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Name Marco von Ballmoos
Member since
Email [hidden]
Home page https://earthli.com/users/marco
Description

The (only) developer at earthli.com.

Contents

3209 Articles
111 Comments

18 years Ago

Mashup Mime

Published on in Fun

So there’s this mime, David Armand, and he does a bit called Karaoke for the Deaf (Google Video) on HBO. His shtick[1] is acting out the song “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia.

It’s wicked good, so he gets invited to do it at some awards show, Torn by David Armand (YouTube), in the middle of which Natalie herself joins him on stage and starts miming the song with him.

A good time was had by all.


[1] For the german-speaking following along – yeah, it’s really, really hard to write it without the ‘c’ at this point.

Ignorance

Published on in Quotes

“If ignorance is bliss, then slap the smile off my face.”
Rage Against The Machine

Testing Tone Deafness

Published on in Fun

You probably shouldn’t do this one at work because it takes a full six minutes of concentration and silence—during which bizarre sounds are emitted from your speakers. Either that, or you need some headphones. Test your musical skills in 6 minutes! is a Flash-based test for tone-deafness / musical ear. It plays 30 pairs of musical sequences that may or may not differ in tone: that’s for you to decide. For the really bored, there is also Can’t dance? Test to see if you’re rhythmdeaf!, which... [More]

Daily Show on Iraq

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

The Daily Show this week had a number of very good clips, mostly centering on Iraq, Rumsfeld and Bush. In particular, they highlight the high-quality correspondents that the show still has, despite the loss of Carrel, Helms, Cordry and Colbert. Oliver, Bee, Riggle and Mandvi are filling in quite nicely, as you’ll see below.

Fareed Zakaria (Part I and Part II)

Though he’s always interesting, this interview with Zakaria is the best one yet; his analysis of Iraq and the Middle East is spot-on.... [More]

An Empire Says What?

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Instead of focusing on money spent on military budgets, World Wide Military Deployments takes a look at the number of soldiers deployed around the world by various countries. This is a relatively good measure of the degree to which a country exerts its forceful influence on other countries. The top 5 are:

United States ~ 400,000
140,000 in Iraq, 74,000 in Germany, 40,000 each in Japan, Korea and Kuwait and over 1000 troops in a dozen other countries, mostly in the Middle East
Turkey ~ 36,000... [More]

Reality

Published on in Quotes

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
Carl Sagan

Wally

Published on in Fun

Wally is Dilbert’s coworker. He is, without a doubt, the absolute king of work-avoidance. His talents are numerous and his fame wide-spread. This latest Dilbert cartoon shows him at his absolute best—right down to the Dr. Evil-like gesture of sipping from his slightly-oversized coffee cup.

 Wally's Way

Denial Ain’t Just a River In Egypt

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

There have been a flood of political cartoons covering the conference on the Holocaust taking place in Iran in the last couple of days. They almost all depict president Ahmadinejad of Iran as Hitler or a Nazi of some kind. To be fair to the normally right-leaning caricaturists of America, there have also been a hell of a lot of them depicting Bush as divorced from reality and incredibly political in all of his decisions. This reaction is somewhat expected, as Bush’s rating dips down toward the... [More]

Temple of Doom

Published on in Miscellaneous

Giant Carnivorous Centipedes tells you all can probably stand to know about “Scolopendra gigantea, a venomous, red-maroon centipede with forty-six yellow-tinted legs”, which reach “lengths of over thirty-five centimeters” (almost 14 inches). They’re carnivores, but beasts of this size (lovingly described as a bitter repast themselves in Papillon by Henri Charriere (Amazon)) must necessarily seek larger prey than mere beetles and spiders.

