Clipmarks | splendidus's clips

But if you hold your personal boundaries and don’t argue back (simply healthily deflect back), you’ve won. You’ve held your ground. You’ve not let them sway you.

5) No one can argue against needs

If someone disrespects your needs, then you need to have boundaries in place to inform you what you will and will not tolerate from them.

6) Trying to control another person’s opinion oversteps both their boundaries and yours

"Blue Skies" versus "Goal-Oriented" Research

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:25:08 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: The Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva has now achieved the status of the most powerful particle accelerator and the biggest and most expensive experiment in history.
Will it be worth its cost?
(via @ProfBrianCox)

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

a lively debate chaired by Cern physicist

Brian Cox with the science minister Lord Drayson

"blue skies" research, as opposed to "goal-oriented" research

When completing proposals for publicly funded grants, scientists are now required to indicate

the applications or spin-off technologies of their work

Retrospective justification is anti-innovative

targeted research restricts the creativity that defines science

Critics might wail about how much the LHC costs, but esoteric it ain't. This experiment to find the Higgs Boson is on a continuum of knowledge and discovery on which all human civilisation is based

There will be some direct technological spin-offs for sure

Other high-energy physics projects formed the basis for the development of positron emission tomography

Next year, the scientists at the LHC will ignore the advice of the Ghostbusters, and will deliberately cross the streams of protons whizzing round the 27km tunnel at 99.99% the speed of light

Clip Source: www.timeshighereducation.co.uk

View the debate

see the story

Tags: economy, large hedron collider, research, science, technology

Planetary Society & Hubble Advent Calendars

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:51:33 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: My favorite objects are the moons. How wonderful would it be, if we had more than one moon...

Clip Source: planetary.org

I decided to flatter the Big Picture very sincerely by running my own advent calendar here at The Planetary Society Blog.

instead of counting up to Christmas, I'll count up to the New Year

The first image I've selected is of the star sapphire of the Saturn system, Dione.

It's the fourth largest of Saturn's moons, about 1100 kilometers across, just another little iceball except for that fascinating system of fractures that looked like volcanic flows to Voyager scientists but which Cassini revealed to be bright, fresh fractures cutting Dione's surface.

Clip Source: planetary.org

Day 2: Mathilde

Clip Source: planetary.org

Day 3: Europa

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009

Planetary nebula NGC 2818

composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy

four moons of Saturn

UGC 8335 is a strongly interacting pair of spiral galaxies

Tags: astronomy, calender, moon, space

How fast is your site?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:15:38 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: An experimental feature in Google's Webmaster Tools that shows you information about the speed of your site and suggestions for making it faster...

Clip Source: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

just launched Site Performance, an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools that shows you information about the speed of your site and suggestions for making it faster

Towards the goal of making every webpage load as fast as flipping the pages of a magazine, we have provided articles on best practices, active discussion forums and many tools to diagnose and fix speed issues

On Site Performance, you'll find how fast your pages load, how they've fared over time, how your site's load time compares to that of other sites, examples of specific pages and their actual page load times, and Page Speed suggestions that can help reduce user-perceived latency

The load time data is derived from aggregated information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google Toolbar and opted-in to its enhanced features.

The Big Picture of the Milky Way

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:54:04 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: The image spans a mind-boggling area of 120 feet long (ca. 36.6 m) by 3 feet wide at its sides, bulging to 6 feet at the center of our humongous galaxy. The panorama represents the combined effort of two Spitzer survey teams, who used two of the onboard instruments.

Clip Source: spitzer.caltech.edu

In a picture of truly galactic proportions, the world's largest image of our Milky Way galaxy, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is on display at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. On Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 at 2 p.m. CST, the scientists who created the image and representatives from NASA will present the image to members of the public.

More information about the image, including a high resolution downloadable version, is available at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/.

