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AverageCats- Your cat is average. - http://averagecats.com/#
AverageCats- Your cat is average.
AverageCats- Your cat is average.
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*my* cats eat people food. when they can sneak it. - D0r0th34
fml:mlia :: ichc:averagecats. - ⓞnor
Like 60+% of USA households, I do not have a cat. My lack of cat is average. Or median-ical. Or something. - Larry Hosken
not a cat or dog person yes I said it..........I do love my birds though - VAL D.
ZooBorns: Pile o' Otter Babies - http://www.zooborns.com/zooborn...
ZooBorns: Pile o' Otter Babies
ZooBorns: Pile o' Otter Babies
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You really otter look at these! - Jim Norris
cute! - Henner Zeller
Can't... stand... such cuteness... My eyes are saturating! - Iván Rivera
So Cute! - Kong Yee Peng KMN
cut kids - Xitong Liu
"The Cavern of Doom is resolutely single-threaded, with a spine of near-universally travelled choices seen in the thick arcs moving left to right. Notably there is only a single choice (both in this view and in the entire book) that goes back to an earlier page. This can be seen in the lone arc below the pages moving from right to left. It is either ironic or telling that this linear structure comes from the book written by a talented computer programmer. Perhaps knowing how to deal with the complicated makes you appreciate the simple." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
"In a computer game, ... the program itself can keep a running tally of items you’ve encountered and possibly picked up. In a book this responsibility falls to the reader, and with it an expectation of honesty. To encourage a degree of fair play, the Cavern of Doom engages in a form of entrapment by asking the reader, in the midst of a dicy situation, whether they have a magic item that would clearly save the day. What the book knows and the reader may not is that this item does not even exist." - ⓞnor
I usually read CYOA books straight through, front to back. - Jim Norris
And I keep translating CYOA as "Cover Your Own Ass." - Jim Norris
Their Flash version of the Zork book won't let me do that. (Good thing they didn't adapt UFO 54-40.) One thing this essay doesn't mention is the generally awful quality of the writing in these books. The FAQ at one major gamebook reference site -- gamebooks.org -- answers "What's your favorite gamebook" with "Well, the truth of the matter is that I don't think many gamebooks are all that good". (It goes on to recommend one exception, which I'm now tempted to read. Or play. Whatever it's called.) - ⓞnor
The Pip series was not terrible... I remember it was amusing, at any rate. - Andrew C
Pip series? I just ordered a copy of _Ocean of Lard_. (Also, _Life's Lottery_.) - ⓞnor
(googled) Ah, it's actually the Grailquest series. The player character was called Pip. - Andrew C
Devices - Shiny Devices - http://shinydevices.com/devices
Devices - Shiny Devices
"See those two screws at the bottom of the picture? If you connect those screws to a switch of some kind, and plug the whole thing into the USB port of a computer, the switch will act as a one-key keyboard. This one happens to be an Enter key." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
$33 for a 1 key keyboard? (minus the actual key) - Paul Buchheit
It sure is pretty though - Jesse Stay
surely this could be done more inexpensively with an atmel or pic with usb - joshua schachter
Or the guts from an old mouse. - Ken Sheppardson
This is an elaborate AFD joke by Jacques, right? (Edit: by "joke", I mean I wouldn't be surprised if the description is accurate, but kind of underpromises what it can do.) - Andrew C
Wow, he got shinydevices.com? That's a pretty good domain! Also, this device is way, way prettier than I expected. I'm really impressed by how pretty it is. - niniane
It is kind of pretty. Who is making these? - Paul Buchheit
Paul: When I first read "$33 for a 1 key keyboard? (minus the actual key)", I thought you were talking about an actual Apple product. - Gabe
^^^^ like :) - A.T.
