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 • testing • unittesting • python • code

Times Square on New Year's Eve

Are all these comments for real? Sounds hideous.

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

Another Time Machine for Windows program, looks promising

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

"Screw Google" meetings

Microsoft's lobbying efforts in DC

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

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 games • championsonline • mmos • superheroes • cryptic

Yelp easter egg

Augmented reality view hidden in the iPhone app

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

App Engine data modelling

Argument for massive denormalization so things work fast in Google AppEngine

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

GAE: query restrictions

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

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

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

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

More EBANK problems

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

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

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

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

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 mingw • msys • cygwin • unix • posix • windows • software

Scotch ostrich egg

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

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

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

Time Machine for Windows

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

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

2009-08-22 windows • smart • harddrive

SF street food festival

Looks interesting

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

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

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

Altternative to Teamspeak or Ventrilo for group voice chat

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

Czech travel tips

Nice set of blog posts

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

Xbox 360: 54% fail

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

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

Kind of Bloop commentary

Nice background on how the project happened

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

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

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

US religious geography

Great series of maps showing religious distribution in the US

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

Photographer catches Usain Bolt

How do you photograph the fastest man?

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

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

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

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

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

You put your video games in my Twitter!

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

Facebook land rush

Detailed engineering description of how they handled the name registration product

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

Stormtroopin' in the Rain

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

Chromium in Eve Online

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

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

flot Javascript charting

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

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

Fallout 3 mod scene

Nice overview of how strong the Fallout 3 mods are

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

Your world of text

Weird browser collaboration/game thing; infinitely scrollable text fiel

2009-08-14 via:metafilter • games • text • 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 law • shoplifting • civilrights

Google Chrome has its own vector graphics library

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

No flight privacy

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

2009-08-13 privacy • government

List with pictures of all the cursors available in CSS

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

Simple solution to enable paste-as-text in Windows

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

Seen this idea before, but these are really well done

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

Eve RMT economics

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

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

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 via:waxy • games • infovis • books • visualization • cyoa • chooseyourownadventure

Hitler learns of FriendFeed buyout

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

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

Virtual keyboards

Detailed analysis of iPhone vs. Android's virtual keyboards

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

Doug Cutting to Cloudera

Doug's one of the smartest systems engineers out there

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

Sorting big data in Python

Nicely annotated example of how to do something simple, well

2009-08-10 python • algorithm • generators

non-English programming languages

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

2009-08-10 programming • software • languages

Facebook buys Friendfeed

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

Atlantica Online microtransactions

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

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

Men at their most masculine

Interesting photo project (Note: some photos are nudes)

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

Plane collision photo

Amazing photo of the mid air collision

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

tr.im shutting down

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

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

Visible Minifig

What's inside a Lego man?

2009-08-09 legos • anatomy • funny

Steam indie games sale

These are two great collections of indie games.

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

George Sodini online

more Internet traces from the killer

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

Finding my goddess

Painfully earnest personal ad

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

Demolition City

Great little Flash game

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

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

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

Great detailed interview with the show's creator

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

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 sanfrancisco • california • crazy • history

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 security • macos • macintosh • osx

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 murder • georgesodini • blog • blogging • diary

Paris street art walk

Good looking guide to a nice Paris walking tour

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

Crushing despair of unemployment

Heartbreaking story of a family down on their luck

2009-08-04 unemployment • economy

SF sunrise chart

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

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

Contortionist folding bike

The video is worth watching

2009-08-04 bike • folding • commuter • bicycle • engineering • for:kra

Flip Flop Fly Ball

Great collection of sports infographics

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

Texas political campaign's website was keyword stuffed

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

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 • gay • civilrights

Auto-Tune the News #7

Bring the funny!

2009-08-03 parody • autotune • autotunethenews

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

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

OO in Javascript

Simple explanation of how prototypes work

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

Warhammer's problems

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

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

More on Curse hack

Straight from the Curse site

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

Curse Gaming hacked

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

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

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 google • design • python • optimization • JIT • software • opensource

How people spend the day

Nice visualization

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

appreciation of Paris' odd TV dinner stores

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