aDeepBlue Blog

Flex Event Order

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:30:00 GMT

I had a really strange bug yesterday that we found that I thought it would be good to share. We had recently launched a new application to production. Long story short, there is a screen that gets the next ID for a report, and it had been working fine for a few days. All of the sudden though, about noon yesterday it stopped working. Nothing had changed in the code and our first instinct was a network problem. But what we found out was that it really was the code.

Sharing Memory through Communication

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Quote from: the FAQ from Google's new programming language Go:

Do not communicate by sharing memory. Instead, share memory by communicating.

This is a very succinct and eloquent way of saying something that I have been stressing for years when talking to web developers. OO principles teach this by way of saying that your apps should be loosely coupled, but there are too many people that do not get what this means. I usually try to describe it as "Only let this object or method work with what it is given". Never act on data that you are not explicitly given. You cannot be sure it will always be there, and you cannot be guaranteed that it will be in the proper form for you to work with.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:10:00 GMT

2.5 Dimensions on Flickr

This is a great example of creativity with photography, although it takes a little bit of work to achieve. Definitely worth checking out and reading about how they made it.

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Mixed Feelings - Adding Extra Senses

Very interesting piece in wired about neuroplasticity, the ability of your brain to "remap" itself to accept other inputs. The idea about the belt that allows you to always know where north is sounds like a great idea. I can definitely understand how you would get used to something like that though and feel like something was missing when you took it off.

Mon, 18 May 2009 07:59:00 GMT

Wolfram Alpha Released

From playing around with it for a few minutes it is as cool as I hoped it would be. I think I'm going to find it quite useful. Make sure you check out the screencast of what all you can do with it and here is an article about how it works.

Fri, 15 May 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Kind of Bloop - Miles Davis in 8-bits

Ever wonder what Miles Davis would sound like in only 8-bit music like on the original Nintendo? Donate 5 bucks to this cause and you can find out. Donate 30 and get a limited edition CD of it. This seems like a super cool project and the site it is being ran from - Kickstarter - seems like a really cool idea too.

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:44:00 GMT

Open Mind Common Sense

Computers don't currently know the basic things about the world that we consider "common sense." Here, you can help build a database of such knowledge in simple English sentences. The computer will analyze these sentences to connect concepts and draw new conclusions from the things you teach it.

This is how it all starts.

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:08:00 GMT

High Def Radar

I don't know how I haven't heard about this until now, but it seems that back in the mid-90's the FAA started using Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) near 45 of the nations busiest airports. Traditionally this radar has not been available to the public, but they are now starting to make it available. You can now access 6 of the 45 with the rest being made available this summer.

It is not perfect though and because of it's higher resolution it can be harder to "see" through heavy rain or hail. So you want to make sure you use it in conjunction with "old" nexrad radar to make sure you don't miss anything. But this radar is twice the resolution of nexrad and can identify "hooks" in the radar echos much more efficiently. Pretty cool stuff.

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:01:00 GMT

My Fucilli pasta with Marinara sauce. Taken by Stu.

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:47:00 GMT

F1 Steering Wheel

Following up to my previous entry this is what the new F1 steering wheel looks like. Pretty neat and very interesting from a UI standpoint. Wish they made these for normal cars!

Also, check out some more photos from the Signapore Grand Prix, also from the big picture.

Update: Here are a couple more links: Some history of the steering wheel from F1Technical and another article about F1 User interfaces.

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Storing Schema-less data in MySQL

I have thought about doing something like this before, and the index scheme is quite interesting actually. I would love to try something like this to see how well it worked.

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:53:00 GMT

Smart Switch

Take a household light switch, network it to the powergrid and make it give resistance when trying to turn it on when the powergrid is under load. The more power being used the harder it is to turn on. You can network it to either your homes energy usage, or the grid as a whole. Pretty neat concept.

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:31:00 GMT

New F1 Racing Rules and Cars Wired has the low down on the new F1 racing rules and cars and a nifty video from the Red Bull team explaining it all. I might have to watch more F1 racing.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:15:00 GMT

Superbowl Twitter Analysis

Pretty neat infographic from nytimes showing twitter usage across the country during the superbowl. The more I use twitter the more the value of things like this really start to show. For such a simple service it has some rather large overall uses.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:21:00 GMT

OS X Terminal Commands

More for me than anyone else, though if you have never used SAY, you really should try it.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:20:00 GMT

Star Wars: Retold by someone who has never seen it

If you *have* actually seen it (them), this is pretty funny. The animations really make it though.

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:07:00 GMT

Ford's New Prototype Dashboard

The article says this will be available standard on all new Ford Fusion Hybrids. Pretty neat. I think they could have done a lot more with it (I don't understand why they still use a gauge like that, at least color it in or something) but still I have been waiting for displays like this in a car for a long time. It would be even better if they would give developers an API, but that's just wishful thinking.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:03:00 GMT

Google Zeitgeist 2008

The title says it all. I wish we could dig in further, but this really tells you a lot about the collective intelligence...

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:02:00 GMT

Photographs from Macy's Parade from the 50's and 60's

At least that's what it looks like. Does anyone have any more information on these images?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:00:00 GMT

JAXA wanting to release paper airplanes from the space station

Made of special paper, they actually expect the planes to make it all the way to the surface of the earth. This should be pretty cool. Lets just hope they hit populated land and not open ocean...

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:58:00 GMT

Best of LIFE

Related to my previous entry about Google hosting LIFE images, this blog is finding the best of the best from those and the Flickr Commons.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:56:00 GMT

Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa

A great example of evolutionary programming in action. I have always wanted to play with GA, but don't generally have the patience.

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:34:00 GMT

Flex Sparklines

I have talked about sparklines before and this seems to be a very well done implementation of them in Flex. Putting this out there for me as much as anyone else. See also: Flex Spinner.

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:36:00 GMT

How Soil Types Determined the 2008 Election in the Deep South

Pretty convincing arguments for an old sea making soil fertile for cotton production which made it more likely to have higher populations of slaves which translates into higher population of blacks today in these areas surrounded by higher population of whites. Worth a read.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:33:00 GMT

keyboardr

For those of us who suffer withdrawals when our hands leave the keyboard.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:38:00 GMT

Turgooduccochiqua

The description says it all: "A quail inside a cornish game hen inside a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey inside a goose. With bacon between layers." Click through for the picture.

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Then/Now, a photography series by the New York Times

David Dunlap is taking modern photographs of old photos and providing you a great way to see the present and past together and compare. I would love to do this with some old pictures of Memphis.

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:17:00 GMT

Oblong g-speak

You have seen Minority Report, now see the real tech that it inspired. Slashdot has a discussion about it too, although in typical fashion the majority of that crowd seems unimpressed. I say this is some pretty cool tech with a lot of possibilities for large data set visualization. Bottom line, I want to play with it.

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:12:00 GMT

Fecal Bacteriotherapy, otherwise known as a Fecal Transplant

I would like to start out by saying I am not making this up. If you check the wikipedia history you can see that I have not edited this article. I also submit the following Google Trends page as further evidence, along with my original source at buzzfeed.

That being said, this is fairly genius, although disgusting. And according to the wikipedia article, it seems to have a very high success rate.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:34:00 GMT

Google hosted LIFE images from the 1750s to today

Some awesome images in here, but its really surprising the wide variety of images that they have. For instance: They have images of Paducah, KY. I particularly like this aerial shot that is marked as April 1952.