archives
May 10: Flag of Germany
The flag of Germany is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red and gold. The black-red-gold tricolour first appeared in the early 19th century and achieved prominence during the 1848 revolution. The short-lived Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–50 proposed the tricolour as a flag for a united and democratic German state. With the formation of the Weimar Republic after World War I, the tricolour was adopted as the national flag of Germany. Following World War II, the tricolour was designated as the flag of both West and East Germany. Both flags were identical until 1959, when socialist symbols were added to the East German flag. Since reunification on 3 October 1990, the black-red-gold tricolour has remained the flag of Germany. The colours of the modern flag are associated with the republican democracy formed after World War II and represent German unity and freedom: not only the freedom of Germany, but also the personal freedom of the German people. (more...)
May 11: History of Minnesota
The history of Minnesota is the story of a U.S. state shaped by its original Native American residents, European exploration and settlement, and the emergence of industries made possible by the state's natural resources. Minnesota achieved prominence through fur trading, logging, and farming, and later, railroads, flour milling and iron mining. While those industries remain important, the state's economy is now driven by banking, computers and health care. Fort Snelling played a pivotal role in Minnesota's history and in the development of the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The earliest known settlers followed herds of large game to the region during the last Ice Age. They preceded the Anishinaabe, the Sioux, and other Native American inhabitants. Fur traders from France arrived during the 1600s. Europeans, moving west during the 1800s, drove out most of the Native Americans. Fort Snelling, built to protect United States territorial interests, brought early settlers to the area. Early settlers used Saint Anthony Falls for powering sawmills in the area that became Minneapolis, while others settled downriver in the area that became Saint Paul. Minnesota became a part of the United States as the Minnesota Territory in 1849, and became the 32nd U.S. state on May 11, 1858. (more...)
Laptop thieves nabbed with help from Mac software
Glenn Fleishman says, Two alleged thieves were found with stolen computer and A/V gear taken from three roommates in White Plains, N.Y., because one of the victims is a Mac expert. She used the notoriously hard-to-get-working Back to My Mac feature in Leopard which allows single sign-in to .Mac for remote, secure access to all computers on which you've signed in. (It uses UPnP/NAT-PMP, wide-area Bonjour, dynamic DNS, and IPsec's IKE coupled with IPv6 tunneling. Any surprise it's wonky? It's cool when it works, though.) The unnamed victim in question was able to use remote screen sharing to capture a picture of one alleged burglar via the machine's built-in iSight camera, and copied photos on the computer that apparently were of the other alleged thief. One of the other roommates recognized the two alleged perps from a party at their apartment (they were friends of a friend), told the police, who tracked them down, and made the arrests, finding all the stolen gear in the process. While I've heard of plenty of Webcams-lead-to-capture stories, this is the first story that ties in IPv6 and recovered gear that I know of. Link....
Web Zen: WTF? zen
monoface feed the head floating head (shown above) pipe cleaner dance ptikobj gamegame globe salesman tom's tales of brilliance green porno previously on web zen: ummm...oookaaay...zen wha? zen Link, Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)...
Daniel Reyes (boxer)
1972 births | colombian boxers | ibf champions | living people | strawweights | world boxing champions | world minimumweight championsDaniel Reyes Torres (born 1972-05-05 in Cartagena, Colombia), is a professional boxer.
Amateur Career
Reyes represented Colombia as a Flyweight at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. His results were:- Defeated Tebebu Behonebn (Ethiopia) 16-2
- Defeated Khaled Falah (Syria) 15-13
- Lost to Albert Pakeyev (Russia) 13-13
Legal Aid Ontario
1998 establishments | legal aid | ontario law | organizations based in torontoLegal Aid Ontario (LAO) is an agency which provides legal assistance to financially disadvantaged persons in the province of Ontario, Canada. Legal aid is provided primarily for criminal or family matters, for a few specific other types of proceedings, and for duty counsel support in some circumstances. Its mandate includes financial support for 79 community legal clinics in Ontario.
The Toronto-based LAO was formed in 1998 and is primarily funded by the Government of Ontario, although it operates as a separate organisation.
Ramnathapuram
Ramnathapuram is a small town in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India.