@Gabe :D - Jemm
Having a real "any" key is probably totally worth it. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Dan was kind enough to manufacture the plastic casing pictured. It is indeed prettier than I had expected! - Jacques Frechet
I've been thinking about hacking up a cheap USB keyboard (a la http://www.instructables.com/id... ) for a project. This device looks like it'd be easier, prettier, and possibly smaller, but $33 does seem a bit steep considering the fact that USB keyboards can be found for less than $10, and it sounds like I'd need several of these if I want to control multiple keys. - Laurence Gonsalves
What's the project, OOC? - ⓞnor
I was just thinking to make pedals for modifier keys, particularly shift and maybe also control, possibly starting with piano-style pedals like these: http://www.sweetwater.com/store... - Laurence Gonsalves
How 'bout starting with some USB dictation transcription pedals? - Ken Sheppardson
I hadn't heard of those before. Thanks. From my searches, it looks like they're for "rewind", "play/pause" and "fast-forward". I'm guessing there are special keycodes for those? I could probably remap them to the keys I want with software, but it'd be nice if they could be more "plug-and-play" (so I could move the device between machines without having to set up mappings). Do you know if any of these transcription pedals are configurable through hardware (eg: dip switches)? - Laurence Gonsalves
BTW: I've actually seen a few companies that made exactly what I'm looking for, but they all seem to be discontinued. This page has a bunch of links: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea... - Laurence Gonsalves
Laurence: I'm afraid all I know about them is that they exist. Sorry. - Ken Sheppardson
Laurence: have you seen this? http://www.piengineering.com/custom... - Gabe
...or to cut out a whole lot of work: http://www.piengineering.com/xkeys... - Ken Sheppardson
Those products from piengineering look good. A bit pricey ($119.95 for what is effectively a 3-key keyboard) but they seem to be programmable, and I guess economies of scale work against them. - Laurence Gonsalves
If you keep increasing the pricetag you'll reach the Optimus 3 Mini, the 3-key keyboard with separate LCD screens for each key. $179.95. - Amit Patel
Amit, I think the Optimus 3 uses OLED screens, not LCD. Presumably that's why they're so expensive. - Gabe
The impressive part about those devices seems to be the reprogramming of the device ROM via USB directly from this web page http://shinydevices.com/setting... (check the source) - Thomas Amberg
@robsc are you amused yet? #robsc
oh, dang, I should have posted from here #robsc - Rob Schonberger
I wonder how much do we need to post here in order to make #robsc a "trending topic"? - ana
Well, if their algorithms on figuring out about #robsc, it should be soon. it's trending way up - Rob Schonberger
What do you guys think their trending algorithm is? What are the signals? #robsc - ana
#robsc would look at to start with, a sample of the last minute and compare against other recent data for uni/bi/tri grams for df? - Rob Schonberger
but who knows? They could change every day (and may well). I just want to game the system. #robsc ftw! - Rob Schonberger
I suppose you would also take into account different amounts and different content at different times of day. Is it possible for a topic to trend only at certain times of day? #robsc - ana
#robsc says that you may be right; Whatever it is, it has to react quickly to look good (or does it?) - Rob Schonberger
do you think they care about looking good? or maybe they care more about getting trending topics that look "cool"? #robsc - ana
well, if you selected based on linear growth rate, you'd get some # tag that lots of people use (which is growing with total twitter use). if you selected based on proportional growth rate, you'd get #robsc, which was formerly used by 0 people and is now used by 3. Regardless it's clear they just want to generate something "interesting". - ⓞnor
i think i am too tired to really get into this discussion right now; 'nite #robsc - ana
well, whatever the algorithm is, #robsc isn't trending yet; we should write a script and reverse-engineer their algorithm - ana
I wonder if this is like what SEOs do, in their lairs of evil. - Andrew C
Yes it is exactly what SEOs do in their lairs of evil. #robsc - Daniel Dulitz
In Soviet Russia, #robsc amuses YOU - Daniel Dulitz
Someone was saying that hashtags aren't recognized by Twitter when they're in FF comments, only FF posts. #lairofevil #robsc - Daniel Dulitz
"Google Wave" is trending alright - ana
Uzbl - the uzbl browser. - http://www.uzbl.org/
Uzbl - the uzbl browser.
