February 2012
1 post
January 2012
2 posts
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Encrypt Evernote →
using a encrypted sparse bundle and some moving of the core database. Clumsy, but it works.
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November 2011
8 posts
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Type like a hacker. →
So cheesy. So much fun.
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Arrested Development back on Netflix →
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$5 Chess Game, Best-of-Three, Zuccotti Park. →
A growing number of people in America know what it feels like to be in zugzwang. For some of them their whole life has been one long zugzwang, they can’t remember ever having any good options. Without catching a lucky break, a lifetime of hard work for most people results in just that—a lifetime of hard work. For others they maybe once thought they had it all—a good job with a pension, a nice...
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Protect the Internet →
Congress is considering two well-intentioned but deeply flawed bills, the PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
As written, they would betray more than a decade of US policy and advocacy of Internet freedom by establishing a censorship system using the same domain blacklisting technologies pioneered by China and Iran.
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A brief survey of URLs
When designing websites, what the URL looks like (and how memorable it is) is just as relevant as what the content of the page actually is. Here are some screenshots of URLs and titles of webpages as examples, ranging from close to perfection to downright awful.
The way I generated these screenshots was as close to how a naive web user would: I googled the name of the company or product, and...
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“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or...”
– J Krishnamurthi
September 2011
1 post
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Scales and Purpose
Every day, I get up after around six hours of sleep, brushing away the trailing remnants of a fantastic dreamworld and forcing my eyes open. I water my plants, eat breakfast, and make some coffee. I pack up my gear and move outside. I walk uphill to a tall tower. I wait for lifts, unlock doors, and move things around. I read a little, write a little, and take a break to eat. I pack up my gear. I...
August 2011
16 posts
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Remote, Automatic Backups using rsync, ssh and...
What you want to do: create and maintain an incremental backup some data on /copy/from/here on a local computer to /copy/to/here on a remote computer, transmitting the backup securely, efficiently and periodically, without any user intervention. How to do it: 1) Test rsync from the command line 2) Enable password-less logins over SSH 3) Tell cron to periodically execute this task Step 1: Test...
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Alex Steffen on The shareable future of cities →
He mentions this remarkable graph or energy consumption on transport vs population density:
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NPR books' list of top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy →
The Lord of the Rings is an undeserving #1, above Slaughterhouse Five, 1984, The Foundation Trilogy and Watchmen. That said, you really can’t go wrong with any of the first 20 on the list.
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Jonathan's Card →
An experiment in real-world honesty: download this card and get a coffee at Starbucks for free. If you want to be a decent human being, reload whenever you want to.
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There and Back Again: A modern map of Middle Earth →
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How to explain to a 5-year old why air is... →
The answer is more subtle than you probably imagine.
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Mr. Moritz and the Time Machine →
From the same guy who did How I Came to Work at the Wendy’s.
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Facebook buys Push Pop Press →
Bad news for those of us waiting for fantastic “books” from PPP. Good news for Facebook, apparently.
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How I Came to Work at the Wendy's →
So good. The most powerful and beautiful thing you will read today.
July 2011
17 posts
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Alexandre Buisse's 10 ways to improve your... →
Repeat after me: content trumps technical quality. Always. We have to work in some of the most hostile and dangerous environments on the planet, so it’s ok if the images you get are not quite perfect, as long as the content is there. So stop pixel-peeping and bump that ISO to 12,800 before the sun rises, use that plastic kit lens or even leave your DSLR home and climb with a point and...
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Alan Moore on Anarchism →
The man who wrote Watchmen and V for Vendetta weighs in on Anarchism.
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Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and... →
An excellent TED talk by Geoffrey West on the scaling properties of cities and economies.
We’re on the cusp of an exciting explosion of a new wave of quantitative theories of social structures, that will help demystify fields currently outside the realm of scientific understanding.
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The Key to Developing Mathematical Theories.
To develop a strong conceptual theory grounded in mathematical statements,
1. Explicitly state your assumptions.
2. Construct a simple model based on these assumptions.
3. Show that your system must necessarily exhibit some phenomenon under your assumptions.
4. Finally, build a strong argument that this system is a metaphor for some meaningful construct of reality.
The especially hard parts...
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What do we say to Death? →
So good. Stretched Canvas, $85.
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A Numerical Tour of Signal Processing →
Toolboxes, examples and functions for numerical signal processing. Impressive, especially the sparse deconvolution sections.
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Page One: Banish Multi-Page Articles →
An excellent idea, but only works for these sites:
The New York Times
The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Slate
Wired
Vanity Fair
The New York Observer
Details
Gourmet
A Safari + Chrome extension.
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Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre
I saw this first at a pre-screening. I went there ten minutes early, but the theatre was already packed to capacity, and I rushed to the balcony, where the seats had long since been claimed but there was still space on the aisle. Bundling up my jacket, I could make a little seat, and position my head above the balustrade.
Sitting there reminded me of memories from a fictitious childhood, of...
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A Simple Money-tracking App
The ingredients:
A Google Docs Form asking you how much you spent
Some AppleScript to load the form
A recurring iCal event with a reminder that triggers the AppleScript
So you can build a trigger that loads the Google Docs form every 24 hours (for example) and asks you for how much you spent on X. This is automatically timestamped and saved in a spreadsheet by Google Docs, for your charting...
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Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters. →
A fantastic book.
The themes : The terrible despair of living in India, the fear, the constant, opressing environment.
“In a way, thought Jehangir, the Santa Claus story was like the Famous five books. You knew that none of it was real, but it let you imagine that there was a better world somewhere. You could dream of a place where there was lots to eat, where children could have a...
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Signs
If it’s a yes, then let me know. If it’s not, then tell me so. It’s the not knowing that kills me so: The ever-waiting, restless unease, The maddening delay, the sisyphean checking, For some sign from you.
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John Twelve Hawks' How We Live Now →
This essay by John Twelve Hawks outlines what he thinks of modern media, technology, and how political and social structures are going to evolve.
Once you look beyond surveillance cameras, you can find the Vast Machine everywhere. Infrared devices and x-ray machines can “see” through walls of homes and vehicles. New data systems can instantly evaluate ATM and credit card activity, building a...
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Find all files of type and move them.
find /in/this/folder/ -name '*.extention' -exec mv {} /move/to/folder/ \; This code finds all the files in a folder (recursively) that meet some criteria, and then moves them to a folder
Pictures from Cotopaxi trip online. →
From my trip to Ecuador. Featuring Cotopaxi and other volcanoes.
“Every thing is what it is, and not another thing”
– Bishop Joseph Butler
Happiness
With a terrible clarity, I have realised that the key to happiness is not getting what one wants – it’s often not getting what one wants.
That’s our collective Fat Lady : that’s the thing that keeps us going.