» full article | source
Faubourg Tremé: new New Orleans docu
art | civlib | videoPremiered recently in SF and NYC. Snip from description: Faubourg Tremé is arguably the oldest black neighborhood in America, the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement in the South and the home of jazz. While the Tremé district was damaged when the levees broke, this is not another Katrina documentary. Every frame is a tribute to what African American communities have contributed even under the most hostile of conditions. It is a film of such effortless intimacy, subtle glances and authentic details that only two native New Orleanians could have made it. Link, trailer. (thanks, Clayton James Cubitt)...
Roboexotica, monochrom's cocktail robot fest, in SF
Scott Beale reminds us that... Roboexotica USA, a celebration of cocktail robots, takes place from 8pm-2am this Saturday, May 10th [that'd be today] at Space, 354 5th Street in San Francisco. I won't be there myself, but I'll look forward to the tweets, vloggage, and flickr coverage likely to pour forth like so many mecha-margaritas....
Polyhedral dice for musicians
games | happy mutantsMusicians who play tabletop RPGs, rejoice -- here's a detailed guide to using polyhedral dice to improve your musical skills. The d12 is Schoenberg’s dream die. Music majors, rejoice! Now the dice gods can determine your tone row for you. The d12 is also excellent for all you wind players who have to do scale competencies in order to pass band. Pair it with the d4 for maximum torture… I mean, practice value. 1. C 2. C#/Db 3. D 4. D#/Eb 5. E 6. F 7. F#/Gb 8. G 9. G#/Ab 10. A 11. A#/Bb 12. B Roll for your key! Link (Thanks, Amy!)...
SF fanzines prefigured blogs: Roger Ebert
book | happy mutantsRoger Ebert traces the roots of Internet culture to science fiction fanzines: Then the university intervened, and I found myself publishing The Spectator (not precisely an original title), a weekly tabloid of arts and politics at the University of Illinois. I had become too busy for fandom, and found it wise to GAFIA (get away from it all). I have always been convinced that the culture of sf fanzines contributed heavily to the formative culture of the early Web, and generated models for web site and blogs. The very tone of the discourse is similar, and like fanzines, the Web took new word coinages, turned them into acronyms, and ran with them. Think about it. Science fiction fans in the decades before the internet were already interested in computers, big-time--first with the supercomputers of science fiction myth, and then with the earliest home-built models. Fans tended to be youngish, male, geeky, obsessed with popular culture, and compelled to circulate their ideas. In the reviews and criticism they ran, they slanted heavily toward expertise in narrow pop fields. The Star Trek phenomenon was predicted by their fascination years earlier with analysis of Captain Video, Superman, X minus One and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and there were learned discussions about how Tarzan taught himself to read. Link (via Making Light)...
Celebrity Restaurants Being Sold Off - Homesgofast.com
Celebrity Restaurants Being Sold Off
Beverly Hills Celebrity Fine Art Advisor and Appraiser David W ... - PR Web (press release)
Beverly Hills Celebrity Fine Art Advisor and Appraiser David W ...
Celebrity Supporter Agrees With Criticism Of Ref - Vitalfootball
Celebrity Supporter Agrees With Criticism Of Ref
Celebrity baby showers are going high-end - Los Angeles Times
Celebrity baby showers are going high-end
Grandmom’s guide to Ubuntu: Hardy Heron ate my mp3’s - Blogger News Network
Grandmom’s guide to Ubuntu: Hardy Heron ate my mp3 ’s
Spam Filtering For Small/Medium Business?
spamor_is_it writes "The company I work for has been growing dramatically and I've been charged with the task of being the gatekeeper for our GFI Spam filters. This involves manually inspecting the subject line/to/from for all caught messages in each filter rule folder. For a company of about 50 people, in one day the number of spam messages can exceed 2,000. Neglect it for a day and you end up with quite a task on your hands. I've made the rules lax enough so important messages can go through, along with a few stray spams, for which I get bitched at. Tighten the rules up and then maybe an important time-sensitive email never gets to its intended recipient, and I get bitched at. Manually reading through all those subject lines is supposed to prevent that, but I'm only human and genuine messages can easily get overlooked. How do larger organizations deal with the spam issue? I can't imagine having one centralized person manually inspecting everyone's junk-mail header is the optimal solution. Purchasing a different commercial mail filter product is a possibility, but I'd like to hear some anecdotal evidence before jumping ship."