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links for 2010-02-08

09-Feb-10
  • If, instead, Ed pushes an inconspicuous button on the underside of Sheldon's base, and a jack-in-the-box chicken head springs out of the top and shoots Frickin Laser Beams out of its eyes that disintegrate both the bomb and the jet in the space of five seconds, then Ed Smith (and Sheldon) has become Crazy Awesome.

    In other words, it is because of Ed's quirkiness that he is an effective cast member. He literally would not be as effective (or, indeed, the same character) without the eccentricities. There can't be one without the other.

    (tags: @2file)
  • The Pinball Hall of Fame opened in the Las Vegas, Nevada in January 2006. It is a project of the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club, and it features pinball machines from all eras, including some very rare machines such as Williams' Black Gold, Bally's Pinball Circus and Recreativos Franco's Impacto. It features approximately 400 different pinball games, including some classic video arcade games and other novelty machines of the past and present.
    (tags: @2file)
  • I run Cerberus on a self-signed certificate, and had the same problem with downloading files in IE

    I don't know where to post diff's as the license asks me to do, so I'll just post it here.
    Here's a diff that fixes the problem for me

    Code:

    Index: plugins/cerberusweb.core/classes.php
    ===================================================================
    — plugins/cerberusweb.core/classes.php (revision 792)
    +++ plugins/cerberusweb.core/classes.php (working copy)
    @@ -5215,7 +5215,7 @@
    header("Expires: Mon, 26 Nov 1962 00:00:00 GMT\n");
    header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D,d M YH:i:s") . " GMT\n");
    header("Cache-control: private\n");
    - header("Pragma: no-cache\n");
    + header("Pragma: public\n");
    header("Content-Type: " . $file->mime_type . "\n");
    header("Content-transfer-encoding: binary\n");
    header("Content-Length: " . $file->getFileSize() . "\n");

    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-02-05

06-Feb-10
  • Question 205: To ask the Minister for Finance the names and addresses of all nominees to bodies or agencies under the remit of his Department that were appointed since 26 June 1997, detailing by whom they were appointed; when they were appointed; the amount paid by the Exchequer to each nominee each year from 1997 to 2009 broken down into income, expenses, overtime and any other relevant category; the money paid by his Department each year from 1997 to 2009 to cover expenses or incidentals related to the nominees, such as accommodation, travel and so on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5662/10]
    (tags: @2read)
  • MAR: My teammates were very supportive. Actually, the night that they suspended me, Dale Ellis did exactly what I did in protest. Silent protest. Even Dikembe was like, “He’s been doing this for months and he hasn’t been bothering anybody! Why do you make a big deal out of it?” They respected my decision because they knew me as a person. I’m not trying to cause problems. But hey, I’m going to follow my heart and my conscience. I’m like, if it’s wrong and that’s the way I see it… I can’t sleep! Because it’s on my conscience so much and I need to get this thing off my chest. You want to think that people are able to take some constructive criticism. But if they can’t take it, and it hurts me in the long run in terms of not being able to get a job, I still say, “OK.” It is what it is.
    (tags: @2read)
  • Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!

    Example: http://dummyimage.com/640×480

    (tags: @2file)

links for 2010-02-04

05-Feb-10
  • El Hotel St. Gervasi se encuentra en la zona alta de la ciudad de Barcelona, donde conviven las casas modernistas y los edificios de nueva factura. Su cuidado interiorismo, en el que destacan las pinturas murales de Arts & Claus del hall y el restaurante, denota el alto nivel que el diseño en todas sus vertientes, tiene en esta ciudad.
    (tags: @2search)
  • Sant Gervasi de Cassoles 26, 08022 Barcelona, Spain
    (tags: @2search)
  • Casa de Billy Barcelona is a beautiful guest house in a restored, late 19th century building
    on the most beautiful and important street of Barcelona — Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes
    (tags: @2search)
  • dnsassert

    MD5 (dnsassert-0.04.tar.gz) = d3cd82ef8f93409e22711d80c11d0f0c Released 25th August 2009

    We run a busy set of DNS boxes serving zones for a very informal community. Users regularly move their delegation elsewhere without telling us. To manage the cruft accumulation I wrote dnsassert to check that various DNS records are as expected. In our particular case I feed it the list of names from our BIND and MTA configs. and have it flag any NS or MX RRsets that we're not listed in any more. It's written in Python and uses the dnspython module. It has nothing to do with the BIND UPDATE assert() bug.

    Why is dnsassert not threaded, you ask? Because dnspython isn't thread-safe. I have a patch to fix that but I'm not distributing it. Sorry.

