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MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Meet the new media

On the future of media, at The Awl:

Of course a website’s fortunes can change overnight. That these fortunes are tied to the whims of a very small group of very large companies, whose interests are only somewhat aligned with those of publishers, however, is sort of new. The publishing opportunity may be bigger today than it’s ever been but the publisher’s role is less glamorous: When did the best sites on the internet, giant and small alike, become anonymous subcontractors to tech companies that operate on entirely different scales? This is new psychological territory, working for publishers within publishers within publishers. The ones at the top barely know you exist! Anyway, internet people, remember this day in five years: It could happen to you, whether you asked for it or not.

Because, on the future of MetaFilter:

Unfortunately in the last couple years we have seen our Google ranking fall precipitously for unexplained reasons, and the corresponding drop in ad revenue means that the future of the site has come into question.

Ironically, from a Facebook executive:

Please allow me to rant for a moment about the state of the media.

The cameras I’ve enjoyed

Big Huge Labs reminded me that my 10 year Flickr birthday is in just a few days. Tthat has me thinking about the cameras I've used over those years. Ten years is long enough that I had to go looking to remember some, and long enough that I found some I'd forgotten. » about 3300 words

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Strobist David Hobby on HDR

I’ve been re-reading David Hobby‘s Lighting 101 tutorial while at the same time exploring HDR (Wikipedia’s HDR article is a good read for those unfamiliar with it). The question that eventually came to mind was how the guy that wrote the following feels about HDR? How often have you heard this, usually with a tone of superiority: […] » about 800 words

What makes us special?

In Daily Kos this weekend: A Common Thread Among Young-Earth Creationists, Gun Enthusiasts, Marriage Exclusivists, and the 1%. The key point is that groups identify by what makes them “feel special.” Distilled, here are the four groups: Creationists: being created by god makes humans special Gun enthusiasts: their role in protecting liberty makes them special […] » about 400 words

On “do what you love”

A friend forwarded Miya Tokumitsu’s essay “In the Name of Love” pointing out the Steve Jobs quote and summarizing that it “challenges the notion of work at what you love.” I read it with some frustration, then decided I had to ask my friend what he saw in it. I was already into my reply […] » about 600 words

How to identify context inside the WordPress dashboard

On wp-hackers, Haluk Karamete asked:

on admin pages, how can I detect that the current admin is dealing with a cpt?

Andrew Nacin answered:

get_current_screen()->post_type.

[But] this will also specify a post type when it’s a taxonomy being edited. To filter that out, ensure that get_current_screen()->base == 'post', which is [true] for edit.php, post-new.php, and post.php (for all post types).

Haluk didn’t elaborate on the cause of the question, but the answer is very good advice for those seeking to conditionally enqueue JS and styles only for specific post types.

MySQL performance tips from around the web

Gospel: use InnoDB, never MyISAM It seems everybody on StackExchange is singing from the same gospel: “[How can I] prevent queries from waiting for table level lock?” Answer: use InnoDB. The major advantages of InnoDB over MyISAM. “Even in a read-intesive system, just one DELETE or UPDATE statement will quickly nullify whatever benefits MyISAM has.” […] » about 400 words

Transcend WiFi SD card hacking links

http://www.fernjager.net/post-8/sdcard:

As a 400 MHz Linux system with 32 MB of RAM, using only ~100 mA @ 3.3 V, the possibilities are endless!

http://haxit.blogspot.com/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards.html:

This post is written with the intention of exposing not only the exploits which will allow you to root (or jailbreak) the device, but also the process of discovering and exploiting bugs, some of which are a dead end, while others lead to the holy root B-)

http://hackaday.com/2013/08/12/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards/:

As he suspected that some kind of Linux was running on it, he began to see if he could get a root access on it… and succeeded.

