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“why the lucky stiff” on Why You Should Create

Why\'s photo-illustration of his book, \"why\'s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby\"
why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, the most whimsical programming book ever written.

Here’s a great quote from the enigmatic programmer known only as “why the lucky stiff” on why you should create:

when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.

Very true, especially since there are whole industries and professions that specialize in manipulating your tastes in order to get you to line other people’s pockets. Well put, why!

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An Illustrated Guide to the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability

Diagram of Dan Kaminsky\'s explanation of how DNS can be \"poisoned\"

Steve Friedl has a number of excellent technical explanations on his site, and his latest one, An Illustrated Guide to the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability, is a masterpiece that does a fine job of explaining the DNS vulnerability that Dan Kaminsky found.

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Copy and Paste

In the very unlikely event that you forgot what the keyboard shortcuts were…

Two wonen: one wearing a \"Copy (control + C)\" T-shirt, the other wearing a \"Paste (control + V)\" T-shirt.

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Linux Bloat

Slide: Linux Symposium T-shirt sizes in 1999 (mostly medium) and 2008 (mostly XL, followed by large and XXL)

It could be that programmers are getting larger, but it also could be that Linux Symposium is using American Apparel shirts. They’re supposedly not made in sweatshops and are made from really soft cotton, but they’re about a size smaller than the corresponding Hanes Beefy-T’s.

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b5media is Looking for Contract PHP/MySQL Developers

PHP, MySQL and WordPress developers wanted at b5media

Attention Toronto-area developers! If you’ve got good PHP/MySQL chops (having a little experience building WordPress templates and plugins would be a bonus, but not absolutely necessary), perhaps you’d like to do a little contract work for my company, b5media. Our regular programming staff has its hands full with our core projects, so I’m using my authority as the company’s Nerd Wrangler (a.k.a. Technical Project Manager) to cast a net for local developers who’d like to work on a project or two.

I can’t go into details here on the blog — here’s what I can tell you:

  • We’re a network of about 300 or so blogs and our revenue is based on advertising, which in turn is based on our readership.
  • Our blogs are based on WordPress. Mark Jaquith, one of our programmers, is a WordPress core developer. As you may have already reasoned out, our stuff is based on MySQL and PHP.
  • I have a couple of projects:
    • A WordPress-based promo site using a customized template and featuring some custom widgets and plugins, and
    • An ecommerce site that makes it easy for people to purchase ads on our blogs

If you’re picked to do the job, you’ll be working from a pretty complete spec written by someone who understands both the business and technical sides of the job: me! You’ll also be reporting to me, and I’m told that I’m a pretty good guy to work with.

There’s something to be said for face-to-face meetings and being able to walk up to the project lead and ask questions, so we’d rather hire a developer in town.

Interested? Drop me a line at my work email address — joey@b5media.com — and I’ll be happy to tell you more.

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Internet Memes Timeline

Internet Meme Timeline

Feeling nostalgic for “Ate My Balls”, “I Kiss You” or “All Your Base are Belong to Us”? The Internet Memes Timeline’s got the cure for that.

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Code Swarm: A Visual History of Python Commits

The Code_Swarm video is an interesting visualization of the evolution of the work done on the Python programming language and the people involved, tracing its evolution from late 1990 to mid-2005.


code_swarm – Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

The intro for the video says:

In 1991, Guido van Rossum released his Python scripting language to the public.

This video will take you through the history of the project, compressed into a fraction of the time.

You will see the names of developers fade in and out of prominence, while the files they work on swirl around them.

Red files are core code. Blue files are documents. Yellow files are modules. The histogram on the bottom tracks the size and time of commits. When a person makes a commit, their name stands out. The files they commit also stand out. Files grow in size every time they are committed. Files and people gradually fade when there is no activity.

[Thanks to The War on Folly.]