    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-02-03

04-Feb-10

links for 2010-02-02

03-Feb-10
  • Mr Nick Webb
    Sunday Independent
    Independent House
    Talbot Street
    Dublin 1 FOI/2009/40

    Requesting access to correspondence between the following bodies (RTE, Comreg, ESB group, Bord na Mona, Bord Gais, SEI, Eirgrid, Digital Hub) and the Department

    Request & Reply 28/10/09 21/12/09

    (tags: @2read)
  • Mark Pilgrim

    Writer, Developer advocate, Google
    Jan 30, 2010
    Who are you, and what do you do?

    I'm Mark Pilgrim. I'm a developer advocate for Google. I write open source books and advocate open standards. Most recently, I've been advocating HTML5 and related web standards.

    (tags: @2read)
  • The first 90% of John Gruber’s And Oranges is excellent. Everyone should read it, and I’m not just saying that because it’s all about me. Unfortunately, the last 10% goes right off the rails, so naturally that’s where I’m going to start.
    (tags: @2read)
  • "Trance music" is not a new phenomenon. The ability for music to drive dancers into ecstatic frenzies has been known at least since Euripides. The Shakers got their name from the ecstatic behavior they exhibited when dancing to their simple, repetitive hymns. Voodoo rituals are built around complex, trance-inducing rhythms. It was well known that trance-dancing can produce ecstastic states, but until the later part of the 20th century, and the invention of the 'extended dance remix', it was rare for commercial music to reach for it.
    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-31

01-Feb-10
  • (tags: @2dl)
  • Welcome to Console Repairs Ireland. Irelands first and top console repair service. We provide an electronic game console repairs service for Iphones, Sony Playstation 2/3, Sony Psp, Nintendo Wii, Ds lite and Xbox 360. With over ten years experience with electronics, we can repair almost any fault you may encounter with your console. We operate on a “No Fix, No Fee” basis and most repairs are guaranteed for 6 months.
    (tags: @2file)
  • Money rolled in, and out again, as Gallagher speculated on even bigger plays and enjoyed his vast wealth, spending it on classic cars, racehorses, art and cellars full of vintage wine and champagne.

    Then in 1982, while trying to keep his head above rising debt, he spotted four opportunities that he was convinced would save him – the takeover of the 17-supermarket H Williams chain; a quick buy-and-sell of an assembled site on the corner of St Stephen’s Green and South King Street (now the site of the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre) and of another property at Earlsfort Terrace; and the resurrection of the Phoenix Park racecourse. All four deals were lined up like dominoes.

    A prospective buyer for the St Stephen’s Green deal pulled out at the last minute and the dominoes fell one by one. Gallagher sold off personal assets – shares in racehorses and a private art collection – to try and pay off the banks, but it wasn’t enough; the banks called in their loans.

    (tags: @2read)
  • What is this place?

    Cruise Elroy is a blog by Dan Bruno about video games, their community, and their culture, with a special focus on game music. If you’re a gamer who likes to think critically about the medium, you’ll be at home here. Comments are gratefully accepted at comments@cruiseelroy.net.

    What does Cruise Elroy mean?

    Cruise Elroy is a nickname given to Blinky, the red ghost in Pac-Man, when he speeds up after most of the dots on the board have been eaten. The name’s origins are shrouded in mystery.

    (tags: @2search)
  • This script removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages. There are cleverer Facebook tidy scripts out there, but this one is nice and simple and possibly easier to update as new adverts come along. It's also very easy to customise, should you want some of the sections that are blocked here by default to actually appear.

    NOTE: this script also currently suppresses the ability to use the /online friends/ box to initiate chats.

    (tags: @2dl)
  • # Login
    # Save the bookmarklet to your web-browser's bookmarks. You only have to do this once!
    # Surf to the Flickr page with the image on it you would like to upload.
    # Click the bookmarklet in your web-browser's bookmarks.
    # Click on the Flickr2Facebook logo that appears over the image. This will popup the upload window!
    # Choose the album you would like to upload the image into.
    # Sit back and enjoy!
    (tags: @2search)
  • FacePAD, better known as the Facebook Photo Album Downloader will allow you to download your friends’ facebook albums, events albums, and group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.
    (tags: @2dl)
  • Hit Self-Destruct was a blog about video games that ran from 2007 to 2009. It was written by Duncan Fyfe, who you can still email or follow on Twitter. If you've never read this site before, or if you want to relive some of its highlights, you could begin with these:

    Badlands
    Debate Class
    In The Future We Will Play, Part I: Indiana
    In The Future We Will Play, Part II: New York
    The Fall
    Game Development and Other Excuses
    Interactive Journalism
    Domestic City, Part One of Nine
    Stop/Thief
    The Pitch
    A Trilogy In Seven Parts
    Neverwinter Nights 2 Gets A 5
    War Correspondent
    Missed Connections
    Over and Under
    Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard
    Murder Charge

    (tags: @2read)
  • Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging.
    (tags: @2read)
  • Mr Corcoran opened Korky's on Grafton Street 15 years ago when the rent was €100,000 a year. His rent has risen to €445,000 a year for a retail space of 900sq ft — about the size of a small two-bedroom apartment.

