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links for 2010-08-24

  • This guest contribution is from a programmer colleague of mine at Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences. Thanks for this enlightenment. According to Wikipedia there are an estimated 10.5 million American men who are red green color blind. I am one of them. I discovered this many years ago and rarely think about it as to me it is normal. However, I have discovered that those around me are endlessly fascinated with it—especially designers. So, to you I provide this public service message on color blindness. First a little bit of myth busting. Red and green do not appear gray to me, perhaps less bright then you are used to but not gray. Second, color blindness does not give me superpowers. I cannot magically see through red and green objects and describe what is behind them. (It would be nice at times though (-: .) Examples Now for the really fun part. This is a series of images created with Vischeck that appear the same to me. Really they do, at most one is a very tiny shade lig
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    links for 2010-06-05

  • French psychologists recently spent some time analyzing Darth Vader (we're not sure why) and determined that the Sith Lord was mentally ill, according to LiveScience. Specifically they say he probably has a borderline personality, described by Wikipedia "as a prolonged disturbance of personality function in a person (generally over the age of eighteen years, although it is also found in adolescents), characterized by depth and variability of moods." The psychologists are going to publish their findings in the journal Psychiatry Research, but LiveScience has a preview: Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder. For instance, the future Darth Vader showed both impulsivity and anger management issues as an overexcited, lovelorn Jedi. He went back and forth between idealiz
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    links for 2010-01-25

  • "The Free Database about the St. Louis Area that anyone can edit!"
  • When it comes to free software, the open-source community certainly has a monopoly on high-minded posturing and puffy rhetoric. Just take a look at the Philosophy page of the GNU operating system's website: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms." But when it comes to free software, those free-loving, free-wheeling open sourcers have an unlikely challenger: Microsoft. Yes, you heard us right, Microsoft: the ice to Fedora's fire; the night to Ubuntu's day. But as unlikely as it may seem, Redmond actually has a thriving – though largely unsung – library of free applications available to download. And we're not just talking about freeware cobbled together in bedrooms by people who don't get
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    links for 2009-12-03

  • Writing for the web is a challenge. There are usually word length restrictions, the fact that users scan rather than read every word, and sometimes style guides to adhere to. There are enough writing tips online to keep you reading for longer than you probably desire. Here are 1o tips that have been the most useful to me: Know your audience This sounds obvious but is often taken for granted. The only way you can write relevant copy that is targeted at the right audience in the right tone of voice, is to understand who that audience is. Depending on where your audience are located, you may have to include local expressions or if writing for a wide audience be specific with things such as dollars. If it is US dollars then say so. If it is Cardiff in Wales then say so as there is also a Cardiff in New Zealand and other countries.
  • Colour is a powerful tool when it comes to design. It’s fun to work with and when you get it right it can really make a design. I’m no colour expert so I’m not going to bore you with any theory but having worked with colour for a long time I there are a few really simple tips I’ve picked up along the way. Editor’s note: We’ll be covering topics like Typography, CSS3, HTML5, Microformats and how to work with clients at The Future of Web Design Tour. Tickets are only £59.
  • When you type www.wikipedia.org into your browser's address bar, you expect nothing less than to be taken to Wikipedia. Chances are you're not giving much thought to the work being done in the background by the Domain Name System, or DNS. Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out. Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another. The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading.
  • Well, the latest installment of the Twilight series is breaking box office records all over the place. I contributed to that as I saw it with a packed house on Saturday afternoon. How could I resist, after having so much fun at the first one last year? It was an interesting experience, as my audience had a maniacal cackler who almost provided more entertainment than the movie itself. Before I get to my detailed review (I am educated in film so expect serious criticism), I want to mention the movie's soundtrack. I think a lot of indie rock fans were up in arms over some of the bands on there. I don't know, I don't put much stock in the whole "selling out" concept, and I've been listening to it and there really are a lot of great tracks. Thom Yorke, BRMC, Grizzly Bear, Editors…. um, uh… oh geez.
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