Not like the spitting up green pea soup exorcism but
Exercism.io, one of many great resources for
learning programming languages by solving actual problems. Similar to
Ruby Koans, you are given a programming problem
to solve and a set of unit tests. Your challenge is to make all the
tests pass by writing code (ala
TDD). As you
write your code and run your tests you may be given hints leading
towards a solution or you may have to just figure it out on your own.
Once all your tests are passing, you publish your code to the Exercism
site where others can review and you can see other people's solutions
for the same problems. I've learned more by reviewing other people's
code than all the books and blog posts I've read.
Nǐ hǎo 你好! Permanently on my desk, and everywhere I go is an
iPad/iPhone app called Pleco, which has my custom flash cards that I use
to quiz myself about 300 Chinese (Mandarin) characters. I’m getting
pretty good with the help of a weekly instructor found via Craigslist,
daily walks through Chinatown in NYC, and a website called Memrise. In
less than a month I’ve been able to specifically translate (a lot of)
the data sheets for products I’m sampling/purchasing for my job at
Adafruit Industries, and for fun/downtime I’m translating some of the
Chinese graffiti in Blade Runner (I always wanted to know what they
said).
A very interesting story of the origins of the BLINK tag.
The Origins of the <Blink> Tag
I am widely credited as the inventor of the tag. For those of you who
are relatively new to the Web, the tag is an HTML command that causes
text to blink, and many, many people find its behavior to be extremely
annoying. I won't deny the invention, but there is a bit more to the
story than is widely known.
| Official Google Blog: Holiday templates to keep you
organized
| The holidays are upon us, and theres much to do: Gifts to be wrapped,
lights to be strung, candles to be lit, and a long list of tasks at
the home and the office. A little creativity can come in handy at this
time of year. You can save time and money with the Google Docs
template gallery for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Whether youre a small business owner or the chief holiday organizer,
the gallery includes a few special templates designed to help you
spread a little holiday cheer. Here are a few tips to help you get
everything done on time
| Lessons Learned: Mac mini dual monitors using
DualHead2Go
| When we first set up the office here in NYC, we made an early decision
to go with Apple products for development. Now don't get me wrong, I
love Apple, indeed I am a recent inductee into the Apple Fan Club.
However, I have noticed a few... insufficiencies with the platform,
many of which have little to do with the company itself. For example,
the lack of a good time management system (apologies to iBiz).
| perl.com: Hidden Treasures of the Perl
Core
| The Perl Core comes with a lot of little modules to help you get
thejob done. Many of these modules are not well-known. Even some of
the well-known modules have some nice features that are often
overlooked. In this article, we'll dive into many of these hidden
treasures of the Perl Core.
| Chris Hanson - launchd: Better than sliced
bread
| Simply put, launchd is what makes it easy to get tasks launched
on-demand on Mac OS X 10.4 and later. It obviates lots of different
archaic Unix infrastructure — init.d, cron, inetd — in favor of a
single self-consistent and easy to use mechanism. Dave Zarzycki’s post
Where to begin? describes the
launchd design philosophy in some depth.
Processes launched at startup on Mac OS X are managed by launchd.
There’s no careful balancing of init.d or SystemStarter scripts on
modern releases of the operating system. Instead, launchd jobs have
property list entries in the LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons directories
in the system and local domains. Some specify that launchd should keep
them alive indefinitely, others simply provide conditions under which
they should be launched.
| Using Rsync and SSH by Try
Johnson of troy.jdmz.net
| I like to backup some logging, mail, and configuration information
sometimes on hosts across the network and Internet, and here is a way
I have found to do it. You'll need these packages installed:
| * rsync
| * openssh
| * cron (or vixie-cron)
| Please note these instructions may be specific to Red Hat Linux
versions 7.3, 9, and Fedora Core 3, but I hope they won't be too hard
to adapt to almost any *NIX type OS. The man pages for 'ssh' and
'rsync' should be helpful to you if you need to change some things
(use the "man ssh" and "man rsync" commands).
| First, I'll define some variables. In my explanation, I will be
synchronizing files (copying only new or changed files) one way, and I
will be starting this process from the host I want to copy things to.
In other words, I will be syncing files from /remote/dir/ on
remotehost, as remoteuser, to /this/dir/ on thishost, as thisuser.
| I want to make sure that 'rsync' over 'ssh' works at all before I
begin to automate the process, so I test it first as thisuser:
| $ rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir /this/dir/
| and type in remoteuser@remotehost's password when prompted. I do
need to make sure that remoteuser has read permissions to /remote/dir/
on remotehost, and that thisuser has write permissions to /this/dir/
on thishost. Also, 'rsync' and 'ssh' should be in thisuser's path
(use "which ssh" and "which rsync"), 'rsync' should be in
remoteuser's path, and 'sshd' should be running on remotehost.
| As you already know, the RPM database contains a list of all installed
RPM packages on your system. You can query this database to get info
of the packages on your Linux system. To query a single package, you
use the -q option. For example, to query a package whose name is
"software":
| # rpm -q software
| Microsuck | Microsofts Really Hidden
Files
| There are folders on your computer that Microsoft has tried hard to
keep secret. Within these folders you will find two major things:
Microsoft Internet Explorer has not been clearing your browsing
history after you have instructed it to do so, and Microsofts Outlook
Express has not been deleting your e-mail correspondence after youve
erased them from your Deleted Items bin. This also includes all
incoming and outgoing file attachments. And believe me, thats not even
the half of it.
| Please backup your hard drive now… twice at
goodCRIMETHINK
| There is a tightness in my chest, and I am crying right now. I have
just suffered a catastrophic data loss for the second time in my life.
