Autarchy of the Private Cave

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    Interesting and relevant links I found.

    Recommended: On Basilisk Station (by David Weber)

    8th August 2010

    I definitely enjoyed this high-quality book. It provides enough details to vividly imagine all the people and events, but that is not the main reason I like it. The main reason is duty (or, to be more precise, military duty, albeit highly civil-oriented). Due to high level of details, some may find this book boring – but not those who can remember all the details of what they’ve ever seen.

    I would even call this a heroic novel, as heroism (together with duty, persistence and high morals) best describes the actions of Captain Honor Harrington.

    I found both a PDF version here (provided by World Public Library Association), and an audio-book here, although I’m not sure those copies are legitimate (i.e. not pirate copies violating international copyright treaties). Use at your own discretion, or just buy a paperback.

    This book happens to be the first in Honor Harrington series. I haven’t yet seen other books or reviews thereof, but this one is definitely worth reading on its own.

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    Posted in Books, Links | No Comments »

    Analysis of the HDD failures in a large population of hard disks

    19th June 2010

    Will be useful to anyone dealing with more than 1 piece of computer hardware: Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you?

    To get the essence quickly – just scan the tables and figures, and read conclusions.

    You might want to read what google engineers tell about HDD failures.

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    Posted in Hardware, Links | No Comments »

    Everything old is new again: nice summary of realworld-digital integration approaches

    9th May 2010

    Just found a really nice, “almost interactive” TED talk about digital/real-world interfaces. The ideas aren’t new – they have been around for quite a while, as exemplified both by Sci-Fi movies and several digital implant enthusiasts – but this time it comes with a seemingly-tested implementation, which is – WOW! – both cheap and working. Moreover, here ideas are taken to a level of example applications with functional prototypes – which gives hope to have at least some of those market-ready within 5-10 years :)
    Read the rest of this entry »

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    Posted in Links, Software, Technologies | No Comments »

    The list of Linux music players with CUE sheet support

    30th April 2010

    Last updated: 2011-12-13

    • Clementine music player
    • DeaDBeeF (as in 0xDEADBEEF) is an audio player for GNU/Linux systems with X11 (though now it also runs in plain console without X, in FreeBSD, and in OpenSolaris) with CUE sheets support
    • AudioPlayer51 is a free, open-source, cross-platform audio player written to handle FLAC files and CUE sheets (exclusively). If you don’t use FLAC files and CUE sheets, you won’t find AudioPlayer51 very useful.
    • Amarok: only for WAV+CUE, doesn’t currently support FLAC+CUE; version 2.3.1 is promised to fully support CUE sheets
    • Audacious (through the .cue plugin)
    • QMMP (haven’t tested this one)
    • XMMS through mp3cue (also untested)
    • foobnix (untested, suggested in this comment)
    • cueplay

    Some extra links:

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    Posted in *nix, Links, Software | 8 Comments »

    Up or Out: the Value Apex

    1st April 2010

    Up or Out: Solving the IT turnover crisis is an in-depth analysis of the “best employees quit, mediocre employees stay” paradox, with a focus on the culture of quitting.

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    R tutorial links

    29th March 2010

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    Posted in Bioinformatics, Links, Science, Systems Biology | 1 Comment »

    Good online Python book with code examples

    1st March 2010

    Building Skills in Python: A Programmer’s Introduction to Python by Steven F. Lott (© 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008 Steven F. Lott).

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    Posted in Links, Programming, Python | No Comments »