Room Colors and How it Affects your Mood

Room Colors and How it Affects your Mood: "While most of us may not spend a lot of time thinking about room color, it affects every day of our lives. Room color can influence our mood and our thoughts. Colors affect people in many ways, depending upon one’s age, gender, ethnic background or local climate. Certain colors or groups of colors tend to get a similar reaction from most people - the overall difference being in the shade or tones used. So it’s important to choose wisely."

6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck

squawkfox » 6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck: "I’ve used a few bad words in my life. S$it, you probably have too. But when the wrong words appear on your resume, it sucks.

These sucky words are not of the four-letter variety. These words are common. They are accepted. They litter the average resume with buzzword badness. Hiring managers can identify sucky words in seconds, leaving your resume work worthless."

Inside the Mind of Microsoft's Chief Futurist

Interview: Inside the Mind of Microsoft's Chief Futurist: "As chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, Mundie is a living portal of future technology, a focal point between thousands of scattered research projects and the boxes of super-neat products we'll be playing with 5 years, 20 years, maybe 100 years from now. And he's not allowed to even think about anything shipping within the immediate 3 years. I'm pretty sure the guy has his own personal teleporter and hoverboard, but when you sit and talk to him for an hour about his ability to see tomorrow, it's all very matter of fact. So what did we talk about? Quantum computing did come up, as did neural control, retinal implants, Windows-in-the-cloud, multitouch patents and the suspension of disbelief in interface design."

User Personalization with PHP: Beginning the Application

User Personalization with PHP: Beginning the Application: "In this tutorial we will build an online bookmark system. This will be used to create a database for storing all our URL's and their descriptions. There are many commercial and non-commercial applications that offer almost the exact functionality that we will create in our application; the difference is that we have full control over our application, allowing us to tweak it to suit our needs."

Exploring Logo Designs with Mathematica

Wolfram Blog : Exploring Logo Designs with Mathematica: "On my way to becoming a graphics developer at Wolfram Research, I took detours through degrees in design and architecture. One of my enduring passions is exploring graphic design with programmatic and generative systems. While some aspects of design require the skilled hand of the designer, others can be formalized and explored by computer. For those tasks, Mathematica is an exceptional tool."

Should Cell Phone Jamming be Legal? - PC World

Should Cell Phone Jamming be Legal? - PC World: "Jamming a cell phone is illegal in the U.S. Very illegal. And not just by ordinary citizens. It's illegal for theater and restaurant owners to jam (block) calls, and even state and local police or prison officials. The U.S., in fact, has the strictest laws in the world against jamming cell calls."

How to Open a Permutation Lock

"This file here explains to you how you can open a permutation lock without knowing the right numbers code. This file is just written to show you the insecurity of this kind of lock. Which means you shouldnt buy such a lock because it is very insecure and every person with this knowledge can open it. With this technique you can open the lock without destroying it and without doing any harm to it."

8 Harsh Truths that Will Improve Your Life

8 Harsh Truths that Will Improve Your Life - Dumb Little Man: "Some of these lessons may be old-hat for you. If so, look for ways to refine the idea to ensure your getting the most out of it. On the other hand, you may completely disagree with an idea or two and that's great! Let us know your thoughts so we can all learn from each other."

Question Everything

Question Everything: "Last night President Obama gave a very inspiring speech to the nation. In it he raised the bar on objectives for this country and the government. I must say that, in my opinion, for what that is worth, he has picked some key problem areas to get to work on and worthy objectives to reach in solving those problems."

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business | chrisbrogan.com: "We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer."

Programming - the real basics!

39: Programming - the real basics! - Opera Developer Community: "As an experienced developer you’ll sooner or later have to face people that are just not technical and will consider whatever you do as black magic. Conversely, as a non-technical person, not knowing what someone delivering work for you is doing is a bad starting position. This article explains in simple terms what programming is about and hopefully will help both parties involved to steer these non-conversations into more productive waters.

It will also help novice web developers to take on board some generic programming principles that are essential to undertand before you start learning how to code JavaScript. It may seem boring to begin with, but trust me, your work will be a lot more robust, dynamic and creative (read: a lot more WOW factor) if you get these rudimentary principles down in the first place. Learning the basic fundamentals of programming is important before you start working in particular languages (JavaScript, in the case of this course)."

Man Bites Blog: Hey, You Media Wimps! If You Want to Save Newspapers, Learn to Love Your iPhones, Then Go Join Facebook

Man Bites Blog: Hey, You Media Wimps! If You Want to Save Newspapers, Learn to Love Your iPhones, Then Go Join Facebook | The New York Observer: "Contributing to this catastrophe has been newspapers’ stubborn refusal to consider any news-gathering and -analysis model other than the one that they were used to, one that, most crucially, relegated consumers to the role of passive readers instead of engaged users. It’s a mistake that happens all over the Big Media Debate: misinterpreting the limitations of our print past as prescriptions for our media future."

DIYcity

DIYcity: "Twitter bots, aggregators, social software, mobile apps - we use these things more and more in our daily routines to make our lives better. But can we also use them to remake our cities altogether? How can these technologies be applied to transform urban spaces, changing them from the centralized, hard-coded things they are today into finely-tuned, fluid, user-operated systems that are efficient, sustainable and fit for life in the 21st century?"

Playing with Functional Programming: A More Elegant Solution for "Keyword Arguments" in Haskell?

Playing with Functional Programming: A More Elegant Solution for "Keyword Arguments" in Haskell?: "The topic will be functional programming in Haskell and ... Python?! Although I'm new to functional programming, I want to teach so I can learn. I also want to explore the cross pollination of good ideas between Haskell and Python and have fun doing it. I have a sneaking suspicion that cross polination may result in some elegant coding solutions."

Digg May Release a Web-based Toolbar

Digg May Release a Web-based Toolbar - PC World: "A photograph uncovered on Flickr is creating speculation that Digg may be coming out with a new Web-based toolbar, in addition to its existing Firefox toolbar. The new feature is designed not only to submit your favorite content to Digg,"

39 Ways to Live, and Not Merely Exist

39 Ways to Live, and Not Merely Exist - Dumb Little Man: "It's not fine. If you want to truly live life, to really experience it, to enjoy it to the fullest, instead of barely scraping by and only living a life of existence, then you need to find ways to break free from the mold and drink from life."

What I'm not playing this weekend: Quake Live

What I'm not playing this weekend: Quake Live : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech: "Don't get me wrong: I do want to play this new, browser-based follow-up to Quake III Arena, one of my favorite first-person shooter of all time. But between outrageously long player queues, overloaded servers, and problems installing the browser plug-in, I've yet to fire a single bullet in the game—and unfortunately, I'm not the only one."

Simple Tic Tac Toe in Python

Gray Season » Blog Archive » Simple Tic Tac Toe: "Simple Tic Tac Toe release.This is a small funny game written in Python using Alpha-beta pruning algorithm. It’s also an experimental program for my py & wxpython study.So just sit back and enjoy this game.All the suggestions about this game will be welcome."

PHP plugs security holes

PHP plugs security holes | Zero Day | ZDNet.com: "The open-source PHP Group has issued a patch for at least four security flaws in the widely-used general-purpose scripting language.

With PHP 5.2.9 (see changeLog), the PHP development team corrects a total of 50 bugs, including a publicly-known flaw that allows attackers to read the contents of arbitrary memory locations in certain situations."

Ultra small code to drag everything in HTML pages

Ultra small code to drag everything in HTML pages: "A frequent question I receive from my readers is about how to implement a simple script to drag elements in a web page. So in this post I want to illustrate the simplest method I know and use to drag everything in HTML pages, using just three rows of Javascript code.

In this post I provided a very basic script quick to reuse and customize in your web projects (in the live preview I added some little additional features respect the content of this tutorial). This is the result:"

How to be happy

How to be happy | Project Happily Ever After: "In today’s lesson, we’re going to deal with the opposite of happiness-with anger, sadness, fear, loneliness and all of those other feelings many of us wish were never invented."

60 Second Lessons to Improve Your Photography

60 Second Lessons to Improve Your Photography » i Digital Photo: "Once you’ve read the ideas and tips, picture in your mind some photographs you have already taken. Think of how they could have been improved by applying what you have learned here. Visualize how you might have taken your photos differently. Already your photography is improving!"

The "This is way too much" RC Plane

YouTube - Worlds Largest Model RC Plane: "A friend show me this greate video and I wont it to sare with you this is the Worlds Largest Model RC Plane I've ever seen."

Hacking a commercial airport WLAN

Hacking a commercial airport WLAN » Debuggable Ltd: "I want to share a little hack I did when I was waiting at the Atlanta airport. As most airports do these days, they have a wireless network there. Unfortunatly, they try to make you pay $7 for 24h, no matter how long you actually get on there. Since I didn't want to get ripped off, I started playing around with the network. Using LiveHTTPHeaders for firefox"

Watchmen Gets 78% @ Rotten Tomatoes

Watchmen Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes: "Seems everybody will watch the watchmen."

