Category Archives: linklist

bookmarks of note

Items of some interest:

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These are my recent Pin​board​.in links:

  • pry/​pry

    Pry is a pow­er­ful alter­na­tive to the stan­dard IRB shell for Ruby. It is writ­ten from scratch to pro­vide a num­ber of advanced fea­tures, including:

    irb ruby software-​​development inter­preter

  • Daniel Fischer’s Blog — A Start­ing Guide to VIM from Textmate

    For about four years I’ve been using Text­mate almost every day. I’m very fast with it. I’ve always thought about switch­ing over to VIM or Emacs but I have been scared of los­ing my speed. In fact, I’ve actu­ally tried Emacs in the past and also wrote a blog post on my expe­ri­ence. I liked it in gen­eral, but I ended up com­ing back to Text­mate after a week. Why? I didn’t really feel like I was gain­ing anything.

    text­mate vim tuto­r­ial habit

  • A Ques­tion Answered — Credit Slips

    “Over cof­fee this morn­ing with a friend, I threw out the same ques­tion from my orig­i­nal post. How does an orga­ni­za­tion get itself to the place where it col­lec­tively comes to think such strong-​​arm col­lec­tion tac­tics on hos­pi­tal patients are a good idea, let alone morally defen­si­ble? A pro­file of Accretive’s CEO, Mary Tolan, in Crain’s Chicago Busi­ness con­tains this gem: “My objec­tive is just to be a happy, con­fi­dent cap­i­tal­ist,” says the devo­tee of Ayn Rand’s and Mil­ton Friedman’s free-​​market gospel, which she applies with a com­bat­ive, survival-​​of-​​the fittest man­age­ment style.”

    ran­dism buh-​​bye-​​john-​​galt

  • The Hum­ble Ori­gins of the NEXT Global Econ­omy. Don’t Miss Out.

    “It’s sim­ple.  If you want to build a thriv­ing local econ­omy.  A local econ­omy that makes your com­mu­nity resilient to eco­nomic fail­ure and shocks, you need to find ways to help the inno­va­tors in your com­mu­nity make things.”

    resilience sus­tain­abil­ity communities-​​of-​​practice mak­ers

Items of some interest:

Posted on by

These are my recent Pin​board​.in links:

Items of some interest:

Posted on by

These are my recent Pin​board​.in links:

  • Kinet­icJS — HTML5 Can­vas JavaScript Library Framework

    “Greet­ings fel­low webo­nauts! Kinet­icJS is an HTML5 Can­vas JavaScript library that extends the 2d con­text by enabling high per­for­mance path detec­tion and pixel detec­tion for desk­top and mobile appli­ca­tions. You can draw things on the stage and then add event lis­ten­ers to them, move them, scale them, and rotate them inde­pen­dently from other shapes to sup­port high per­for­mance ani­ma­tions and tran­si­tions.  Served hot with a side of awesomeness. ”

    javascript ani­ma­tion graphic-​​design html5

  • Tim Brown — More Per­fect Typog­ra­phy on Vimeo

    At long last, design­ers can use real fonts on the web. But what now? Where do we go from here? Tim Brown has been study­ing type on the web for seven years, and has lots of ideas to share. In this talk, Tim will guide you through using typo­graphic tools and per­spec­tives that will change the way you design web­sites. Typog­ra­phy is an ancient art and craft; we are merely its lat­est prac­ti­tion­ers. By look­ing to our tra­di­tion for guid­ance, we might once more attain our finest typo­graphic achieve­ments in this new medium.

    via:trek typog­ra­phy graphic-​​design type­face video

  • Twit­ter /​ tsuomela: My response to http://t.co …


    cultural-​​assumptions academic-​​culture wry-​​smile

  • BOOKTRYST: Amer­i­can Rare Book Trade Ads From 1902, Part III

    Part III of an absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing nanohis­tory series at Book­Tryst, exam­in­ing each of the ads in a 1900s bookman’s mag­a­zine. “On August 10, 1915  Ralph Ran­dolph Adams filed for, and on July 10, 1923 was granted a U.S. Patent for “Radioac­tive Spray Mate­r­ial.“ “The object of this inven­tion is to pro­vide a radio-​​active sub­stance for the pur­pose of stim­u­lat­ing plant growth. A fur­ther object is to pro­vide a radio-​​active sub­stance for the pre­ven­tion and destruc­tion of insects, lar­vae, eggs, bac­te­ria and fungi which are inju­ri­ous to plants or ani­mals. A fur­ther object is to pro­vide a mate­r­ial hav­ing these prop­er­ties which can be effi­ciently applied by spray­ing, and which will adhere to the parts of plants above ground…or to the fur, feath­ers or skin of ani­mals [our empha­sis] which are both­ered by pests…(U.S. Patent No. 1461340). In short, Adams invented a radioac­tive insect-​​killer to spray on the leather he used for bind­ing as a preser­v­a­tive to pre­vent pests from harm­ing his work. Adams “Vien­nese” bind­ings prior to 1910 do not, pre­sum­ably, require use of a Geiger counter, and, hav­ing one from 1902 recently pass through my hands, I am relieved. It is unknown to this writer whether Adams’ post-​​patent bind­ings glow in the dark.”