“In an environment completely devoid of light, the centipede scurries across the damp... [More]”

Good Ideas

Published on in Quotes

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If they’re any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
Howard Aiken

Fear of Flying

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Did you ever read the Batman comics? One of his enemies was that lawyer who liked to flip a coin, Twoface.[1] He had two completely different personalities and used a coin to decide which one he was going to be … until the next time he decided to flip the coin. It’s unclear exactly what his superpower was, but that’s Batman for you. There is now ample evidence that airport security policy around the world is being created by this guy, except his two personalities are Terry Gilliam and George... [More]

14 Reasons

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

This post, Articles of Impeachment against Bush and Cheney (Daily Kos), lists the most egregious offenses of the Bush junta over the last six years. Naturally, since it’s on the Daily Kos (which isn’t necessarily so much lefty as staunchly Democrat), they note that the impeachment must affect “both Bush and Cheney … It will not do any good for us to impeach Bush and have Cheney take the Oval Office”. A relatively obvious conclusion to which any analyst (who can think at least one move ahead) would have... [More]

Welcome to the Club (Officially)

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

In an interview just a few days ago, Ehud Olmert had an interesting slip of the tongue; here’s the quote:

“Iran openly, explicitly, and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they [the Iranians] are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?”

As discussed recently in Robert Gates Confirmed as US Secretary of Defense (earthli News) (first footnote), the “wipe Israel off the map…” comment has become accepted truth. Ahmadinejad,... [More]

RTFM

Published on in Quotes

“I would RTFM if there was an FM to FR.”
Andrei Michael Herasimchuk

Missing ognl?

Published on in Programming

This article was originally published on the Encodo Blogs. Browse on over to see more!


Every once in a while, when adding a new component to or changing an existing one on a Tapestry page, you’ll make a mistake. Most of the time, the exception handler page is pretty good; sometimes the exception can be quite confusing. For example, suppose we have a custom component with a single property:

package com.encodo.blogs.samples;

class CustomComponent extends BaseComponent {
  public abstract... [More]

Robert Gates Confirmed as US Secretary of Defense

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

This transcript of his confirmation hearing (New York Times) indicates that the transition from Rumsfeld to Gates is akin to the transition from a Republican Congress to a Democratic one: better, if not good yet. Despite the murky crimes lurking in Mr. Gates’ past vis-a-vis the Iran/Contra affair and his having been head of the CIA for some time, it’s hard not be heartened at hearing more honest—and reality-based—answers coming from a Secretary of Defense. Even though Rumsfeld made it easy for his successor... [More]

Complex Humor

Published on in Quotes

“There exists a type of joke that makes you feel clever for getting it. Do do confuse this with actual humor.”
Me.

XKCD – Web Comic

Published on in Fun

If you’re a regular peruser of Reddit[1], you’ve probably already seen at least one XKCD cartoon. They really do tend to be pretty unique and, often enough, have something interesting and funny to say. Dreams, for example, is a discussion between a firm embed of society and a doubter:

“The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking. And I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops.... [More]”

Reddit

Published on in Design

 Reddit Home PageReddit is a really interesting, stripped-down, fast social bookmarking site; while it doesn’t have the CSS/Web 2.0 props of Magnolia or Digg, neither does it have the excruciating wait time or incredibly heavy page load (both are easily over 250KB home pages). Reddit weighs in at under 50KB and has sensible caching commands, so the browser isn’t constantly following some insipid order to check for new content every time you click something. It’s style is very spartan, but conveys all the... [More]

Good Riddance

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 King and KingmakerChile’s Gen Pinochet dies at 91 (BBC) brings the sad, sad news that a true monster no longer walks among us. Naturally, since he’s dead, it’s time to start remembering that [d]espite his human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved the country from Marxism.” (emphasis added). Despite? That’s all he’s known for! Probably everybody loved him except for the friends and family of the “3,000 people [who] were killed or “disappeared” during his rule which ended in 1990.” Instead make sure to... [More]

Flash Silhouettes

Published on in Design

 This portfolio page by Jonathan Yuen offers a unique Flash experience: its navigation is quite nice. The stark and simple silhouettes are mostly static, but some small pieces move: the fish swim around, clicking the finger makes ripples on the pond, the butterflies flutter. Combined with the music, it’s quite pleasant to look around, including the cryptic navigation links—for those not versed in whichever language they’re written in—and the horizontal scrolling. It’s well worth a visit.

