Tyler Clemons

I always forget how to do this, so I am going to put it on my blog   If you have ever watched a youtube clip, and wanted to show your friends a particular snippet beginning at some specific time, you might send them the URL and tell them “Watch after 30seconds.” A better method of communication is to send the URL with a “time marker.”  (continue reading…)

Ben showed me a great website recently.  It’s called Kiva which can be found at http://www.kiva.org/.  This website allows anyone to make a small loan to entrepreneurs in third world countries.  The basic idea is to lend a small amount, or large amount, to an individual so that they can improve their business.  They then pay the loan back.  There isn’t any interest on the loan but in this situation, the benefits are worth more than interest.  I suggest that everyone considers taking a look at Kiva.  It’s a great opportunity to help those in need.

*It appears the petition may have worked*

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

Alan Turing is considered to be the father of modern computer science.  Turing is also partly responsible for designing the “bombe,” a machine used to crack the German Enigma machine yielding invaluable German military Intelligence to the Allied forces.

Unfortunately, instead of being revered by his government for his services rendered, he was criminally prosecuted for being a homosexual because homosexuality was illegal in Great Britain in 1952.  Having seen the end of his career and having undergone the subsequent drug treatment administered by the government to cure his homosexuality, he committed suicide via a cyanide induced apple.

Since then, the scientific community has embraced his achievements and ignored his lifestyle decision (as they should).  With great pleasure, I have stumbled upon an online petition urging the British PM to apologize to Alan Turing.  It is shame that only British citizens can sign it.  This petition can be found:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/

For more information about Alan Turing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Lastly, what would this be without a plug for gay rights in today’s society:

http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/index.html

Something that I stumbled on awhile back.

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/

It is no surprise that the most popular pages are adult websites.

I have been using this service for awhile now and I just thought I would formally recommend it.  OpenDNS is usually a faster alternative to the default DNS provided by your ISP.  It protects against phising automatically and can be adjusted to automatically block adult material aka porn.  AND you can travel with your settings by creating an account.

Click here

Back in undergrad, the majority of our classes taught us sound software engineering principles using Python, C++, and sometimes Java.  The first two were used quite extensively.  The resource I used was invaluable to my success in mastering data structures, learning OOP, and granting me proper exposure to Python and C++.  Data Structures and Algorithms Using Python and C++ is a great resource and I wanted to share it here.  I believe it is great for beginners of both Python and C++ and those entering a data structures course.  Click HERE to order a copy.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/01/12/02NF-ruby-on-rails-merb_1.html

Rails will add some new features and enhancements by merging with MERB.  Should be interesting.

I use a Macbook that I purchased last year.  It has OS X 10.4.5, or Tiger, installed.  It’s a pretty good machine.  So I decided to upgrade to 10.5.4, or Leopard.  Yea, it has been about a year and yea, 10.6 is coming next year, but that’s beside the point.  I was surprised I ran into problems considering how confident Apple has been.  “It Just Works?.”

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I use Adium and iTunes frequently. One of the cool things about the OS X environment is the integration between applications. For instance, Adium contacts can be linked to Address Book accounts. One of my personal favorites is the integration of Adium and iTunes. Adium can display details of what is currently playing on iTunes such as the name of the song and the artist. The trick is customizing these messages so that they can be presented as suitable away or status messages.
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I ran across scripting for the Mac OSX awhile ago. I finally decided to take a look at it when I decided to play around with Adium’s open source code. The most dominant prescene I observed was Applescript. Applescript is nice and all, but Python is nicer. Scripting OSX applications with Python has been around for a bit. Using the easy to install appscript, scripting can be leveraged by the power of Python and Ruby.

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