Leonard Nimoy is fabulous (via fuckyeahleonardnimoy) (Clint Ecker (clintology))

Leonard Nimoy is fabulous
(via fuckyeahleonardnimoy)

Leonard Nimoy is fabulous
(via fuckyeahleonardnimoy)
This is a collection of patterns which we have found occuring commonly with Django. All of these either make collaboration easier, coding simpler or code more maintainable. None of them are design patterns in the sense of GoF design patterns. We call them design patterns as none other seem closer or more convinient. These are guidelines, which need to be overriden (very commonly, in some cases). Use your judgement when using them. As PEP8 says, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
. . . is when you get phone calls at work from pump-and-dump operators. The guy on the phone just now told me he was from Addison Capital Management’s New Delhi office. This outfit has called me a few times in the past, usually to pitch some wealth management deal (offshore accounts to shelter my vast wealth from tax authorities or something).
Today the deal was on a company called EM International, which is about to announce a contract with JC Penney to produce furniture, or something. “It’s trading at $4.00 now. I won’t tell you it will go up to $10.00, but I can say that it will be trading at $6.25 within three or four months,” goes the guy. This is a deal to show me just what ACM can do for me and make me a loyal client.
A quick bit of Googling for EM International + JC Penney turns up this message board discussion in which two people report the very same EMIE/JC Penney story. Long story short, maybe I should have tried to keep the guy on the phone and get more info on the outfit to pass on to the authorities, rather than say “mm hmm, maybe not” and hang up on him.
Anyway, the most important thing to take away from all this is: Vast wealth! I gots me some of it, and they knows about it, yes they does.
Posted in: general
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Posted in: tweets , uncategorizedAs Kirsty, Travis and I were parking at Costco after going to lunch today, a rather evil woman in an old white Celica cut us off and stole our parking spot right in front of us.
So, as we walked in, I split off from the group and placed an empty water bottle on the hood of her car.
Then, as we walked out, I placed an empty Costco-sized box of laundry detergent on the hood of her car.
Do you think she noticed?
Posted in: news
A really neat technique for providing embedded, video to almost every browser (including MobileSafari) using HTML5 when appropriate. No browser sniffing, no JavaScript required. The only issue I see is that the amount of code to provide all of this is bordering on unwieldy and definitely is ugly. Otherwise, its a brilliant solution to what is quickly becoming a huge headache:
Video for Everybody is very simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 element which offers native playback in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3 & 4. Native OGG video playback in Firefox 3.5 (you get MPEG4 / H.264 playback in Safari).
No plugins to install. The video is played by the browser itself. It loads quickly and doesn’t threaten to crash your browser. In other browsers that do not support , it falls back to Adobe Flash. You can host locally or embed any Flash file, such as a YouTube video.
Hat tip to John Siracusa for pointing it out to me.
June 30, 2009
June 30, 2009
June 25, 2009
I read an article last night by Michael Nielsen entitled "Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?" It was probably one of the best articles I've read in at least a month. This morning I woke up earlier than expected, and I decided to check out the author's background, and suddenly it made sense that I was impressed with the content. Fortunately (unfortunately?) he linked to a bunch of other stuff he's written, and I found myself popping open new browser tabs as though I were browsing Wikipedia.
This led to a great deal of copying and pasting. 34, two-column, 10pt, 4×0.5" margin pages later, I have a whole pile of reading material. (I read offline because my attention span whilst on the computer isn't what it needs to be for longer, denser pieces.) I've worked my way through a great deal of it, and I find myself wishing I had stuck with Computer Science a while longer.
In any event, here's the list. Enjoy.
The last two aren't written by Nielsen, but they're worth reading, especially if you're interested in open science.
Michael Jackson was probably a complex character, just like every single one of us is probably a complex character. He probably did a lot of good things (would being successful at making music be considered a good thing?) and he probably did a lot of wrong things as well. A number of years ago, I got the distinct impression that we all wanted Michael Jackson to go away. The pejorative “Wacko Jacko” gained traction and he was widely maligned by entertainers, reporters, and regular folks. I’m not saying anything new.
Well, we got our wish. He went away. In his death, he’s being celebrated and he should be. Redemption is part of the human experience. I don’t want to take away from the rituals we perform when one passes away, no matter how far from our dailies lives they exist. It just all seems so duplicitous. The very voices and faces that ridiculed the person for who he was now celebrate his life or mourn his passing. I’m having a hard time believing that it’s anything but business for them. Just as they capitalized on his eccentricities and transgressing of our social mores, they’re capitalizing on his death. Part of me recognizes that this part of business. The reality is that one of the purposes of business (if not THE business) is to meet demand and demand comes from us.
So, do we mourn out of pure loss or do we mourn as an act of collective guilt? It was our prurience that brought Michael Jackson’s behavior to the forefront so we could flog him with our words and our brows. I feel that he was, in many ways, one of our modern scapegoats.
My own feelings on Mr. Jackson? I didn’t know him enough to like or hate him. I didn’t like the character Michael Jackson that the media showed me but we all know how that is. I really wanted the stories to go away but really, if it wasn’t him, it would be someone else so my complaint was a general one not one with him per se. His business was his business and the business that other people had with them was just that. My life was in no way enriched by reading the latest goings on.
The one thing we should be talking about that we aren’t talking about is our faceless aggregate prurience and our conceit to being this all-knowing eye. I’d like to see people asking if it’s okay to form an opinion on a subject after reading one news article. What about two? Read five to seven paragraphs on a subject and all of a sudden we’re experts. We’re informed. I just don’t think it works like that.
And yes, yes I am quite guilty of thinking that way myself. That’s why it’s worth talking about.

I wanted to make a special breakfast before Steve and Jade flew back to SF, so I grabbed a few things from the Ballard market and mashed it up with the leftover grub from Saturday’s BBQ. Enter: HUEVOS RANCHEROS. WHHEEEEEEEE.
Here’s how I layered these bad boys (from bottom to top):
Fried corn tortilla
Black beans (w/ cumin and Mexican oregano)
Grilled corn (cut off the cob)
Ranchero sauce (tomato / ancho / jalapeno)
Fried eggs
Green onions
Grated monterey Jack cheese
Cilantro
I also had a bowl of crispy mojo pork to pick at too. I also served that with a huge plate of chicken hot wings (thanks Dallas). HAHA. Not the most traditional of breakfast side dishes, but these leftovers aren’t gonna eat themselves AND HEY WE’RE ALL ON VACATION. LOL.
Bfast with friends makes food taste better!
~Spec
Posted in: cooking culture , cuisine , recipes

a 13 year old kid uses a 30-year old Walkman for a few days. Out comes some pretty funny stuff ;)
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down ‘rewind’ and releasing it randomly Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.



Birdfeed has quickly taken the place of all its competitors on the home screen of my iPhone. Birdfeed presents a beautiful, functional representation of Twitter across all aspects of its interface. Where other clients — even the venerable Tweetie — came more quickly to the shelves of the App Store, the time put into polishing Birdfeed really shows.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Buzz also—as of the last time I saw him—has an excellent beard!