    Add in about €50,000 a year for rates and he has to find nearly €500,000 to trade on the premier shopping street. In his view it doesn't make sense. His battle with his landlords may end up in the courts. Proceeding have been issued by Canada Life.

    Mr Corcoran has offered to pay €300,000 to anyone willing to buy out his lease on the Grafton Street pitch. He first made the offer a year ago. He has not received a single offer.

    "What galls me is that since I first came into Grafton Street it was still a beautiful place to visit and to spend money. It's been going steadily downhill," he added.

    (tags: @2read)
  • SJ: Apple was this incredible journey. I mean we did some amazing things there. The thing that bound us together at Apple was the ability to make things that were going to change the world. That was very important. We were all pretty young. The average age in the company was mid-to-late twenties. Hardly anybody had families at the beginning and we all worked like maniacs and the greatest joy was that we felt we were fashioning collective works of art much like twentieth century physics. Something important that would last, that people contributed to and then could give to more people; the amplification factor was very large.
    (tags: @2read)
  • This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-30

31-Jan-10
  • SJ: Apple was this incredible journey. I mean we did some amazing things there. The thing that bound us together at Apple was the ability to make things that were going to change the world. That was very important. We were all pretty young. The average age in the company was mid-to-late twenties. Hardly anybody had families at the beginning and we all worked like maniacs and the greatest joy was that we felt we were fashioning collective works of art much like twentieth century physics. Something important that would last, that people contributed to and then could give to more people; the amplification factor was very large.
    (tags: @2read)
  • This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.
    (tags: @2search)
  • The Beer Belt comprises areas where beer has been the alcoholic beverage of choice since times immemorial: Ireland and the UK, the Low Countries, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Albania; most of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia and Romania; and significant, western parts of Poland. Beer production requires the cultivation of cereals, so this is a climatic-agricultural precondition for the Beer Belt.
    (tags: @2dl)
  • Am I wrong?
    Have I run too far to get home
    Have I gone?
    And left you here alone
    If I would, could you?
    (tags: @2file)
  • Three friends discover their new flatmate dead but loaded with cash.
    (tags: @2dl)
  • One bus I was on as child was hijacked and set alight. It was surprisingly uneventful. The passegers simply got off, as requested decidedly politely by the hijacker – this was politics, after all, not mere arson – and walked way. It seemed normal to all of us. Where busses are concerned, you can get used to anything – it’s simply a matter of conditioning.
    (tags: @2file)
  • The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:

    Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

    Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

    Google Chrome 4.0+

    Safari 3.0+

    Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.

    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-29

30-Jan-10
  • The Daily Beast spoke with Lindelof and Cuse, known on the Internet as Team Darlton, about the final season of Lost, its influence on television programming, the show’s legacy, and why viewers shouldn’t expect to see every mystery answered this season. (This is Part 1 of a two-part interview—look for Part 2 on Tuesday.)
    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-28

29-Jan-10
  • # Twitter and Facebook. Simpler. Easier.
    # See and share photos, videos and more.
    # Keep up on trends and news.
    (tags: @2search)
  • This guide will show you how to setup Postfix mail server running alongside Cyrus SASL, Courier-IMAP and SquirrelMail. Once everything is setup you will be able to read and write emails using the SquirrelMail web interface and be able to access your email anywhere in the world!
    (tags: @2search)
  • Sometimes you may in need to use an external SMTP provider to send your emails, and usually ISPs give instruction on how to configure mail clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird. But what if you are already using an internal SMTP server such as Postfix?

    These guidelines are for Debian (but may be helpful with other systems as well) and are related to Postfix. The SMTP provider in the example is AuthSMTP which is a well known provider for SMTP relaying.

    (tags: @2search)
  • BOFH Settings

    By default Courier handles mail with corrupt formatting in a very annoying way (IMHO), it creates a new mail and then attaches the old mail to it. While this does stop a lot of viruses in their tracks it also confuses SpamAssassin and garbles mail from poorly written but popular mail clients (Outlook and Outlook Express for example). This set up is changed by creating a file called /etc/courier/bofh and entering the following setting:

    opt BOFHBADMIME=accept

    After making any changes to this file you need to restart Courier. These settings can also be made on a per-IP basis using smtpaccess but they are generally more useful site wide.

