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I knew this would happen. Out of all of the new things that I have to learn to do for this snail game, the part that is the most tedious and difficult for me is the UI. Every part of the UI. You’d think that I’d be able to use web design skills from my previous life to make this at least a little intuitive, but nope - this blows. And it’s not just designing the thing that’s the problem, it’s finding the best way to implement it, too.
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The idea of a Nintendo phone, initially proposed by Moises Chiullan and Horace Dediu on episode eighty-three of The Critical Path, has continued to gain traction in my mind since I listened to The Analyst Taxonomy . As Moises pointed out in the tail end of the show Nintendo, like Apple, possesses the capability to not only manufacture physical devices, but to create the software necessary to run them as well. Permalink.
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How to convert Apple Lossless/ALAC/.m4a files to FLAC with avconv, on Ubuntu Linux
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duncanlock.net
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13 years ago
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eng
I recently needed to convert some Apple Lossless music files to FLAC . Here’s how to do it: If you don’t already have ffmpeg or libav-tools installed, do this: $ sudo apt-get install libav-tools Then run this to do the conversion, in the folder with music in: $ for f in * .m4a ; do avconv -i " $f " " ${ f %.m4a } .flac" ; done And that’s it - it will convert all the .m4a files in that folder to..
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Rethinking building on the cloud: Part 2: Environments on the Cloud
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www.thoughtworks.com
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13 years ago
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eng
The newly launched Mingle SaaS offering runs entirely on the AWS cloud. As discussed in our earlier blog on Layering the Cloud, because there is no existing system that we have to modify or integrate with, we've got the freedom to design the architecture from scratch. This has led us to rethink the role of environments in our development and deployment process.
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There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living, which is Atlas.
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Shortly after Merlin Mann posted Chasing the Right Zero I linked to the article , as did most of the internet. With Chasing the Right Zero , Merlin wrote the article I had had simmering on the back burner for months, putting to words my epiphany regarding Inbox Zero and the real meaning behind the philosophy. At the time I felt no need to add anything to his words or quantify my own opinions on the subject, so my linked list post cont..
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In HTML applications, jQuery has changed the way people thing about view rendering. Instead of an input or a text field in the view pulling data into it, the jQuery code pushes data into the view. How could this look in a server side situation like Java? In this code example, I read an HTML template file from the classpath, set the value of an input field and append more data based on a template (also in the HTML file).
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Download for Windows Check out the IndieDB project page Like on Facebook Follow on Twitter After seven months of hard work, Alpha 3 is ready to play! Some interesting statistics: 28,000+ lines of code 29 MB of compressed voxel data 63 MB of sounds and music 38 animations 60+ textures and normal maps 220+ revisions since Alpha 1 Incidentally, most of that is open source! If you're a developer, check it out on G..
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A weekend of train-ventures, dodgy restaurants, and the most amazing weather in the universe.
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liza.io
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13 years ago
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eng
I was meant to write this blog post four hours ago. Instead I got home and decided that since this one would have quite a bit of pictures in it and I’ve been running into bandwidth issues I may as well find a better solution for image hosting (as opposed to uploading everything to this server). I signed up to Amazon S3 on its free trial account and have been attempting to set it up ever since. Now I don’t even want to write this stupid po..
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As part of our preparation for the 1.1 version of Codename One we are accelerating our typical release cycle so we can test against regressions as soon as possible. We plan to make a release within this month for versions 1.1. The final feature set for 1.1 should include the following highlights: 3rd party Library support [ Windows Phone 8 support ]( http://www.codenameone.com/3/post/2013/04/windows-phone-8-and-the-s..
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In this post we’ll get a quick look at two ways to define a category as a type in ML. The first way will be completely trivial: we’ll just write it as a tuple of functions. The second will involve the terribly-named “functor” expression in ML, which allows one to give a bit more structure on data types. The reader unfamiliar with the ML programming language should consult our earlier primer.
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In this post we’ll get a quick look at two ways to define a category as a type in ML. The first way will be completely trivial: we’ll just write it as a tuple of functions. The second will involve the terribly-named “functor” expression in ML, which allows one to give a bit more structure on data types. The reader unfamiliar with the ML programming language should consult our earlier primer.
