A look at Twitter's current architecture and a few notes on the lead architect's plans for the future. The most interesting bit for me: "Everything is kept in RAM and the database is just a backup." Crazy. (via Willison.) (#)
TNF
Hi. I'm Matt.
Wanna see something cool?
Jun. 30, 2009
Jun. 19, 2009
9:44 am
Calling Iranian politics “byzantine” doesn’t quite do the trick, because all Byzantium really had going on was palace intrigue. Tehran is that, plus Twitter.
Gabriel Winant, from a piece detailing the ins-and-outs of Iran's current political scene. I love Twitter and all, but ascribing this kind of importance to the service is just way over the top. (#)
Jun. 18, 2009
Jun. 16, 2009
I dare say I've never linked to a Smashing Magazine article, but here's one I can really get behind. A pretty comprehensive primer on all of the CSS3 rules worth using. The most useful part for me: which browsers currently support each tool. (#)
Jun. 2, 2009
May. 20, 2009
A lovely little bash script that exposes a simple HTTP request syntax for using curl on the command line. I can see myself using this a lot. (via Simon Willison.) (#)
This is gonna be really big news. Yahoo! is opening up a treasure-trove of geo-relational data that can be queried through what looks to be a really easy-to-use API. Know the city your photo comes from, but want to figure out the state, the country, the continent? That's just one use case. Can't wait to dream up some others. (via Jeff Croft.) (#)
May. 19, 2009
The best use of Flash I've seen in a long time. A visualizer for Twitter messages that's capable of working in full screen. Hook this puppy up to a monitor at your next geek event and watch as your attendees get sucked into the resultant feedback loop. How wonderfully anti-social! (#)
May. 1, 2009
10:32 am
In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Kai Diefenbach, quoting an unnamed source. (#)
Apr. 30, 2009
I spend a chunk of pretty much every day thinking about the user interfaces that Category 4 clients see, so I found this look at the Twitter admin site quite interesting. It's way more barebones than I expected. (#)
Apr. 27, 2009
Apr. 22, 2009
I like what this guy is trying to explain almost as much as I like how he does it. He's not really answering the question "What is programming like?" He's answering "Why do no two programmers ever produce the same work?" It's a great analogy. (#)
Apr. 21, 2009
I've read a lot about monitor and video color display in my day, but this is a new one on me. Turns out if you reduce the quality of an images blue channel, no one will ever notice. Same, to a certain extent, with red. But mess with the greens and you've got a problem. Fantastic stuff. (#)
Apr. 12, 2009
Little cardboard robots are helped by passers-by in their journey from one end of Washington Square Park to the other. "The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone." Grad student much? I thought so. Still, this is one rad little project. (#)
Mar. 14, 2009
Mar. 10, 2009
7:12 am
We called it the Rubber Duck method of debugging. It goes like this:
- Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck (bathtub variety).
- Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that's all right.
- Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain things line by line.
- At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.
Works every time. Actually, if you don't have a rubber duck you could at a pinch ask a fellow programmer or engineer to sit in.
Andrew Errington, from an awk list-serv discussion on debugging. (#)
Mar. 8, 2009
8:45 am
When you talk about how much you like a tune, you don’t say: “That’s a great MP3”. You say: “That’s a great song”. The MP3 is the delivery mechanism, not the creative work; just as in type a font is the delivery mechanism and a typeface is the creative work.
Stephen Coles, typography enthusiast and contributor to Font Feed, on the distinction between the terms "font" and "typeface." (via Jeff Croft.) (#)
Mar. 5, 2009
9:59 am
We’re just a million little gods causing rain storms, turning every good thing to rust.
I guess we’ll just have to adjust.
Arcade Fire, from the song "Wake Up." (#)
Mar. 3, 2009
Now here's a bookmarklet I'll actually use. From arc90, this tool takes that article you're reading at the Times and strips out everything but the title and the article content. No ads, no extraneous razmatazz, and no fuss. The only dissapointing part is that it removes story-related photos unless they're actually in the article body. (via kottke.) (#)
Mar. 2, 2009
If you’re like me and you’ve been following ExpressionEngine’s Knowledge Base article on porting an EE site from one server to another, let me share a secret. You’ve been doing it the hard way.