ADS-B: the internet of things in the sky

ADS-B is a civil aircraft tracking and telemetry standard that the FAA has ruled will replace transponders by 2020. Like a transponder, it’s used to identify air traffic, but with far more more information, such as altitude, heading, speed, and GPS location. The protocol also supports delivery of weather, terrain, and notices to aircraft. The […] » about 300 words

Where to buy a submarine

No need to explain why, I understand: you need a submarine. And you don’t need a bathtub toy (really?), you need something that will truly wow them at the yacht club. There are a few Soviet diesel subs built in the 1940s through 1950s that might be just the thing. The Soviets built over 200 Whiskey-class […] » about 300 words

Manhattan Project tours

It’s easy to forget that plutonium, the incredibly radioactive element at the core of the first atomic detonation, was only identified in 1941. Two years later Army Corps of Engineers started construction of Reactor B to produce it in industrial quantities. Today,  Reactor B is a National Historic Landmark, and one of only a few locations […] » about 400 words

Casey Bisson

Where on earth can I get an weotype list?

It’s not like these aren’t documented, but I keep forgetting where.

WOEID place types:

$woetype = array(
	'7'  => 'town',
	'8'  => 'state-province',
	'9'  => 'county-parish',
	'10' => 'district-ward',
	'11' => 'postcode',
	'12' => 'country',
	'19' => 'region',
	'22' => 'neighborhood-suburb',
	'24' => 'colloquial',
	'29' => 'continent',
	'31' => 'timezone',
);

They can be queried via YQL:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
&lt;placeTypes xmlns="http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/schema.rng" xmlns:yahoo="http://www.yahooapis.com/v1/base.rng" yahoo:start="0" yahoo:count="1" yahoo:total="1">
	 &lt;placeType yahoo:uri="http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/placetype/35" xml:lang="en-us">
	 	 &lt;placeTypeName code="35">Historical Town&lt;/placeTypeName>
	 	 &lt;placeTypeDescription>A historical populated settlement that is no longer known by its original name&lt;/placeTypeDescription>
	 &lt;/placeType>
&lt;/placeTypes>

Dynamic range vs. price and brand

Dynamic range is what keeps skies blue while also capturing detail in the foreground. Without enough dynamic range, we’re forced to choose between a blue sky and dark foreground, or properly exposed foreground and white sky. I’ve been using multiple exposure HDR techniques to increase the dynamic range I can capture, but multiple exposures don’t […] » about 400 words

Happy D. B. Cooper Day!

D. B. Cooper, the guy who hijacked a plane in 1971 and then — mid-flight — jumped into the darkness with a bundle of cash and disappeared, is celebrated on this day, the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Granted, this is mostly just a thing in Ariel Washington, where it’s said to have started in 1974, but the […] » about 400 words

If I did it over again, I’d make Shutterfingers smaller

Shutterfingers is my simple servo controller that presses the shutter on cameras that don’t support remote control. My first attempt was in a sweet looking, but big aluminum case and incorporates a 6600 mAh battery to power the Arduino, servo, and external power for the camera. Well, it all works, but I’m not sure why I […] » about 400 words

Just catching on: MySQL supports tables in plain CSV

The  storage engine docs are quite clear — “the CSV storage engine stores data in text files using comma-separated values format” — and yet I never realized MySQL supported it.

Sure, the tables don’t support indexes and repairing them seems riskier than with other tables, but it still seems to offer a lot of convenience for some things. A comment in the docs suggests how easy CSV exports can be:

A comment suggests this super easy export to CSV approach:

CREATE TABLE csvtable SELECT * FROM innodbtable;
ALTER TABLE csvtable ENGINE=CSV;

That said, I really can’t imagine using it in production, or even as part of a repeated workflow.

On gamification

Stowe Boyd, remarking on the Pew Internet Project report on Gamification in which he was quoted:

The need for a renewed push in the enterprise to reengage every person with their personal work, to find meaning and purpose, has never been greater. But adding badges to users’ profiles on whatever work management tool the company is on, showing that Bette is a super expert customer support staffer, or whatever, is the shallowest sort of employee recognition, like giving out coffee mugs to the folks with the lowest number of sick days.

Shutterfingers works!

I mentioned my plans to make a servo controller to mechanically press the shutter button on a camera when signaled from a motion control timelapse robot. The parts have arrived and it’s running on a breadboard. I’ve had to make a few changes to the code, including fixing a variable reference, but the biggest change […] » about 200 words