Thursday July 02, 2009 Links for 2nd July 2009
A summary of my more interesting recent twittering.
- The President of Brazil holding an OpenSolaris T-shirt
[link]
(via Kelly Nishimura) - A Paper Craft Castle On the Ocean
[link]
(via @lbkwrm) - Favorite Scrubs Episode (#100)
[part 1]
[part 2]
[part 3]
- Kid swaps his iPod touch with Sony Walkman
[link]
"It took me 3 days to figure out the tape had a 2nd side"
(via Alex Muffett) - Miss Ellie - world's most ugly pedigree dog
[link]
I'm so glad we have a cute looking mutt. - Dunking Devils (Basketball trick shots)
[link]
- Getting my iPod working with my Ubuntu desktop.
1st, fix the read-only problem [link]
2nd, use Amorok to easily transfer music to the iPod [link] - Humor: Owls on drugs
[link]
(via @lbkwrm)
- An alarm clock for really heavy sleepers
[link]
Would hate to wake up in that with a hangover.
(via HackADay)
( Jul 02 2009, 12:53:53 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Thursday June 25, 2009 Links for 25th June 2009
A summary of my more interesting recent twittering.
- Open Source kit to put Jesus on your toast
[link]
(via HackADay). As kaj comments: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Toast.
- In case of fire, do not Twitter
[link]
(via Popurls).
- Twitter Users Heckle Hoekstra En Masse
[link]
Wild prediction here, but I bet @petehoekstra won't twit'ter so much from now on.
- Pete Hoekstra's twitter gives Jon Stewart comedy fodder
[link]
(via Rebecca)
- Tried turning my blog into a Zine with zinepal
[link]
Needs work. Didn't include the images with each entry.
- The spawn of Twitter
[link]
Now an interactive version of the chart would be really impressive
(via Nat Torkington's blog). - Mythbuster's Adam Savage's Maker Faire Saturday talk on Colossal
Failures which we missed
[link]
- 20 Creative and Unique Typefaces
[link]
Everybody will comment on #2, so why should I be different? Ouch!
(via @neilhimself) - The Twitter Book
[link]
Lots of ideas for a great Twitter experience.
- Potential nominee for Parent of the Year award:
[link]
No idea if it's true.
(via PopUrls). - Caffeine and your kid Three useful resources
[link 1]
[link 2]
[link 3]
( Jun 25 2009, 08:52:15 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Friday June 12, 2009 Links for 12th June 2009
A summary of my more interesting recent twittering.
- Sinnerman - Nina Simone
[link]
- The Twitter Book
[link]
- Alice 3D
[link]
Great for teaching kids how to program and enjoy it at the same time.
- For crochet'y people everywhere
[link]
- San Jose Mercury News to charge for web content
[link]
Good luck with that.
- AP Economic Stress Index
[link]
(via Nat Torkington's blog).
- OpenSolaris 2009.06 announced
[link]
- OpenSolaris 2009.06 What's New
[link]
- Couple clips from the Scrubs season 8. Sesame St. / Muppets episode
[link]
[link]
- Maker's Faire
[link]
- The Audies for 2009:
[link]
Neil Gaiman wins one for The Graveyard
- Transcript of the OpenSolaris 2009.06 chat on Slashdot
[link]
( Jun 12 2009, 08:06:02 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Friday May 29, 2009 Links for 29th May 2008
A summary of my more interesting recent twittering.
- Google Wave
[link]
(thanks Rebecca).
- What to do when you really really need the number to be random
[link]
(via HackADay).
- Web 2.0 company status update
[link]
Load of dead companies there.
Article [link]
(via Nat Torkington's blog). - Tommy Emmanuel & Martin Taylor Four handed guitar
[link]
- Ukulele Orch. of GB: The Good the Bad the Ugly
[link]
- A SpareBot-inspired spaceship
[link]
(via Hack A Day).
- Say it with flowers
[link]
Getting mesmerized.
- Thunderbird start page now providing useful folder summary info
[link]
(via Nat Torkington's blog).
- Visualization in sports
[link]
Love the bit on all the shots in the NBA 2007-8 season. Static image here.