    (tags: @2search)
  • A claim to the modern day growler states that in 1989, Charlie Otto and his father were discussing the dilemma facing the Otto Brothers Brewery. They wanted to offer "beer-to-go" for their local customers, but they were not yet in a position to bottle. Father Otto suggested the use of "growlers," which were used in his younger days, but Charlie recognized the need for an updated package type. He purchased a small silkscreen machine, and set it up on his patio. Soon he was silk-screening his logo on half-gallon glass bottles that resembled moonshine jugs. The modern-day "growler" was introduced.
    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-27

28-Jan-10

links for 2010-01-26

27-Jan-10
  • I had a website, serving up many files. Sometimes you want to 'encourage' a user to download a file instead of their browser displaying a file. You can do this by setting the "Content-Disposition" header. However I had thousands of files that I wanted to force the user to save instead of display. I also needed to be able to let people display them normally.

    I came up with this solution, by adding the following to my apache configuration file.

    (tags: @2search)
  • Lechler learned how to kick the ball as a four-year-old in East Bernard, Texas, a town of about 1,700 an hour's drive southwest of Houston. His father, Dale, was a coach at the local high school, and Shane liked to attend the football team's afternoon practices, at which the players offered him instruction on how to punt. Later, as a five-sport star at the same school, Lechler received scholarship offers from some of the top college programs in the country, including Texas, Notre Dame and LSU. Recruiters tagged him as an "athlete," meaning he excelled at more than one position. Lechler had potential; to devote that potential exclusively to punting seemed a waste. Nevertheless, that's what he did in College Station, where he averaged 44.7 yards a punt, then an NCAA record for punters with 250 or more career kicks. His gaudy numbers and booming punts prompted the Raiders to pick him in the fifth round in the 2000 draft.
    (tags: @2read)
  • (tags: @2dl)
  • With Moore’s encouragement, Gaiman sent a sample script to Karen Berger, Moore’s editor at DC Comics; it was called “Jack in the Green,” and used English folklore to tell a Swamp Thing story. Berger didn’t publish it, but she eventually hired Gaiman to write a series based on an archival DC character named the Sandman. In the original nineteen-thirties incarnation, the Sandman had worn a green zoot suit and a gas mask, and killed villains with a gas gun. Gaiman’s hero was different: remote and troubled, ironic and proud, with an archaic vocabulary and a head of hair like a blot of fountain-pen ink. His power rests in storytelling; he travels through human dreams. With his siblings Destiny, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Death, he is one of the Endless, presiding over the universe, but is as flawed and petty as any Greek god.
    (tags: @2read)
  • But okay, ya gotta start somewhere. Dig in. The absolute best scenario is to find something that needs to be fixed. Look at existing code, try to figure out what's going on, see if you can fix a problem. Some of the best developers I know got started as script kittens who just wanted to fix things, and soon found they could learn Java over a long weekend. If you can't find "something to fix," then find something small you want to build. Maybe find a way to parse your Twitter feed and display it here (or whatever — something like that).
    (tags: @2read)
  • Available now is a demo version of Cryptic Comet's new computer strategy game "Solium Infernum."
    (tags: @2dl)
  • The communications regulator ComReg and Eircom have settled legal proceedings relating to the price Eircom can charge other telecoms operators for using its network.

    In August, ComReg cut the monthly wholesale price for local loop unbundling (LLU) line share from €8.41 to 77 cent. Eircom subsequently appealed the decision.

    In a statement this evening, ComReg said the proceedings had been settled, and the price would remain at 77 cent.
    Advertisement

    LLU line share is a product Eircom is legally obliged to offer to competing telecoms operators. It allows them access to the higher bandwidth part of the fixed line so that they can provide broadband without providing a conventional voice telephone service.

    BT Ireland welcomed the news, saying it finally brought wholesale prices down to levels seen in the rest of Europe.

    (tags: @2file)

links for 2010-01-25

26-Jan-10
  • Presumably she thought the ribbon of scruffy looking youngsters, she may or may not have noticed down the years, who dot the nation’s road network with their thumbs cocked, were just congratulating my father on his impressive driving.
    (tags: @2read)
  • For just shy of a couple of months six arch-demons waged a war in hell. For just shy of a couple of weeks, four arch-demons wrote up their perspectives on the struggle. The resulting mass of writing works both as a multi-perspective narrative of a single, increasingly dramatic game, a review highlighting the game’s merits and as an extended tutorial of exactly how six newbies came to understand one of 2009’s most intriguing, subtle and just plain best games. If you’ve any interest in learning more about Solium Infernum, this is where to start. If you haven’t any interest in Solium Infernum, this will hopefully start it.
    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-24