All-powerful Java code snippet

All-powerful Java code snippet « Modern Programming World: "As a joke (but not really), I was terribly annoyed at Java today, and wrote this Java code in a few minutes. It’s (not surprisingly) capable of accomplishing *anything*. Give it a shot."

Practice Your Code-Fu: Programming Contests and Puzzles Online

Practice Your Code-Fu: Programming Contests and Puzzles Online | GrokCode: "This is a list of the best sites on the net for practicing your coding chops, showing off your programming skills, and competing for fame and fortune. Exercise your brain by untangling obfuscation, applying algorithms knowledge, growing your inner math geek, or playing a bit of code golf. These sites have exercises to build on and refine what you already know, or learn the language du jour."

Announcing the Native Client Security Contest

Google Code Blog: Announcing the Native Client Security Contest: "Exploits, bugs, vulnerabilities, security holes -- for most programmers these terms are synonymous with fire drills and coding all-nighters. However, for the next 10 weeks, the Native Client team is inviting you to bring them on! We're challenging you to find security exploits in Native Client. Sign up today for the Native Client Security Contest, you could win up to $ 213 , as well as recognition from renowned security researchers."

A Jar of Nothing Gift

A Jar of Nothing Gift - Craftbits.com Craft Project: "For the person that wants nothing as a gift."

The Psychopath: The Mask of Sanity

The Psychopath: The Mask of Sanity: "Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken."

Top Sims to Visit in Second Life

The Grid Live » Top Sims to Visit in Second Life: "I have run across a few great lists of sims and sites to visit in Second Life, so I thought I would create a travel page in which I could add links to sites that list great sims or the sims themselves. This is by no means comprehensive or all encompassing, but if you know of a great site or just want a link to your sim here, email me at eubeenhadd at gmail.com and I will include it."

30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Their 30th Birthday

30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Their 30th Birthday | Marc and Angel Hack Life: "The Web is grand. With its fame for hosting informative, easy-to-skim textual snippets and collaborative written works, people are spending more and more time reading online. Nevertheless, the Web cannot replace the authoritative transmissions from certain classic books that have delivered (or will deliver) profound ideas around the globe for generations."

Simple bash script to monitor your webserver remotely on different ports

Simple bash script to monitor your webserver remotely on different ports | Share your knowledge!: "Simple bash script to monitor a webserver on different ports (here smtp, dns, http & https but it can be customized) I'm sure there is over 100 available programs doing this but I wanted something with small memory usage. Also, I only wanted to be notified once, notifications are receive by SMS on my cell. With the software I was using before, I was getting notified every minute until I could reach a computer and fix the problem or stop monitoring which was quite annoying."

How to remotely connect from Ubuntu to a Windows machine

How to remotely connect from Ubuntu to a Windows machine | Gerard McGarry: "In deciding to run Ubuntu in a Windows environment (I run a Windows server as well as a couple of Windows XP machines), one of my key concerns was being able to connect to those Windows machines."

Azure: One big, happy platform?

Azure: One big, happy platform? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com: "In spite of the growing Microsoft cross-divisional ties, Shewchuck emphasized that Azure isn’t going to be a closed cloud environment."

Interesting Photography Trick: Replace Landmarks with Cheap Souvenirs

souvenirs - a set on Flickr: "Forced perspective can produce some nice pics."

Introducing the Cell Processor

InformIT: Introducing the Cell Processor > 1.1 Background of the Cell Processor: "In September 2007, the Guinness Book of World Records announced the new record holder for the world’s most powerful distributed computing system. It wasn’t a traditional cluster of high-performance computers, but a worldwide network composed of regular PCs and PlayStation 3 consoles (PS3s). Called Folding@Home, this distributed computing system simulates protein folding to analyze how diseases originate."

User Personalization with PHP: Beginning the Application

User Personalization with PHP: Beginning the Application: "In this tutorial we will build an online bookmark system. This will be used to create a database for storing all our URL's and their descriptions. There are many commercial and non-commercial applications that offer almost the exact functionality that we will create in our application; the difference is that we have full control over our application, allowing us to tweak it to suit our needs."

Google is now on Twitter! Weird ain't it!

Digg - Google is now on Twitter! Weird ain't it!: "23,000+ followers in a few hours!"

Pixar's Gender Problem

Vast Public Indifference: Pixar's Gender Problem: "Whenever a new Pixar movie comes out, I wrestle with the same frustration: Pixar's gender problem. While Disney's long history of antipathy toward mothers and the problematic popularity of the Disney Princess line are well-traveled territory for feminist critiques, Pixar's gender problem often slips under the radar."

OneSwarm: Privacy preserving P2P

OneSwarm: Privacy preserving P2P: "Although widely used, currently popular peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are limited by a lack of user privacy. By design, services like BitTorrent and Gnutella share data with anyone that asks for it, allowing a third-party to systematically monitor user behavior. As a result, P2P networks can only be safely used by those comfortable with wholly public knowledge of their activity.

OneSwarm is a new P2P data sharing application we’re building to provide users with explicit control over their privacy by enabling fine-grained control over how data is shared. Instead of sharing data indiscriminately, data shared with OneSwarm can be made public, it can be shared with friends, shared with some friends but not others, and so forth. We call this friend-to-friend (F2F) data sharing."

Staying Productive while Offline

Staying Productive while Offline - Linux Magazine Online: "Surviving a long train trip without an Internet connection can be tough, but with a little bit of preparatory work, you can stay productive even when offline. Here are a few ideas that can help you to do some work without Internet access."

Microsoft Sues TomTom For Linux Patent Infringement

Microsoft Sues TomTom For Linux Patent Infringement: "Microsoft (MSFT) has gone and done it, they've filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming Linux violates their patents."

Podcast With Google's Pete Koomen On New Business Model For App Engine

Podcast With Google's Pete Koomen On New Business Model For App Engine - David Berlind's Tech Radar - InformationWeek: "When it comes to running custom apps in the cloud, there are basically two architectures. One involves an IaaS (Intel (NSDQ: INTC)-as-a-Service) provider like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) where you load your own software stack onto Amazon's pay-as-you-go bare metal (virtual as it may be). The other is to develop your code to run on one of the platforms as a service (PaaS). One such PaaS is Salesforce.com's Force.com. Another is Google's App Engine, which had limitations on its usage because it was free. In this interview, App Engine Product Manager Pete Koomen discusses the business model for App Engine that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) announced yesterday."

8 Tuition-Free Colleges

mental_floss Blog » 8 Tuition-Free Colleges: "During difficult economic times, the cost of higher education leaves many students wondering if they can afford to go to college. For those who want to avoid being saddled with huge loans, the U.S. government offers one of the best deals around: Enroll at one of the five service academies tuition-free and receive free room and board. (And you thought the Grand Slam promotion at Denny’s was cool.) But if military service isn’t for you, here are eight other schools that offer tuition-free educations:"

The Rules of an Entrepreneur

Spoiled Techie | The Rules of an Entrepreneur: "You know, I have always wondered like every other entrepreneur what makes some people just so successful and others not successful. I wrote a blog post a while back on one of my other blogs, I thought I would move over to this one because well it was just so damn popular. In working with my startup or just one of my start up ideas at DrinkingFor I have to live by the rules stated in that post in which I also found them at GoDaddy in which Bob Parsons is the original author. I am not trying to take his stage, but rather spread the ideas. Make them known to more people in more places in more types of crowds. He wrote some 16 rules to live by and I just wanted to express them to the technical crowd that reads this blog."

How to Make Anything (Using Acrylic and Machine Screws)

How to Make Anything (Using Acrylic and Machine Screws): "It is a technique we call Interlocking T-Bolt Construction. It consists of a T-cutout in one piece of acrylic (or any 3 mm stock) and a receptacle in another piece. These pieces can then be bolted together making a very secure 90 degree joint. A deceptively simple technique that has unlimited possibilities."

5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed

5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed: "I asked Paul Buchheit for advice on launching startups because he fathered two of this decade’s most successful online products: Gmail and FriendFeed. As part of his work on Gmail, he also developed the first prototype of AdSense, Google’s ad program. And he’s known as the engineer who suggested Google’s now famous motto: “Don’t be evil.”"

12 ways to use Twitter to increase your productivity

12 ways to use Twitter to increase your productivity - Simple Help: "A very common criticism of Twitter (other than its uptime) is that it’s just a distraction, “noise” that doesn’t actually help you in any way. Well, here are 12 ways you can use Twitter productively."

Hacking contest offers $10,000 for iPhone exploit

Hacking contest offers $10,000 for iPhone exploit • The Register: "An annual hacker competition planned for next month has setting its sights on Apple's iPhone and four other smart phones in a contest that will pay cash prizes of $10,000 to anyone who can break in to the mobile devices."

