Simon Lyall's Blog

Archive for the ‘Links’ Category

Links: Spinning Levers, Redis, College a bad investment, Playing the World Champ

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

“Spinning Levers” 1936 Chevrolet Auto Mechanics – 10 min video illustrating starting off with levers and working to how a car tranmission and gearbox works
Is College a Lousy Investment? - For an increasing number of kids, the extra time and money spent pursuing a college diploma will leave them worse off than they were before they set foot on campus.
Redis Crashes – Redis is running memory checks on your computer when it is idle.
What happens when a chess enthusiast plays the world champion Viswanathan Anand? – A reporter (with a significantly better chess rating than me) plays the World Chess Champion.

Posted in Chess, Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: Parody trailers, Obama fundraising, Japan!, American academic jobs

Monday, January 28th, 2013

7 trailer parodies of Marvel, Pixar, Muppets, Star wars, Disney films – Pretty much what the titles says
Meet the Obama campaign’s $250 million fundraising platform – Overview of the fundraising platform including A/B testing and optimization.
Japan: high tech image, low tech reality - a place where the ATMs close at 9pm, offices without computers, fax machines in wide use and most homes without central heating
The closing of American academia – How a $100,000 degree translates into a $10,000/year University teaching position.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: Exercise, Radio NZ Hosting, Scale in the Cloud, Philip Roth

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie – The auther talks to various trainers and puts forward the theory that basic weights and other strength building exercises the real key to fitness
Radio NZ’s New Hosting – Short writeup of Radio New Zealand moving their hosting from in-house to a remote data centre
Architecting Scalable Applications in the Cloud – 1st of short series of articles.
Philip Roth and Wikipedia – A wikipedia responds to Pjilip Roth’s article in the New York Times. I’m afraid Roth doesn’t come off very well.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: A/B testing, Road safety, Where IT goes to die, The Cheapest Generation

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

23 Tips on How to A/B Test Like a Badass – Really great article, mostly applicable to ecommerce sites but plenty of general ideas. I’d like to say I do this at work but unfortunately the culture isn’t there.
What an RAF pilot can teach us about being safe on the road – Interesting view on how easy it is for motorists just “not to notice” cyclists. I commonly see cyclists these days with flashing lights (front and back) turned on during the day to help improve their visibility.
The Cheapest Generation – How the consumer wants of young adults differe from those of the previous generation(s). Phones & Walkable neighbourhoods are in, Cars and big houses in the suburbs are no longer as important.
Where IT goes to die – How large company/Enterprise IT works from an author with experience at smaller companies. He is accerate and it is not very pretty.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: PIN numbers, Military leadership, Eggs, The Web stack

Monday, November 26th, 2012

Analysis of PIN Numbers – What are the most and least common 4-digit PIN numbers?
General Failure – Does the US military no longer punish or demote bad generals? “A culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s leadership rank—if it is not uprooted, the country’s next war is unlikely to unfold any better than the last two.”
Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa – Different approaches to food safety in the US and Britain.
An Overview of the Web – What happens when your browser requests a web pagewebpage. A step by step though the various layers or computers, protocols and programs. Understandable buy someone a little technical.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: Mars!, The cdbaby model, Robots, the rest of the world on the web

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Comparison – Mars Curiosity Descent – Ultra HD 30fps Smooth-Motion (YouTube) – Comparison of the original and a greatly improved version.
If newspapers were run like CDBaby.com – An alternative business/operating model for online news.
New Wave of Deft Robots Is Changing Global Industry – Robots move beyond the traditional car-assemble type jobs.
10 lessons for uncultured web developers – A few little things that trip up web developers, especially those who think the valley is the world.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: Weather Prediction, Advertising, 3rd world mobile web and Database failover

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

Handling Database Failover at Craigslist – Jeremy Zawodny links to a few recent articles on automated database failover and outlines what he does at craigslist. The consensus seems to be the the added complexity of automating failover results in less reliability than improving the process of doing it manually.
The Weatherman is not a Moron – An overview on modern weather prediction and how it is improved. In just 25 years the 3 day estimate for landfalls for Gulf of Mexico hurricane has dropped from 350 to 100 miles.
Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web – Is magazine advertising a waste of time? In this article the results are mixed but mostly “No” .
See your site like the rest of the world does. On the Nokia X2-01 – Fascinating survey of the mobile web browser stats in the BRIC and Next 11 countries.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Links: Density done well, schizophrenia, Olympics and Socialist networks

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Density done well (youtube 15min) – Brent Toderian former Chief Planner for the City of Vancouver talks how you can do urban density well to enhance a city.
Edge of the abyss - A parent talks about his daughter’s child-onset schizophrenia
“Keeping the Torch Burning” – editing an Olympics book for the Guardian - Martin Belam gives some highlights from a book he has recently edit on terror, protest and dissent at the Olympics
What If Social Networks Just Aren’t Profitable? – A social networks such that attempts to make them profitable will eventually destroy them?

Posted in Links | Comments Off

Links: 8bit T2, IQ, Baby names, Low Power computers

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

How low (power) can you go? – Charlie Stross looks into the future (as Sci-Fi authors often do) and predicts what 2032 could look like with one square millimetre computers everywhere.
American Baby Names Are Somehow Getting Even Worse – Bastian, Sincere, Copelia, Luxx
Race, IQ, and Wealth – Is IQ just a function of GDP/Wealth ?
Terminator 2 – 20 years ( July 3 1991 – July 3 2011) (Youtube) – You may remember “8-bit trip” by Rymdreglage a couple of years ago. Here is their stop-motion tribute to T2 ( which I’ve seen 5 times in the theatre).

Posted in Links, Misc, Tech | Comments Off

Links: CGI Screwups, Being in the band, How many servers does google have?

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America – A list of stuff that Americans don’t know about how the rest of the world perceives them or how it is compared to them
The 7 Most Common CGI Screw-Ups (Explained) – I know cracked.com is just a content farm but it has really good articles. In this case a bit more informative and technical than usual.
How to play in someone else’s band - The subtitle is “gain twenty years of road experience with a five minute read” and it is really good. The main point to remember is your number one job above all else is to make the leader sound good, look good and feel good.
Fun with Energy Consumption Data – The “Fun” bit is estimating how many servers Google and Facebook have.

Posted in Links, Tech | Comments Off

Simon Lyall's Blog

Archive for the ‘Links’ Category

Links: Spinning Levers, Redis, College a bad investment, Playing the World Champ

Links: Parody trailers, Obama fundraising, Japan!, American academic jobs

Links: Exercise, Radio NZ Hosting, Scale in the Cloud, Philip Roth

Links: A/B testing, Road safety, Where IT goes to die, The Cheapest Generation

Links: PIN numbers, Military leadership, Eggs, The Web stack

Links: Mars!, The cdbaby model, Robots, the rest of the world on the web

Links: Weather Prediction, Advertising, 3rd world mobile web and Database failover

Links: Density done well, schizophrenia, Olympics and Socialist networks

Links: 8bit T2, IQ, Baby names, Low Power computers

Links: CGI Screwups, Being in the band, How many servers does google have?

Simon

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives

Meta