25-Jan-10
  • TOPcast is an internet podcast with interviews of key pinball industry people, documenting the history of pinball. TOPcast also has a technical show (discontinued in 2008) that allows listeners to call in (or email) and ask tech questions about their (broken) games. On the tech show there's special features like Tech Tip of the Week, Stump the Chump, Game of the Week, Play of the Week, trivia contests and more. The shows are hosted by Shaggy of the 'This Old Pinball' video DVD pinball repair and restoration fame.
    (tags: @2dl)
  • Mark Walters has played pinball in such varied locales as Las Vegas, Central Missouri, and a ferry between Denmark and Sweden. This column will chronicle his interactions with pinball machines, both new and old, known and unknown.
    (tags: @2search)
  • "It's conceivable, now that the premiere nervousness with the attendant bugs and kinks are in the past, the Jerry Lewis Saturday night two-hour marathon on ABC-TV might settle down to some form of respectable entertainment. It better had … it's truly amazing that so much could have gone awry. What was billed as 'an informal two hours of fun, entertainment, discussion and interviews in a spontaneous atmosphere' came off as disjointed, disorganized, tasteless … The responsibility was Lewis' to fill the void and lapses … he just didn't fit the bill." – Daily Variety
    (tags: @2read)
  • Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection is a video game title from Crave Entertainment for the Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3,[1] PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360.[2] Players play on a variety of classic virtual pinball machines from Williams Electronics' history. The Williams Collection follows the previous title, Gottlieb Pinball Classics, which to date is only available in the United Kingdom and Australia on the Wii platform. Gottlieb Pinball Classics has, however, been made available in North America on the Sony PSP under the title of Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection.[3]
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-22

23-Jan-10
  • A brief aside: I was a little disappointed to see that the production Nexus, unlike the ones distributed to company employees and which showed up on tech blogs back in December, didn’t have the QC barcode on the back cover. I thought this was an intriguing and borderline-brilliant idea. But silkscreening a unique barcode on every phone, the Nexus could have acted as a flawless, zero-technology form of ID. You could swap contact info with any user of any phone without needing to turn on bluetooth and activating features: just snap a photo of their QC code and an app on your Android (or iPhone, or Blackberry …) app would do the rest. Ditto for checkin kiosks, catalogue stores, or any other place where you’d like to hand over your contact details without fuss, bother, or opening your phone to snooping. Oh, well.
    (tags: @2read)
  • With minimal preparation, you can make a delicious Mexican-style meal for your family or double the recipe and entertain a crowd. A bonus is that the leftover chicken is incredibly versatile and can be used for a number of dishes.
    (tags: @2file)
  • The Sears Tower is the third tallest building in the world; 110 stories constitute 1,450 feet, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The glass boxes, termed 'the Ledges', were opened to the public July 2, 2009. Four 10 foot by 10 foot compartments protrude 4.3 feet from the building's 103rd floor observation room, the Skydeck.

    With three layers of glass totaling one and a half inches thick, each platform can support up to 5 tons. A completely transparent three sides, top, and bottom designed to generate the sensation of hovering over Chicago do just that, as the box extends far enough for one row of visitors to stand suspended at a time. A clear day presents a view of up to 50 miles and four states.

    (tags: @2file)
  • These vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) created the images between 1939 and 1944.
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-21

22-Jan-10
  • Explore Twitter with FluidDB
    (tags: @2search)
  • Painting a room is one of the easiest things you can do to enhance your surroundings. Its mostly fun, fairly inexpensive, and can be a very satisfying accomplishment if done well.
    (tags: @2file)
  • After the Continental Congress convened, King George III told his ministers that “blows must decide” whether the Americans “submit or triumph.”

    North’s government agreed. To back down, the ministers believed, would be to lose the colonies. Confident of Britain’s overwhelming military superiority and hopeful that colonial resistance would collapse after one or two humiliating defeats, they chose war. The Earl of Dartmouth, who was the American Secretary, ordered General Gage to use “a vigorous Exertion of…Force” to crush the rebellion in Massachusetts. Resistance from the Bay Colony, Dartmouth added, “cannot be very formidable.”

    (tags: @2read)
  • * Connects up to 2 Scart-equipped devices to a TV/display
    * Saves wear and tear on connections – no need to connect/disconnect equipment
    * Ideal for use with TV, VCR, camcorder, DVD, satellite receiver or Hi-Fi system
    * Gold-plated connectors for optimum contact and signal transfer
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-20

21-Jan-10
  • Welcome to The Gutter Bookshop, a new independent bookshop based in the Old City part of Dublin's popular Temple Bar area. We sell all kinds of books, including some great children's books, as well as gifts and stationery. We aim to provide you with something just a little bit different than you'll find in the big chain bookshops. Please pop in and say hello! (See the Map on Contacts page)

    We're not able to process Online Orders just yet (we're working on it!) but if you would like us to get something for you please drop us a line at info@gutterbookshop.com or on (+353) 1 6799206. We can get most popular titles within 24 hours and there's no postage costs if you choose to pick up from the shop! We will also do our best to track down new or good secondhand copies of books that are out-of-print or hard to find.

