July 2010
2 posts
1 tag
The Alot is Better Than You at Everything →
“The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar.”
4 tags
The Mandelbrot set canvas demo
Some more fun with the canvas element, this time with that old fractal standby, the Mandelbrot set.
Run Demo (The image may take a few seconds to render.)
I’m sorry, but your browser doesn’t support the canvas element.
function mandelbrotSet(canvasId)
{
//
// Set up canvas, graphics context, and pixel data objects.
//
var canvas = document.getElementById(canvasId);
...
June 2010
5 posts
2 tags
Foundations of Computer Science →
A free introductory computer science book from Standford.
2 tags
List of freely available programming books →
Lists of free programming books generated by the users of Stack Overflow.
There Are No Famous Programmers →
As a programmer, this fact is comforting.
Fanboyism and Brand Loyalty →
I wish everyone on the internet could be made to read this an understand it:
The Misconception: You prefer the things we [sic] own over the things we [sic] don’t because we made rational choices when we bought them.
The Truth: You prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self.
John Gruber jumps the shark →
I’ve been reading Gruber’s Daring Fireball almost since the beginning. Last week I decided to stop reading it because the blog started sounding more and more like propaganda for our Dear Leader Jobs. Or maybe I’m more and more sick of Apple related news and discussion? Regardless, it’s good to see that I’m not the only one.
2 tags
Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the... →
“The first thing to note is that denial finds its most fertile ground in areas where the science must be taken on trust.”
May 2010
9 posts
2 tags
Dive Into HTML5 →
A free (and currently still being written) book about HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim.
3 tags
Canvas element demo
I was having a little bit of fun with the canvas
element today. The
patterns drawn are from an algorithm I found on page 3 of The New
Turing Omnibus by A. K. Dewdney.
The parameters to the algorithm are randomly generated, so if you click “Run Demo” again it will draw something new.
Run Demo
(The image may take a few seconds to render.)
I’m sorry, but your browser...
1 tag
Wrigley Field power outage causes delay →
I guess you can call it a “dark delay”.
First functional synthetic bacterial genome... →
1 tag
Google Font Directory →
Wow cool. I’m getting tired of the normal “web safe” fonts.
Caffeine may be protective against the cognitive... →
Suddenly I feel a whole lot better about my caffeine addiction.
1 tag
Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas →
The death of the album (in handy graph form) →
April 2010
11 posts
“A lot of people don’t like bumper stickers. I don’t mind bumper...”
– Demetri Martin
Adam? …is there a reason your laptop is in the... →
Guy was able to get data off of his dying hard drive by putting his laptop in the fridge.
1 tag
Iceland's disruptive volcano →
Nice picture set of the recent Icelandic volcano eruption.
Mythbusters in Lego →
Pretty cool, but it needs an explosion.
1 tag
1 tag
Life Without the Web →
Cartoonist James Sturm is abstaining from the Web for four months. A few years ago I would have thought that was crazy talk, but now taking a break like that is something I day dream about during a bad day at work. I wish him well.
3 tags
What the iPad is Missing (No, it’s not a Camera) →
I’m as sick as can be of all the iPad content on the internet this week, but this article is a good one. (I’ve also been sick with a respiratory infection, but I think that’s unrelated to the iPad.) The author, Stephen Coles, discusses several issues with the iPad’s typography support. I’m surprised by these problems because much of the iPad’s hype portrays it...
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
– William Blake
1 tag
An open letter to the people of the world →
Fake Steve Jobs:
The truth is, all over the world, across every culture, there exists a sense of yearning. A kind of malaise. An emptiness. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss: There is a hole in your soul. That is what we’re addressing at Apple. That is the hole we aim to fill.
3 tags
Quake 2 in a Web Browser →
I hope this isn’t an April Fools trick, but if it is then it’s a believable hoax with the way modern browser are heading. I have fond memories of playing Quake 2 in college. In the future if I get nostalgic about some game I liked, all I will need to do is type in the right URL into my browser.
March 2010
27 posts
“He would pray. Pray all night if necessary. Not to the new God, the God of...”
– Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot
1 tag
Acrylic on Flesh →
People painted with acrylics to look like paintings. They’re cool and uncanny at the same time.
2 tags
A Turing Machine →
Mike Davey:
I wanted to build a machine that would be immediately recognizable as a Turing machine to someone familiar with Turing’s work.
The machine looks beautiful. Includes a video of the machine in action.
“Have you your pistols? have you your sharped-edged axes?”
– Walt Whitman, Pioneers! O Pioneers!
Life at Google →
Tim Bray on how focused Google employees are:
But first I’d like to step back almost 20 years, to an occasion in the early Nineties when I was on-site at Microsoft. I noticed a pattern in the men’s rooms, time after time, like this: I’d be washing my hands or whatever, and some guy would come in, walking really fast with a look of urgency, headed straight for the fixtures. This was a guy who’d...
1 tag
Simply Noise →
Simply Noise is a free white noise generator. It’s amazing how a little bit of noise can help with concentration. I used to just turn a fan or two on, but this is a nice alternative.
1 tag
Happy Ada Lovelace Day →
“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.”
1 tag
Chris Glass's Photo Album →
1 tag
The Mourners →
My brother tipped me off to this neat virtual gallery of sculptures. I particularly like this one.
1 tag
Joe Mauer Gets 8 Year $184 Million Deal →
Good for Mauer not running off to a big market team next year (read: sign with the Yankees).
2 tags
Windows PowerShell Cookbook →
Free online PowerShell book published by O’Reilly.
1 tag
Film Reviews / Analysis by Rob Ager →
I found Ager’s reviews while searching for The Big Lebowski reviews. I particularly liked his analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
2 tags
It Finally Happened
My Xbox 360 bit the dust with the Red Ring of Death to tonight. It lasted two years. I thought something was wrong with it lasting so long.
2 tags
Harmony →
An neat HTML5 canvas element drawing program.
4 tags
ASP.NET MVC 2 Released →
And I was just getting comfortable with first version. The software treadmill continues to run.
1 tag
Reyes Prescribed Rest for Thyroid →
From the article:
Reyes has also been told to change his diet. He has been eating a lot of seafood lately, Greenberg said, and the doctors told him the iodine in the shellfish might have contributed to the higher levels.
So apparently Reyes eats too much shellfish, gets a hyperthyroid condition, and will be out for a few weeks, all this when trying to come back from a hamstring injury....
1 tag
“Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn’t conceive of...”
– Flannery O’Connor, A Late Encounter with the Enemy. Describing 104 years old General Sash.
1 tag
8-bit NYC →
It’s like a fusion of Google maps and Zelda.
1 tag
