April 2014 Archives

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Socotra is an island in the Indian Ocean, 150 miles off the Horn of Africa and 240 miles south of the Arabian Peninsula.    Roughly 40,000 people live there, but the plant life is a lot more interesting.   Roughly one third (!) of the flora and fauna species on Socotra are unique to the island.


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The United States government has many different agencies — the Treasury, the Department of Defense, more recently Homeland Security, and numerous others.


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Young Jimmy, a humble young man from North Carolina, is one of my newest personal coaching clients. Each month we get on the phone for an hour and find ways to make him more productive and profitable at work.


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For years the advice for mobile designers has been to avoid text input. Screens are small, fingers are imprecise, and so errors happen. But at the same time mobile devices are always with us, always on, and always connected.


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Our users are precious about their time and we must stop wasting it.


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Since starting the zombie code kill blog, a post on TDD has been on my to do list, but I found it to be a difficult topic to write on. This is because it is difficult to treat the topic in a fair and balanced way while keeping it short enough to remain an interesting read.


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Parents do everything they possibly can to give kids what they need to grow up well. Most of those efforts are focused around cognitive or physical development. Music training. Limited TV. Flash cards between naps and trips to the Superstore. Languages. Swimming, soccer, dance. The list goes on.


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In my last post I described a project restart, a simple, generic process for handling a software project when there are too many things left to do a few months before deadline.


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At a baptismal celebration earlier today, I had the opportunity to step into one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in San Antonio, Perico's at 281 and Sonterra.


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Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I’m a big believer in personal brilliance. Whether it’s being a talented wordsmith, an amazing salesperson, or an incredible team team player, we’ve all got a little dose of secret sauce within us.


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nvim A Notational Velocity inspired mode for vim.


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CIO — In his book, "Essential Drucker: Management, the Individual and Society," Peter F. Drucker says, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."


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How do others experience your leadership? It’s a question that leads to discussion with many of the people I coach. No matter the stellar quality of your leadership, you never stop learning about your leadership.


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Saddam Hussein, by many accounts, was a megalomaniac.  As a testament to his own greatness, Hussein erected more than 300 palaces across Iraq and dozens of statues — of himself — throughout the country, during his 25 year reign.


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“That guy from the TV commercials!” That’s what they call him, either because they don’t know his name, or are by now too drunk to remember it. As the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, he has appeared in countless Sam Adams commercials over thirty years.


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On June 5th and 6th, 2012, the planet Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun, a predictable astronomical event known as the “Transit of Venus.


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On November 5, 2006, famed ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes crossed the finish line at New York City Marathon.


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With their homeland occupied, the underground band of freedom fighters had few options left. The ragtag band of the resistance — this group, at least — numbered only 8,000 (with arms for only half of them), a paltry sum compared to the heavily armed platoons patrolling their streets.


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Kim Jong-il, the dictator who lead North Korea for nearly two decades, died over the past weekend.  Filling his (platform) shoes is his son, Kim Jong-un. But unlike most sons who succeed their fathers in the seat of government, Jong-un is not the oldest son.


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About 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, a volcano named Mount Mazama, located in present-day Oregon, erupted, leaving behind a big crater.  Over time, water from rain and snowfall filled the hole, and Crater Lake was born.  And Crater Lake is not like most other lakes.


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There’s something inherently fun about trying to set a new world record, especially if doing so as a large group. There’s a collective sense of purpose around the goal, even if the goal is something trivial like making the world’s largest burrito or another similarly silly idea.


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In the summer of 2008, the United States’ economy saw its highest levels of inflation in a almost two decades — peaking at 5.6% in July.  If that sounds off-putting, Zimbabwe’s economy is downright terrifying.  In 1998, Zimbabwe witnessed 32% inflation.


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Emoticons are the little typographical things which demonstrate if we are happy, sad, etc. in an email.  Things like :) or <3 or even the occasional d-_-b. In 1982, Scott E. Fahlman, now a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, coined the first emoticon — at least, officially.


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Learn all about the Nashorn Javascript Engine with easily understood code examples. The Nashorn Javascript Engine is part of Java SE 8 and competes with other standalone engines like Google V8 (the engine that powers Google Chrome and Node.js).


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As you may be aware, the JDK 8 Early Access is now available for download. This allows Java developers to experiment with some of the new language and runtime features of Java 8.


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This excellent compilation of essays by James Allen truly holds the key to success, amongst other things! I feel so inspired after reading this book, so ready to put into practice what this powerful, little book is teaching.


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Here are 9 reasons to use the 80/20 Analysis Template (Google Doc / PDF). Are you thinking or feeling any of these things right now? It is time to set some priorities. It is time to create focused intensity on work that matters.


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Tweet, Reblog. Hashtag. Like. Even if you’re not familiar with the social media universe, you know that those buzzwords mean something to the always-connected digital natives out there.


