“My advice to young people is to get a computer science degree, if for no other reason than you can avoid those odd jobs and get right to the programming.” – Brent Simmons I’m continually bumping up against my ignorace of good programming practices that one would get in Comp. Sci. 101. Not that it …
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Finding Yourself on Myspace
That’s right, somewhere, out in the vastness of the MySpace network, is someone exactly like me. I feel like I’ve lapped myself.
How to Decode TinyURLs with Ruby
def reverse_tinyurl(tinyurl) require ‘open-uri’ require ‘net/http’ url = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(tinyurl)).to_hash[‘location’].to_s end This should also work for any url that is a known redirect whether it be a tinyurl.com, urltea.com, rubyurl.com, or what have you.
Prepare Your Pocketbooks
“Launching a paytoplay service in the midst of free alternatives makes little sense…But there’s a lot more to the conversation.” – Aaron Mentele Heh. That’s why the next web app I launch, I’m charging. A pile. Get ready cause, I’m looking at your pocketbook. Seriously, if you want to get in on the action early, …
I Still Don’t Care What Everyone Thinks
AideRSS (a feed-filtering service) is starting to pick up traction in my blogosphere. “[AideRSS] analyzes the activity around each item in an RSS feed – Technorati hits, comments, Del.icio.us links, traffic reports, etc. – and calculates a score for the item. It then creates four feeds from the original feed, each set to a higher …
License Recalled
Mattel Inc, recalls 9 million toys after recalling 1.5 millon. All the recalled products are licensed – Barbie, Batman, Big Bird, Cars, Dora, Elmo, Thomas (shakes fist). Back In My DayTM, very few licensed toys were allowed in the house. I’m sure it was a combination of the ickyness of branding your child, the sensitivity …
Rennaissance: If Blade Runner Wasn’t Drawn By Frank Miller
Baby Talk Less
“The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos, and there is some suggestion of harm” – Frederick Zimmerman, University of Washington While I’d like more info on the study methodology (phone interviews with 1K families in MN & WA) …
Christmas (Funny) in July
Cayenne Chris’s Christmas 2006 Tekdiff episode [mp3] finally came up on my shuffled ‘Unlistened Podcast’ this afternoon. It’s one of the best Tekdiff episodes (23 4-star or great episodes in my library), from the Tiny Tree’s First Christmas to bizarre Holiday traditions in unnamed Eastern European villages. Belated Yuletide Thanks Chris.
Gifted
“When a holiday is the pretext and the value of the gift is (possibly) linked to merit, we can self-deceive and believe that a small-valued gift simply represents a cheap gift-giver, or a friendship of uncertain strength, rather than our own lack of merit.” – Tyler Cowen Ouch.