"…a keyboard controlled (modal vim-like bindings, or with modifier keys) browser based on Webkit. very minimal interface. No unnecessary interface elements. controllable through a FIFO and with external scripts. what is not browsing, is not in uzbl. Things like url changing, loading/saving of bookmarks, saving history,.. are handled through external scripts that you write" - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
Sounds like uzbl : web :: mh : email . - Andrew C
I wonder if anyone still uses mh. - ⓞnor
Gotta be some diehards somewhere. - Andrew C
"...we could do without gtk. But Webkit needs a widget toolkit to create widgets (think javascript popups, html forms etc)" If they really wanted to go all the way, shouldn't each <form> element just turn into a named pipe? - Laurence Gonsalves
Elastic tabstops - a better way to indent and align code - http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic...
Elastic tabstops - a better way to indent and align code
"Each cell ends with a tab character. A column block is a run of uninterrupted vertically adjacent cells. A column block is as wide as the widest piece of text in the cells it contains or a minimum width (plus padding). Text outside column blocks is ignored." The page includes a Java applet demo of a simple editor which uses this concept. This actually looks pretty sweet. - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
You mean, tabs should be 4 spaces? That's okay but did you read this article? - ⓞnor
It would require changes to any editor; I see no reason those changes would be harder (or easier) to make to vi. (The changes are to how tabs are rendered; actual editing is unchanged.) - ⓞnor
Those are good points about time travel, but this could be a relatively incremental improvement that would actually make things a lot better. Not that I'm about to adopt it or anything (as far as I know it is implemented only in gedit), but table-based layout of code fits the way I move code around better than the line-at-a-time reindenting most editors use. Maybe a good intermediate solution would be an editor that works with this model but translates it to a more conventional format on exit. - ⓞnor
I wasn't smart enough to make the demo do anything interesting for me, but what does this do that you can't do with the emacs commands that in/outdent the selected block of text? - j1m
j1m: try making one of the variable names (or types) much longer than it currently is. You'll see the entire next column of stuff shift over to adapt without you having to do anything special. Also, since it's only the rendering that's changing, and not the number of space characters on every affected line (as would be the case if you indented everything with spaces), your revision history will be cleaner: only the line you meant to edit will show up as "changed". - Laurence Gonsalves
What Laurence said -- try editing the "try making this comment a bit longer" text, or the "makeThisFunctionNameLonger()" function in front of it, and watch how things reflow. Or, edit the name of the someDemoCode function and watch the argument list move. Some of these things could be done through fixups and block-move commands, but I think this is quicker and better. - ⓞnor
@Laurence, yeah, the bit about the revision history seems pretty valuable. - j1m
What I want is something that can reflow gracefully to variable column widths, so we don't have to argue about 80 columns vs. 100 vs. whatever all the time. - ⓞnor
This makes sense to me. Neat find. - Jason Wehmhoener
Very interesting idea, seen it a few times before. Sad thing is that it isn't really supported anywhere I can find. I only indent with tabs myself, spaces are evil. I hate having to retab files that have to few/many spaces to be readable. =) - Daniel Bruce
omg i love you. <3 <3 <3 - Will Higgins™
I haven't tried this, but here's a related package for Emacs: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-e... - Amit Patel
The problem is that we still edit code's textual representation instead of structure. I'd be more of a fan of a 2d layout of code. - Jonas S Karlsson
@Jonas: Agreed. - Ihab Awad
The Case for Working With Your Hands - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
The Case for Working With Your Hands - NYTimes.com
"Contrast the experience of being a middle manager. This is a stock figure of ridicule, but the sociologist Robert Jackall spent years inhabiting the world of corporate managers, conducting interviews, and he poignantly describes the “moral maze” they feel trapped in. Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It’s important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can’t back down from an argument that you initially made in... more... - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
In other words, managers become politicians. :) - Ray Cromwell
Not every decision really needs moral conviction behind it, even in an ideal, no-office-politics world. - Andrew C
Planetary gear calling card by phooky - Thingiverse - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2...