Clip Source: www.spitzer.caltech.edu

Zoomable provided by Spitzer (GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL)
(requires JavaScript and Adobe Flash Player)

Zoomable provided by the GLIMPSE team (GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL and GLIMPSE only)
(requires JavaScript and Adobe Flash Player)

Zoomable provided by the MIPSGAL team (GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL)
(requires JavaScript)
http://mipsgal.ipac.caltech.edu

Posters provided by Spitzer (GLIMPSE)

Tags: milky way, nasa, picture, spitzer space telescope

Square

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:16:33 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: Twitter Co-Founder Launches New Mobile Payment System

Clip Source: www.readwriteweb.com

Square, a new mobile phone payment system founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, just launched its private beta today

Square will give its users the ability to use their mobile phones, laptops or desktop computers to accept payment cards and swipe them with the help of a small dongle that will plug into the computer's or phone's audio jack

Clip Source: www.readwriteweb.com

users won't have to sign any contracts and there won't be any monthly fees or hidden costs

plans to expand widely in 2010

In its current iteration, Square works on the iPhone and iPod touch

It's not clear how much the dongle will cost, but chances are that it will be cheap, as the company plans to focus on the service and not the hardware

Square will email receipts to a payer's phone, for example, and allow merchants to track frequent customers and offer them discounts

In addition, Square will also donate one penny for every transaction to a cause of the user's choice

Tags: mobile payment, square, twitter

Brain Reverse Engineering

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:16:47 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: Did IBM really simulate a cat brain?
(Clarifying...)

Clip Source: alfin2100.blogspot.com

Respected Neuroscientist Henry Markram recently objected to claims for cat-scale "brain simulation" by an IBM team led by Dharmendra Modha. Markram stated that the IBM team's claims were a "hoax."

It is important to understand the differences between Markram's and Modha's approaches to brain simulation, in order to make sense of the public disagreements

Markram -- an accomplished neuroscientist -- is attempting to simulate the brain down to the level of synapses and ion channels on individual neuronal processes

Modha is merely simulating "neurons" as points or nodes in an extensive network of nodes. Modha is a computer scientist and his simulation is just what you would expect from a computer scientist

Markram intends for his simulation to teach neuroscientists how the brain works on a dynamic level

Modha wants to build a simulation that can bring human-level massively parallel computing to complex machine systems

no one but Markram has objected so far

Well, Markram and Al Fin. ;-)

Tags: ai, brain, cat-brain, ibm, simulation

Project “EST Granny Square Blanket”

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:32:04 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: How to help "Architecture for Humanity" by crocheting granny squares? Here is how...

Clip Source: www.baahar.net

Since the announcement of this project one month ago, many packages poured into my home from all over Europe … Latvia, Germany, Finland, Turkey, Austria, Norway, France, … all of them containing colorful granny squares like these:

we have 54 of them now and counting

Thanks to this project I realised once more, how people everywhere in the world are willing to participate in projects to do something ‘good’, in however small way that may be.

I also realised that 7×7 cm is not equal everywhere

As for the charity organisation I would want to donate the money that we will hopefully raise by selling the finished blanket: one organisation close to my heart is Architecture for Humanity.

I love their way of bringing together local architects with communities in need and provide open designs to build sustainable homes and other types of buildings.

Clip Source: www.baahar.net

Tags: architecture for humanity, crotchet

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:03:34 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: via @Wildcat2030

Clip Source: sixrevisions.com

1969: Arpanet

1969: Unix

1970: Arpanet network

1971: Email

by Ray Tomlinson, who also made the decision to use the "@" symbol

1974: The beginning of TCP/IP

1977: The PC modem

1978: The Bulletin Board System (BBS)

1978: Spam is born

first unsolicited commercial email message (later known as spam), sent out to 600 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk

1979: MUD – The earliest form of multiplayer games

1979: Usenet

internet-based discussion system

1982: The first emoticon

it was Scott Fahlman in 1982 who proposed using :-) after a joke

1984: Domain Name System (DNS)

1985: Virtual communities

The WELL (short for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link)

1987: The Internet grows

1988: IRC – Internet Relay Chat

1988: First major malicious internet-based attack

1990: World Wide Web protocols finished

1991: First web page created

1991: The first webcam

1993: Mosaic – first graphical web browser for the general public

1996: First web-based (webmail) service

1998: Google!

1998: Internet-based file-sharing gets its roots

2001

Tags: history, internet, synopsis

Some usefull cheat sheets

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:29:48 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: .htaccess, browsersafe fonts, Photoshop, PHP

Clip Source: www.thejackol.com

htaccess Cheatsheet

Enable Directory Browsing

Block Users from accessing the site

Redirect Visitors to New Page/Directory

Block site from specific referrers

Password Protecting Directories

Use the .htaccess Password Generator and follow the brief instructions!