Fool me once, shame on, shame on, fool me can’t get fooled again, or
something like that.
In college, a freak transformer explosion and subsequent power surge
killed my hard drive. From that point on, I swore to always back up my
data, and mostly I did just that. As of mid this summer, I had a
ridiculous mirrored RAID drive setup with external SATA drives and all
sorts of doohickies. I had about 1 terabyte of data backed up locally
and had started to upload it offsite to a service called Mozy. But then
I started selling off my desktop in preparation for my move from Boston
to NYC. I purchased a LaCie 1TB Big Disk and put all my media files and
documents from my “Atlas” drive on it. That drive literally held my
world on its shoulders.
| Official Google Blog: Controlling how search engines access and index
your
website
| I'm often asked about how Google and search engines work. One key
question is: how does Google know what parts of a website the site
owner wants to have show up in search results? Can publishers specify
that some parts of the site should be private and non-searchable? The
good news is that those who publish on the web have a lot of control
over which pages should appear in search results.
| Official Google Blog: Robots Exclusion Protocol: now with even more
flexibility
| This is the third and last in my series of blog posts about the Robots
Exclusion Protocol (REP). In the first post, I introduced robots.txt
and the robots META tags, giving an overview of when to use them. In
the second post, I shared some examples of what you can do with the
REP. Today, I'll introduce two new features that we have recently
added to the protocol.
| Neh="Im hungry"
| Owh="Im sleepy"
| Heh="Im experiencing discomfort"
| Eair="I have lower gas"
| Eh="I need to burp"
Those "words" are actually sound reflexes, Priscilla says. "Babies
all around the world have the same reflexes, and they therefore make the
same sounds," she says. If parents dont respond to those reflexes,
Priscilla says the baby will eventually stop using them.
Adobe Illustrator CS2 crashes on an Intel Mac Pro running Mac OS 10.4.8
when a designer tries to use a tool on the pathfinder palette. This only
happens when a circular path is involved. For example you want to Unite
a round/circular path and a square path. Yo highlight both paths and
select Unite from the Pathfinder palette. The program will crash.
Java Studio Creator is an easy-to-use visual tool for developing Web
applications with Java. Designed for the corporate developer who needs
to be productive and doesnt have the time to learn the details of Java
technologies, the product combines the Java integrated development
environment IDE with a rapid visual designer, a smart code editor,
synchronized editing, and easy deployment resulting in rapid iterative
development of Web applications and Portlets.
The best type of software for productivity is personal information
manager (PIM). They are softwares which help you oraganising your
personal information, such as contacts, calendars, emails, notes etc. To
give you choices, find out what are available on the Internet and fits
you, Listible has a huge list (over 160) of PIMs. There are Windows &
Mac based software; web based, and all of them are free:
One of the biggest advantages of Mac OS X's UNIX heritage is the huge
range of open source scripting languages available. Scripting languages
are often the ideal tool if you want to manipulate text, manage jobs, or
link together disparate components without resorting to a compiled
language like C or Objective-C. Scripting languages are a great tool for
system administrators, application developers, and pretty much any user
who needs to perform complex or repetitive tasks, because they were
invented to solve these types of problems more quickly than can be done
with general-purpose languages.
Someone on IRC pointed me to this CSS generator, and the number of
options and output are impressive. The ability to have verbose comments
in the CSS is a nice way to learn what browser hacks are being
implemented (and gives you an easy way to pull them out if you like). I
can take no credit for this tool, so props to the appropriate party...
read
more | digg story \<http://digg.com/design/Handy_CSS_layout_generator_for_web_developers\>__
One of the biggest issues involved with becoming a web publisher is the
question of hosting. With an internet clogged with false hosting review
sites, hosting companies trying to rip you off, and hosting companies
run by 14 year olds, the majority of web publishers are at the mercy of
random chance when it comes to finding a quality host. To solve this
huge problem and to grant freedom to all, we have come up with 75
extremely specific steps that will get you up and running with a *nix
box (running FreeBSD), along with the most recent versions of Apache,
Perl, PHP, and MySQL.
So you bought a new PC for yourself or a relative during the holidays.
There was the initial excitement about its speed and the nice screen
%u2013 and then it came time to actually get it running. Which meant
embarking on some real work -%u2013 downloading a browser, a couple of
multimedia players, a PDF reader, a toolbar, and maybe something for
voice and instant messaging. Don%u2019t forget the anti-spyware and
anti-virus apps %u2013 you%u2019ve got to have those. Hours, maybe even
days, go by. How many wizards have you clicked through, not to mention
license agreements and preference pickers? And then you have to ask: did
I get everything? And how am I going to keep all of this up to date?