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On August 23, 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck central Virginia, causing reverberations up and down America’s eastern coast, with reports coming in from New York City to North Carolina.


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Paul Boag is a veteran OmniFocus user and has always made an effort to share how he uses the application. With the OmniFocus 2 Beta he recorded a new screencast that takes you through his setup.


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When I was a young man, I would scoff at well-intentioned adults who would sometimes offer up little aphorisms when I got in trouble or had a problem. Little nuggets like, “This too shall pass,” generally went in one ear and out the other.


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Please check back soon. If you are the owner of this website, please contact Technical Support as soon as possible.


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Meet @DearAssistant, a Twitter bot that is like a online version of Apple Siri. You can tweet your questions in plan English and the bot will reply with an answer. Here are some questions that people have asked @DearAssistant so far:


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2014, motherfuckers. Yeah! LET'S DO THIS. "Do what?" you ask. I DON'T KNOW. LET'S FIGURE THAT OUT TOGETHER, MOTHERFUCKERS.


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Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from krav maga expert David Kahn’s book Krav Maga Weapon Defenses. Welcome back to another installment of the Krav Maga Technique of the Month.


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Improve the performance of java.util.HashMap under high hash-collision conditions by using balanced trees rather than linked lists to store map entries. Implement the same improvement in the related classes LinkedHashMap and WeakHashMap.


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Among the most anticipated additions to the Java platform coming in Java 8 is JSR 310: The Date and Time API. Find out how the Java Date and Time API addresses the need for a more robust date and time infrastructure in Java SE, then familiarize yourself with the java.


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Java 8 is packed full of some really exciting features at both the JVM and language level. While some of the features initially envisioned for this release got scoped out or pushed out to release 9, there are literally dozens of new features.


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On March 25th, Oracle will unveil Java SE 8 — a major step forward in the language. One of the important new features in this release is improved concurrency, some of which appears in the foundational java.util.Arrays class.


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One of our highest priorities at Mist.io is to never break production. Our users depend on it to manage and monitor their servers and we depend on them. At the same time, we need to move fast with development and deliver updates as soon as possible.


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CIO — As organizations struggle to adjust to the new growth economy, finding top talent is one of their biggest challenges.


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That, pictured above, is an armadillo. And if for some reason you wanted to eat one, apparently, they’re “fabulous” — “[t]hink of the best turkey or goose you’ve ever had … but much, much better,” according to a Chowhound user who feasted, unknowingly, on armadillo legs.


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SourceForge and Allura will also be at PyCon in Montreal, April 11-16. We'll have a booth and would love to talk with anyone in attendance. You'll learn more about the Allura sprint over there and in the next newsletter.


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Why busyness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and a challenge to put it behind us. Being busy used to make me feel important. It made me feel like the world needed me, like somehow I was more valuable or valid when busy.


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I have learned that life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and that life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate an unwavering commitment to push forward even when times are tough.


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What makes for a great presentation — the kind that compels people’s attention and calls them to action?  TED talks have certainly set a benchmark in recent years: HBR even asked Chris Anderson, the group’s founder, to offer lessons drawn from the three decades he’s run TED’s s


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If dategrep works on a seekable file, it can do a binary search to find the first and last line to print pretty efficiently. dategrep can also read from stdin if one the filename arguments is just a hyphen, but in this case it has to parse every single line which will be slower.


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Plugins can be loaded from Github, the web or local files. Worth a look if your shell rc file is getting out of hand.


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It sounds like a type of coffee, a stiff drink, or if you run it through Google Image Search, a quilt pattern (above). But it’s not. It’s a tax avoidance scheme — a legal way for American corporations to, in large part, dodge a 35% corporate income tax.


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Obviously, I'm not a relationship expert. But there's something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different... After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here's the advice I wish I would have had...


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On November 17, 1810 Sweden declared war on the United Kingdom. The two sides were at odds for more than a year and a half, only finally reaching a peace accord in July of 1812, as formalized in the Treaty of Orebro.


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CQ MAVEN METHODSCQCON 2013 HELLO WORLDIm Andrew.asavory@adobe.com@savs Joined Adobe in November 2012 CQ NewbieJCR/CMS/TLA old hat Background in Open Source, Content Management, Mobile Talking today about what I learned so far... FORK ME!If you found this talk useful, or spotted mistakes:github.


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Pirate garb is known for a few signature items: bandannas, tri-corner hats, overcoats, and of course, eye patches.  But were eye injuries that common?  Pirate history is understandably lacking, with ships logs rarely kept and communications to land impossible.


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One issue with anonymous classes is that if the implementation of your anonymous class is very simple, such as an interface that contains only one method, then the syntax of anonymous classes may seem unwieldy and unclear.


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Java 8 was released last month and is just chock-full of new features and behind-the-scenes optimizations. The internet has been doing quite a good job covering all these new additions – both the good and the bad.


