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Beautiful pictures of the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds largest and highest energy particle accelerator, which is about to start operation outside of Geneva Switzerland. The internet is full of theories about how the LHC is going to destroy the world, but it doesn't seem like any respected scientists are worried about that. But two well known physicists are speculating about something less troubling, but quite possibly much more weird:

The authors of this paper claim to show that other terms can be added to the quantum mechanical action that are consistent with current theory and experiment. However, some of these possible terms include conditions in the future that need to be taken into account and summed over. That is to say, what happens in the future could (according to this paper) affect what happens in the present.

Why the LHC? The authors argue that these sorts of time-violating interactions could be associated with whatever new particles we create at the LHC. For example, the production of a large number of Higgs particles in the future could have a backwards-in-time causal effect on the machine that produced them, stopping the machine from ever running.

- jim 8-06-2008 3:17 pm [link] [1 ref] [4 comments]

Today, July 25th (last Friday in July) is the 9th annual Sysadmin Appreciation Day. And, coincidentally, August marks the 9th anniversary of digitalmediatree.
- jim 7-25-2008 10:24 pm [link] [6 comments]

Death of software patents? Sounds a little too good to be true.
- jim 7-24-2008 5:06 pm [link] [1 comment]

Lucky to be a programmer:

For the past few weeks I’ve been working with a fellow developer on a project that required an all-out programming effort. It’s done now, so we’re back to a regular schedule, but when people hear about the crazy hours they often say they’re sorry. They really shouldn’t be. I would never do this often, or for long periods, or without proper compensation if done for an employer, but the truth is that these programming blitzkriegs are some of my favorite periods in life. Under the right conditions, writing software is so intensely pleasurable it should be illegal.
++.
- jim 7-23-2008 7:41 pm [link] [1 comment]

Damn, Apple (aapl) is getting hammered after hours (down 11.2% to $147.98 right now.) They reported earnings today. Looked good to me, but I guess Wall St. didn't like their guidance for next quarter. If I believed in the market at all and had extra cash I would be buying in the morning.
- jim 7-21-2008 11:49 pm [link] [15 comments]

No answers here (although lots of useful suggestions in comments) but this is a succinct description of one of the main problems I face: tag soup

Perhaps when it comes to mixing HTML and server-side code, some form of soup is unavoidable, a necessary evil. The soup can be quite palatable; maybe even delicious. It's certainly possible to write good tag soup and bad tag soup.

But I have to wonder: is there a better way? Is there something beyond RHTML, Views, and Templates? What examples would you point to of web development stacks that avoided degenerating into yet more hazardous, difficult to maintain tag soup? Is there anything truly better on the horizon?

Or is this year's newer, fancier, even-more-delicious iteration of tag soup as good as it ever gets for web development?

- jim 7-21-2008 4:44 pm [link] [add a comment]

Turns out that buying the second server was a good move. And rsync is the greatest command ever.

rsync -avzl -e "ssh -p22" user@example.com:/var/www/ /backup/www

Just ridiculously easy.
- jim 7-16-2008 5:17 pm [link] [add a comment]

Still haven't pulled the trigger on the iPhone [typical - ed.] Didn't really want to stand in line so I'm waiting for things to settle down. Looks like they sold over 1 million in the first weekend. It took them over 2 months to do that with the first one. Battery life is down thanks to the power hungry 3g radio chip, but it's still longer than other 3g phones. Not really a problem for me, but I understand it is a big deal for some people.

Overall I think the new software is a bigger deal than the new phone. The App Store is very well done. Over 10 million downloads already.

Check out this one: Zeptopad. Very nice. (I want to know more about "shake and share", that looks clever.)
- jim 7-15-2008 5:23 pm [link] [8 comments]

Nightmare data center scenario: power out in downtown Vancouver. Lots of hosts are down, as the backup generator at the Harbour Centre building failed after 20 minutes.
- jim 7-15-2008 4:29 pm [link] [add a comment]

domize.com: excellent domain name search tool.
- jim 7-15-2008 3:31 pm [link] [add a comment]

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