Planetary gear calling card by phooky - Thingiverse
Planetary gear calling card by phooky - Thingiverse
"A calling card with working planetary gears. Astound your friends, frustrate your nemisii." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
Do you have nemesii? - Daniel Dulitz
The same dude, who appears to be obsessed with planetary gears in unlikely places, made probably the nerdiest Mother's Day gift ever: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5.... (I'm not sure if I have even a single nemesis, much less plural nemesii, but I'm open to applicants.) - ⓞnor
Wouldn't nemesii be the plural of nemesius? I'm pretty sure the plural of nemesis is nemeses. - Gabe
MakerBot Industries - Robots That Make Things. - http://makerbot.com/#
MakerBot Industries - Robots That Make Things.
MakerBot Industries - Robots That Make Things.
MakerBot Industries - Robots That Make Things.
"Optional Frostruder Kit expands your Maker Bot to extrude frosting in any shape you imagine. Automated cupcake frosting? Yeah, we got that." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
Please don't? [Sorry, I'll give you some slack]. - coldbrew
cool, was going to say, "that reminds me of reprap", but then came across http://blog.reprap.org/2009.... it seems makerbot is kinda like the redhat of reprap - Karl Rosaen
That's a good way to put it. I hope they're equally successful. There are a few interesting models posted on thingiverse -- parametrized lego bricks (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5...), a camera of sorts (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5...), a board game proof of concept (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5...)... - ⓞnor
UFO-02 Detector - http://www.amazon.com/dp...
UFO-02 Detector
Hey, the symbol from "Threshold"! I drifted away from that show by midseason. - Andrew C
From the same supplier: http://www.amazon.com/Images-... - ⓞnor
I will hold out for a radio link to KITT. (and yes, I know about the KITT-voiced GPS.) - Andrew C
The customer reviews are funny though. - Morton Fox
Have you already got a flux capacitor? - Andrew C
"Ok for cleaning teeth, not so great for killing ants" - Lolz! - Ken Morley
The "dead fish" flight control algorithm may not be FAA approved - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
May 12 from e3r - Comment - Share
The Propeller chip: the good, the weird, and the really weird? - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
May 10 from e3r - Comment - Share
It kinda sounds like a faster interpreter would be an easier/better approach than a good, optimized compiler... - Andrew C
Yeah, they discuss a number of runtime models in the forum thread where Catalina was announced: http://forums.parallax.com/forums.... At one point the Catalina author says: "I did indeed look at using LCC to generate bytecodes and then write a bytecode interpreter for the propeller - but I wasn't sure I could fit everything into a single cog (which was one of... more... - ⓞnor
gave me flashbacks from writing i/o controller assembly in college (also for a flying vehicle). - David Vasileff
Not so good vibrations - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
Not so good vibrations
May 9 from e3r - Comment - Share
Invisible Hand Networks, Inc. - Market Data - http://www.invisiblehand.net/index...
