nuclear powered soup

Books aren't dying either, OK?

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:26:11 GMT

Wherein Amy Hoy thoroughly deconstructs Charles Petzolds argument that books are dying.

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Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:26:01 GMT

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Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:01:26 GMT

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Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:53:53 GMT

"Zed is Gandhi. Zed is Che Guevara. And Zed is Morpheus. But, also, Zed is Dan..."

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:18:24 GMT

Zed is Gandhi. Zed is Che Guevara. And Zed is Morpheus. But, also, Zed is Daniel Larusso. Immediately following that, he’s Slim Shady. Ergo, Zed is Hannah Montana. Cool, we’re making progress. –_why, A Costly Parade

"To go fast, walk alone. To go far, walk together."

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:40:53 GMT

To go fast, walk alone. To go far, walk together. –uncertain dogma

Reposted from Erikmitk

"In an effort to drive DVD sales and obviate low-quality user uploads of their..."

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:25:26 GMT

In an effort to drive DVD sales and obviate low-quality user uploads of their work, the seminal British comedy troupe Monty Python launched its own YouTube channel this week, placing 23 3-minute-long clips online with full titles and links to buy on Amazon.com. The result, apparently: a 16,280% increase in DVD sales (as of this morning). The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset climbed 740 places and now ranks at No. 5 in Amazon’s Movies & TV category as of this writing. The nearest sales competitors include two DVD packages of perennially-popular TV series 24, the new release of Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work, and one of the most popular films of the year, The Dark Knight. Monty Python, on the other hand, hasn’t released any new material since 1983. –Steve Bryant, Monty Python - Pythonline.com

"Ich treibe aktiv Sport, und zwar eine alte asiatische Kampfkunst namens Sh'..."

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:50:52 GMT

Ich treibe aktiv Sport, und zwar eine alte asiatische Kampfkunst namens Sh'la fen. Beim Sh'la fen kommt es vor allem auf die innere Ruhe an, denn nur so ist man bereit für den großen Gegner, der laut Prophezeihung jeden Kämpfer ('Sh'la fen der') heimsucht. Die Bezeichnung ist T'ra Um, was so viel wie Gedankengemetzel bedeutet. Zur Ausrüstung eines jeden Sh'la fen Den gehört die Waffe ('Kis Sen'), der Schild ('Dec Ke') und ein persönlicher Kampfplatz ('Matra Tze'). Die Regeln sind simpel, wer zuerst die Kampfhaltung ('Lie Gen') ändert, verliert.

Reposted from Erikmitk via Deva

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:56:18 GMT

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:55:12 GMT

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:54:20 GMT

Building A Better Box Top

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:49:19 GMT

http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2008/11/20/pizza_box/

ahoi polloi --- ein füllhorn voller fühlhörner: (729)

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:41:15 GMT

ahoi polloi --- ein füllhorn voller fühlhörner: (729)

Reposted from fin via Deva

YouTube - Always Look On The Bright Side of Life

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:09:43 GMT

YouTube - Always Look On The Bright Side of Life

"Text editors should take a lesson from video games. In many games, you have a..."

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:17:50 GMT

Text editors should take a lesson from video games. In many games, you have access to subset of total weapons, powers, whatever. As you advance and master the basic weapons, more weapons become available to you. By the end of the game you have direct experience with all or most of the weapons – from basic to advanced. How many times have you done something cool or strange in Vim only to think, “How did I do that?” video-game-mode would be a fun way to learn an editor: start with the basic commands and unlock more as you progress. –Chris Wanstrath, Learning Your Editor

via a generous designer Fat whinnie

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:26:29 GMT

via a generous designer

Fat whinnie

Reposted from zideshowbob

Polishing Your RubyGems

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:28:51 GMT

Lately I've noticed that my Ruby programs took really long to start up. IRb, for example, needed more than 5 seconds until I got to my prompt.

The culprit turned out to be RubyGems, or rather, stale gems that gathered dust. Removing old and unused gems sped up the startup time of IRb to under a second again, and all other ruby programs I tested are snappy again. Yay!

