Tim's Openreferences

Cold Frame Design Ideas

design ideas for cold frmaes

The myth of the eight-hour sleep The myth of the eight-hour sleep

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

Should Corporations Have More Leeway to Kill Than People Do?

A decision affirming that Shell should go unpunished in the Niger Delta case would leave us with a Supreme Court that seems of two minds: in the words of Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent from Citizens United, it threatens “to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation” by treating corporations as people to let them make unlimited political contributions, even as it treats corporations as if they are not people to immunize them from prosecution for the most grievous human rights violations.

A more startling paradox is difficult to imagine.

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

.. On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

1" Contemporary Matte Black Picture / Poster Frame

Size represents the glass size. i.e. A 11x14 frame will fit a 11x14 print/photo exactly. All frames have a small "lip" which reduces the viewable area by about 1/4" inch on each side.

How To Make a Panorama In Photoshop

How to make a great panorama in 30 seconds.

8 Guidelines To Taking Panoramic Photos With Any Camera

Here’s another lesson I learned the hard way. If you are using a DSLR or other camera that doesn’t have the nifty Panorama Mode, you’ll want to set your metering mode to manual. Otherwise you’ll end up with an image like this.

Juegos in Guanajuato by Skip Hunt

Architecture in Guanajuato, Mexico. ~ 2008

Cold Frame Single

The new Cold Frame Single is in fact a miniature greenhouse that will allow you to get a jump on the growing season. Grow in your containers or directly in the soil. The clear, adjustable polycarbonate cover will provide maximum light and just the right amount of ventilation. Insulated polycarbonate sidewalls will protect your tender seedlings during cool nights.

Apple retaliates against NYT for exposing labor practices

Based on our experience and others, Apple's PR team does everything it can to hand out favors to journalists who write articles that it approves of and punish those who don't. This attempted manipulation consists of a variety of standard carrot and stick techniques, most of which are used to some extent by other companies as well.

The carrots include invitations to Apple's famous product launch events, flattery, and "exclusive" access to some of Apple's executives. The sticks include launch-event snubs, guilt trips, and the silent treatment.

So it would certainly be no surprise to us if The New York Times is now serving some time in Apple's penalty box.

Farmageddon - Movie Trailer

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Phonegap API plugin: QRCode

I've just made an Phonegap/Android app that scans a QR barcode using the plugin here. Follow the instructions and you should be successful. It's possible that the plugin has been written since Kris's answer.

What’s bad for JP Morgan isn’t bad for America

Sorkin happily parrots the rather ridiculous Sifma number saying that the costs of the rule could reach $350 billion. “Even half that number has to be considered substantial”, he writes, as though the best way of making a ridiculous number accurate is to simply divide it by two.

Ceramic Owl Ocarina

Nicaraguan ceramic owl ocarinas from artisan group Oyanca Artesania come in assorted colors. When played, this ocarina sounds like an owl! The ocarina is a type of vessel flute. Ocarinas are different from whistles in that they have finger holes that allow them to make different pitches. Ocarinas are used throughout the Andes, and have their origin in pre-Colombian times. Ocarinas come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are often used to imitate birds or to call livestock in the mountains.

An appreciation of Ray Charles: The Great Interpreter

A remembrance of music legend Ray Charles with music producer Phil Ramone, musician Marcus Roberts, "Time" editor Christopher John Farley and "Rolling Stone" editor Anthony Decurtis.

The definition of soul (Ray Charles): "When someone listens to your voice and thinks you've been though the experience you're singing about (24:55)

What Americans Mean When They Say They're Conservative

What follows is an attempt to tease out the many different worldviews Americans are referring to when they invoke the word conservative -- and then to figure out which of these worldviews best describe Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul, the choices before Republicans

5) An embrace of free-market capitalism, and a belief in the legitimacy of market outcomes.

Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything

The qualities that many once thought of as “soft”—values, trust, and reputation—are now the hard currency of success and the ultimate drivers of efficiency, performance, innovation, and growth.

Is Romney's Tom Brokaw Ad 'Fair Use?'

Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to Mitt Romney, responds to the controversy surrounding a new campaign ad consisting of a single clip from a 1997 Nightly News broadcast. Following a rally in Panama City, Florida, Fehrnstrom told reporters that the campaign has received a cease-and-desist letter from NBC's legal department, but that the ad will remain in rotation.

Golf: We call our own fouls

In golf, we just call these [infractions] on ourselves; we don’t try to hold or try to foul until the refs call it on us, like in basketball. That’s not what our game is about. I’m not saying that there’s not sportsmanship in other sports, but it’s on a different level in golf. That’s just the way I was brought up. That’s just the way I was brought up. That’s the way golf teaches you to be.

Chinese College Salary: $22/day

Mr. Lai’s college degree enabled him to earn a salary of around $22 a day, including overtime — more than many others.

Typography for Lawyers

A new text family designed by Matthew Butterick, inspired by legal typography and the needs of legal writers.

Nokia ringtone during violin solo yields classical improv

How ubiquitous is Nokia’s iconic ringtone? An easy — but not advisable — way to find out is to leave your phone’s ringer on during a concert recital and see what happens when a call comes in. Yes, it’s a major faux pas, yet you have to give credit to Slovakian violinist Lukas Kmit, when it happened in the middle of his solo performance! Watch and see how he handled it.

Annotated State of the Union Speech

In a nutshell, that theme—the intended message of the speech—is: I am a reasonable guy, still hoping to be a uniter rather than a divider, and I have a plan to deal with the trends that make us all worry about our economy and society. Also, I'm very patriotic—and if you think I'm weak or pussy-footing, go ask Osama bin Laden about that.

‘Kumbaya’ capitalism collides with self-interest

‘‘We cannot continue to see chief executives’ pay rising at 13 percent a year while the performance of companies on the stock exchange languishes well behind,’’ Cable told Parliament on Monday. ‘‘And we can’t accept top pay rising at five times the rate of average workers’ pay as it did last year.’’ Chilling words for the City, especially since Cable serves in the cabinet of a Conservative prime minister.

.. But the hard part is embracing higher taxes or a lower salary. ‘‘I personally believe that when it comes to policy, you shouldn’t be pursuing self-interest but the public interest,’’ Soros said. But Davos Man prefers to believe in a world of ‘‘kumbaya’’ capitalism, where self-interest and the public interest would coincide. Openly insisting that this is not always the case is how Soros really has betrayed his class.

The more beautiful the woman, the simpler the dress should be

The more beautiful the woman, the simpler the dress should be. Perhaps Matt wrote it to showcase Jackie's gorgeous voice, phrasing, emotive delivery, and felt that a fancier-schmancier song would upstage her.

Diigo: Highlight and Annotation for the web

Collect and Highlight, Then Remember

Can Pinterest and Svpply Help You Reduce Your Consumption?

How Bookmarking Became A Consumerist Activity

Tim Cook calls assault on Apple's ethics in China "patently false and offensive"

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.

For the many hundreds of you who are based at our suppliers’ manufacturing sites around the world, or spend long stretches working there away from your families, I know you are as outraged by this as I am. For the people who aren’t as close to the supply chain, you have a right to know the facts.

What the iPad Can’t Do

Not long after the iPad went on sale in early April, the Ilinois Institute of Technology announced that it would be providing each member of next fall’s freshman class with one of the new Apple devices. School officials said that the iPad would allow students to take notes, check email, and read books. Which books they had in mind is not precisely clear except for this: they are not likely to be textbooks. While a number of publishers, like McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin, have signed on with software developer ScrollMotion to produce textbooks for the iPad—works that would exploit its multimedia capabilities with video lectures, historical film clips, educational games, and interactive quizzes—almost none of those books yet exist.

Newt's Mother's Bipolar Disorder

Family life was unstable. They moved often, and by the time Gingrich was sixteen he had lived in Pennsylvania, Kansas, France, and Germany. Recently, at a campaign event organized by a Web site called CafeMom, he talked about living with his mother’s depression and bipolar disorder: “My whole emphasis on brain science comes, indirectly, from dealing, um . . .” He winced, and started crying. “See how I’m becoming emotional?” he said, with difficulty, then continued. “From dealing with the real problems of real people, in my family. So it’s not a theory—it’s, in fact, my mother.”