Ministry of Intrigue

Django Debug Toolbar is an insanely useful Django app that you can drop into any Django project and get tons of useful information while developing and testing your work, all in a pretty sexy looking toolbar.

DjDT displays information such as:

• Execution time
•  Settings
• HTTP Headers
• Request Variables
•  SQL
• Template Debug Console
•  Signals
• Logging (from the standard Python logging module)

There is a great video on the landing page that does an admirable job showing off what DjDT is capable of doing for you. I can’t imagine why anyone would not use this when developing with Django, unless it’s just plain ignorance of it.

Seriously, save yourself some headache when you are testing your work and use DjDT.

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Love this demo video of the MikroKopter. The GPS integration in the device is slick, and I love that it’s an open source, DIY device. The parts aren’t even all that expensive considering what they are, but as a project it’s still a little too pricey and time consuming for me to tak on right now.

Take a look at the video through the link, and I guarantee you will be impressed. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find you browsing the MikroKopter wiki afterwards, scheming and planning on how you will build your own.

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Loren Feldman of 1938 Media does a great job summarizing many of things going wrong at Techcrunch these days, and it’s an excellent overview of the issues at hand. In particular, Feldman points out a number of important unanswered questions still lingering in the wake of Michael Arrington’s supposed transparency regarding the MacBook Air scandal.

From the post:

At this point it’s obvious that the TechCrunch site is incapable of doing the right thing. There is simply no moral compass over there to guide them so I am once again forced to stop producing puppet shows for a few dozen people and spell it out.

[snip]

[It’s] still not clear is Daniel’s relationship with TechCrunch. Mike Arrington, Editor-In-Chief of TechCrunch, said that Daniel is merely an intern and that “the frequency of [his] posts was light.” If by “light” he means “over a hundred stories” then okay. Daniel states no, he was not an unpaid intern but a part-time employee. The TechCrunch site lists him with a fancy title. Intern, employee, dog sitter, no one is too sure what this kid does. Which is it? It’s February. Did he just get a 1099 or not?

Go give it a read, I think it summarizes many of the reasons that I stopped regularly reading Techcrunch about a year ago, although it leaves out an important one: their policy of posting stories based on rumors from anonymous sources without getting confirmation or performing anything that could pass as journalistic due diligence. I still think it’s disgraceful that the tech community at large gives so much influence to a site that is just one small step above being a gossip rag.

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I love this short essay from Tim Hackbarth (who also happens to be my step-brother) evaluating how daily habits add up to both negative as well as positive cumulative effects in his life, and pointing out the overall value of taking the time each day to do just one little thing. 

Definitely worth a read, and some consideration. Tim is a smart guy, and also happens to be the creator of my favorite productivity website, which is worth a look any time that you are struggling with improving your personal task management system.

So, with that in mind, how many things are you working on right now? How much are you getting done, and are you giving yourself a heart attack trying to do it? Just think how much better off and farther along you would be if you stopped trying to get everything done today, instead focusing on getting any of it done, no matter how small?

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This is huge. This is bigger than Buzz, bigger than the Nexus One and bigger than Wave. If Google’s trials are successful, they could seriously reshape the standard for the speeds at which Americans access the Internet, specifically around 1 gigabit per second over fiber connections.

From the post:

 Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:

Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.

New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.

Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

Guess this settles the question of why Google has been buying up all that dark fiber over the last few years. OK, tech pundits, in the wake of this announcement, do any of you seriously care if Buzz is a flop or not?¹ Stop opining about social networking sites and “power of social media” (a phrase guaranteed to earn you a punch in the groin from me) and start thinking big.

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Love this breakdown of the typical incendiary blog post, and the comments are the icing on the cake. Worth a look if you’re in need of a few chuckles.

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Outstanding example of what an HTML5 based video player can be. I look forward to the day when all web video is consumed like this: with no browser plugins, seamless buffering, and without hogging my computer’s resources.

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Research conducted by scientists from the University of Manchester and the University of Houston suggests that contrary to the current view that our atmosphere and oceans came from the release of volcanic gases may be incorrect. Instead they suggest that the the source of our early atmosphere came from space itself.

From the article:

“We found a clear meteorite signature in volcanic gases,” said Dr Greg Holland the project’s lead scientist.

“From that we now know that the volcanic gases could not have contributed in any significant way to the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Therefore the atmosphere and oceans must have come from somewhere else, possibly from a late bombardment of gas and water rich materials similar to comets.

What I’m curious about is if this makes the particular life sustaining qualities of our atmosphere more or unless likely to be present on other planets.

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Research indicates the existence of a complex ancient civilization in the Amazon. It does not appear to be of Inca origin and predates the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese. I’ll be curious to see how this develops.

From the article:

Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities.

 […] 

While some Inca sites lie just 200 kilometres west of the geoglyphs, no Inca objects have been found at the new sites. Neither do they seem to have anything in common with Peru’s Nasca geoglyphs.

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This is the kind of breakthrough we need in order to make AR a practical technology for day to day use.

One of the limitations of current head-up displays is their limited field of view. A contact lens display can have a much wider field of view. “Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away,” says Parviz.

Just as exciting is proposed power source for the device:

Parviz says that future versions will be able to harvest power from a user’s cell phone, perhaps as it beams information to the lens. They will also have more pixels and an array of microlenses to focus the image so that it appears suspended in front of the wearer’s eyes.

WANT

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