Clean your gems

First, run sudo gem cleanup to remove any outdated versions of your installed gems. During the cleanup RubyGems might tell you that a gem that is about to be removed is a dependency of another gem. If you look at the version number of the other gem and see that it is an old one anyway, you can safely remove it. Otherwise, if you remove a dependency you didn’t mean to, simply reinstall the original gem in question, and RubyGems will make sure that all dependencies are met.

One drawback of this is that it will remove older versions of gems you might want to keep, like an older Rails version you still need. In that case I would simply reinstall the older version afterwards.

Removing stale gems

Another useful command is gem stale. This will list your installed times, sorted by last access time. This allows you to identify rarely or never used gems, which you can then remove.

You should, however, note that “last access time” seems to be only defined when used from a non-gem program or library, while a gem using another gem doesn’t seem to count towards access time. Then again, since this is, in best Ruby-tradition, largely undocumented, I could be wrong.

And I'm too tired to dive into the source code right now.

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Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:53:38 GMT

YouTube - MontyPython's Channel

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:27:59 GMT

Monty Python gets it (again) (via)

Louis CK - "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy" (via)

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:55:05 GMT

Louis CK - "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy" (via)

The Unicorn Diaries

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:46:13 GMT

The Unicorn Diaries

Reposted from grah

JS-909

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:44:56 GMT

A sound machine written entirely in JavaScript, no Flash (via)

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Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:59 GMT

"Because he happened to go to a far-sighted school, he was able to practise on..."

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:39:26 GMT

Because he happened to go to a far-sighted school, he was able to practise on a time-sharing system, instead of punch cards; because the university was willing to spend the money to keep the computer centre open 24 hours, he could stay up all night; and because he was able to put in so many hours, by the time he was presented with the opportunity to rewrite Unix, he was up to the task. Bill Joy was brilliant. He wanted to learn - that was a big part of it - but before he could become an expert, someone had to give him the opportunity to learn how to be expert. –opportunity is key

Reposted from derreisende via brightbyte

"An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a ..."

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:39:16 GMT

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers. –Randgruppenhumor cont'd

Reposted from terrorobe via brightbyte

Top 5 artists this week

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

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Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:34:59 GMT

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Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:18:21 GMT

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Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:07:27 GMT

swissmiss: Think make Think

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:54:54 GMT

swissmiss: Think make Think

Reposted from grah

"There are two simple ideas that make a project successful: Building the ..."

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:53:37 GMT

There are two simple ideas that make a project successful: * Building the right software * Building the software right Executing them is difficult of course, but if you can figure out the right software to build and manage to build it right, you're going to be successful. –Pat Maddox, Sometimes a tool isn't just a tool

LEGOs, Play-Doh, and Programming

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:59:51 GMT

http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/11/9/legos-play-doh-and-programming

10 Very Good Reasons Why You Should Grow a Giant Beard

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:19:24 GMT

http://www.biggerbetterbeards.org/

"I had implicitly bought into the idea that C programs segfault at random, eat..."

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:30:40 GMT

I had implicitly bought into the idea that C programs segfault at random, eat data, and generally act like Vikings on a day trip to Lindisfarne; in contrast, programs written in higher level languages supposedly fail in nice, predictable patterns. –Laurence Tratt, How can C Programs be so Reliable?

The philosopher and the wolf

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:40:22 GMT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/11/08/sm_philosopherwolf.xml&page=1

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Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:45:19 GMT

"The reality is that this is the most exciting time since Steve Gutenberg for ..."

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:46:19 GMT

The reality is that this is the most exciting time since Steve Gutenberg for the written word. More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about. From a commercial perspective, that means you’re not just selling for the beach, bed, and bath market anymore, but perhaps also for niche markets like broom closet and breakfast nook. –The Book Bench: Online Only: The New Yorker

Reposted from heather via grah

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8, Marriage and more

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:21:06 GMT

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8, Marriage and more

Pair programming, not sure if it really works (via)

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:39:11 GMT

Pair programming, not sure if it really works (via)

(repost, since soup seems to have lost the original)

"Gonna have tons of fun saying "President Adama" for the next four years. "So ..."

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:38:03 GMT

Gonna have tons of fun saying "President Adama" for the next four years. "So Say We All!!" Oops-I mean, "Yes We Can!!"(find Earth, that is) –Twitter / Cathy Shive