Clip Source: www.addedbytes.com

mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet (V2)

• PDF, 563Kb
• PNG, 71Kb

Clip Source: www.ampsoft.net

standard set of fonts common to all versions of Windows and their Mac substitutes, referred sometimes as "browser safe fonts"

Impact, Impact⁵, Charcoal⁶, sans-serif

Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua³, Palatino⁶, serif

Clip Source: www.diyphotography.net

Black & White Cheatsheet For Photoshop

there is no definitive method that will get the best results every time

Open the PSD file

There is just one layer you really need to work with. It is called "ORIGINAL"

download already created file (5MB download)

Clip Source: morris-photographics.com

Adobe Photoshop CS3

Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

Download for: PC (43 KB) or Mac (42 KB)

Clip Source: creativetechs.com

Creative Tip: Adobe Pen Tool Cheatsheet.

Clip Source: www.blueshoes.org

Empty() & Co, Special Values

comparison with ==

comparison with ===

Tags: cheat sheet, css, htaccess, photoshop, php, web deveopment

First programmable quantum computer

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:22:08 GMT

clipped by: splendidus

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines.

based their quantum computer on two beryllium ions chilled to just above absolute zero

In the quantum world, a single qubit can represent a mixture of 0 and 1 simultaneously, a state called a superposition.

A laser pulse operation could change the composition of the mixture within the qubit, tipping the scales to make the qubit more likely to become a 1 when measured.

On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time

“Getting this kind of control over a quantum system is really interesting from a physics perspective,”

to be useful, a quantum computer must operate accurately 99.99 percent of the time

“The very same techniques they’ve used for two qubits can be applied to much larger systems.”

Tags: computers, physics, quantum

Photosounder

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:43:00 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: Photosounder :: Turns photos into sound...
(via @Wildcat2030)

Clip Source: www.urlesque.com

Photosounder is a spectral editing program that opens images and sounds indiscriminately, treats and processes them as images, and synthesizes them as sounds. Don't worry, we don't have any idea what that means either, but this is what it looks and sounds like. Video below.

[Video]

Tags: photos, sound

How does an Etch-a-Sketch work?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:29:28 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: I absolutely love this device. I can vaguely remember it from when I was a child.
I didn't know what it was called, and for some reason never thought of searching online for it. I came accross an article by chance that mentioned it.
Hopefully, I will soon be the owner of one of those and am terribly excited - more than I should reasonably be
And now I also know how it works...

Clip Source: www.howstuffworks.com

It is not easy, but you can get inside by removing the outer case and the glass:

What you find inside is a stylus mounted on a pair of orthogonal rails. These rails move when you turn the knobs. Also inside is a mixture of extremely fine aluminum powder and beads. The beads help the powder to flow evenly.

When you turn the Etch-a-Sketch upside down and shake, it coats the inside face of the glass with aluminum powder:

"Why does the aluminum powder stick to the glass?"

After you play with the powder, you know that the answer is, "Because it sticks to EVERYTHING!"

It is amazing stuff!

tightly strung and very thin steel wire that connects the knobs to the horizontal and vertical bars through a pretty complicated pulley system. The wires connect both ends of each bar to its respective knob

When you turn a knob, it moves its bar, and this moves the stylus. The stylus scratches off the aluminum dust coating the glass to create a line on the screen.

Tags: art, drawing, etch-a-sketch, fun, must-have, timeless

How to do Philosophy (via @Wildcat2030)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:39:13 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: I think Wittgenstein deserves to be famous not for the discovery that most previous philosophy was a waste of time, which judging from the circumstantial evidence must have been made by every smart person who studied a little philosophy and declined to pursue it further, but for how he acted in response. Instead of quietly switching to another field, he made a fuss, from inside. He was Gorbachev.
(...)
A Proposal:
Instead of trying to answer the question:
-- What are the most general truths?
let's try to answer the question
-- Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general?

Clip Source: paulgraham.com

Words

concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard

Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words

Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words

Theoretical Knowledge

theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of curiosity

it must be more noble

Aristotle

sets as his goal in the Metaphysics the exploration of knowledge that has no practical use

And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well

he protected them from both the criticism of outsiders and the promptings of their own inner compass by establishing the principle that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge had to be useless.

The Singularity

This singularity is even more singular in having its own defense built in. When things are hard to understand, people who suspect they're nonsense generally keep quiet

just studied other things

Tags: gone wrong, how to, philisophy