- Keyboard pants
[link]
- New pattern found in the Prime Numbers
[link]
(thanks Tim Bray)
- Eat Fast Get Fat?
[link]
(Via O'Reilly Radar).
( May 29 2009, 08:49:36 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday May 19, 2009 Blog Translation
|
Finally got around to adding a Google Translate widget to my blog. Up there. Near the top left corner. Use it to translate these blog pages into your favorite language. 34 to choice from. |
I can now tell those ten people that translate my blog into other languages that they can stop doing that. Oh wait. That's somebody else.
[Technorati Tag: Google Translate]
( May 19 2009, 07:48:14 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Monday May 18, 2009 Wordle Of My Twitter Tweets
|
Inspired by Tim O'Reilly, I did a Wordle of my Twitter tweets. |
( May 18 2009, 01:53:14 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Thursday May 07, 2009 Links for 7th May 2008
A summary of my more interesting recent twittering.
- World's oldest living dog turns 21
[link]
There was another than just died at 28.
- Apple tablet rumors
[link]
- Amazon Kindle DX
[link]
It's getting a lot better. Still not in color and too expensive for my tastes.
- Hana (flower simulator) screensaver for Mac OS X (Intel)
[link]
- What eBooks should be
[link]
- Swine Flu tracker
[link]
- What's the state of the economy? Yet another way to look at it
[link]
- Need to burn an audio CD with no track gaps?
[link]
This works great on Ubuntu Jaunty
- When Prom Goes Bad (humor)
[link]
- What to do in an emergency (humor)
[link]
- JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere. TED talk
[link]
A stunning new way to see scientific data. The potential is amazing.
- Lawyers (humor)
[link]
- How to tick people off (humor)
[link]
- Explaining Twitterspeak to others (humor)
[link]
- Susan Boyle: The Biggest YouTube Sensation Ever?
[link]
( May 07 2009, 08:45:46 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Monday April 27, 2009 Blogs.sun.com - Five Years Old
And I've been here for 98.5% of it. From my first post (notice the absence of the signature image in the top left corner), through to the one that gained the most comments, and on to the latest.
Today I spend more of my spare time Twittering, but I still try to summarize the interesting things I find in blog posts.
Congratulations to the creators of Roller and the blogs.sun.com team. It's been a lot of fun.
[Technorati Tag: Sun Microsystems]
( Apr 27 2009, 08:21:30 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Wednesday April 22, 2009 Links for 22nd Apr 2008
A summary of my recent interesting twittering.
- Ugobe files for bankruptcy
[link]
The Pleo's were cute when I saw them at Maker Faire, but way too pricey.
- There's an Edge of Darkness film coming later this year
[link]
The 1985 BBC drama was my favorite drama series ever.
- Our dog now has more followers on Twitter than I do
[link]
- Takeuchi Taijin's "A wolf loves pork"
[link]
(via Make: blog) - thanks Lynea
- Interactive map of vanishing employment
[link]
- Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent
[link]
- Congratulations to Smart Bitches Trashy Books for successfully
Google bombing "Amazon Rank"
[link]
"There was a glitch in our systems & it's being fixed," Amazon's director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said. Yeah, right.
- Robot programs humans to help it get through park
[link]
(via Hack a Day).
- Best Ever Blueberry scones from Cooks Illustrated
[link]
- Python API's for the Web
[link]
- Tommy and Phil Emmanuel - Sugarfoot Rag
[link]
- How I got audio working for YouTube videos on Ubuntu Jaunty
[link]
( Apr 22 2009, 07:41:50 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday April 14, 2009 Closed TRACKEDINBUGSTER - Two Months Later
|
See a previous post for more background. Well it's almost two months on, and I've shuffled a load more bugs over to Bugster, so I thought I'd run my script again. |
There are now 644 bugs that have been closed in OpenSolaris Bugzilla as TRACKEDINBUGSTER. Here's their current status, this time with percentage figures:
1-Dispatched: 146 22.67% 2-Incomplete: 24 3.72% 3-Accepted: 70 10.87% 4-Defer: 16 2.48% 5-Cause Known: 6 0.93% 6-Fix Understood: 6 0.93% 7-Fix in Progress: 15 2.33% 8-Fix Available: 11 1.71% 10-Fix Delivered: 179 27.80% 11-Closed: 171 26.55%
( Apr 14 2009, 08:58:51 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [4]
Tuesday April 07, 2009 Links for 7th April 2009
Summarized for posterity.
