Triviathis is now online and open for signups. This is our soft semi-beta launch to see how the site performs under light load and gather initial user feedback.
It's a trivia game site that anyone can submit questions to. If you just want to play you can just play - no need to signup. The idea is to bring trivia to web 2.0. Answer questions and get an instant AJAX response as soon as you submit your answer. Questions are tagged and you can browse by tags. Instead of having to take entire quizzes worth of questions you can answer one question at a time and skip whichever ones you want.
My role in this project is currently almost everything. Getting a few more people involved as we grow here. Keep watching us close because we're growing fast.
Iraq has demanded a clear commitment from the US that its forces will have left its soil by the end of 2011.
...
“The maximum duration is three years. It cannot be extended beyond the three years but it can be reduced,” an Iraqi source close to the matter said, explaining that under the suggested amendments either Baghdad or Washington would be able to accelerate the US withdrawal rate provided a 12-month notice period is given.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5032531.ece
Great news, but -
1. Will Iraq live up to this declaration?
2. If they do live up to it - what happens then? Will we just leave? Highly unlikely. Remember the last time this happened? I do:
United States occupies Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden demands that we leave because they don't want us or need us there anymore. United States says, "No we won't leave and you can't make us". Osama Bin Laden carries out various acts of terrorism against the United States, most notably running a few planes into some buildings, and the United States says "The terrorists are over there in Iraq, let's bomb everyone there". And now we're there.. and we're likely to do the exact. same. thing. all. over. again.
Course what if everything goes the way I want it to go and we leave and never return? We'll just have to start another war, won't we.
KeyCastr is a small Mac app that shows keystrokes as you perform them. This is useful especially for screencasts when you need to know what was pressed. The only Windows app I could find that does something similar is osdHotKey.
Add this code to testmailer.rb (Testmailer < ActionMailer::Base) def test_mail(to)
subject "My first email!"
recipients "#{to}"
from 'test'
charset "utf-8"
content_type 'text/html'
body "Testing one two three..."
end
This and it's corresponding audio have some of the most enlightened commentary on the current US economic situation with regard to AIG and subprime mortgages. It's about half an hour, but if you want to know what's going on you should listen to it - it's one of the shortest ways to learn.
Just set up a few google apps accounts using google mail and Thunderbird. There is a lot of misinformation on the web about what you should be using for settings in Thunderbird. If you want to set it up correctly and have everything function the way it should you really need to look into what Google says and not other blog posts. This is a very important page, but very well hidden.
glTail is a pretty neat little script (make sure you check out the video on the homepage.. static image doesn't do it justice). It's a ruby script that creates a visual representation of log files.
Install (if you have rubygems) is as easy as: gem install gl_tail
It requires an older version of net-ssh that you can intsall like this: gem install net-ssh -v 1.1.4
Configure the gl_tail.yaml file and then just run it straight from your console: C:\docs> gl_tail
My notes: When configuring the gl_tail.yaml file make sure you use spaces and not tabs because it will mess up if you do.
My friend Harlan sent this to me. A video basically explaining doubling time or rule of 72 (or 70 or 69) in real-world examples that don't have to do with money. It's pretty simple, but cool to watch especially seeing rule of 72 in areas other than money. Total length is ~75 minutes, but you can watch any number of the videos and get some good info.
Here's the equation:
70 / % of growth per unit of time = doubling period per unit of time
Examples:
70 / 5 (% per year) = in 14 years it will double
70 / 4 (% per year) = in 17.5 years it will double
70 / 35 (% per minute) = in 2 minutes it will double
The approximation that you can do in your head of course is only accurate within a certain range (lower numbers). One can see as we approach 70:
70 / 70 (% per year) = in 1 year it will double
Well this is obviously not true.
I don't entirely agree with the conclusion he comes to about population growth being beyond problematic; I don't dispute the numbers though. As far as population and energy problems I think the biggest thing that is ignored is rate of innovation (not only new technology, but the different ways people can live [vertically?]) and supply and demand. One cannot ignore the bacteria example though in that we are just one unit of time away from doubling once we reach that point of fullness (example: if we fill up this planet to the maximum even if we discover another planet that is habitable (or make it habitable) we will fill it up (double) in just one more unit of time.
