...more recent posts
I've been experimenting this morning with a very basic caching scheme for this site. I have a very crude version working for my page. You can see the difference between this dynamic page, and the cached static page by following either of these links. In most cases, as would be expected, the cached page is tremendously faster. The downside is that it is not being configured for known users (i.e., no indication of new posts, and while you still see how many comments, you don't see which ones are new to you, plus, seeing posts on the static page won't effect the number of new posts shown on the main page - in other words, the system will keep telling you there is a new post until you see it on the dynamic page.) Also, for most browsers, you won't see any updates to the page unless you consciously reload the page. Overall I think the speed gain is probably worth it. I'll be doing more tests on this, and we could deploy this change rather quickly if we wanted.
Oh yeah, slightly new (anti-)design. Wooohooo.
Macintouch has some great pages of reader reports on wireless connectivity. One on short range (airport, wireless lan stuff,) and one on long range connections (ricochet, ect.)
3ivx is a development effort toward producing a cross platform (windows, mac, unix, be, and amiga) MPEG-4 codec. I hope they can do it.
I guess it's mobile computing day. Here's a more technical piece about a complete wireless portable computing package. More technical than the last link. He calls it Ambu-lan. It's based on the ricochet wireless modem I have been salivating over recently, and also uses Apple's airport (802.11) Good reference point to what is possible (if you're a real geek) right now.
Here's a first hand report from a self styled "digital guerilla" about his travels in Brazil shooting digital video and editing on the fly with a powerbook G3. Not too technical (and I guess, really, not too interesting,) but this whole stlye is about to start happening. I'm hoping we'll be on the band wagon some time this year (i.e., by this time next year.) I still need a new server arrangement (I'm presently canceling my sDSL order and opting for colocation) and Apple (or Sony I guess) still has to make the right laptop (more speed, more disk space, longer batteries.) The cameras have been ready for over a year. And, of course, people need faster internet connections (dsl, or cable.) In the article, he was compressing 5 minute videos with sound down to 16 megs (from 1 gig.) It's not quite there yet (for instance, he ended up just fed ex-ing tapes back to the states because he couldn't find a fast enough connection,) but it's very close. And if there is any way to make traveling around the world into a job, we will find the path.
The Red Herring (strangely) has an article about female tetrchromats, that is, women who have 4 different cone photopigments in their retinas, instead of the usual 3 (red, green, blue.) Some quirk of genetics precludes males from having this mutation, but it seems like some women do. When I read the intro I immediately wondered if they see CMYK color space, but I guess it is more like a fourth color somewhere between red and green in addition to the usual RGB trio. Looking around at the color scheme in this apartment I'm beginning to think that MB must be so blessed. I knew there had to be an explanation.
Is this completely off the deep end? I keep hearing in my head that sample Public Enemy uses: "The government you have elected is inoperative." Anybody know where that comes from?
That Transmeta chip is finally starting to show up in some very small portable computers. Lots of pictures in this tech-report article. That Sony VAIO (last one) sure looks sweet.
Wow. CNN and the Environmental News Network are both reporting that a microbe has been recovered from the upper earth atmosphere which could have extraterrestrial origins. From CNN:
"The living bacteria, plucked from an altitude of 10 miles (16 km) or higher by a scientific balloon, could have been deposited in terrestrial airspace by a passing comet, according to the researchers. The microorganisms are unlike any known on Earth, but the astrobiologists 'want to keep the details under wraps until they are absolutely convinced that these are extraterrestrial,' said study participant Chandra Wickramasinghe, a noted scientist at Cardiff University in Wales."I'm trusting genehack on this: "If they're right, it's huge, but I fear that eliminating all the other, more likely explanations is going to take quite a bit of work."
Riothero's familly was part of a usaweekend piece on weblogging families.