Nelson's Linkblog 2009-08

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Unit testing framework for Google AppEngine. Lets you run tests inside the GAE environment

2009-08-30 appengine • code • python • testing • unittesting

Times Square on New Year's Eve

Are all these comments for real? Sounds hideous.

2009-08-29 crowds • newyearseve • newyork • timessquare

Another Time Machine for Windows program, looks promising

2009-08-29 backup • disk • shadowcopy • software • timemachine • windows

"Screw Google" meetings

Microsoft's lobbying efforts in DC

2009-08-28 antitrust • google • legal • microsoft • politics

Poodle sculptures

Dogs freakily trimmed and dyed

2009-08-28 dogs • poodles • stupid • via:metafilter

Champions Online comments

Nice roundup of thoughts

2009-08-28 championsonline • cryptic • games • mmos • superheroes

Yelp easter egg

Augmented reality view hidden in the iPhone app

2009-08-28 augmentedreality • easteregg • iphone • yelp

App Engine data modelling

Argument for massive denormalization so things work fast in Google AppEngine

2009-08-27 appengine • bigtable • database • gae • google • scalability

GAE: query restrictions

Details of what kinds of limitations Google App Engine places on queries

2009-08-27 appengine • databases • gae • google • gql • queries • software • sql

Very small boot disk that lets you load many operating systems over a network

2009-08-27 boot • internet • linux • network • software

More EBANK problems

Eve Online's big player run bank is insolvent. 2x the liabilities as assets.

2009-08-26 banking • ebank • eve • eveonline • games • mmos

OpenStreetMap renderer packaged as a plug-and-play Amazon EC2 instance

2009-08-26 amazon • cartography • ec2 • maps • openstreetmap • osm

Alternative to cygwin for Unix on Windows. MinGW gives Posix emulation with a minimum of changes to Windows, MSYS gives a shell environment

2009-08-25 cygwin • mingw • msys • posix • software • unix • windows

Scotch ostrich egg

2009-08-24 egg • eggs • food • fried • scotchegg

Photo software: combine images at different focus depths to make one super-focus image

2009-08-23 depthoffield • dof • focus • opensource • photography • software • stacking

Time Machine for Windows

2009-08-23 archive • backup • timemachine • versioning • windows

Reasonable SMART monitoring for Windows. No idea why this isn't built in by default.

2009-08-22 harddrive • smart • windows

SF street food festival

Looks interesting

2009-08-21 food • sanfrancisco • streetfood • via:andy

Share code via a website; unlike pastebin, this one runs the code too

2009-08-20 pastebin • software • via:waxy

Altternative to Teamspeak or Ventrilo for group voice chat

2009-08-20 chat • games • software • speex • teamspeak • ventrilo • voice

Czech travel tips

Nice set of blog posts

2009-08-19 czech • europe • tourism • travel

Xbox 360: 54% fail

Over half of the Xboxes sold broke. What a design flaw!

2009-08-17 consumer • failure • rrod • xbox • xbox360

Kind of Bloop commentary

Nice background on how the project happened

2009-08-17 chiptunes • kickstarter • milesdavis • music • scene • via:waxy

Eve Online developers banned a bunch of accounts doing real money trade. Great analysis of the aftermath.

2009-08-17 economics • eve • eveonline • games • mmos • rmt

US religious geography

Great series of maps showing religious distribution in the US

2009-08-17 america • demographics • religion • unitedstates

Photographer catches Usain Bolt

How do you photograph the fastest man?

2009-08-17 bolt • photography • running • usainbolt • via:metafilter

Blog + social media service for people who are in serious medical care. What a humane service.

2009-08-17 blog • hospital • illness • medicine • web2.0 • weblogs

Andy's chiptune project covering Miles Davis is released! Samples online now, available to the public soon

2009-08-17 chiptunes • kickstarter • milesdavis • music • scene • via:waxy

You put your video games in my Twitter!

2009-08-17 eve • eveonline • games • mmorpg • twitter

Facebook land rush

Detailed engineering description of how they handled the name registration product

2009-08-16 engineering • facebook • memcache • scalability • software

Stormtroopin' in the Rain

2009-08-15 genekelly • photo • photoshop • singinintherain • starwars • stormtrooper

Chromium in Eve Online

Interesting; popular MMO game will be embedding Google Chrome via the Awesomium library

2009-08-15 browser • chrome • eve • eveonline • games • mmo • webkit

flot Javascript charting

Basic library for doing charts in Javascript; works in all browsers

2009-08-15 charting • data • graphs • javascript • jquery • plotting • programming

Fallout 3 mod scene

Nice overview of how strong the Fallout 3 mods are

2009-08-14 fallout • games • mods • modscene

Your world of text

Weird browser collaboration/game thing; infinitely scrollable text fiel

2009-08-14 games • text • via:metafilter • web2.0

Shoplifter shakedown

This is nuts; if someone's busted for shoplifting the store can demand a "fine" in lieu of involving the authorities.

2009-08-14 civilrights • law • shoplifting

Google Chrome has its own vector graphics library

2009-08-13 android • cairo • graphics • mobile • svg • vector • webkit

No flight privacy

US government is getting a list of names of everyone who flies

2009-08-13 government • privacy

List with pictures of all the cursors available in CSS

2009-08-13 css • cursors • javascript • webprogramming

Simple solution to enable paste-as-text in Windows

2009-08-11 paste • systrack • text • utility • windows

Seen this idea before, but these are really well done

2009-08-11 albums • funny • music • photography

Eve RMT economics

Details of the trade in PLEXes in Eve Online, essentially a proxy for buying in-game currency

2009-08-11 economics • eve • eveonline • mmos

Choose your own Adventure analysis

Great flowchart of one of the old kid's books. Worth viewing the PDF. The structure is quite complex and rewards multiple visits.

