September 2004
Sept. 17, 2004
Pollster, Schmollster. Jonas on why the polls don’t accurately reflect the population.
zipdecode (Java Applet). Type a zip code (try 66044) and watch the USA get narrowed down. Brilliant.
Sept. 18, 2004
Introducing Myself. Michael Moncur takes up the reigns at the JavaScript weblog.
Flickr iPhoto Plugin 0.7 (via) Flickr just got a whole lot easier to feed things to.
Sept. 19, 2004
Projection Stylesheets. Jim Wilkinson writing on the css-discuss wiki.
Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates (via) It be that day again, yarrr.
Sept. 20, 2004
A9 and Google Local. Remote scripting features heavily on these two recent high profile site launches.
UI Patterns and Techniques (via) Patterns for User Interface design.
My llama photos. I think it’s a llama; it might be an alpaca.
CSS 2.1 Index. The best way of browing the CSS spec. Even better with TypeAhead find.
Tkinter Tricks: Using Complex Numbers to Rotate Canvas Items. Smart use of Python’s complex number type.
Net security threats growing fast. 30,000+ PCs a day are being compromised for botnets.
The Sun Does Not Shine Online. Paper losing 90,000 readers a day to their free web edition.
Implementing Piped List in CSS (via) Simple, effective border trick.
Matching newlines in JavaScript
Just a quick note: the . character in a JavaScript regular expression will never match a newline character. If you want to match any character including newlines you can use the [\s\S] character class instead, which means “any character that’s either whitespace or not whitespace”.
Why online newspapers require registration. Rick Skrenta says it’s due to competition with print ads and spam.
Sept. 21, 2004
The Rapture Index (via) Whoa.
Journalism Under Fire (via) Outstanding speech by Bill Moyers.
George Monbiot: Their beliefs are bonkers (via) I really, really hope that this isn’t accurate.
Will Google Launch A Browser? They’ve registered gbrowser.com.
Python2.4 highlights
A.M. Kuchling’s “What’s New in Python X” documents are always a treat, and his guide to the forthcoming Python 2.4 is no exception. Among other things, 2.4 elevates sets to built in type status, dramatically improves the usability of Python’s list sort method (for easier application of DSU, aka the Schwartzian transform), makes reverse iteration easier and introduces an alternative string substitution method.
[... 231 words]More evidence of a Google browser. Kottke’s Google Browser roundup.
Interview with BBC R&D Dirac Developer Thomas Davies (via) With discussion of the new open-licensed Dirac codec under development at the BBC.
Google Browser mention in Bugzilla. The bug has since been deleted.
if (gBrowser) { var google = new Platform(); }. Matt May speculates on hard drive search and Google’s 32 billion dollar market cap.
Mac Geekery (via) Tips for hardcore Mac geeks.
Are poker ‘bots’ raking online pots? (via) Poker bots fleecing newbies on gambling sites.
PONGMECHANIK (via) Crazy German hardware Pong clone.
Python Cookbook: Use generators for fetching large db record sets. Nice generator example.
HOW-TO: Take digital photos from a kite. With detailed instructions on modding the camera to take a shot every second until the card fills up.