Windows Incident Response: Looking for "Bad Stuff"

Windows Incident Response: Looking for "Bad Stuff", part I: "Searching for unknown issues within a Windows image is always a tough thing...a great deal of the incident response and forensic analysis that I do is preceded by a triage worksheet, interviews of key personnel, etc. Sometimes, I will even ThunderDome two people who give me disparate information, simply because it's a good interro...I mean, interview technique. Anyway, the purpose of all this is to narrow down the issue as much as possible to help me identify what an issue, what the source might be, etc."

The Life Cycle of a JSP Page

The Life Cycle of a JSP Page: "A JSP page services requests as a servlet. Thus, the life cycle and many of the capabilities of JSP pages (in particular the dynamic aspects) are determined by Java Servlet technology. You will notice that many sections in this chapter refer to classes and methods described in Chapter 11."

XML basics for new users

XML basics for new users: "If you're new to XML, this article introduces the basic construction of XML documents as well as the rules that you must follow to create well-formed XML, including naming conventions, proper tag nesting, attribute guidelines, declarations, and entities. You'll also gain an understanding of validation in terms of both DTD and schema usage."

Building an Arduino-based laser game, Part 3: Transmit, and that's a hit

Building an Arduino-based laser game, Part 3: Transmit, and that's a hit: "Arduino is an inexpensive, easy-to-use electronics platform. The entire platform, both the hardware and the software, is completely open source, and the language is loosely based on C/C++. Arduino was built for makers, tinkerers, and artists who want to take the plunge into creating interactive physical objects. This three-part series starts with basic Arduino hardware and uses it to create an interactive laser game called ''Duino tag,' where players can play tag using devices built nearly from scratch. In this final part of the 'Building an Arduino-based laser game' series, you'll build the transmitter and complete the 'Duino Tag gun."

Linux Process Management: Command Line

Linux Process Management: Command Line: "Although you might think this a system of process management that should be avoided by the new user, you should consider that there may be times when knowing this process can really save your skin. So, although you may tend to shy away from the command line tools, this would be one of those that is good to know in a pinch."

Homemade 3-D Scanner

YouTube - Homemade 3-D Scanner: "I modified a Dell scanner in such a way that it can used to scan cylindrical objects such as a soda can or, in this case, an energy drink can."

10 Ways to Beat the “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” Syndrome

10 Ways to Beat the “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” Syndrome | Zen Habits: "“In a population of 6 billion+ people globally, it is hard not to feel like another number. I find life so disenchanting the more I pursue things I though were my dreams. I am at possibly the top university in the world getting my masters to make the world a better place… yet I lack the joy and excitement that I should have. If this were just my problem, I would figure this out, but I think so many of us deal with this. We can have so much to be grateful for, and we very well might be grateful…however, when the achievement of a dream fails to make us as satisfied as we thought it would, it calls the very credibility of dreaming into question. I appreciate the process of life, one might say…Nothing seems to be that exciting though… nothing could surprise me anymore. I was wondering if you had any insight on this issue… i.e. what I call the “I can’t get no satisfaction” syndrome.”"

HTTP SSL Stripping

Home > Software > SSL Strip: "This tool provides a demonstration of the HTTPS stripping attacks that I presented at Black Hat DC 2009. It will transparently hijack HTTP traffic on a network, watch for HTTPS links and redirects, then map those links into either look-alike HTTP links or homograph-similar HTTPS links. It also supports modes for supplying a favicon which looks like a lock icon, selective logging, and session denial. For more information on the attack, see the video from the presentation below."

Controlling 4 or More Servos Demo Arduino Code

Controlling 4 or More Servos Demo Arduino Code | Curious Inventor - Blog: "The newest version of arduino has a SoftwareServo library built in, which lets you use more than two servos at once. This code is a simple example of how to control 4 servos via keyboard from the SerialMonitor mode of arduino. If you have arduino12 software, you'll need to manually add the SoftwareServo library as described in the included readme.txt file."

32 Indispensable Bookmarklets for Web Developers and Designers

32 Indispensable Bookmarklets for Web Developers and Designers : Speckyboy Design Magazine: "All of these bookmarklets/favelets will be useful to all web designers and developers, they are the quickest method for testing, analyzing and tweaking any web page."

CIO for Hire: Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s also dangerous

CIO for Hire: Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s also dangerous | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: "It’s kind of interesting how things work out. Many IT organizations struggle to get security or monitoring tools justified in a business case: “Everything is working fine, why do we need to upgrade our firewalls or buy enterprise virus scan?”"

Cross-domain communications with JSONP, Part 1: Combine JSONP and jQuery to quickly build powerful mashups

Cross-domain communications with JSONP, Part 1: Combine JSONP and jQuery to quickly build powerful mashups: "With the number of publicly offered Web service APIs, it's now much easier to get content from different Web sources and to build mashups—if you have access to the right APIs and tools. Discover how you can combine an obscure cross-domain call technique (JSONP) and a flexible JavaScript library (jQuery) to build powerful mashups surprisingly quickly."

Anatomy of a crash

Anatomy of a crash - www.drive.com.au: "Survivors of serious car crashes often say time appears to slow down in the moments around the impact and that they can recall the event in extraordinary detail.

In reality, the crash is often over before the human brain has registered the incident, and it's only by later replaying it in their minds that crash victims achieve such vivid recollections."

The Godfather Wars

The Godfather Wars | vanityfair.com: "In many ways, the men who made The Godfather—director Francis Ford Coppola, producer Al Ruddy, Paramount executives Robert Evans and Peter Bart, and Gulf & Western boss Charles Bluhdorn—were as ruthless as the gangsters in Mario Puzo’s blockbuster. After violent disputes over the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, they tangled with the real-life Mob, which didn’t want the movie made at all. The author recalls how the clash of Hollywood sharks, Mafia kingpins, and cinematic geniuses shaped a Hollywood masterpiece."

Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging

Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging: "An integral part of your programming skills should be high proficiency in debugging. This document is intended as a first step toward that goal."

Django for the Impatient: The Finishing Touches

Django for the Impatient: The Finishing Touches: "With the database and admin side of our application taken care of, it's time to turn to the public-facing pages. A page, from Django's perspective,has three typical components:

* A template that displays information passed to it (in a Python-dictionary-like object called a Context)
* A view function that fetches information to be displayed, typically from a database
* A URL pattern that matches an incoming request with your view function, optionally passing parameters to the view as well

We'll tackle these three in that order. In a sense this is building from the inside out— when Django processes a request, it starts with the URL patterns, then calls the view, and then returns the data rendered into a template."

Propeller Laptop

PROP-6502 Propeller Laptop: "This is a Propeller laptop - with a 6502 co-processor and 64K of static RAM! The Propeller handles all I/O for the 6502 and runs an integrated debugger so you can program the computer. The Propeller serves as the programmable chipset for this 6502 laptop. You could use an FPGA in this capacity, but could you easily do this and implement visual debugger software inside an FPGA? Over the years hardware prototyping has evolved from building-block hardware (TTL) to programmable hardware (PLA’s and FPGA’s). I believe the Propeller represents the next revolution: 100% software-based virtual hardware – and I built this laptop to prove it!"

Navicat Free MySQL GUI

Navicat Free MySQL GUI - Free Software Downloads - ZDNet Asia: "Navicat (MySQL Manager) version 8.x is a MySQL database management tool, which can convert XML, CSV, MS Excel, MS Access, and popular data formats to MySQL databases, eliminating time-consuming data entry and the errors that accompany it.

Other useful major features include import and export wizard, Unicode support, HTTP/SSH Tunnel, batch job scheduling, data synchronization, data transfer, visual query builder, and visual report builder. Navicat features importing data from ODBC and batch job scheduling. Version 8.0.29 lite is a bug fixing release."

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating - Well Blog - NYTimes.com: "Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice."

The Cost of Getting A Patent

The Entrepreneur Definition » The Cost of Getting A Patent: "A patent protects your valuable invention from unauthorized usage. Just imagine you doing all the hard work and someone else taking the credit. You can avoid such a situation by applying for a patent. Once you obtain a patent no one can steal or copy your patent. A patent is nothing but a set of rights that are given by the government in order to protect your invention from any unauthorized usage. A person who disobeys the patent laws is likely to go to jail."

Python for the Samsung INNOV8 and i7110

Python for the Samsung INNOV8 and i7110 - of sorts: "It seems that Samsung Mobile Innovator's team signed a version of Python for S60 a few weeks ago - and then forgot to tell anyone."

Investing in the next 'big thing'

BBC NEWS | Technology | Investing in the next 'big thing': "A San Francisco company has launched a tool to help investors decide where to put their money."

Surging Demand for MySQL Experts

Jobs Trend: Elance Cites Surging Demand for MySQL Experts: "MySQL experts are seeing accelerating demand for their services on Elance, a leading site for online work where businesses hire skilled professionals to get work done. With over 1,300 MySQL jobs posted in the last 30 days, MySQL is now the third most in-demand skill on Elance, moving up three spots since October."