2009-08-11 books • chooseyourownadventure • cyoa • games • infovis • via:waxy • visualization

Hitler learns of FriendFeed buyout

A lot of FriendFeed users seem to be pissed; good parody

2009-08-11 facebook • friendfeed • funny • hitler • parody

Virtual keyboards

Detailed analysis of iPhone vs. Android's virtual keyboards

2009-08-11 android • hci • interface • iphone • keyboard • typing • usability

Doug Cutting to Cloudera

Doug's one of the smartest systems engineers out there

2009-08-10 cloud • cloudera • hadoop • lucene • nutch • yahoo

Sorting big data in Python

Nicely annotated example of how to do something simple, well

2009-08-10 algorithm • generators • python

non-English programming languages

Most programming languages use English keywords ("for", "if", "return", etc.)

2009-08-10 languages • programming • software

Facebook buys Friendfeed

2009-08-10 business • facebook • friendfeed • twitter

Atlantica Online microtransactions

Nice description of how this new game finance model works in AO

2009-08-10 economics • games • micropayments • microtransactions • mmos

Men at their most masculine

Interesting photo project (Note: some photos are nudes)

2009-08-10 craigslist • gay • masculinity • men • nsfw • nude • photography • portraits

Plane collision photo

Amazing photo of the mid air collision

2009-08-10 accident • airplane • aviation • helicopter • newyork

tr.im shutting down

First big URL shortener to go away; what happens to the links?

2009-08-09 nambu • shortener • shutdown • tinyurl • url

Visible Minifig

What's inside a Lego man?

2009-08-09 anatomy • funny • legos

Steam indie games sale

These are two great collections of indie games.

2009-08-09 braid • darwinia • games • steam

George Sodini online

more Internet traces from the killer

2009-08-07 google • killer • murder • sodini

Finding my goddess

Painfully earnest personal ad

2009-08-07 batshitinsane • dating • personalads • via:mike

Demolition City

Great little Flash game

2009-08-07 boom • games • physics • via:metafilter

Web app that tries to find all the blog posts you've commented on everywhere on the Internet

2009-08-07 blog • comments • discussion • weblog

Great detailed interview with the show's creator

2009-08-06 madmen • matthewweiner • television • tv

Apparently not a spoof: robots equipped with weapons to take down humans. Love the font choice.

2009-08-06 robots • taser • weapons

Blogged because *some* people I know who live in the Bay Area don't know who he is. Ahem.

2009-08-06 california • crazy • history • sanfrancisco

MacOS security fixes

Must remember to trot this list out next time someone tries to claim Macs are inherently more secure. All software has bugs.

2009-08-06 macintosh • macos • osx • security

Gym murderer diary

George Sodini had an online diary, discusses his "Exit Plan" months before murder. Offline now, here's a copy.

2009-08-05 blog • blogging • diary • georgesodini • murder

Paris street art walk

Good looking guide to a nice Paris walking tour

2009-08-04 graffiti • l'atlas • menager • paris • spaceinvader • streetart

Crushing despair of unemployment

Heartbreaking story of a family down on their luck

2009-08-04 economy • unemployment

SF sunrise chart

very simple to read chart of sunrise/sunset times, along with position of sun in the sky

2009-08-04 almanac • astronomy • calculator • sanfrancisco • solar • sun

Contortionist folding bike

The video is worth watching

2009-08-04 bicycle • bike • commuter • engineering • folding

Flip Flop Fly Ball

Great collection of sports infographics

2009-08-04 baseball • infographics • infovis • sports • via:waxy

Texas political campaign's website was keyword stuffed

2009-08-04 badtech • google • politics • seo • texas

Same-sex couples stats

2006 survey of census data, etc estimating the number of gays and lesbians in various places in the US

2009-08-04 census • civilrights • gay

Auto-Tune the News #7

Bring the funny!

2009-08-03 autotune • autotunethenews • parody

This looks to be the best iPhone-friendly system for tracking a wine cellar

2009-08-03 database • drink • iphone • wine • winecellar

OO in Javascript

Simple explanation of how prototypes work

2009-08-03 coding • javascript • oo • programming • prototypes

Warhammer's problems

Thoughtful article on a few fundamental game design flaws in Warhammer that sabotage an otherwise great game

2009-08-03 daoc • gamedesign • games • mmos • mythic • war • warcraft • warhammer

More on Curse hack

Straight from the Curse site

2009-08-03 badtech • curse • flash • hack • security

Curse Gaming hacked

That Adobe Flash vulnerability is real, and someone targeted Warcraft accounts with it. Nice.

2009-08-03 adobe • badtech • flash • hack • warcraft

Python Unladen Swallow

Google-financed open source project to make a faster CPython VM. The document is well written, also a rare public example of Google design doc format

2009-08-03 design • google • jit • opensource • optimization • python • software

How people spend the day

Nice visualization

2009-08-02 activity • graphics • infovis • people • statistics

appreciation of Paris' odd TV dinner stores

2009-08-01 food • france • frozenmeals • paris • picard • tvdinners