    (tags: @2search)
  • This is the "secret stash" late night showing. It is uncut and contains more footage than previously released
    (tags: @2dl)
  • The 'Summary of Submissions to the Innovation Taskforce' document is a summary of some of the proposals and themes contained in the submissions received in response to the call for submissions . It does not provide a complete analysis of each and every submission but rather tries to call attention to some common issues or concrete proposals and recommendations raised by respondents. To get a full flavour of the content of the submissions, readers are advised to read the individual submissions which are published separately at www.innovationtaskforce.ie.
    (tags: @2read)
  • Guys I think it would be better to use this from now on:

    http://www.springydevelopment.co.uk/…-karmic-koala/

    This tutorial is the best I have found so far, I have just installed it on my revo R3610 and it is booting very quickly, with splash screen (apart from the initial acer logo you couldn't tell it was being run on a PC/revo)

    However if you look at the comments for the tutorial I linked to, alot of people are having problems with the usplash and xbmc stages. This is an easy fix, which the author has not implemented so make sure you do the following:

    At the stage where you are adding sources to the /etc/apt/sources.list, you need to change the PPAs for xbmc to:

    Code:

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

    note the removal of the "karmic-" prefix so that it is now just "ppa" rather than "karmic-ppa" in both urls.

    Do that and the rest is a breeze. Hope that helps.

    (tags: @2search)
  • Ok, so I have been building a media centre for about a week now, and I have had a lot of trouble getting it setup and working right, but now XBMC has released version 9.11 alpha 1 version of its popular media centre software which is now compatible with Ubuntu 9.10.

    After all the trouble I had, I thought I would share with you how I installed it, and got XBMC to boot on load. I am using an ASUS AT3N7A-I with a 1.6 dual core atom processor and NVidia ION chipset, 2GB of ram and a 1TB hard drive. So I will only be showing you how to use the NVidia drivers for linux, but to be honest NVidia driver support for linux is better than ATI support.

    (tags: @2search)
  • There's been quite a few questions of late on how to get the best out of a Acer Aspire Revo, so I thought I'd put this guide together for you all.

    For those unfamiliar with this cheap little computer, the Acer AspireRevo was the first NVIDIA ION based Nettop available for retail purchase, and via the VDPAU API it is with XBMC for Linux capable of playing back practically all 1080p high-definition video files that you can throw at it.

    Full credit for this HOW-TO step-by-step guide goes to draggy, who's tutorial work I have modified. I have taken the liberty of using nano instead of vi in this HOW-TO guide and also installing the very latest SVN release of XBMC Media Center so that you can use all the cutting-edge skins. Please bear in mind that SVN releases can be buggy, however so far I personally have never had any problems.

    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-19

20-Jan-10
  • Sick of the noise on Twitter?

    Here's what The Twit Cleaner will do for you:

    Analyses all the people you follow
    Finds time wasters, spammers, the boring, bots etc
    Creates a detailed report of everyone you're following
    Increases the integrity & authenticity of your brand or personal image
    Clears up the 'background noise' of Twitter
    Frees you to focus your time & energy (whether you're here for friendship, business or both)

    (tags: @2search)
  • Stateful programmatic web browsing in Python, after Andy Lester's Perl module WWW::Mechanize .

    * mechanize.Browser is a subclass of mechanize.UserAgentBase, which is, in turn, a subclass of urllib2.OpenerDirector (in fact, of mechanize.OpenerDirector), so:
    o any URL can be opened, not just http:
    o mechanize.UserAgentBase offers easy dynamic configuration of user-agent features like protocol, cookie, redirection and robots.txt handling, without having to make a new OpenerDirector each time, e.g. by calling build_opener().
    * Easy HTML form filling, using ClientForm interface.
    * Convenient link parsing and following.
    * Browser history (.back() and .reload() methods).
    * The Referer HTTP header is added properly (optional).
    * Automatic observance of robots.txt.
    * Automatic handling of HTTP-Equiv and Refresh.

    (tags: @2search)
  • Plenty of people have learned WWW::Mechanize, and now, you can too!

    Following are user-supplied samples of WWW::Mechanize in action. If you have samples you'd like to contribute, please send 'em to <andy@petdance.com>.

    You can also look at the t/*.t files in the distribution.

    Please note that these examples are not intended to do any specific task. For all I know, they're no longer functional because the sites they hit have changed. They're here to give examples of how people have used WWW::Mechanize.

    Note that the examples are in reverse order of my having received them, so the freshest examples are always at the top.

