devnulled: A stream for software developers and engineers

Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson will executive-produce the label’s inaugural release, a compilation featuring the Roots, Skillz, Jean Grae, Madlib, Aceyalone, Little Brother and Dilated Peoples. The album will also include two unsigned acts; Okayplayer Records is accepting submissions until Feb. 13, with details available through the Web site. The album is slated for release this summer.

That’s interesting.. I thought that OkayPlayer was a label already, but apparently not. The Roots appear to be working on a new album as well. I love The Roots.

MySQL Administrator is a powerful visual administration console so you can now easily administer your MySQL environment and gain significantly better visibility into the how your databases are operating. MySQL Administrator now integrates database management and maintenance into a single, seamless environment, with a clear and intuitive graphical user interface.

It doesn’t really say whether or not it will be free or open source (my guess would be no to both), however, it looks hot.

An interesting article about the hardware used on the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity:

At the nerve center of each MER rover is a 6-by 9-inch electronics board containing one computer responsible for every process that goes into a mission, whether it be monitoring spacecraft health in transit, deploying parachutes during landing or roving about the red planet. The computer, called a RAD6000, is a tried and true component for NASA space mission that has formed the brains of past Mars missions in the, as well as the recent Stardust comet encounter.

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This is for all you hep cat’s out there, the Internet Guide to Jazz Age Slang:

Herein is contained an alphabetical listing of slang words used in the 1920’s. The twenties were the first decade to emphasize youth culture over the older generations, and the flapper sub-culture had a tremendous influence on main stream America; many new words and phrases were coined by these liberated women. These are the most common words and phrases of the time, many of which we still use today!

Ever thought about working for yourself? If so, here is an article to know about the good and bad of doing this. As for myself, I always have some sort of idea out there on the backburner.. in fact I own at least 10 domains or so for various business ideas. Given that my dad and all but one of his sibling are all entrepreneurs, I’ll likely find myself there someday as well.

I’ve pretty much settled on building a 2.3L Stroker engine using my 4G63 6 Bolt block which increases the displacement of my engine by 0.3 Liters just by adding a more aggressive crank, which in turn lengthens the stroke and increases the displacement. My biggest reason for this is that my Talon will always primarily be a street car, but I see myself doing more track type racing than drag racing in the future, and I’d like the extra torque of a larger engine to have a reasonable exit speed on turns. Also, it allows me to throw a good sized turbo on with a custom intake manifold and aggressive cams without losing too much bottom end, or having to worry as much about turbo spool-up time. Since I’m not looking to build a high revving engine and have to pay the expense of having things such as titanium valve springs for such an engine, I think this is the way to go for me.
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The first bill would increase penalties for people who drive too slowly in the left lane. It is already illegal to drive below the speed limit in the left lane, but 9NEWS political analyst Fred Brown says the new proposal is focused more on reducing road rage. The measure will be debated this Wednesday in the House Transportation and Energy Committee.

I’d be super happy to see all of these laws pass. Personally, I like to drive fast in the left lane while ignoring my cell phone, and I get tired of people not paying attention to driving while they are on the phone, or even worse, holding up a large line of traffic by driving slow in the left lane. I have noticed lately that all of this buzz seems to be creating some awareness– people seem to be getting out of my way if they are going slower than me in the left lane. Now if we could get people to visit Germany for a week, they would see how well “Drive on the right, pass on the left” works on the Autobahn.

I’ve just been digging into ColdFusion again the past few days after working in Python exclusively for almost a month, and I almost forgot something pretty fundamental which I use a lot (since about 95% of my methods/functions in CFC’s are typically written in CFScript these days). Something I had to recall, was how to pass an argument collection to a method/function. Well, it’s quite easy, but not something that is easy to come across in the wild if you don’t already know about it:


<cfscript>
thisStruct = StructNew();
thisStruct.argA = 1;
thisStruct.argB = 1;
thisFunction(argumentCollection=thisStruct);
</cfscript>


I’m also having to remember to use semicolon’s again on the end of lines in CFScript, since in Python you just end a line with a CRLF.

Of course I should probably be in bed by now, but I wanted to post a link to a Mozilla plug-in which is called “Flash Click To View“. Essentially it will not play Flash until you click on it, thereby eliminating those annoying flash ads which you can’t already block using the standard ad blocking hoo-ha in Mozilla. I’ve also came across some rules for usercontent.css which does similar things, but I’m honestly too lazy to mess with that since I already have to edit rules in the now defunct Proxomitron as it is.

If you’ve downloaded a song in the past few years, it’s in large part because of Justin Frankel. Seven years ago, when he was just eighteen, he invented Winamp, the first software program that made it easy to play digital music on your computer. A few years later, he created Gnutella: the vast, and vastly controversial, online network that lets you swap songs. The fact that Frankel secretly did the latter while working at America Online, the company behind his multimillion-dollar buyout, made him both the Internet’s greatest punk — and hero. Now he’s about to punk the industry again.

I just came across this story about Justin Frankel again.. I read it a few days ago and forgot to publish it. I love how he has his own warehouse with a few cars and various instruments in it.. sounds similar to what I do if I became ridiculously rich as he did. According to his .plan, he has resigned from Nullsoft / AOL! I wonder how much longer Winamp will be around…