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In this post we’ll get a quick look at two ways to define a category as a type in ML. The first way will be completely trivial: we’ll just write it as a tuple of functions. The second will involve the terribly-named “functor” expression in ML, which allows one to give a bit more structure on data types. The reader unfamiliar with the ML programming language should consult our earlier primer.
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Figure 1. Just hold down your chosen compose key, then press the other keys in turn: [compose key] + e + = gets you a Euro symbol. The compose key on Linux is incredibly useful, but not configured by default - and on XFCE there’s currently no graphical UI to change it. However, it’s pretty simple to change… here’s how to make the Caps Lock key your compose key: In the file /etc/default/keyboard, change XKBOPTIONS to look like this....
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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been attempting to get up at 5am to work on snails before going in to actual work. It’s been working for the most part apart from a couple of slip-ups and basically goes like this:
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This was a difficult piece for me to write because my feelings regarding academic writing are so conflicting. On the one hand, I view academic writing — by which I mean the type of writing taught in American schools — as a certain boon: it introduces kids to the writer’s craft, teaches young writers how to write, and provides an introduction to organizing and conveying thoughts and ideas in a coherent and orderly fashion. On the other hand ..
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Allan McRae , Pacman developer, found an interesting small tool, called Distro Picker . This tool finds the Linux-Distribution based on what you prefer as a Desktop Environment, Package Manager and other settings. When I tried it out, it offered me my current distro: Arch Linux , so interestingly, it works really well! I’ll definitely have to take a look at the other distros offered.
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May is looking to be quite an exciting month at Thoughtworks Studios. I'm writing to give a quick preview of Go’s new value stream mapping, a SaaS version of Mingle, and Snap, our new CI/CD in the cloud offering for users of Github and Heroku. Let's start by taking a look at a screenshot from a new Go feature on one of our dog food servers.
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I figured I’d put together a list of the main features I need to finish for A Game of Snails. If anything, it’ll help me gather my thoughts and track my progress better as well as helping me figure out what to work on next. What I should be doing is compiling specs properly for this, but I’ve been too preoccupied with actually working on the thing to keep up with the documentation. Not to mention this game has been in my head for so long (7..
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Virtually every time Dan Benjamin is interviewed, the host eventually asks the same question posed by numerous interviewers of days gone by: “When people ask what you do, what do you tell them?” And every time, Dan answers the same way, saying that his answer depends on the person asking. For some, Dan responds that he is in broadcasting and leaves it at that; in other cases he goes in to more detail, qualifying that statement by describing..
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Located outside Silverton, Colorado. I have heard great things about the states out west and Colorado in particular. I would love to visit there some day, especially if I could spend a few nights in a cabin like this. Permalink.
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Two interesting anecdotes showing a different, less praiseworthy side of Steve Jobs. The man was not perfect, as many purported him to be in the sad hours following his death, but a mere mortal not just like the rest of us, but human nonetheless. “He made himself so fearful and terrible that an entire group of amazing, talented, hard working people, ended up getting screamed at wrongfully. It was his fault that the MobileMe launch went ..
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Twist execution hooks and customizable HTML reports - Part 2
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www.thoughtworks.com
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13 years ago
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eng
This is the second part in a two part blog series which talks about Twist execution hooks and customizable HTML reports. In the first post, we described collecting the step execution time and posting it in Twist data store. Here we will discuss customizing the HTML report to visualize the step execution timings.
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This isn’t going to be a huge world changing ecosystem, but there is room for one little monster to take it all.” Although I feel Alex Kessinger’s numbers would have benefited from some more research and the methods used to obtain his eventual conclusion could use some polish, his estimate seems to at least be in the ballpark of probability, as does his conclusion. Permalink.
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Two years of life as an expat coder in middle-of-no-where Japan
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www.bemmu.com
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13 years ago
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eng
After reading this article, I went back and forth trying to decide whether or not I should link to it. The piece was not particularly remarkable in any way, after all. Regardless of how I justified not writing about it though, I kept coming back to this story until I eventually gave in. It’s a touching story tinged with the melancholy undertone of existential ennui. Having spent months away from home multiple times in the past, I can empath..
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This is going to be two-part post about both A Game of Snails and running (and Sweden!) A Game of Snails I took a few days off of A Game of Snails, but it’s coming along pretty nicely overall. The last week has been set on setting up the database. You can now save users and snails to the database, load a player’s snails when they log in, etc. Up next I just need to start saving a player’s snail jars (players can buy more jars with virtua..