    (tags: @2read)
  • foreach (@l) { if($_->url() =~ m/=REMOVE/) { $browser->get(substr($_->url(), rindex($_->url(), '/')+1)); } }
    (tags: @2search)
  • Plenty of people have learned WWW::Mechanize, and now, you can too!

    Following are user-supplied samples of WWW::Mechanize in action. If you have samples you'd like to contribute, please send 'em to <andy@petdance.com>.

    You can also look at the t/*.t files in the distribution.

    Please note that these examples are not intended to do any specific task. For all I know, they're no longer functional because the sites they hit have changed. They're here to give examples of how people have used WWW::Mechanize.

    Note that the examples are in reverse order of my having received them, so the freshest examples are always at the top.

    (tags: @2search)
  • Screen scraping is a relatively well-known idea, but for those who are not familiar with it, the term refers to the process of extracting data from a website. This may involve sending form information, navigating through the site, etc., but the part I'm most interested in is processing the HTML to extract the information I'm looking for.

    As I mentioned in my article about outliners, I've been organising myself recently, and as part of that process of organisation I've been writing several screen scrapers to reduce the amount of browsing I do: repeatedly visiting news sites to see if they have been updated is a waste of anyone's time, and in these times of feed readers, it's even less tolerable.

    (tags: @2search)
  • where title contains "HTML::LinkExtor"
    (tags: @2search)
  • This is a simple Twitter Python script that checks your friends time-line and prints out any links that have been posted. In addition it visits each of the URLs and finds the actual title of the destination page and prints that along side. This simple script demonstrates an easy way to gather some of the hottest trends on the internet the moment they happen.

    If you set up a Twitter account within a niche and find a few of the players in that niche to follow then you can simply find any links posted, check them to see if they are on topic (using some keyword/heuristics) and then either notify yourself of the interesting content, or automatically scrape it for use on one of your related websites. That gives you perhaps the most up to date content possible before it hits Google Trends. It also gives you a chance to promote it before the social news sites find it (or be the first to submit it to them).

    (tags: @2search)
  • I'm fooling around with Yahoo! pipes and I'm hitting a wall with some regular expression. Now I'm familiar with regular expressions from Perl but the rules just seem to be different in Yahoo! pipes.
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-18

19-Jan-10
  • A candidate whose aides were prepared to block him from becoming president. A wife whose virtuous image was a mirage. A mistress with a video camera. In an excerpt from the new book Game Change – their sweeping account of the 2008 campaign – the authors reveal that, inside the Edwards triangle, nothing was too crazy to be true.
    (tags: @2read)
  • Dublin 1961 – 30 Photos compliments of Johnny Vaughan.

    If Anyone has any Information on the photos (names/locations) to settle a few bets, it would be appreciated.

    You can email to grangemoregolf@eircom.net

    An American, Charles W. Cushman travelled the world for 30 years, including a visit to Dublin.

    When he died, he left his collection to the Indiana University, who have uploaded them.

    (tags: @2dl)
  • Advanced Options

    How to use / insert pdfmyurl in your own site

    Simply link the text or image you want people to use for downloading a specific page/url like this:

    http://pdfmyurl.com?url=www.opentracker.net

    for example:

    <a href="http://pdfmyurl.com?url=www.opentracker.net">downlaod this page as pdf</a>

    will create a text link that looks like this:

    download this page as pdf

    How to use on your server

    Synopsis:

    wget -O www.opentracker.net "pdfmyurl.com?url=www.opentracker.net&-O=Landscape&–header-left=hello"

    (tags: @2search)
  • The project got its start at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course, generally aimed at businessmen, for the purpose of filling in gaps in education, to make one more well-rounded and familiar with the "Great Books" and ideas of the past three millennia. Among the original students was William Benton, future US Senator and later CEO of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He proposed selecting the greatest books of the canon, complete and unabridged, having Hutchins and Adler edit them for publishing by Encyclopædia Britannica.
    (tags: @2search)

links for 2010-01-17

18-Jan-10
  • Top marks: Kermode's favourite films

    The Exorcist (1973) Greatest movie ever made – terrifying, uplifting, transcendent.

    Local Hero (1983) 'Brigadoon meets Apocalypse Now' in Bill Forsyth's charmer.

    Silent Running (1972) Doug Trumbull's lonely sci-fi gem – without which we wouldn't have Wall-E.

    It's A Wonderful Life (1946) Suicidal despair, financial ruin, corruption – how's that for a feelgood film?

    Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Guillermo del Toro's Citizen Kane of fantasy cinema.

    Mary Poppins (1964) Anyone who doesn't get Poppins simply has no soul.

    A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Powell and Pressburger's after-life epic blends romance, philosophy and metaphysics.