    books nanohis­tory dig­i­ti­za­tion cul­ture

Items of some interest:

Posted on by

These are my recent Pin​board​.in links:

Items of some interest:

Posted on by

These are my recent Pin​board​.in links:

  • BOOKTRYST: Amer­i­can Rare Book Trade Ads From 1902

    ‘Where to begin with Charles Car­ring­ton (b. 1867 — d. 1921 of syphilis), who deserves an entire book devoted to his col­or­ful char­ac­ter and career? Of Por­tuguese descent, Car­ring­ton,  born Paul Harry Fer­nandino, was, arguably, the most noto­ri­ous pub­lisher of his gen­er­a­tion. He began in Lon­don. Circa 1893–96 he skipped to Paris; deported from France in 1907, he fled to Brus­sels. In 1912, he returned to Paris, at times Ams­ter­dam. In short, he oper­ated one step ahead of the law. “His­tor­i­cal, Artis­tic, Med­ical, and Anthro­po­log­i­cal Works,” is cer­tainly one way to char­ac­ter­ize the books he pub­lished. Erot­ica, pornog­ra­phy, curiosa, and sex­ol­ogy are other appro­pri­ate descrip­tions. Often, the stated pub­li­ca­tion locale, pub­lisher, and date on his books were false. Many if not most of his books were “for pri­vate sub­scribers only.” He was active as a pub­lisher for twenty-​​six years and pub­lished approx­i­mately 300 books.’

    book­seller bib­lio­ma­nia nanohis­tory characters-​​we-​​have-​​been-​​like

  • The Ongo­ing Vigil of Soft­ware Security

    “Some of the rea­sons that we keep see­ing these types of exploits are that the “bad guys” are much smarter and more deter­mined than we give them credit for, we’re much lazier and more igno­rant than we take respon­si­bil­ity for, and secu­rity is dif­fi­cult to man­age prop­erly. As we become more and more reliant upon soft­ware, it is imper­a­tive that secu­rity be taken more seriously.”

    software-​​development secu­rity advice overview

  • Economist’s View: “The Soci­ol­ogy of Organizations”

    “It often sounds as though Per­row is fault­ing these orga­ni­za­tions for defects that are inher­ent in all large orga­ni­za­tions. But it seems more fair to say that his analy­sis does not iden­tify a gen­eral fea­ture of orga­ni­za­tions that leads to fail­ure in these cases, but rather a sit­u­a­tional fact hav­ing to do with the power of busi­ness to resist reg­u­la­tion and the sus­cep­ti­bil­ity of Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent to polit­i­cal pres­sures that ham­string effec­tive reg­u­la­tory orga­ni­za­tions. Per­row does refer to spe­cific orga­ni­za­tional haz­ards — bad exec­u­tive lead­er­ship, fal­ter­ing morale, inabil­ity to col­lab­o­rate across agen­cies, exces­sively hier­ar­chi­cal archi­tec­ture — but the heart of his argu­ment lies else­where. The key set of prob­lems spi­ral back to the inor­di­nate power that cor­po­ra­tions have in the United States, and the dis­tor­tions they cre­ate in Con­gress and the exec­u­tive branch. … It is specifics of the US polit­i­cal sys­tem rather than gen­eral defects of large orga­ni­za­tions per se that lead to the bad out­comes that Per­row iden­ti­fies. There are strong democ­ra­cies that do a much bet­ter job of reg­u­lat­ing risky indus­tries and plan­ning for dis­as­ters than we do — for exam­ple, France and Ger­many. …
    There isn’t much pub­lic con­cern about these risks, and leg­is­la­tors are there­fore free to ignore them as well. … So where will the polit­i­cal demand for strong reg­u­la­tion come from? Will we need to wait for the bad news we’ve man­aged by good for­tune to have avoided up to this point?”

    public-​​policy infra­struc­ture antebellum-​​America con­ser­vatism

  • Bach­mann, Gaffney, and the GOP’s Anti-​​Muslim Cul­ture of Con­spir­acy — The Daily Beast

    “Ear­lier this month, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-​​TX) appeared on the FOX Busi­ness show Money Rocks to make the case for depriv­ing the chil­dren of immi­grants of their 14th Amend­ment rights. Gohmert claimed that on a recent air­plane trip to the Mid­dle East, one of his trav­el­ing com­pan­ions had struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with a grand­mother who described her family’s involve­ment in a Hamas plot to send preg­nant women to the United States. Gohmert sum­ma­rized the les­son for view­ers this way: “We’re bring­ing them over here on tourist visas, some ille­gally, let­ting them be born here and say­ing, ‘This is an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. So come back in 20, 25 years when you’re ready to blow us up.’””

    para­noia Repub­li­cans con­ser­vatism conspiracy-​​theories political-​​discourse antebellum-​​America