Dru Nelson

JT Herman Plaza 1

Originally uploaded by drudru

Photo 1 – a portion of the Tibet protest, China support for the Olympic Torch

Usenix proceedings are now free!

Nice!

That is some really high quality content.

If you go to Yahoo Finance, and look at their tech ticker.

The images look bad.

Why? Well, like so many sites that have thumbnails… they don’t use the correct algorithm for proper bitmap scaling.

The fix for this is easy and it is something that any programmer should know. Here is a link that is heavy on java, but translates easily to other languages:

The Perils of Image getScaledInstance

It has lots of pictures so you can easily visualize the differences.

If you want a longer read, read this great article It’s time for 2-d by Michael Herf of Picasa fame. It’s from 2000, but still very relevant.

looks like people are rediscovering the beauty of pure vector graphics, and even taking it to the next level.

Here is a great blog post with a collection of YouTube videos of some great oscilloscope demos.

My favorite is the last one. I love that kind of visualiztion.

Today I saw a posting asking “what does this command do?”

ls -R | grep “:$” | sed -e ‘s/:$//’ -e ‘s/[^-][^\/]*\//–/g’ -e ‘s/^/ /’ -e ‘s/-/|/’

Hint: it is related to my post which is now part 1.

I have to say, this clever use of 30 year old tools is just excellent. command line version using sed is just super clever. Very cool.

I gotta say, this phone is still the best phone I’ve ever had. Here is why:

First, it works great as a phone, which is the whole point of the device. I have no complaints there.

Second, it works great as an ipod. I’m consistently using it to watch a few videos that I haven’t had time for. I’m also listening to my music more often as well. Other phones that I’ve owned had really poor mp3 playback functionality.

Third, the software gets refreshed and improved often. This 1.1.3 release is another great release. The pseudo-GPS in the Google maps app is just awesome. Also, with the better gmail support in the native mail client, I’m using that more often as well. Just the other day, by accident, I found that new gesture shortcut that lets you delete mail with a simple flick and confirm (nice!) I’ve never had a phone that got periodic updates.

Apple has a clear winner on their hands.

Last week, I found out that Michael Klein passed away in an accident. It was a bit of a shock. You can read about the incident in the news. I knew Mike from eGroups and I had a tremendous amount of respect for him. He accomplished a lot at a very young age (he was my age), but on a one-on-one basis he was pretty down to earth. He will be missed.

Last Sunday, another shock occured. The kids came running over and called for me. One of our older neighbors was calling for help after calling 911. A closer neighbor was already over and was performing CPR. Unfortunately, the man had already passed away peacefully hours earlier. They were an older couple and the wife thought he was just sleeping a little late. We stayed with the wife and tried to comfort her when the paramedics and police arrived. The man was well known and loved in our neighborhood. His passing has affected our lives pretty significantly.

A few days later, the paramedics showed up again when we were outside. The wife had a mild heart attack. Her family was there to support her, and she is in the hospital.

It has been a really tough week for everybody.

I make mistakes every now and then. For example, I saw that movie Rize recently. Good movie. I was talking to a few people about it and I mentioned that I thought it was pretty cool for Dave Chapelle to back this movie. At that point, I found out that I made the same mistake that many others have made. The movie was by another very different chappelle, Dave LaChapelle.

Why do I mention this?

Recently, I heard that COPA was overturned in the courts. Unfortunately, like many others, I thought that COPPA was one and the same. Both are similar. They both are related to protecting children. My experience is with COPPA. It is the one that requires a birthdate on the registration screen. I watched several companies scramble to be compliant with the law. It stressed both companies and the effectiveness of the law remains questionable. I thought it was overturned, but it was just another simple mistake due to a low Levenshtein Distance between two words.