August 2007
69 posts
“The reason Florence is famous is that in 1450, it was New York. In 1450 it was...”
– Paul Graham
SEO tools →
A number of useful scripts that tell you things like link popularity and Google PageRank.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price →
Substandard wages, skimping on employee health benefits and eviscerating communities. Rent it from Netflix and get educated.
Tor: anonymity online →
Tor is a network of tunnels that improves privacy and security on the Internet. It enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.
Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely...
Mocha RDocs →
Mock library for Ruby tests.
Ruby testing techniques →
Marcel Molina and Chad Fowler lead a workshop via screencast on testing with Flexmock.
“The General says we never miss a shot
and we never ever ever keep a body count....”
– Michael Franti
Introduction to C, Unix/Linux, and CGI Programming →
Potential autumn study.
Vanu software radio →
Vanu Bose, son of Bose audio company founder, created a startup that is using Linux to let you use any wireless network hardware on your phone (Edge, CDMA, etc.).
Ruby Sadist ~ Heckle and Flog →
Better tests and scoring code complexity.
“If someone is going to spy on you, it’s probably best if its you.”
– Fred Wilson
Five sentences →
Lately, I’ve been following this rule: all emails should be five sentences or less.
A search engine that will replace Google →
Very interesting set of videos. Scoble says human-powered search will supplant Google as the dominant search application.
RESTful authentication →
Trying it out this week.
Building an open-source business →
MySQL, etc.
Appaholic ~ Facebook app statistics →
The Facebook economy →
Four ways to make money:
1) Sell ads
2) Attract sponsors
3) Sell services
4) Sell products
Web War One ~ attacking military information... →
Kent Brockman: [chuckles] A chilling portrait of things to come.
Ruby Hoedown videos →
Chad Fowler, Marcel Molina, Ezra, Adhearsion etc.
“Some things are preferred over others. Natural selection determines which music,...”
– Unknown
“There is a disconnection between American foreign policy and the average...”
– Secrets of the CIA
WatchAction verbs for every email in your inbox (in descending order of priority) … delete, delegate, respond, defer, do.
“Writing requires almost no financial or physical resources. A pen, a paper and...”
– Scott Berkun
Earth Class Mail →
All your land mail is sent to a warehouse in Oregon. The enveloped is scanned and e-mailed to you. You choose whether to have it opened and the contents scanned and emailed.
All “trashed” mail is recycled. You can have sensitive documents shredded. All opened mailed is done by military vets with previous security clearances.
Absolutely awesome.
Lifelock ~ identity theft protection →
A taxonomy of Rails plugins →
Best walk through of writing a Rails plugin I’ve seen yet.
Habibi
A famous Arabic word common between classical and spoken used in most of Arab countries. Habibi is either a friend, a boy/girl friend, husband or wife, a relative, or a familiar person to you whom you like in different way. Even if you are calling a person of the same gender, you may use it. The same word exists in Hebrew.
High Performance Web Sites: The Importance of... →
Yahoo!’s Chief Performance Yahoo! details why the performance golden rule is “optimize front-end performance first, that’s where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent.”
The Methodphitamine in place of Symbol#to_proc →
Democratic t-shirt tax →
Democrats are siding with special interests at expense of poor people. Barack Obama leads the charge.
American Foreign Policy at Point Zero
From Anti-war.com ~
The United States has rarely lost any conventional military battle since at least 1950. Nor has it, at the same time, ever won a war. It has successfully overthrown governments through interventions or subversion but the political results of all its efforts – as in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Iran in 1953 – have often made its subsequent geopolitical position far, far more...
“The thing that I found when I was in war zones was that nobody wants to hear...”
– Michael Franti
An Introduction to Mock Objects in Ruby →
Slideshow.
Ron Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy →
Agreed.
Only terrorists need to worry... you're not a... →
Warrantless wiretapping is a bad idea…
Celtics season tickets
A buddy of mine and I are splitting season tickets for the re-vamped Boston Celtics in 2007-2008. What’s the best way to equitably split the games?
I turn to Ruby…
require 'date'
require 'time'
class Ticket
def initialize(date, opponent, quality)
@date = date
@opponent = opponent
@quality = quality
end
attr_accessor :date, :opponent, :quality
def...
Martin Luther King and Michael Vick →
Very well-written piece from ESPN.
“I! am a choreographer. You! are cheerleaders. I will transform your robotic...”
– Bring It On… seriously.
Democrats ~ "get out of Iraq, but go into Darfur"
Democrats are not against elective wars — interventions that have little or no connection to the security and well being of the United States — as a matter of principle. Instead, they appear merely to be against Republican elective wars that go badly.
Americans would be well-advised to consider the larger lessons of Iraq. No one disputes that the situation in Darfur is a humanitarian...
“Now I’ma rap a rhyme with the greatest of ease
And swing it like the man...”
– DJ Kool