Invisible Hand Networks, Inc. - Market Data
Daily average spot bandwidth price at a NYC exchange, 2002 - 2008, down from ~$200 in 2002 to ~$20 (per Mbps-month) in 2008. For comparison, telegeography data shows a substantial (but lesser) drop in prices for transoceanic routes. - ⓞnor
May 2002: http://web.invisiblehand.net/wp... predicts "[Within] 12 months (by mid-2003), Cogent's price for a 100Mbps wholesale circuit will be near $5,000/month ... other providers' prices will probably continue to decline at the historical rate of 30% per year ... In the meantime, buyers should be aware that there is no such thing in the year 2002 as a Mbps for 10 or 30$/month." I think they were wrong about Cogent. - ⓞnor
Mar 2007: http://money.cnn.com/2007... describes Cogent (in Fortune magazine) as if their strategy and surprisingly cheap prices were news. I remember the de-peering events they talked about; some of them created substantial disruptions in Internet traffic. - ⓞnor
Apr 2007: http://www.renesys.com/blog... comments on Cogent de-peering some smaller ISPs in Europe, and discusses their overall strategy. Nothing I've read really explains their anomalous pricing in a satisfactory way. Anyway, I'm done with this curiosity-quest now. - ⓞnor
Cogent released $10/Mbps pricing in 2003 (I probably misremembered what the sales rep told me about 2000). http://www.net99.net/htdocs... I guess availability of $10/Mbps has spread to more data centers and areas of the country since then, though the price hasn't gotten lower. I'm curious how you found the graph, though. Awesome sleuthing! - Sanjeev Singh
I found it with a Google search for [bandwidth prices]. - ⓞnor
So this is your yearly post? - j1m
No, it's just an extended comment on Sanjeev's post. - ⓞnor
i like that graph just as on object. - edythe
Sorry to jump in late but I just stumbled across this. I am the person who wrote that white paper about Cogent and also published that graph every month. I think I was right about Cogent that their pricing was unsustainable. Their price didn't go up from $30 to $50, they went bankrupt instead. Here's a follow-up from 5 years later.... more... - nemo
Wow, fantastic, thanks for the update. - ⓞnor
The art of reduced expectations - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
The art of reduced expectations
What's the collective noun for "annoyance"? - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
What's the collective noun for "annoyance"?
i’z lookin pritty sharp today! - http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009...
i’z lookin pritty sharp today!
lolhedgehogs are always the best - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
Love the expression on its face :) - Hasitha
First crash damage - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
First crash damage
Inscrutable Measurement Unit - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
Inscrutable Measurement Unit
Motors, ESCs, batteries... - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
Motors, ESCs, batteries...
Radio, GPS, attempted liftoff - http://d1n.blogspot.com/2009...
Radio, GPS, attempted liftoff
Nutrimatic Usage Guide - http://nutrimatic.org/usage...
Nutrimatic Usage Guide
"Nutrimatic is a pattern-matching word-search tool designed for puzzle solving and construction, based on a dictionary of words and phrases that commonly occur in Wikipedia, using a regular expression based pattern syntax." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
Great name! - Andrew C
Togelius: Automatic Game Design - http://togelius.blogspot.com/2008...
Togelius: Automatic Game Design
"What we're trying to do is search a space of game rules for rule sets that constitute fun games. This immediately raises two questions: how do you define and search a space of game rules, and how can you measure whether a game is fun?" (via joshua) - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
I wonder if the second question couldn't be more fruitfully answered by quantifying the amount of chaos the rules allow, like what Wolfram did for CAs. - Andrew C
On the other hand, an automated system for tuning rules would certainly be very interesting. I suspect it might need to be built with a lot of special purpose stuff - response times/delays like what people have, intuitive senses of what inertia and gravity do, and so forth, depending on the complexity of the space of rules. - Andrew C
Homemade Pong Watch
"The basic idea - from Buro Vormkrijgers - is genius: each minute the right side scores a point, and each hour the left side scores a point. The effect is that the score is the time." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
want - j1m
A dude at work is trying to build his own version. He thinks he can do it smaller and lighter, mostly because the parts have gotten better. - ⓞnor
Pillar Point Air Force Station tracking station - http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map...
"The AN/FPQ-6 is a Missile Precision Instrumentation Radar (MIPIR) class monopulse tracking radar used to provide position data on aircraft, missiles, space boosters, and orbiting bodies. The site can track in either skin mode or in conjunction with vehicle-borne transponders. The radar's large antenna and high power coherent transmitter make the site's data quality very high." - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
I wonder if virtualglobetrotting's data is available for tools like wikitude to use. They seem to have a lot of touristy landmarks and curiosity objects, which is what you'd want for something like that. - ⓞnor
Daily Kos: State of the Nation - http://dailykos.com/
Daily Kos: State of the Nation
(just for the picture) - ⓞnor from Bookmarklet
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