so, just in case there was any confusion as to how you can buy chicken for 89 cents per pound, i present
exhibit a
:
“Tyson Foods Inc., the world’s largest poultry processor, two of the firm’s executives and four former managers have been indicted on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants to work at its U.S. plants as a way to boost profits, the Justice Department said Wednesday.”
for that one other person out there that might care, the
groove
tool has been updated for v1.3:
“This is a flexible brainstorming outline tool, which you can share with your friends. It’s easy to add new items and edit them; then you can drag items around the screen to arrange your thoughts and connect them in different ways.”
despite its flaws,
groove
has proven pretty useful for sharin’ and collaboratin’ at the
mothership
.
speaking of unfinished projects [ see
previous
post. ]. there’s not one, but two,
jabber
books in the works.
Programming Jabber: Extending XML Messaging:
“Programming Jabber offers developers a chance to learn and understand the Jabber technology and protocol from an implementer’s point of view. Detailed information of each part of the Jabber protocol is introduced, explained, and discussed in the form of mini-projects, or simple and extended examples in Perl, Python, and Java. This book provides the foundation and framework for developers to hit the ground running, and is the essential book on Jabber.”
:
“Enables developers to build their own Jabber-based messaging systems quickly and easily. Examples are in Visual Basic and make use of JabberCOM. Readers will be able to create their own instant messaging clients for use with AOL, MSN, ICQ and other popular chat clients. Includes coverage of installing and running your own Jabber Server.”
if you have a
jabber
client you can subscribe to pixie@snowdeal.org and type “hello” to see my stab at developing a rosterbot. she’s not too smart. yet.
back in september when i was
playing around
with the topic mapping software
touchgraph
, i had plans. big plans.
i was going to try to begin storing metadata about posts indexed by the
blogger
post ID [ made easier by the emergence of the blogger api ], so i could do all kinds of fancy, schmancy visualization of the relationships between posts. well, like a lot of my big ideas, it never made it past the lame
prototype
that i threw together.
well,
chris langreiter
mocks my procrastination with his excellent
vanilla-vista
:
” vanilla-vista is the umbrella term for quite a few ideas regarding visualizing the space and its (link) structure. In its first incarnation, it’s basically TouchGraph plus a few extensions.”
interesting stuff with a lot of potential – here’s the
applet
.
the
mozilla
is available for your browsing pleasure.
i’m playing with it now and despite some recent
instability issues
in the nighly builds, things seem quite nice. apparently the
0.97 branch
is slated for “official” release on friday.
things keep getting better and better.
Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design
:
“An interface to any experience, whether technological, physical, or conceptual, must have a message and a reason for communicating it and begin with the creation of meaning and the development of appropriate types of interactivity. These decisions drive the use of sensorial media to present the experience to the audience in an appropriate and supportive way. Addressing one factor without the others can contribute to an experience that is incomplete or unbalanced.”
[ via
blackbeltjones
]
dang. now, i know that we aren’t fighting with .38 specials and i’m not normally awestruck by weaponry, but the
ac-130 aircraft
is devastatingly impressive.
“The Vietnam era had the “Puff the Magic Dragon” Gun ships. The latest version of the weapon is the AC-130 with its 105 mm cannons and Gattling guns. Computer controls allow for concentrated targeting while the aircraft lumbers in circles. This time lapse photo shows the accuracy, as every fifth round is a tracer! Guaranteed to scare the shit out of anyone within 10 miles.”
[ via
rc3
]