WoC 2006

Published on in Miscellaneous

 Threat to CivilizationThe War on Christmas has begun. The opening salvo of 2006 is brought to you by this article, Woman faces fines for wreath peace sign (Yahoo News), which brings us the sad tale of Lisa Jensen, who was lying her face off when “said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath” (pictured left). Her arch fiend—and the enemy of a peaceful Christmas—Bob Kearns, said in a phone interview that he couldn’t allow it because it would pave the way for other forms of expression, like saying we should “drop... [More]”

Zinn on the Power of History

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 Howard ZinnA recent speech, The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism by Howard Zinn (Democracy Now), shows that Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (Amazon), still has a fire in his belly. It’s most excellent and well worth reading from start to finish. To make sure everyone’s awake and that they know they’re at the right lecture, he starts with a clear, succint, impossible-to-misinterpret topic sentence for his essay:

“They’ve taken over the country. They’ve taken over the policy. They’ve driven us into... [More]”

Shutting Down OS X

Published on in Technology

Following closely on the heels of the self-outing of the programmer of the Windows Vista shutdown menu is The Design of the Mac OS X Shutdown Feature by Arno, by one of the designers of the same feature in OS X (which hasn’t changed in 5 years now).

 OS X Shutdown menu

After first sympathizing with Microsoft that managing a product as big as an operating system is incredibly difficult—and mentioning that Copland’s problems were in large part “due to an inability to manage this complexity”—he concludes by saying that,... [More]

Debate

Published on in Quotes

“If you think that disagreeing and offering excellent reasons for your thinking will change anyone’s mind, you must be new on this planet.”
Scott Adams

The Neocon Paradox

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

For a hard-hitting look at the neoconservative vision—in light of the disasters it has thus far engendered—there’s Neo-Con Futurology by Stephen Holmes (London Review of Books). Ostensibly a review of Francis Fukuyama’s latest book[1], it comprises a bold condemnation of that vision and of the blinkered philistines that wrought it for us. In particular, he focuses on the democratic agenda to which they have clung for the last several years. They have, with the help of a media willing to put in the time selling the idea, managed to make... [More]

Sorting Collections in Java

Published on in Programming

This article was originally published on the Encodo Blogs. Browse on over to see more!


One of the features we expect from a collections library is sorting. You should be able to use generic library mechanisms to sort a list of any kind of element. Most libraries include a generic sort function, to which a comparison functor (object or function pointer) is passed. This functor is called repeatedly on pairs of elements until the list is sorted.

Let’s define the simple class we’ll use in the... [More]

Swearing In

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 Keith Ellison, Terrorist?The United States has its first Muslim Congressman in Keith Ellison (D-MN). It’s good timing and he seems a good sport as the racist shitheads come crawling out of the woodwork—shitheads like Glenn Beck, who interviewed him on TV recently. CNN’s Beck to first-ever Muslim congressman (Media Matters) has the lowdown on this new low in American television. He was unutterably rude to the Congressman, hiding behind a “I’m just askin’ what everybody’s thinkin’” facade.

You can hardly blame Beck for his... [More]

Weird Al is Back

Published on in Miscellaneous

 Straight Outta LynwoodIt seems that the world, through the Internet, has finally developed a place where Weird Al Yankovic’s special genius can shine. A truly talented performer is becoming more mainstream than he ever was. And his new stuff is just as good as he’s ever been, from the free song download done in the style of “Save the World” charity songs from the 80s, Don’t Download this Song (video drawn by Bill Plimpton and also available for free online at his MySpace page) to the brutal parody of James Blunt... [More]

Like a Brick Wall

Published on in Technology

The Sales pitch is low and away (Macalope) tells us that Steve Ballmer is all agog over Vista. Hardly surprising considering the source, who’s widely known as “monkey boy” throughout developer circles for his excitable antics. Drinking your own kool-aid is almost never pretty, but Steve takes a big ‘ol swig for us:

“Asked about the timeline for Vista service packs, Ballmer quipped that as it is the highest-quality, most secure and reliable Windows operating system ever, there should be no need for a... [More]”