human made

» Python vs Ruby: It's a cultural Issue

This is a cultural issue. In the Ruby (or Perl) community, if you use obscure language features to do a common task in a single line of code, you will be worshipped as a god. In the Python (or Tcl) community, you will be viewed with suspicion. Not that Python doesn’t have one-liners (e.g. comprehensions) - just that everyone agrees which ones and when and how to use them.

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I’m pretty much just testing the tumblr iPhone app.

I always think about stealing this poster when I’m at the coffee shop.

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» More corrections on the Klein thing

So.

Way back in the mists of…January, I posted a TED talk about Joshua Klein’s studies on crows.

Then the NYTimes put up a correction, which I linked to as well.

Turns out, as always, there’s more to the story. So here’s Klein’s bit, which I felt it was fair to post once I stumbled across it.

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Oceansize: A strange short film wherein the sea reclaims an oil refinery. It’s a remarkably good little short story, despite having very little dialogue (all of which is in german (I think)).

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» How I Won a Copyfight

Fairly impressive work by one student to truly own the code he wrote for class, and own the right to share it in a legal and ethical fashion.

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» Acoustic Black Hole Created in Bose-Einstein Condensate

The general idea is to set up a supersonic flow of atoms within the BEC. Sound waves moving against this flow can never make any ground. So the region where the flow changes from subsonic to supersonic is an event horizon. Any sound waves (or phonons) created inside the event horizon can never escape because the flow there is supersonic. That’s the black hole.

Welcome to the future. Again.

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» Ultra-futuristic concept vehicles from Japan

This is mostly for @the_patches. I can’t imagine American car companies seriously producing these ideas, as they all seem seriously influenced by a culture that is saturated in ideas like Mecha.

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“ But as a proof-of-concept, it was a ringing success. There is a market opportunity here for someone who wants to automate the service. I envision something run jointly by, say, the American Library Association (or maybe the International Federation of Library Associations) and the Adopt-a-School program (to ease vetting), that works with a couple dozen booksellers, national and local, and lists books by all kinds of authors and requests from all over the world. Donors can either get a suggestion for a book to donate (perhaps based on preferences like “Science Fiction” or “Young-Adult Novels” and “Schools in My Area” or “Schools in the Nation’s Poorest ZIP Codes”) and, with a few clicks, donate a book, receiving a tax-deduction receipt in return.

— Locus Online Perspectives: Extreme Geek

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» Long exposure shows Roomba cleaning path

Signaltheorist … shut off all of the lights in his room for 30 minutes and captured a long exposure of the path that the ROomba makes …

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Pixel City - Procedurally generated city (via ShamusYoung)

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