache:

Video for Everybody is very simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 element which offers native playback in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3 & 4. Native OGG video playback in Firefox 3.5 (you get MPEG4 / H.264 playback in Safari).

No plugins to install. The video is played by the browser itself. It loads quickly and doesn’t threaten to crash your browser. In other browsers that do not support , it falls back to Adobe Flash. You can host locally or embed any Flash file, such as a YouTube video.

Hat tip to John Siracusa for pointing it out to me.

The reddest salmon I’ve ever seen. We subsequently cooked...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:52:28 -0500

The reddest salmon I’ve ever seen. We subsequently cooked and ate it. (via 704 Race)

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:13:00 -0500

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman:

a 13 year old kid uses a 30-year old Walkman for a few days. Out comes some pretty funny stuff ;)

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down ‘rewind’ and releasing it randomly Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

How I started my day this morning: a big cup of tea, a cat, and...

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:20:52 -0500

How I started my day this morning: a big cup of tea, a cat, and a Kindle (via 704 Race)