An introduction to run-levels

An introduction to run-levels: "Simply put, a 'runlevel' determines which programs are executed at system startup. Most of your exposure to run levels will deal with system startup. You will become intimately familiar with the exceptions the first time you have to troubleshoot a failed system."

An open source to a brighter future?

An open source to a brighter future? - Times Online: "Giving your core product away is certainly an unusual business strategy, yet some succesful software companies are doing exactly that"

Point and shoot tips from the old masters

Ryan Brenizer's Amazon Blog: Point and shoot tips from the old masters Permalink: "When you're just starting out as a photography enthusiast, life doesn't seem fair. Many of the pictures you admire were taken by people not only with a lot more experience, but with equipment you couldn't come close to affording. They've got incredibly light sensitive cameras like the Nikon D3 and Canon 5D Mark II. They've got f/1.4 lenses that can turn night into day and let photographers focus on only the details they want, throwing unwanted backgrounds into blurriness. With a point-and-shoot, you have the limitations of poor light sensitivity, no depth-of-field control, slow frame rates, limited flash control, etc. Someone with expensive equipment could be standing next to you in and indoor event getting great shots while yours are a blurry, muddy mess. You can only learn so much from people who frequently work in ways that are impossible for you. What if there were truly masterful photographers who worked with cameras with all the limitations of yours and more? Couldn't they be role models?"

Preparing for a Layoff

Preparing for a Layoff: "You get into work tomorrow and you are told that your position has been made redundant. Are you prepared for this scenario and its likely impacts on your financial security?

In these weak economic times with lower company profits and unemployment rising, you need to be prepared for adverse circumstances such as losing your job. Whether you are in a dual income or single income household, you need to have contingency plans in place if one or more of your main sources of income goes away. Here are four key items to plan ahead for."

JavaScript and the DOM Series

JavaScript and the DOM Series: Lesson 1 - NETTUTS: "While frameworks such as jQuery, Prototype and MooTools are great ways of suppressing browser bugs and speeding up development, it's important to know and understand the underlying technologies. This series intends to tell you what you need to know about JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM). Even if you swear by a particular library this will still benefit you - knowing how something works under the skin can only be a good thing!"

Five reasons no one will replace Google

Google: Five reasons no one will replace Google: "'I've received 33,000+ hits and counting to this post,' says the blogger who wrote 'Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?' on Monday. His piece got blogged all over, promoted to the Digg front page, and fueled the starry-eyed bloggers searching for doom to herald for Google. (It was also just a troll.) Kudos to him, but he — and everyone who believed him — was wrong."

NASA Goes Massively Multiplayer With Astronaut

Nasa: NASA Goes Massively Multiplayer With Astronaut: "NASA wanted a massively multiplayer online game, and now they're getting one, signing three separate development studios to work on Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond."

Top Ten Songs to Have Sex To

YesButNoButYes: Top Ten Songs to Have Sex To: "The wine bottles have been emptied, the warm breeze off the ocean runs through her hair causing her to tuck the wayward strands behind her ear. Through the dancing glow of the candles, and the way she's kissing your neck ... repeatedly, you know that tonight is going to be a good one. In order to enhance the mood, you randomly punch a button on your iPod, which brings up 'Unskinny Bop' by Poison, ruins the mood, and causes your date to lose all interest. No sex tonight. No crushing of that ass. Instead, you and Bret Michaels are re-living the 80s, while your girl is putting her clothes back on and heading out the door."

My Trilogy Meter I know other movie geeks are...

DAN METH - My Trilogy Meter I know other movie geeks are...: "I know other movie geeks are going to have disagreements and that’s fine. And yes, I know some of these movies went more than 3 sequels, but none were ever meant to.

These are rated purely on my enjoyment level on each film and nothing else. Frankly I’m surprised by how many sequels were better than the original. And I’m not surprised that the 3rd movie is never the best."

Speed up your Ubuntu Linux boot!

Speed up your Ubuntu Linux boot! | Nobody was Born with Linux Knowledge: "In the following tutorial you are going to fine tweak your Ubuntu Linux setup in order to speed up the boot process as well as the startup time of some frequently used applications."

5 Good Ways To Discover Twitter Applications

5 Good Ways To Discover Twitter Applications: "Twitter, runner-up for best overall startup and winner of the best startup founder(s) at the Crunchies 2008 awards ceremony last night, was without a doubt one of the most talked about web companies last year, and we don’t see that changing much in 2009."

How to quickly switch Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface on and off

How to quickly switch Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface on and off: "The Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface is designed to make Ubuntu Linux easy to use on mini-laptops with small, low resolution displays. It comes with a custom program launcher that replaces the normal Ubuntu desktop and panels with a series of tabs and program shortcuts. But sometimes you want an old fashioned desktop. You could just uninstall Ubuntu Netbook Remix or kill the ume-launcher process to restore the desktop. But as Ubuntu Mini points out, you can also just install the Desktop-Switcher utility."

8 Essential Skills They Didn’t Teach You In School

8 Essential Skills They Didn’t Teach You In School - Stepcase Lifehack: "Much of college gave me a bad taste for education. It made learning a real drag. I got through it to get the degree, but it wasn’t until after school that my education really began.

So what are the top skills that should be taught to every man, woman, and child who enters our education system? I’m glad you asked…"

Donkey kong junior shower is truly bananas

donkey kong junior shower is truly bananas on [technabob]: "There’s nothing quite like taking a shower with a baby monkey. I do it all the time."

Book Review: Learning Nagios 3.0

Nagios is an open source enterprise monitoring software that will help you keep track of servers and their services across a network. With Nagios you'll certainly spend more time planning your infrastructure in a proactive way than reacting to preventable problems. And when problems happen you'll beat your users into noticing them, maybe skipping all the stress incoming calls and emails. Network administration is not an easy job but having Nagios by your side will make your workload lighter.

How do learn a new piece of open source software? Maybe you go on line and check the software's official documentation, scavenge forums, Google like crazy, send emails (and wait wait wait) or im friends. Then maybe you print some pages, write some annotations or place sticky notes with the bits of information you need to keep handy. At the end you will learn how to use the software, but in a highly inefficient fashion indeed.

Packt publishing in October 2008 released Learning Nagios 3.0. A great book that documents all you need to know to get yourself started with Nagios and develop the skills necessary to become a network administrator ninja. No network problem will go unnoticed and no user will be left behind. Your boss will be happy, you will add value to your company as you develop your career.

The first part of the book will show you how to install and configure Nagios. All the steps you need to take for a successful installation are included using a straight to the point prose. Also you'll grasp how to include most commonly used services in business like DHCP, SMTP, POP3, MySQL and even UPSes. Cool ain't it?

One of the best chapters is chapter 11 (Not the one you use to declare bankruptcy). It teaches you how to extend Nagios. Along this chapter you'll learn how to make Nagios check the tables in a MySQL database. Think of the possibilities, it's not just about the network hardware and it's services, it's about business critical applications. If something is not included with Nagios, you can build it with any programming language you think fits you best. And if you come up with something you think others might benefit from, you can consider giving it back to the Nagios project! That's the beauty of of Open Source applications.

Other great piece of information included with this book is how you can teach your services/applications/scripts to speak to Nagios (a.k.a. Passive Checks). Nagios doesn't have to work as a hall monitor checking the halls up and down. Applications can report to Nagios too! (I wished I had Nagios back when I used to manage applications with Flexlm licensing).

In overall, Learning Nagios 3.0 is a book you want to have by your side in your daily activities as a network administrator. It'll be a great documentation source you'll like to go back to anytime you need it and will be a good starting point for new projects or ideas you may have around your network.

You'll find some minor grammatical errors in the book, but they are certainly no show stoppers. Think Packt publishing must be aware of most of them and they will be taken care of in following editions.

At this point I don't own any other Nagios related book, but after reading Learning Nagios 3.0 I don't really feel the need to have any other book but this one.

Bonlebon

Spielberg Gets A Razzie

'Love Guru', Paris Hilton are top of the flops - Yahoo! Canada News: "Steven Spielberg's revival of the Indiana Jones franchise in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' was crowned worst prequel, remake, rip-off or sequel."

Green Comet At Its Closest Encounter With Earth On Feb.24

Green Comet At Its Closest Encounter With Earth On Feb.24: "Next week, astronomy enthusiasts will witness an exceptionally beautiful comet, as it approaches Earth. Comet Lulin, named after the observatory in Taiwan where its first photo was taken, has a green color to it, and might even become visible to the naked eye, with a little bit of luck."

Inkscape Tutorials Galore

screencasters.heathenx.org » About Us: "The goal of Screencasters.heathenx.org is to provide a means, through a simple website, of allowing new users in the Inkscape community to watch some basic and intermediate tutorials by the authors of this website. We feel that through a screencast we can better convey the steps required to recreate our graphics or perhaps just provide a little inspiration."

Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable

Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable • The Register: "White-hat hacker Adam Laurie knows better than to think email, video-on-demand, and other content from Sky Broadcasting and other satellite TV providers is a private matter between him and the company. That's because he's spent the past decade monitoring satellite feeds and the vast amount of private information they leak to anyone with a dish."

Web Developing in Linux

Web Developing in Linux: "Using Linux as your primary operating system for web development is a great choice as there are a ton of apps that were developed with Linux specifically in mind. Knowing which apps to use makes web development in Linux easy. In fact I find that it is much easier and productive to do web development in Linux. In this post we look at all the applications you are going to need to get you started developing quickly."

Migrating an Existing Application to the Semantic Web

Migrating an Existing Application to the Semantic Web: "This is the third article in a series that describes the why, what, and how to migrate an existing application to the semantic web. The first article, 'Why Migrate to the Semantic Web,' outlined the reasons for migrating an existing web application to the semantic web. The second article, 'Laying the Foundation of a Semantic Web Application,' focused on selecting a suitable semantic web framework (Jena plus SDB)."

How to Create a JavaScript Animation

How to Create a JavaScript Animation: "JavaScript animations aren't difficult to write. Once you learn a few main ideas, you can create complex animations that take up as much or as little of the browser window as you like, including interactive content that degrades well for people who don't have JavaScript enabled. What's more, the content inside your animations will be available to search engines because the content is in machine-readable (X)HTML."

Ten Things I Have Learned

Ten Things I Have Learned "Great thoughts on Life, Work and Everything."

Russian spy in Nato could have passed on missile defence and cyber-war secrets

Russian spy in Nato could have passed on missile defence and cyber-war secrets - Times Online: "A spy at the heart of Nato may have passed secrets on the US missile shield and cyber-defence to Russian Intelligence, it has emerged."

100+ Language Learning Sites

100+ Language Learning Sites: "This is an alphabetical list of websites where you can learn a language."

Delicious Toolbox: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources

Delicious Toolbox: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources: "Delicious, a powerful social bookmarking tool, has been around for what seems like forever, and while it may not get as much press as Digg, it still has an extremely active and loyal group of users. There are a number of tools out there that cater to these users, some of which still even stick by the old del.icio.us moniker."

Getting Started with Memcached

Getting Started with Memcached - techPortal: "Memcache is a tool which can cache objects in memory – and is often used for speeding up dynamic web applications. PHP has a built-in module for working with memcache, and its a simple and convenient way of introducing caching to your application."

Data Modeling with ERWin

Data Modeling with ERWin: "'ERWin from Computer Associates (CA) is one of the most popular data modeling software in the market. I’ve been using this data modeling tool since its release 3; it’s now at release 7. In this article I’ll show how to create a data model from scratch, starting with logical and physical models, and then forward engineer the physical model to Oracle database'. In this article by Djoni Darmawikarta we’ll create a data model for Sales Order, with customer and product data."

8 Types Of Annoying People You'll Find Inside Starbucks

8 Types Of Annoying People You'll Find Inside Starbucks | www.holytaco.com: "Here are 8 types of people you'll find inside a Starbucks that are guaranteed to annoy the shit out of you."

Troubling times for OpenSUSE

iTWire - Troubling times for OpenSUSE: "The OpenSUSE project, a group that develops a Linux distribution that then feeds into Novell's SUSE Linux, has been hit recently by the layoffs at Novell."

Adobe acknowledges another JavaScript issue with Acrobat, Reader

Adobe acknowledges another JavaScript issue with Acrobat, Reader | Betanews: "An independent security research firm is warning of a non-ingenious JavaScript buffer overflow ploy that modern Web browsers would probably filter out, but which impacts recent versions of Adobe Reader for PDF files."

Death: My Final Gadget Will and Testament

Death: My Final Gadget Will and Testament: "I, Mark Wilson, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do declare this to be my last gadget Will.

While at the time of this writing, I am a spry (OK, a bit soft) 26-year-old man, I realize that I could, at any moment in time, die. In such an unfortunate circumstance, should the world ever recover from its loss, I'd like my most important possessions (my gadgets and digital media) to be well-tended pending their obsolescence (two or three months from now).

I will, give, and bequeath unto the persons named below, if he or she survives me, the Property described below:"

Is Calling a Software Engineer a 'Programmer' an Insult?

Is Calling a Software Engineer a 'Programmer' an Insult?: "'That's an insult!'

That was feedback I received from my last article when I referred to someone who writes software code for a living as an “engineer.” It seems that many people who graduated with a computer science or engineering degree take umbrage at those who use the title “engineer” loosely when referring to someone who develops software."

Digg Takes a Hit in Widget-Based Sharing

Digg Takes a Hit in Widget-Based Sharing: "Digg is seeing a significant drop in shared content when it comes to submissions made via a popular third-party platform."

Video Peggy in action

Video Peggy in action - Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: "For a while we've been meaning to try out Jay Clegg's TWI-video hack for the Peggy 2, and we must say, it's pretty nifty. Using this routine, we can take webcam video (e.g., from our MacBook Pro's built-in camera), sample it in a Processing routine, and send it to be displayed on the 625 LEDs of the Peggy 2."

RIP Linux

RIP Linux - Recovery is Possible | linuxsysconfig: "Don’t worry, Linux is not dead yet. And the $TITLE is not about a new RIP implementation on Linux. The name stands for Recovery Is Possible and it’s in fact a Slackware based Live OS."

Chinese thin clients run Linux

Chinese thin clients run Linux: "A ShenZhen China-based manufacturer is shipping several thin clients that run embedded Linux and target educational, government, business, taxation, and medical organizations. SZ Bencse Electronic Technology (Bencse) offers the entry level J5200, plus four higher-end H-5800 models, and ships worldwide at affordable prices, it says."

Creating Custom Error Pages on Apache Servers

Creating Custom Error Pages on Apache Servers: "It's almost inevitable that on any given Web site someone, at some time, is going to be directed to a nonexistent URL, either through a mistyped address, an incorrect link or due to an incorrectly installed script. Usually, on a server running the Apache software, the visitor will receive the standard error page. For the most part, this type of information doesn't really mean anything to the visitor. In addition, the default error page does not offer any navigational options. The only navigation method available to the visitor is the browser's back button. While it is probably safe to assume that most people today know how to use the back button, a good user interface should allow other options."

Taming the Wild Eee PC: Replacing the Operating System

InformIT: Taming the Wild Eee PC: Replacing the Operating System, Part 1 > Eee PC Configuration Problems: "Purchasers of the Linux versions of the Asus Eee PCs who really know Linux are going to be unpleasantly surprised by the limitations of the dumbed-down version of Xandros, which is the OEM install for that computer. For practical purposes, the package has no software expandability; the programs you can install with it are the ones that came with the PC and a handful of others available via the ASUS repository. In the first of his two-article series, A. Lizard discusses one of the possible options with respect to replacing the Eee PC OS."

Virtual autopsy: Inside the skull of a suicide victim

Virtual autopsy: Inside the skull of a suicide victim - tech - 20 February 2009 - New Scientist: "provide vital clues about how and why they died. But it may not be necessary for much longer. A growing number of countries, including the UK, Australia, US, and Japan, are looking towards virtual autopsies as an alternative to opening the bodies of people who die in suspicious circumstances."

GeekBomb: The Academy Awards + the Geek = Bad Bedfellows

GeekBomb: The Academy Awards + the Geek = Bad Bedfellows | /Film: "The Oscars are just not a geek’s friend, and you know it as well as I do. Just look at the number of posts and people there are out there bitching that The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, or that a movie like Wall-E just gets relegated to the Best Animated Feature Film category which has only three nominees. But what can you do? The Academy Awards have never really smiled on movies that typically fall under the geek banner."

18 Tools I use as a Designer & Blogger

18 Tools I use as a Designer & Blogger | Fuel Your Creativity: "I’m always sharing what tools are useful to me via Twitter, but just incase you don’t use it - I wanted to share here! I always get asked what productivity tools and apps I use on a regular basis and I pretty much open all of these everyday. There are a few apps that are similar in type because some may be all in one tools or I’m just starting to use one more than the other. Check these out, they are ones I would recommend to a designer/blogger/creative type. If there is something missing from the list that you think should be on here, please share in the comments!"

Python ponders release numbering

Python ponders release numbering [LWN.net]: "Release engineering for a large project is always a tricky task. Balancing the needs of new features, removing old cruft, and bug fixing while still producing releases in a timely fashion is difficult. Python is currently struggling with this as it is trying to determine which things go into a 3.0.1 release versus those that belong in 3.1.0. The discussion gives a glimpse into the thinking that must go on as projects decide how, what, and when to release."

Megalomaniac Creates Digg Spam Business

Megalomaniac Creates Digg Spam Business | WebProNews: "A little chutzpah goes a long way, but this is chutzpah bordering on comical grandiosity. The existence of uSocial.net (sorry, kid, no linking) is audacious enough: The site offers a Digg.com gaming service (StumbleUpon and Propeller, too), where clients can pay to have submissions linking to their website voted up on Digg."