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The scalability of cloud computing depends on sharing resources that were never shared before, creating a new set of risks and demanding a new set of security best practices. Not all the proven practices of the past work in today’s interconnected, heterogeneous world.


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This is a guest blog post from Shawn Parrish of NodePing, one of our monitoring partners, about how to avoid some of the more common monitoring stumbling points. NodePing provides simple and affordable external server monitoring services.


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This is the first post in a series to help your engineering team transition into a DevOps model. We’ll start with the whys and get to the hows in future posts. Stay tuned.


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When things get busy, we all have tasks we put off. Sometimes items end up on the back burner out of necessity.


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In 1886, Atlanta, Georgia passed a short-lived law prohibiting the sale and/or manufacture of alcohol. In response, a pharmacist named John Pemberton created a faux wine, mixing together fruit flavors with extracts from kola nuts (caffeine) and coca leaves (cocaine).


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Playing cards have been around, in their current 52-card deck incarnation, for roughly 500 years.  Let’s assume, incorrectly, that the current world population — roughly 6 billion people — has been constantly at that level over the course of those five centuries.


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If you have been thinking about of going iPad-only or making your iPad your main computer – you’re not alone. I’ve been going through similar thoughts and for a few weeks I’ve been experimenting with going iPad-only.


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If you're into productivity, then you must have at least heard of David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity opus. Let's take a look at how to apply GTD to your school work. GTD is basically a "workflow for life," so if all you want to do is get papers in by their deadlines, it's overkill.


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Managing the steady stream of email that gathers in your inbox every day can feel like an impossible task. Not long ago, I kept a lengthening list of folders in my email software to track messages by topic, sender, project, urgency and any other context that seemed relevant that hour.


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Getting Things Done, or GTD, is a system for getting organized and staying productive. It may seem complicated on the outside, but the end goal is to spend less time doing the things you have to do so you have more time for the things you want to do.


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For the last twenty years, I’ve been building software with all kinds of different people and in all kinds of different companies. Since then, things have changed in almost every way imaginable. Even more interesting than the changes in workplace culture has been the diversity in processes.


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On December 6, 1865, Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and in doing so, completed the ratification process. From that point forth, slavery has been illegal in the United States.


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As regular readers will know, it’s been a busy time here at Pi Towers recently with the launch of our new website, free educational materials and £1m education fund.


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A woman decides to have a facelift for her 50th birthday.  She spends $15,000 and feels pretty good about the results. On her way home, she stops at a news stand to buy a newspaper.  Before leaving, she says to the clerk, ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how old do you think I am.


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How’d you spend your last summer?  We’re betting that Matt Moniz, pictured above, aspired to greater heights than you did.  Literally.  Over the course of 43 days in the summer of 2010, Moniz, age 12, and his father climbed to the highest point in each of the fifty U.S. states.


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At the close of the American Civil War, many southerners were left in ruins.  For the most loyal of Confederates, the war left their wills shattered, their land occupied, and their trust in their government worse than it was when the war began.


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It’s a pattern with which most full-time professionals are familiar–you’re spending increasing amounts of time at your desk, but it feels like you’re getting less done.


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Before 1979, Iran was under the control of the Shah and had relatively peaceful relations with Israel.  Iran Air’s headquarters was built in that calmer, friendlier time, and the lead architects on the design were, in fact, Israeli. Fast forward a few decades.


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You've got the perfect idea for a JavaScript-based application or website. Now all you have to do is pick the right open source framework. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming that you’re a beginner or novice developer, or else you’re hiring somebody else to develop your idea for you.


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Mac or PC? Android or iOS? Ember, Backbone, or Angular? Developers aren’t shy about sharing their opinions within these technology debates. Since both sides of each argument have their own respective pros and cons, it really boils down to personal preference.


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In the world of musical instruments, there may no name more famous than Stradivarius.  Referring to the series of violins crafted by Antonio Stradivari and his family in the late 1600s and early 1700s, these instruments may be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.


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Fairy tales made their way into the modern literacy sphere when French author Charles Perrault, in 1697, published Histoires ou contes du temps passé (literally, “Stories or tales of times past”).


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This is a single page javascript app that helps you estimate the cost of AWS glacier.


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Pictured above is a Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG. Car and Driver called the car “the quickest factory Benz we’ve ever tested.” The car has many well-known fans, including Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and hockey star Alex Ovechkin.


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Get a scrape or a cut and your first step — after the subtle facial expression you make from the pain — may be to grab some rubbing alcohol.


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Google’s cloud computing business has figured out how it’s going to come at Amazon Web Services: lower and simpler prices, predictable services and software innovation. Some of the price cuts are as much as 85 percent. Amazon is expected to soon respond with moves of its own.


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Below are the top broadcasting-TV stocks on the NYSE in terms of operating margin. The trailing-twelve-month operating margin at Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE: SNI) is 38.90%. Scripps Networks Interactive's ROE for the same period is 26.40%.


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