This was the experience both Sergey and Larry had a year ago. And
they%u2019re computer guys, after all. Which led them to ask more of us
to make it easier for everyone. So we created the Google Pack -- a
one-stop software package that helps you discover, install, and maintain
a wide range of essential PC programs. It%u2019s yours today %u2013 and
it%u2019s something we hope you find to be painless, easy, and even fun
(if computer setup can ever be called that). And it%u2019s free.
| MAKE: Blog: HOW TO make Enhanced Podcasts (images, links and more
with
audio)
| Apple's new iTunes 4.9, iPod color, allows you to view (and listen
to) "enhanced podcasts" these are audio files that can have
slideshows, URLs and some cool features we have discovered. Apple's
included documents and a Wiki was all I needed to make our MAKE
enhanced podcasts, but I also wrote a how-to. Here's how to get, make
and all you need to know about enhanced podcasts! As a bonus, we put
together some fun ideas we think many might use...
| MAKE: Blog: MAKE ebooks for your iPod
guide!
| There’s a somewhat little know and often-unused function of iPod
called "Notes" which can actually be quite handy for storing and
reading text, creating a locked "kiosk mode", quizzes, games as well
a full-length ebooks. The Notes reader is located in Menu > Extras >
Notes. Only the more recent 3G and 4G iPods, including the iPod photo
and iPod mini both have the iPod Notes application. Here’s our how-to
on making them!
| Google Blog:
Webmaster-friendly
| We're undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will
either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making
the web better for webmasters and users alike. It's a beta
"ecosystem" that may help webmasters with two current challenges:
keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates,
and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index.
Initially, we plan to use the URL information webmasters supply to
further improve the coverage and freshness of our index. Over time that
will lead to our doing an even better job of delivering more search
results from more websites.
| ThanksDave
Taylor
| In a bit of a break from business analysis, I thought it would be fun
to post one of my more technical articles to re-establish my "geek
cred", if you will. This article details the trials and tribulations
of turning a perfectly good Apple PowerBook into a tri-boot system
with Mac OS X, Yellow Dog Linux and Ubuntu Linux. Mac OS X is built of
two components, Darwin, the BSD-based Unix underpinnings, and Aqua,
the beautiful graphical user interface we Mac heads have all grown to
love. However, there are other operating systems and other work
environments that can be installed on an Apple system, based on
popular open source Linux applications. If you’re looking for
Intel-based versions of Linux,... In a bit of a break from business
analysis, I thought it would be fun to post one of my more technical
articles to re-establish my "geek cred", if you will. This article
details the trials and tribulations of turning a perfectly good Apple
PowerBook into a tri-boot system with Mac OS X, Yellow Dog Linux and
Ubuntu Linux.
| Affected Software
| Mac OS X 10.3 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003)
| Mac OS X Server 10.3 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003)
| Mac OS X 10.2 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003)
| Mac OS X Server 10.2 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003)
| Probably earlier versions of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server
| Possibly developer seeded copies of future versions of Mac OS X
Homemade Dot-Mac with OS Xby Alan Graham08/09/2002 So, still fuming
about the .Mac annual fee? The question of whether .Mac is worth $100
is a personal matter, but one of the greatest ironies of this situation
is that Mac OS X is packed full of features that make many aspects of
.Mac unnecessary.
| Homemade Dot-Mac with OS X, Part 2
| by Alan Graham
| 09/20/2002
Jaguar has made significant improvements to aspects of Mac OS X. These
features make setting up a home Web server easier and more powerful than
ever, and I'll touch on some of them while digging deeper into the
homemade Dot-Mac project.
| July 17, 2003 - 08:15 EDT
| IDG World Expo and TrendWatch Graphic Arts today
announced
results of their Spring 2003 study of the creative markets during a
presentation at Macworld CreativePro Expo. A few highlights of the
study show that 82% of respondents use the Mac OS as their primary
system, 17% have upgraded to Mac OS X, while only 22% said they use a
Mac as their primary system at Internet design and development firms.
| Mac OS X Panther is set to roar onto the scene later this year, and
itís something you donít want to miss. No matter how you use your Mac,
Panther makes better, sporting improvements from head to paws. Learn
more about the future today in this Sneak Preview, and stay tuned for
more news of the future.
| Link
|
| As a super-modern operating system, Mac OS X already combines the
power and stability of Unix with the simplicity and elegance of the
Macintosh. Its gorgeous user interface, Aqua, brings your desktop to
life with expressive icons, vibrant color and fluid motion.
Cutting-edge graphics technologies offer capabilities beyond anything
ever seen in a desktop operating system. At the foundation of Mac OS X
lies an industrial-strength, Unix-based core operating system, called
Darwin, that delivers unprecedented stability and performance. And
only with Mac OS X can you run Microsoft Office, Quark XPress and
Adobe Photoshop, browse a Windows network and use Unix commands ó at
the same time.