abstractplain

New ASIMO (Dec. 2005) - Running at 6km/h (00:35).

ASIMO site

How Stuff Works: How ASIMO Works

via Airbag.

Q. what is the value of flag after each of the following?

flag = false or true      > flag is false
flag = false || true       > flag is true

flag = false or true
is like saying
( flag=false ) or true

Really, the sting is that “or” is lower precedence than attribution “=”. No doubt this enables groovy things but I find this unintuitive. It would violate the principle of least surprise were it my surprise being measured, rather than Matz’s. However, “it means the principle of least surprise after you learn Ruby very well”. “Actually, I didn’t make the claim that Ruby follows the principle of least surprise”.

I remember reading this difference between “||” and “or” in pickaxe, and it’s in the Ruby Way and this list of Things That Newcomers to Ruby Should Know from 2002, too.

gotme.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography

A List Apart: Articles: CSS Design: Going to Print

Color for Coders - Color and Design for the Non-Designer at sitepoint.com

Robot Drummer Responds to Human Playing; How They Did It (at createdigitalmusic.com)

via hackaday

The Language Situation in Mozambique (pdf). (1998)

“This paper addresses the language situation in post-independent Mozambique from both a language-planning and a language-policy perspective. It begins with a presen- tation of an up-to-date language profile of the country, as well as a discussion of its high linguistic diversity. This is followed by an investigation of the language spread dynamics in education, literacy and media. Then, the paper argues that language- planning activities, which are ultimately derived from the nature of the Mozambican society and the consequent language needs, should lead to a maintenance-oriented promotion type of language policy in the polity. The final section attempts an evalu- ation of the prospects for an improved cohabitation between the Bantu languages, Portuguese and English in multilingual Mozambique.”

Very nearly spent $100 on a book containing this and 2 other other essays yesterday, but had the sense to wait and check if the intertron had a copy.

FeedLounge - FeedLounge now running on PostgreSQL. An interesting conversation including input from mysql engineers.

“The FeedLounge application is about 50/50 read/write, […] 4 million queries a day.”

“Some of the reasons we decided to make the switch to PostgreSQL:

• Database size - when we switched from MyISAM tables to InnoDB tables in MySQL, the size of our database grew from ~1GB to 10+GB! When we made the switch this weekend, the MySQL InnoDB database was using 34 GB, and the same data in a PostgreSQL database is only 9.6 GB - this should keep our hardware costs down a bit.
• Load time - The current MySQL setup takes over a day to restore the current database, the load of the data into the PostgreSQL database took just over 4 hours.”

Gamasutra - “Rag Doll Development: An Interview With Rag Doll Kung Fu’s Mark Healey”.

WideWORD Trust points and Breach points in Web Apps. “In this document I will try to describe some of the problems involved with writing secure web apps as well as proving that they are secure.”

WikiMatrix / Wiki Feature Comparison - Compare them all

18 Tricks to Teach Your Body - “Soothe a burn, cure a toothache, clear a stuffed nose…”. A bunch of hacks mostly for fixing problems with your body.

via Anarchaia.

CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

via Schneier on Security, which also points out: “RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs.”

funny.