Linux comes to Windows users' rescue

Linux comes to Windows users' rescue - Computerworld Blogs: "I recently got a note out of the blue from another technology journalist. He wrote, 'I know I'm often critical of Linux, but I'm SOOOOO GLAD I installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I installed some patches to Vista and now Vista won't boot, not even in Safe mode. Uggh!'"

Fun and games with the GPL

Fun and games with the GPL - My other OS is Ubuntu - Blogs - PC Authority: "Nokia announced last week that as of version 4.5, the Qt GUI toolkit, most famously used as the basis of the KDE desktop, would change licences from the GPL to the LGPL."

Business is booming for open source adopters

Business is booming for open source adopters - Profile - CRN Australia: "We're in a downturn - we've heard it enough times itmust be true. We've all been asked to do more with less, to ensure our employees survive the coming year."

Basics - Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems

Basics - Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems - NYTimes.com: "Today, Americans are finding their own tips and tricks for fixing misbehaving gadgets with supplies as simple as paper and adhesive tape. Some, like Mr. Azar’s plastic bag, are open to argument as to how they work, or whether they really work at all. But many tech home remedies can be explained by a little science."

WNotes: Creating a Writer/MySQL web application

articles:wnotes [No Thick Manuals]: "While OpenOffice.org is first and foremost a desktop office suite, it has a few powerful features that allow you to create some nifty solutions. For example, the Base application supports different database engines such as MySQL, and it can connect and manage remote databases. Moreover, the data from a remote database is available for other OpenOffice.org applications, so you can, for example, access and manipulate database records directly from within Writer. These capabilities can be put to some rather creative uses."

The Pac-Man Dossier

The Pac-Man Dossier: "Welcome to The Pac-Man Dossier! This web page is dedicated to providing Pac-Man players of all skill levels with the most complete and detailed study of the game possible. New discoveries found during the research for this page in December 2008 have allowed for the clearest view yet of the actual ghost behavior and pathfinding logic used by the game."

Buddi: Personal finances without a headache

articles:buddi [No Thick Manuals]: "Although the idea of using an application to manage your personal finances does make a lot of sense, not all of us have the time and patience to learn all the intricacies of tools like GnuCash or Money Manager Ex. In this case, you need Buddi, probably the most easy to use personal finance manager out there. Written in Java, Buddi runs on most platforms with Java Runtime Environment installed. If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, you can download and install a .deb package; otherwise you can opt for a plain .jar file that will run on pretty much any Linux distro."

NetBeans IDE - Python Development Available Now!!!

NetBeans IDE - Python Development: "Create a new python project from a template, or import existing projects. Use the new file wizard to create new module. You can run individual files, or designate a main file to run per project."

9 Bad Parents

mental_floss Blog » The Quick 9: 9 Bad Parents: "No one ever said being a parent was easy, but these parents aren’t even trying. OK, in some cases, that isn’t fair – circumstances of the day probably dictated the actions of certain parents, like Jack Nicholson’s mom. I’ve got nine bad parents – who do you think the #10 bad mom or dad should be? I almost added Joan Crawford but decided that since she was the bad parent, it didn’t count. Leave your suggestions in the comments!"

9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design

9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine: "By now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy your visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them, with smart design decisions. Here are 9 usability problems that websites commonly face, and some recommended solutions for each of them."

Easy Post-It / sticky note mosaics using free software.

Easy Post-It / sticky note mosaics using free software.: "I work at a non-profit facility with kids and have been looking for projects to work on with them that won't cost a fortune. One thing that caught my eye was the Post-It mosaic of Elvis that made the online rounds a little while back. That looked to be a perfect project that the kids could work on over time, and would certainly brighten up some unused wall space."

Latest Digg Gaming Schemer Isn't Ashamed of Himself

Latest Digg Gaming Schemer Isn't Ashamed of Himself: "This is hillarious. uSocial.net (link omitted on purpose) is a site that sells votes on social media sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Yahoo Buzz. It’s been around for a couple of months, and it works like this: you pay them money, they make sure your story on one or more of these sites receives a large number of votes (and subsequently, lots of traffic). And, of course, this violates the terms of service on most social media sites."

A Better Grip on Open Source Projects?

InternetNews Realtime IT News - A Better Grip on Open Source Projects?: "Over time, software applications grow, sometimes becoming so complex that one hand of the enterprise doesn't have a grip or know what the other hand is doing to track how the application is laid out."

Debunking Six Social Media Myths

Debunking Six Social Media Myths - BusinessWeek: "Using social media to market your business is a good idea. Just don't plan on getting your whiz-kid nephew to do it for free"

How to Write Great Cover Letters for Your Resume

How to Write Great Cover Letters for Your Resume - Dumb Little Man: "Effective cover letters are tailored to an individual job or company. If you email a generic cover letter, you lose the chance to connect the dots for a potential employer. With a customized cover letter, you can highlight specific skills and attributes. You can draw parallels between what you have and what the employer wants."

Trapping HTTP Requests and Responses with Python

Trapping HTTP Requests and Responses with Python | GNUCITIZEN: "Why is this interesting? Well, it is interesting to Python developers/hackers only. The fact is that there are a few HTTPS-enabled proxies with tamperable capabilities for Python. However, none of them are actually easy to use or even reliable enough for my likings. Not to mention that none of them were designed to be extended upon. While it is true that my code hasn’t bee fully tested, and there were some tiny issues already reported (to be fixed soon), I find the code a lot easier to work with as you will see later in this post."

Osama bin Laden's current location

Tuesday Map: Osama bin Laden's current location | FP Passport: "Geography Professor Thomas Gillespie of UCLA has employed a technique typically used for tracking endangered species in order to pinpoint the most likely location of the world's most wanted terrorist. In a paper (pdf) published in the MIT International Review Gillespie describes how he used biogeographic data including bin Laden's last known location, cultural background, security needs, declining health, limited mobility and height to create a mathematical model that he claims will show where the terror mastermind is hiding."

Django for the Impatient: Blog Building Basics

Django for the Impatient: Blog Building Basics: "Django bills itself as 'the Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.' So let's put ourselves on deadline and see how fast we can produce a simple blog using Django. (We'll address your perfectionist side later.)"

How To: Turn Your Linux Rig into a Streaming Media Center

How To: Turn Your Linux Rig into a Streaming Media Center | Maximum PC: "These days, most people have at least one computer and a large collection of media files. The conventional practice for most people has always been to have redundant copies of their media collection on their various computers. While this system technically works, it is highly inefficient and creates the unnecessary task of keeping the media collection on each computer synchronized and up-to-date with the others. A far better solution is to keep all the media on one computer and stream it as needed to the other machines over the network."

U.S. stimulus crucial for smart grid: industry

U.S. stimulus crucial for smart grid: industry | Reuters: "The electric power industry and manufacturers say $4.5 billion in the $787-billion U.S. economic stimulus package will give a crucial boost to 'smart grids' that will help the nation save money and electricity."

Why isn't Java cool? Or, programmers are people too

Why isn't Java cool? Or, programmers are people too | JavaWorld's Daily Brew: "You know what you never hear anyone in the construction trade say? 'Hammers are so hot right now,' or 'screwdrivers are the new black,' or 'I love this wrench! It's so cool!' Yet so much of the computing industry is focused on which particular languages, platforms, and technologies are cool or hip. And, fifteen years after it emerged from Sun's labs to wow the industry, Java is definitely in decline, at least by that metric."

Taiwan Fights Recession With Gadget Show

Taiwan Fights Recession With Gadget Show - PC World: "The Taiwan government last month started handing out NT$3,600 (US$106) in vouchers to every adult citizen in the nation to get them out shopping again and stimulate the economy. The multi-billion dollar program was aimed at stimulating growth by getting people out and shopping. To that end, the government gave vouchers instead of cash to ensure people used them ahead of their expiration dates, instead of handing out cash that might be put in the bank."

‘Duck Hunter’ looks awesome

Toys: ‘Duck Hunter’ looks awesome: "Take a pair of flying robotic ducks, sprinkle in a little laser tag, and you’ve got the makings of a wonderful evening. Boing Boing Gadgets happened upon “Duck Hunter” by Interactive Toy Concepts, a game that looks a lot like a live-action version of everyone’s favorite NES Zapper game, minus the stupid laughing dog. Seriously – train your dog! You gotta start early. If your dog laughs at you every time you shoot at and miss a flying duck, say “NO!” sternly."

10 Easy Steps To Advanced Photography Skills

10 Easy Steps To Advanced Photography Skills | How-To | Smashing Magazine: "A camera does not work like an eye; film does not work like memory. There is a fine line between a photo that is quite nice and one that is quite breathtaking. At some unknown point, a photo can cross the Rubicon and be forever a piece of beautiful art. That hinterland between a regular photo and evocative art is a shifting area from person to person and taste to taste. However, that zone can be narrowed a bit once you start to consider the way the brain stores memories and emotions."