    Brazil (1985) The battle between dreams and reality played out in Gilliam's masterpiece.

    The Devils (1971) Ken Russell's fiery classic, the director's cut of which still remains shamefully unreleased.

    Blue Velvet (1986) First time I saw it, I walked out. Wrong, wrong, wrong…!

    (tags: @2search)
  • IF you're one of the hundreds of thousands of taxpayers not claiming your full tax reliefs, you could be losing out on thousands of euro a year. A few simple steps can get you back on the right track.
    (tags: @2read)

links for 2010-01-16

17-Jan-10
  • #! /bin/sed -nf # Join lines if we have tags that span multiple lines :join /<[^>]*$/ { N; s/[ *]\n[ *]/ /; b join; } # Do some selection to speed the thing up /<[ ]*\([aA]\|[iI][mM][gG]\)/!b # Remove extra spaces before/after the tag name, change img/area to a s/<[ ]*\([aA]\|[iI][mM][gG]|[aA][rR][eE][aA]\)[ ]\+/<a /g # To simplify the regexps that follow, change href/alt to lowercase # and replace whitespace before them with a single space s/<a\([^>]*\)[ ][hH][rR][eE][fF]=/<a\1 href=/g s/<a\([^>]*\)[ ][aA][lL][tT]=/<a\1 alt=/g # To simplify the regexps that follow, quote the arguments to href and alt s/href=\([^" >]\+\)/href="\1"/g s/alt=\([^" >]\+\)/alt="\1"/g # Move the alt tag after href, remove attributes between them s/\( alt="[^"]*"\)[^>]*\( href="[^"]*"\)/\2\1/g # Remove attributes between <a and href s/<a[^>]* href="/<a href="/g # Change href="xxx" … alt="yyy" to href="xxx|yyy" s/\(<a href="[^"]*\)"[^>]* alt="\([^"]*"\)/\1|\2/g t loop # Print an URL, remove it, and loop :loo
  • require 'cgi' require 'open-uri' require 'rexml/document' include REXML class String def to_doc() Document.new(self) end end query = 'ruby file copy site:snippets.dzone.com' url = "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=#{URI.escape(query)}&btnG=Google+Search&meta=" buffer = open(url,"UserAgent" => "Ruby-IMBot").read a_tags = buffer.to_s.gsub(/<\/?em>/," ").scan(/<h3 class=r><a href=[^<]+/).map{|x| x.gsub(/<h3 class=r>|class=l/,'') + '</a>'}.join doc_master = "<links><summary><keywords>#{query}</keywords><link>#{CGI.escapeHTML(url)}</link></summary><records>#{a_tags}</records></links>".to_doc file = File.new('google_links.xml','w') file.puts doc_master file.close
    (tags: @2search)
  • Just in case I ever forget how I did it… I was trying to download some 40 page PDF brochure from a government web site – I wanted to print it out and read it off-line. However, it was cleverly split into 20 different PDFs – no doubt for convenience. Instead of spending 20 minutes clicking on those various links and printing 20 document fragments, I chose to spend twice that time trying to automate the process. And here it is, in all its glory:

    curl -s "http://www.datori.org" \

    | perl -n -e 'chomp;s/.*?(?:(?i)href)="([^"]+)".*?(?:$|(?=(?i)href))/$1\n/xg and print'

    The “thing” downloads the specified page and extracts all linked URLs from it, as indicated by the “href” tags. You’ve got to appreciate the enormity of perl…

    (tags: @2search)
  • Web Scraping for Fun and Profit
    Kenytt Avery
    <k.avery@computer.org>
    The big three

    * Shell prompt
    * E-mail client
    * Web browser

    Stop using your web browser

    * Speed
    o Not moving your hands
    o No ads!
    * Repetition
    o Remembering to check
    o E-mail from cron jobs
    * Usefulness
    o Extracting data
    o UNIX tools

    What to use instead

    * telnet
    * wget
    * links
    * RSS
    * Your favorite programming language
    * An API

    (tags: @2read)
  • grep -o '<a href="http[^"]*"'|grep -v 'search?q=cache:'|grep -v '\.google\.'|sed 's/<a href="//;s/"$//'
    (tags: @2search)
  • linkextor prints links found in given HTML documents, filtered by any given expressions. If no files are specified on the command line, the input document is read from STDIN. You can specify URLs on the command line; they will be downloaded and parsed transparently.

    By default, no links are filtered, so the output will include references to every external resource found in the file such as stylesheets, external scripts, images, other documents, etc.

    After considering criteria, all matching links will be printed to STDOUT. You could pipe them to wget -i – to mass download them, or to while read url ; do … ; done or xargs to process them further, or do anything else you can do with a list of links.

    (tags: @2search)