• Assemble Me – cool blog on information design and visualization

Noise Ninja 2.0 has a Mac OS X version. That’s great. Ironically, one of the things I still do primarily on my PC is my image handling and cataloguing, primarily because of tools like Noise Ninja, Neat Image, Qimage being PC only. And for cataloguing/browsing, ACDSee just beats the pants off of anything on the Mac.

• Weblog Snapshots – paranoid fish whips up a pyobjc/webkit script to generate snapshots of entire weblogs. Source forthcoming. Cool!
• Re:Why not a PDA? – interesting, Duke provides campus-wide CVS and (apparently flaky) AFS w/ Mac and Windows clients.
• Autoversioning, Subversion and WebDAV – the holy grail w/ Apache2 and SubVersion. See also: OSCON 2003 Subversion WebDAV [PDF], Appendix C. WebDAV and Autoversioning
• DForge – version of GForge w/ Wiki, Subversion, WebDAV support
• A Foot of Mac – photomatt breaks down, joins the club. I think it was just last year he was talking about being one of the last non-swicthers…
• R-Name – in the tradition of other great Japanese GUI front-ends, a free OS X batch-file-renaming utility
• Canon XL2 and Panasonic AG-DVX100 Comparison – the new Canon XL2 looks awesome. Interchangable use of EOS lenses, true 24P and 16:9. Although this description of its image quality is disheartening. See also Anyone with some 8bit DSP insights?. We’ll have to see when the XL2 comes out I suppose… (the cinematography forums look like a good place to hang out if you’re doing the video thing)

I spent a couple hours today working out Google Labs Problem #3 (skip the bottom if you want to solve it for yourself). I don’t need a job or anything, but it caught my interest. Sadly, I’m left with a feeling that there should be a much better way to do it if I were smarter, but hey, I kicked that snack machine’s ass. That’s the important thing.

Yes, this was incredibly nerdy. Yes, I should be doing other things with my time. And no, I haven’t eaten yet today.

[update] I got this response back:

Dear Problem Solver,

Thanks for taking the time to play with our little brain-teaser and for
sending us your solution. While you won’t find a confirmation of the
answer in this email, we did want to let you know that your message was
received and that we’ll be taking a look at it. If you submitted a resume,
we’ll be spending some time with that as well. If it seems like there
might be a fit with a position we have open, we’ll contact you within the
next few days.

And as for the answer to the puzzle, we’ll post the ads and the solution
on our site within a couple of months, after those who are a little slower
than you have had a chance to work on it a bit longer. Thanks again for
your interest in Google.

The Google Labs Engineering Team

Which puts me in a bit of an ethical dilemma, right? Do I take this link down so the less scrupulous won’t cheat their way to an (admittedly mediocre) solution? Of course, if they do find this, it’ll be pretty much by using Google to search for it (ahh, delicious irony).

See also: Fog Creek Software: Mysterious billboard, Google is behind mystery geek trap

• Algorithm::FastPermute – like Algorithm::Permute, works only on entire list. I just hard-coded my own fixed-depth iterative permutation loops in PHP
• perlfaq4: How do I permute N elements of a list? – this would probably work, didn’t bother
• Hacking The Math: Permutation Generation – like the Perl libraries, does permutations of entire sets, not subsets
• Permutation Generation Methods – reading that would both go over my head and put me to sleep, I’m sure

• IM Watching – IM monitoring/stats would be an ideal thing to do w/ your own Jabber server
• Why do they hate America so much? – I really do wonder how this will play out

My new office desktop setup w/ Synergy putting my Mac and PC w/ joint clipboard and input. Using two Y-adapters and an extension cable and now my headphones and speakers are also both hooked up.

• Trackball
• SSH tunneling
• Laptop over VPN
• ColorSpyder
• uControl to normalize keys

• Groupcal – iCal + Exchange compatibility
• Accessing Web Services In Netscape 7.1/Mozilla 1.4 Using WSDL Proxying
• Synergy works – todo: ctrl/apple mapping for copy and paste, SSH tunneling it all, connecting laptop as well (one large 5 screen monster); middle mouse button doesn’t seem to work; there should be keyboard shortcuts for screen jumping too… virtual desktops, but err, real. 🙂
• Watch, Compass, Thermometer Cufflinks – zowie
• NYTimes: Not Funnies – on growth of comics and graphic novels
• Everything I Learned at MIT – One day I decided to scan in the notes from all the courses I took at MIT, in my four years there 1995-1999. Perhaps some of them will be of use to you?
• Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention
• bitoogle – the bit torrent file search engine
• Security and NFS
• Red Hat: Securing NFS
• Configuring NFS under Linux for Firewall control

• Synergy – x-platform machine control from a single keyboard and mouse, now w/ OS X support. I’m going to need to try this out. (backup: mathowie’s way)

ma says:

Is there a medieval battle at Machine this Saturday night? Yes. Do you have to bring your own beer? Yes. Will there be men and women dressed in full plate armour hitting each other with pieces of metal? Yes. Can you safely watch the action projected next door at the film center? Yes. Is this the best idea ever? Yes. Will there also be monguls, vikings, and centurians? Maybe. Will I wear my chain mail suit? Unclear.

Looks frickin’ cool.

Machine Project announces
“Untitled War”, a medieval battle staged inside the gallery space. On July 17
from 6 to 8pm, armored warriors will engage in gut wrenching, full-contact
combat with assorted melee weapons.

“Untitled War” is the latest project by artist and uber-gamer Brody Condon. Working in the mystical
confluence of contemporary art practice, 3D games, and historical combat
reenactment, Mr. Condon’s work is engaged in locating and fabricating
situations and visual works where computer games and game culture leak outside
of the gaming box and into lived experience. In “Untitled War”. Condon’s
ongoing work on SCA (Society for Creative
Anachronism, www.sca.org) culminates in a full-contact battle royale staged
inside of Machine Project, located in Echo Park Los Angeles.

“Untitled War” is a performative event combining fantasy role-playing,
fabricated history, extreme sports, and computer games. Warriors from various
historical periods from the SCA will endure an ongoing First Person Shooter
Game style Deathmatch battle. Live camera views (similar to the spectator
camera views found in online FPS games) will be streamed online and projected
next door at the Echo Park Film
Center, creating a game-like viewing experience for those outside the
space.

“Untitled War” is the first one man staging of a Medieval battle in Los
Angeles by Mr. Condon, a former member of the SCA. Mr. Condon’s personal and
collaborative work has recently been exhibited at the 2004 Whitney Biennial,
the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the New Museum of Contemporary
Art.

Thanks to SCA and the Echo Park Film Center for their generous
support.

More information about Brody Condon’s art work can be found at his website,
www.tmpspace.com

Brody Condon also recently created a 650 Polygon John Carmack sculpture piece.

F9/11 (on its way to breaking $100 DBO) has been getting most of the press, but there are other documentaries a-hopping:

• Control Room – decent distribution around town
• The Corporation – a documentary on the growth and repercussions of corporate power (playing in LA for a week at the Nuart
• OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism – on DVD
• Orwell Rolls In His Grave – premiering at Laemmle’s Fairfax 3 July 30