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Amazon Recommends Uranium-235

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 6:26 pm

A History of the Netflix Envelope

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm

Netflix Envelope in 1999

via slashdot

An Easier Way to Upgrade Wordpress

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

This method of upgrading Wordpress using Subversion is actually much easier on the brain cells than their standard method. I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard of it before.

A Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 10:27 am

A thin line between love and hate

15 cool word illusions

Sweetness and Light at 40

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am

A fantastic interview with Miki Berenyi, lead singer of Lush on life after Indie stardom and the nine to five. My Gen-X nostalgia continues unabated.

I’ll Take Safari for the Block

Posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 9:53 am

Actually, the non-block. David Carson’s post Android uses WebKit, reveals one reason why Safari 3 appears so much faster than the previous version: they simply don’t block rendering while waiting for resources that traditionally block other browsers. Current browser implementations normally block rendering while waiting to download stylesheets and external javascript as evidenced in the recommendations made by Steve Souders in his book High Performance Websites.

Animated events especially highlight new efficiencies in their Javascript implementation. Slide effects or animation on the page are butter-smooth compared to other browsers. They feel almost client-like. Safari 3 is such a marked improvement, I use it as my daily browser in OSX, supplanting Opera, which is a real shame since I’m one of only a handful of people who actually use Opera at the day job. Installing Adsubtract and GreaseKit help to round out some missing features due to the move.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment…

Posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

Question: I need 100 ways to say “I love you” to my girlfriend. We made a bet last night that I couldn’t come up with 100 and I can’t lose! Help me pa-pa-pa-pa-please non-expert. —Rod
Answer: Here’s the way to say “I love you”: rarely. To say it a hundred ways is to cheapen a pure sentiment; to place a bet with your girlfriend on your ability to do just that is to participate in a culture that has commoditized affection and thrown it into the remainder bin; and to ask someone else to come up with your hundred ways represents love at its nadir—pure romantic sloth. Why not deep-fry a bag of candy hearts and toss them on the rug for her to eat?

“It gets even better and more poetic from there”:http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/the_nonexpert/how_to_say_i_love_you.php. A terrific essay by Paul Ford.

Stumbling on Happiness

Posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

From the “excerpt”:http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/excerpts.html :

What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you’ve been hiding in your sock drawer since the Ford administration? Would you waltz into your boss’s office and present him with a detailed description of his personal defects? Would you drive out to that steakhouse near the new mall and order a T-bone, medium rare, with an extra side of the really bad cholesterol? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it’s a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.

Definitely not a self-help book and more cognitive psychology (thankfully). I’m fairly late to the party, but I like what I’ve read so far.