Capture a Screencast with a Mac
While putting together a good tutorial movie for your blog or for an article you’re writing requires some thought and preparation, and would benefit from extra time spent on post-processing, the good news is that capturing screen shots and screen movies can be done inexpensively on a Mac. Although I take a glance at the wider context of preparing an entire tutorial and give you some tips along the way, my focus here is on the low-cost software you can use.
Miraz Jordan, Digital Web Magazine — I found this very helpful.
… online organizer that caters to todays lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way.
Seems to work. Wow!
Rails BrainThis is really quite nice!
quick developer reference for CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, AJAX, SQL and more
This is nice too. Obviously more than just rails.
Australia hands over man to US courts
BEFORE he was extradited to the United States, Hew Griffiths, from Berkeley Vale in NSW, had never even set foot in America. But he had pirated software produced by American companies.
Now, having been given up to the US by former justice minister Chris Ellison, Griffiths, 44, is in a Virginia cell, facing up to 10 years in an American prison after a guilty plea late last month.
Griffiths’ case — involving one of the first extraditions for intellectual property crime — has been a triumph for US authorities, demonstrating their ability to enforce US laws protecting US companies against Australians in Australia, with the co-operation of the Australian Government.
… did cost American companies money — an estimated $US50 million ($A60 million), if legal sales were substituted for illegal downloads
… Griffiths fought the prospect of extradition through the courts for three years, in which time he was denied bail and detained in prison.
Kenneth Nguyen, theage.com.au — This is crazy. I used to think that Canada wouldn’t suck up like Australia just did, but I’m no longer so sure.
tracks the bills in Congress, along with estimates about their costs or savings, when available.
A good idea.
Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside
“Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one’s breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe,” Dr. Friedman wrote. “The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight.”
GINA KOLATA, New York Times — Oh. Good.
web.burza Superhero Editionvia Stylegala — Nice site. Fun to explore.
“Novint Technologies opened our eyes to what it’s like to actually feel a game. The Falcon is a first-of-its-kind PC peripheral that makes use of force feedback to allow users to experience artificial 3D-touch “Haptic” sensitivity of virtual objects.
via core77 — That’s part of the marketing speak description. There are a few videos that can be downloaded/viewed. The one showing first reactions of users is a little more convincing (and funny).
This is not a f**king Droog light, light
Canadian design collective Castor Canadensis has concocted a most unique lighting fixture with a most perplexing title. “This is not a fking Droog light, light” consists of 12-volt truck lights hooked up to a transformer that can take a beating and hang out on the walls or ceiling. TINAFDLL ‘s a little too punk-rock to be mistaken for Droog anyway, but at the least, they’ve taken quite the preventative measure.
Castor Canadensis via core77 — I like these. I also like their credenza.
I’d say we’ve reached a turning point when it comes to “The Web” but that’d be misleading. The Web, as we know it, is always changing and at the same time encompassing so many different paradigms it’s not really possible to have a single turning point. “Web 2.0” exists in tandem with a more “traditional” Web and they’re evolving both together and separately. Each has a place and as the “new” Web is pushing the barriers, there is a whole lot we can (and should) pass along to the traditional Web.
D. Keith Robinson — This is an excellent article. If you are familiar with what is happening in web development these days, it is more than excellent. There is problem with this whole ‘web 2.0’ concept and this article nails one part of that problem… and then goes on to offer really good advice (which in itself is noteworthy).
70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding
CSS isn’t always easy to deal with. Depending on your skills and your experience, CSS coding can sometimes become a nightmare … We’ve taken a close look at some of the most interesting and useful CSS tricks, tips, ideas, methods, techniques and coding solutions and listed them below. We also included some basic techniques you can probably use in every project you are developing, but which are hard to find once you need them.
Smashing Magazine — This is a good list. I’m pretty familiar with CSS so some of this is not new to me, but some of it is. There are a couple of quibbles, but… so what?
The American mission was conducted outside the Nato command structure and was therefore subject to different rules of engagement. … It is understood that the special forces unit included men known in America as CIA para-militaries, while support was provided by aircraft including the C130 Spectre gunship. … his [Haji Abdul Rasool, a tribal elder] account [of civilian deaths] is corroborated by teams sent to the area by the United Nations, the Afghan government and Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission. … The UN said it had accounts of 49 civilian deaths and 1,600 families displaced by the violence. … The operation has caused anxiety at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels and in Kabul. … US forces initially hailed the mission as a success. A US army press release claimed 136 Taliban fighters and one American soldier died in the fighting, while there were “no civilian casualties reported”.
David Corn — This is the event that propted Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s warning that Afghans’ patience with foreign troops was “wearing thin.” When I first heard this warning by Karzai it was without the context of this incident.
Static Typing and Readable Code
Neal’s post Static Typing is Communist Bureaucracy has drawn out the usual arguments on both sides of dynamic vs. static typing debate.
Relevance
Event Driven Mongrel and Swiftiply Proxy
Kirk Haines of the IOWA project has finally released his swiftiply package. I’m really excited about this project. The project has a few parts. There is a monkey patch to Mongrel that rips out ruby’s threading and Socket classes and replaces them with an eventmachine event loop. I have been testing this evented mongrel extensively for the past few weeks and it is notably faster and higher throughput then normal multi threaded mongrel.
Ezra Zygmuntowicz — I’m using Merb on a couple of serious projects. This looks interesting.
I am So backloged...Sorry, but I’ve been sick with a cold like I’ve never had before. Still catching up.