- Robotic snout does double-takes at passerby [link]
(via MAKE blog).
- Nice Twitter backgrounds [link]
(thanks lucy).
- POV fun: The Propeller Clock [link]
(via the MAKE blog).
- art machines [link]
- Cat Hair Bags [link]
"shaving one Persian cat produces enough hair to make a handbag"
- Willard Wigan - Micro sculptor [link]
- A big box of ADHD [link]
- Snow White & the Apple [link]
(via MAKE blog).
( Apr 07 2009, 10:40:16 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Friday April 03, 2009 Automatically Change Your Twitter Background
As a follow-on to
yesterday's post,
the Python cback.py script has been updated to automatically
send your newly generated random image to Twitter to become your
new background image. That functionality is not part of the "standard"
Twitter Python API
so many thanks to lucy for providing the magic necessary code
The new version of the script is here. Save it, then rename it to cback.py.
You will also need
multipart.py.
Before you use it, you will need to adjust the username and password lines
(about line 55) to be your valid user name and password.
Twitter is sometimes flaky in taking these images ("urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error"), but then again, I sometimes get similar problems when I try to change my background image from the Twitter Settings dialog.
The cback.py script sometimes generates images greater than the
allowed size when used with the wallpaper option. I'll need to fix that.
( Apr 03 2009, 09:42:14 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]
Thursday April 02, 2009 Generate Random Backgrounds For Twitter Revisited
You may remember my previous attempt to do this. There was the problem of it generating a .bmp file, which then had to be converted to .jpg or .gif (with something like Gimp), before it could be uploaded to Twitter.
I've gone back and reworked my cback script so that it now uses the Python Imaging Library. Not only does this fix the .jpg problem, it has made it an order of magnitude faster. The new source code is here. The changes were minimal.
The final problem to try to solve, (in trying to totally automate this), is to see if there is a way to automatically upload the new image to Twitter. I'll leave that for another day.
( Apr 02 2009, 09:36:11 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Monday March 30, 2009 Links for 30th March 2009
- Pride and Prejudice Red Dwarf style [link]
- Matt Shlian paper sculpture [link]
- How to provide snacks for your Super Bowl party [link]
- Wire Glue, now made with Buckyballs! [link]
(from the MAKE blog).
- Gaping hole halloween costume [link]
- Guide to Sound Effects [link]
- Poodwaddle World Clock [link]
- Wonderful not-so-subtle parody of British Professional Darts [link]
- Wikipedia for schools. [link]
(5500 articles, 34,000 images and 20 million words).
- A great ad you'd never see on US TV. [link]
- Alan Moore's BIG NUMBERS Episode 3, long-lost and rediscovered on ebay [link]
(thanks to Neil Gaiman)
- IntriCut: The paper work of Aoyama Hina [link]
(Lots of other good paper links in the right column too).
- The WayBack machine is now going to be on Sun hardware. [link]
(A 3 petabyte file system).
( Mar 30 2009, 02:37:17 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
Thursday March 26, 2009 Generate Random Backgrounds For Twitter
I had a hack attack yesterday. I converted an old C program of mine that automatically generated random patterned backgrounds for an X11 desktop, to now generate similar random patterns, but this time save them in a .bmp file. If you then convert then to .jpg (or .gif or .png) they can be uploaded and used as your new Twitter background.
The simple Python script that did this is
here.
A big thankyou to Paul McGuire for writing the
bmp.py code that makes this so easy. You can find that
file here.
You can see a sample random circle background pattern on my Twitter page.
It's version 0.1 of the code. A quick simple conversion. It needs to be tidied up and improved. It should also just generate .jpg (or .gif or .png) files. I need to see if there is a standard Python class trhat does something like that.
What would be even nicer was if it could automatically change your Twitter background, but I don't see anything in the Python API for Twitter that allows anything like that. Pity.
( Mar 26 2009, 09:33:01 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]
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