Ubuntu ROCKS!

odysseus_amazed: Ubuntu ROCKS!: "Although I've never been a Linux Operating System convert, I have tried different versions through out the years and generally kept up with the development of the OS. My first 'real' version was Red Hat Linux 5.1 around 1998, after which I progressed to Caldera Open Linux 2.3 in 2000, then Knoppix STD in 2002, followed by a few experiments with versions of Damn Small Linux around 2004-2006. All of these different flavors were tried out on various machines from an old Cyrix to a Pentium III processor with assorted graphics cards, memory configurations, etc. And almost all of them were flawed in some way."

Super Mario World as a board game

Wonderland: Super Mario World as a board game: "Although judging by the length of the playable piste, it's actually more of an exercise in papercraft."

Searching Data using phpMyAdmin and MySQL

Searching Data using phpMyAdmin and MySQL: "In this article by Marc Delisle, we present mechanisms that can be used to find the data we are looking for instead of just browsing tables page-by-page and sorting them. This article covers single-table and whole database searches."

BlackBerry: Building an RSS reader

Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools, Part 2: Building an RSS reader: "In the same way that open source has revolutionized the software development marketplace, the proliferation of alternative news sources has shaken up the traditional news-source monopolies. Today, you can get free news from various Internet sources and from the Internet outlets of the mainstream media. Trekking from one Web site to another to read news stories is possible, but tedious. And what about updates to news stories of interest? Wouldn't it be better if the news of interest is aggregated for your convenience? You can do it with an RSS reader for BlackBerry. Here in Part 2 of this 'Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools' series, explore the RSS data-distribution format by creating a BlackBerry RSS reader suitable for taking news wherever you and your BlackBerry go."

Intermediate JQuery: Using plug-ins to create and extend the jQuery functions

Working with jQuery, Part 1: Intermediate JQuery: Using plug-ins to create and extend the jQuery functions: "The popularity of jQuery owes a lot to its decision to include a plug-in architecture. This decision allows any number of third-party developers to create and extend the jQuery functions beyond the original library functions. The result is hundreds of plug-ins that provide nearly any type of function needed on a Web application. This article describes this plug-in architecture and explains how jQuery can help your Web application behave just like a desktop application."

Add flair to your letter wall in 13.5 sweet steps

Dreambird Designs: Add flair to your letter wall in 13.5 sweet steps: "Ever wanted to add some flair to that letter wall* you've started? How about with a HUGE letter X? Now with step-by-step instructions:"

Is Digg Alienating Its Top Users Like eBay?

Is Digg Alienating Its Top Users Like eBay? | WebProNews: "Digg seems to be divided into two types of users - the 'power users' and the users who feel cheated because the 'power users' dominate everything. Last week, Digg announced updates to its algorithm. Digg's Anton Kast said the updates were to 'ensure that all Diggers have a fair chance at getting their submitted stories promoted to the homepage.' Sounds reasonable enough."

The Psychology of a Linkbait

The Psychology of a Linkbait: "It’s important to remember that the best links come from real human beings. In SEO circles, these are referred to as editorial links. Real people running well-read websites which highlight or reference interesting content from around the web. The best links get to the core of the web’s main mission: to highlight and share good content."

How to make a Flash movie with a transparent background

How to make a Flash movie with a transparent background: "The background of a Flash movie can be set to transparent. This allows the background color or image of the HTML page that contains the Flash movie to show through and allows the layering of Flash content with DHTML content."

Introduction to CSS, learn CSS with our basic guide to Cascading Style Sheets

Introduction to CSS, learn CSS with our basic guide to Cascading Style Sheets: "While it's possible to add styling to HTML (e.g. using the tag) HTML should only be used to structure your content, CSS is the only way you should apply styling."

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop | Blog.SpoonGraphics: "A couple of subscribers left their comment on a previous post that collated a range of inspiring graphic artwork from digital artists across the world. The commentors asked how the light stream effect on some of the pieces was created. I did a little research and picked up a couple of tips from similar tutorials to present a walkthrough on how to create intense light streaks flowing around an object or person."

How Not To Make A Commercial Linux Distribution

How Not To Make A Commercial Linux Distribution | LinuxHaxor.net: "I have nothing against commercial Linux distribution. As a matter of fact, my first Linux experience was a commercial version of SUSE 7 almost nine years ago. I remember it had 6 CDs in a very professionally made CD pack, and SUSE did a very good job at making the installation process as user friendly as possible at that time. (Before SUSE decided to go evil). Its safe to say that I thought that the experience was good enough for me to justify paying for a Linux distribution."

17 Linux Applicaitons to Improve your Productivity

17 Linux Applicaitons to Improve your Productivity | TechCityInc: "I always appreciate any useful application I can find for Linux that can help its users enjoy and have the same comfort they have in Windows. I earlier wrote about of the most useful system application"

Learning Linux: Log Files

Learning Linux: Log Files: "If you are serious about learning Linux then one aspect you will want to familiarize yourself with is log files. This concept will help you to understand why when you go to a mailing list with a problem and, when someone asks you the contents of a particular log file, you are able to offer enough information to help solve your problem. Log files are very good for helping you deduce what is going wrong with a system. There are, however, a lot of log files to wade through. That’s where I come in. In this article I am going to show you the first places to look when you have problems with a Linux system. I won’t cover all of the log files (at least yet), but I will get you started on what will hopefully become a long history of too much information."

A Semantic List-Based CSS Calendar

A Semantic List-Based CSS Calendar: "Most calendars on the web these days are built using large, complex tables. And while an argument could possibly be made that stuff in a calendar is a form of tablular data, it seems to me that in most cases a calendar is really just a list of events happening on specific dates. And that makes a table overkill for most situations in my book."

10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress

10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine: "RSS is one of those technologies that are extremely simple yet extremely powerful. Currently, RSS is the de facto standard for blog syndication, and it is used widely in both personal and corporate settings; for example, in blogs. And because a large percentage of these blogs run on WordPress, we’ll cover in this post some (hopefully) relatively unknown but useful RSS-related tricks and hacks that will help you use RSS in a more effective way — and without unnecessary and chunky WordPress plug-ins."

PHP Doctrine - adding automatic, simple CRUD

PHP Doctrine - adding automatic, simple CRUD | ProDevTips - dev notes and tutorials: "I just found myself wishing for automatic CRUD, for quick and simple administrative tasks, as it turned out a very easy thing to add. The first thing we have to do is move the label selection from having to be explicitly declared in the insert/update form - like we are doing now - to the model"

Essential Elements for Any Successful Project

InformIT: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Project Management: Essential Elements for Any Successful Project > What Exactly Is a "Successful" Project?: "Learn the leading causes of 'troubled' projects, and the common principles, techniques, and tools underlying most successful projects."

Obama's Elf

YouTube - Obama's Elf: "Animated Version of Eric Carmens Ballad"

Linux Version of Chrome To Use Gtk+

Linux Version of Chrome To Use Gtk+: "A major complaint about Google's Chrome web browser has been that so far, it is still not available on anything other than Windows. Google promised to deliver Chrome to Mac OS X and Linux as well, but as it turns out, this is a little harder than they anticipated, Ben Goodger, Google's Chrome interface lead, has explained in an email. It has also been revealed what toolkit the Linux version of Chrome will use: Gtk+."

Linux Firefox Tips

Linux Firefox Tips: "If you use Linux you most likely use Firefox. And if you use Firefox on Linux you might know there are some differences than when using it on Windows. I know I have spent many an hour trying to figure out some of these issues. Hopeful, with the help of gHacks, you won’t have to spend as much time and energy."

A Get Smart Style Shoe Phone

A Get Smart Style Shoe Phone (gen 2): "This is another in my Get Smart props series, which also includes my first shoe phone
, a cone of silence and a
phone booth."

iLean Robot Climbs Itself To Climb Stairs

BotJunkie » iLean Robot Climbs Itself To Climb Stairs: "iLean is a neat little robot from the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab that is able to climb over obstacles much taller than itself by climbing up its own body. I can’t describe it much better than that, but the video largely speaks for itself:"

The Django and Ubuntu Intrepid Almanac

The Django and Ubuntu Intrepid Almanac @ Irrational Exuberance: "It's been more than a year since my first endeavor to setup a healthy environment to deploy Django (as I was rudely reminded by the Ubuntu repositories for my server's version ceasing to function). In that time I've learned a lot, and have also stretched my original setup to its breaking point, but inevitably the day comes for a fresh deployment with better configurations and more flexible folder layouts."

3-D Enthusiasm Is Anything But Flat

ABC News: 3-D Enthusiasm Is Anything But Flat: "In a converted warehouse near one of Los Angeles's toughest neighborhoods, a coterie of professional 'techno-speculators' is playing around with what a growing number of entertainment industry folks hope the future of the small screen will be, namely 3-D."