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Acetylides from Alkynes, And Substitution Reactions of Acetylides
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www.masterorganicchemistry.com
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13 years ago
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eng
Alkylation of acetylides Terminal alkynes have unusually acidic C–H bonds (pKa 25). Treatment with a strong base such as sodium amide (NaNH2) gives an acetylide,
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In the past I have written one article about women and equality, A Crying Shame . I am quite proud of that article. So much so, in fact, that unlike many of the other topics I rehash here, I have felt no need to write anything more on the subject. I did feel pushed to at least mention the article linked at the head of this post, however, especially after listening to what I seem to recall was episode #114 of Back to Work a few weeks ago.....
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Rethinking building on the cloud: Part 1: Layering the Cloud
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www.thoughtworks.com
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13 years ago
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eng
We've just launched Mingle SaaS, and as part of designing & building the architecture from scratch, we were able to challenge and rethink the way we build systems on the cloud. This is the first part in a series of blogs discussing our learning. One of the great things about the cloud is the way you can just run a bit of code or a bash script and before a Windows admin can open their GUI you’ve got a running box. This opens up a host of opp..
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How I made a simple Business Model Canvas for geekar
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myownfortune.wordpress.com
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13 years ago
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eng
The power of simple python scripting is one of the themes of this blog, and now I can show a great practical example. I needed to create something that looks like this: This is a simple HTML table with some CSS. But trying to write it in HTML would result in a lot of copy-pasting […]
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I started exercising my idea muscles a few days ago. Every day I think of 10 startup ideas and develop one into a business model. Some will be published here. Lets begin with the first example – geekar, an Augmented Reality-enhanced retail, in the most early-adopter industry I know: geeks. geekar will sell comic books, […]
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When I first came across this article a few weeks ago while browsing Less Wrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s chronicle struck me as the perfect example illustrating the importance of a number of different things, primary of which was the significance of asking the right question. Alongside this topic the author also touched on the value of keeping an open mind, possessing a willingness to abandon pre-conceived notions when presented with new eviden..
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Previously on this blog, we’ve covered two major kinds of algebraic objects: the vector space and the group. There are at least two more fundamental algebraic objects every mathematician should something know about. The first, and the focus of this primer, is the ring. The second, which we’ve mentioned briefly in passing on this blog, is the field. There are a few others important to the pure mathematician, such as the $ R$-module (here $ R..
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Previously on this blog, we’ve covered two major kinds of algebraic objects: the vector space and the group. There are at least two more fundamental algebraic objects every mathematician should something know about. The first, and the focus of this primer, is the ring. The second, which we’ve mentioned briefly in passing on this blog, is the field. There are a few others important to the pure mathematician, such as the $ R$-module (here $ R..
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Previously on this blog, we’ve covered two major kinds of algebraic objects: the vector space and the group. There are at least two more fundamental algebraic objects every mathematician should something know about. The first, and the focus of this primer, is the ring. The second, which we’ve mentioned briefly in passing on this blog, is the field. There are a few others important to the pure mathematician, such as the $ R$-module (here $ R..
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In the mid-1800s, there were thousands of unique varieties of apples in the United States, some of the most astounding diversity ever developed in a food crop. Then industrial agriculture crushed that world. The apple industry settled on a handful of varieties to promote worldwide, and the rest were forgotten. They became commercially extinct — but not quite biologically extinct.” A nice change of pace from the usual; a delightful article..
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The web is built of links, of pages linking to other resources on the internet. But making those links manually is tedious. This is another area where modern inline editors could do better. Yesterday on Hacker News, there was a thread about Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation’s new knowledge base. This comment struck me especially: I was using Wikipedia the other day and it occurred to me how primitive it is to have all the inner lin....
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The web is built of links, of pages linking to other resources on the internet. But making those links manually is tedious. This is another area where modern inline editors could do better. Yesterday on Hacker News, there was a thread about Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation’s new knowledge base. This comment struck me especially: I was using Wikipedia the other day and it occurred to me how primitive it is to have all the inner lin....
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How would you start your own talk show? The cool thing about creating a talk show is that it costs nothing other that time and a few opinions.
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Jenny Lustig is an alumni of, and is currently a front-end mentor at The Starter League, a web development school in Chicago.
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