7 Urban Wonders of the Modern World

7 Urban Wonders of the Modern World | WebUrbanist: "You might find an urban wonder right around the corner - from the narrowest and most windy streets of the world (respectively) to the biggest building moving project and the most profound rich/poor divide on the planet. Someone has even put the world’s largest urban bat colony on the map. Here are seven profoundly strange recording-setting wonders of the modern world."

First gravity map of Moon's far side unveiled

First gravity map of Moon's far side unveiled - space - 16 February 2009 - New Scientist: "The first detailed map of the gravity fields on the Moon's far side shows that craters there are different than those on the near side. The results could reveal more about the Moon as it was billions of years ago, when magma flowed across its surface."

What's Disney's Inspiration?

“What's Disney's Inspiration?” Slideshow | Fast Company: "From Lost to Wall-E to Disney.com, the media giant proves itself an exceptional idea factory and hit maker. Where do its creative heads find inspiration? We peeked inside their offices to find out."

Rear-Projection TV Turned into a Multi-touch Display

IDEO Labs » Rear-Projection TV Turned into a Multi-touch Display: "Continuing our multi-touch research, we’ve been working on turning an off-the-shelf rear projection TV into a multi-touch display. This screen has the best width-to-depth ratio of any multitouch system (67″ diagonal viewing area and only 16″ deep). This is also the first example of hacking a multi-touch system into an off-the-shelf television. The system we settled on uses very few additional components and could potentially be applied to any rear-projection TV."

5 vital logo design tips

5 vital logo design tips | David Airey » graphic designer, logo designer: "In this guest article, Jacob Cass briefly covers five tips for creating a professional logo design. He also mentions some useful logo design resources."

How to be creative

How to be creative: "Do you ever get asked ‘Where did you get that idea from?’ in any of your projects or pieces of work and you couldn’t answer the question? Well, I have actually come across that a few times and it made me think to myself, where do I get my creativity? How do I get my creative juices flowing? How do I boost my creativity?"

How to prevent cross-site scripting security issues

How to prevent cross-site scripting security issues: "Dynamically generated HTML pages can introduce security risks if inputs are not validated either on the way in or on the way out. Malicious script can be embedded within input that is submitted to Web pages and appear to browsers as originating from a trusted source. This problem is referred to as a cross-site scripting security issue. This article discusses cross-site scripting security issues, the ramifications, and prevention."

HOW NOT TO: Build Your Twitter Community

HOW NOT TO: Build Your Twitter Community: "In my previous post I discussed how to build your Twitter community, offering 10 tips as a guide. Here are a few tips on what not to do:"

Top Twitter Celebrities

Top Twitter Celebrities - Forbes.com

How Not To Suck At Socializing

How Not To Suck At Socializing - Do’s & Don’ts - Stepcase Lifehack: "Being socialable is a very easy thing to do, and it shouldn’t be something you’re either good at or not. You can learn to become a more social person - if you want to."

How To Become Wealthy

How To Become Wealthy: "Even before I had some minor success with a couple of startups, I had moved from just below the poverty line to reasonable comfort, with a house, a year's expenses in savings, and no debt (other than a house mortgage). I've learned a few things, some in classes, some in the college of hard knocks. I've also had a little help along the way from relatives, some of it purely one-sided, and some of it mutually beneficial. I would like to pass on this information to those of you who are just getting started in life. (Some of this advice will be valuable to those of you who aren't just getting started in life, too.)"

How to emulate every Nintendo system in Windows

How to emulate every Nintendo system in Windows - Simple Help: "The following list will guide you through how to play NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube/Wii, Nintendo Gameboy/Color/Advanced, Nintendo DS AND Nintendo Virtual Boy games on your Windows PC."

Add scripting to your C# application

NullifyNetwork - Add scripting to your C# application: "Have you ever wanted to be able to add scripting to your application? So your users can write a script and you can have it run inside it, adding menus, etc. - like Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications allows in Office."

Using Multiple USB Audio Devices in Garageband

Using Multiple USB Audio Devices in Garageband | Adam Weiss: Podcast Consultant: "The way to do it is through an application with the confusing name of Audio MIDI Setup (found in your Mac’s Applications ? Utilities folder). This program can be used to combine any audio inputs on your computer into one “Super Input” (called an Aggregate Device be Apple) that can be used in any program."

Enjoy Your Stay in Borneo!

Enjoy Your Stay | Futility Closet: "Phrases you are likely to need in Borneo, to judge from a phrasebook distributed in 1966 by the Borneo Literature Bureau"

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites | How-To | Smashing Magazine: "We all make mistakes running our websites. However, the nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes among large organizations."

Cloud Computing Pros and Cons for End Users > Advantages of Cloud Computing

InformIT: Cloud Computing Pros and Cons for End Users > Advantages of Cloud Computing: "Cloud computing lets you access all your applications and documents from anywhere in the world, freeing you from the confines of the desktop and facilitating wholesale group collaboration. But cloud computing isn't for everyone; there are pros and cons to this type of web-based computing. Michael Miller explains which users can benefit from cloud applications — and which should steer clear."

Digg Abused to Distribute Malware

Digg Abused to Distribute Malware - More than half a million Digg comments contain malicious links - Softpedia: "Security researchers are warning that the popular social bookmarking service Digg is being abused by malware distributors by creating fake news stories and promoting them, or by posting malicious comments to legit entries. Most of them lead to malware masquerading as a video codec."

Camouflaging A Plane Factory During WWII

Camouflage: "Hidden airplane factory"

Here Is Your Pen Scanner, Mr. Bond

Here Is Your Pen Scanner, Mr. Bond - New York Times: "For baby boomers now in middle age, high-tech spy stuff has always been part of the cultural landscape. Remember the ads for X-Ray Specs at the back of comic books? The shoe phone in “Get Smart”? The miniature wonders that James Bond was issued before each mission?"

Ecstasy's long-term effects revealed

Ecstasy's long-term effects revealed - health - 11 February 2009 - New Scientist: "THEY called it the second summer of love. Twenty years ago, young people all over the world donned T-shirts emblazoned with smiley faces and danced all night, fuelled by a molecule called MDMA. Most of these clubbers have since given up ecstasy and are sliding into middle age. The question is, has ecstasy given up on them?"

Make a Solar DS "light" that you will Never Need to Recharge Again!

Make a Solar DS "light" that you will Never Need to Recharge Again!: "The Nintendo DS Lite seems like it was made to have solar cells put on it. It has a large amount of surface area on the top and bottom that both face upward when the DS is opened. The top and bottom faces each have exactly the right amount of room for two 60x60mm solar cells side by side (four total). Each one has a maximum power output of 3 volts at 40 ma. The top two are connected in series and so are the bottom two. These two sets are wired in parallel to get a total of 6 volts at 80 ma, perfect for trickle-charging the battery."

The Rules of Gunfighting

Petzal: The Rules of Gunfighting | Field & Stream: "Normally, this blog is dedicated to peaceful pursuits. However, SFC Frick speaks much wisdom. I am giving him a meritorious promotion to Command Sergeant Major (E-9)."

25 More Things I Didn't Want to Know About You

25 More Things I Didn't Want to Know About You - TIME: "It's almost certainly a by-product of our blogging, Twittering, Flickr-photo-sharing culture that people are no longer fazed by long lists of strangers' quirks and neuroses. So perhaps my initial take on the phenomenon was too judgmental. Maybe '25 Things About Me' is more interesting than it appears. I decided to read 25 more things and find out"

IP Address Geolocation From MySQL

IP Address Geolocation From MySQL | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials: "In this short tutorial I will use a local MySQL database to do IP addresses geolocation.

First download the database from this page: http://blogama.org/node/58

And then go in your favorite MySQL interface and type"

CMOS sensor magic, with Linux, PHP, and an open FPGA

CMOS sensor magic, with Linux, PHP, and an open FPGA: "This paper describes the recent imaging advances by Elphel, supplier of open source (hardware and software) cameras to customers that include Google (for select Street View and book scanning projects). It should interest imaging engineers, fans of open source, and those curious about open source hardware."

5 Websites To Help You Become a Happier Person

5 Websites To Help You Become a Happier Person | MakeUseOf.com: "I bet you that you create things on a daily basis. And guess what? That makes you creative! Now chances are that if you’re in a regular job, you will not find your daily routines very inspiring or artistic. It’s difficult to change certain things, it may take time or it may even be impossible. But can you change yourself?"

Basics of Compiler Design FREE ebook

Basics of Compiler Design: "I have taught an undergraduate compilers course for over a decade. In the last several years, I have used my own textbook 'Basics of Compiler Design'. I have now decided to make this available online.

Permission to copy and print for personal use is granted. If you, as a lecturer, want to print the book and sell it to your students, you can do so if you only charge the printing cost. If you want to print the book and sell it at profit, please contact me and we will find a suitable arrangement."