Links from July 2009
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- Entries (2)
- Links (16)
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Let's make the web faster
Google has a great selection of tips on how to make your website faster. I posted a little while back about several frontend optimizations I’ve made to make my site faster.
Mars is Hard
IEEE Spectrum goes through just how difficult it would be to get humans to Mars:
The shortest one-way trip, using conventional chemical propulsion, would take six months. If you include the time spent on Mars waiting for the two planets to move back into optimal alignment and also the trip home, the total mission would last at least two and a half years. The crew would have to endure extremes of boredom, isolation, and radiation, and they would require a vast amount of fuel and rations packed into a vessel sturdy enough to shield them from the harshness of space. Simply landing a spacecraft safely on a planet with an atmosphere and substantial gravity poses stunning challenges. And then there’s the matter of keeping the crew alive on the Martian surface.
Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and as JFK said, we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
LRO sees Apollo landing sites
NASA has posted photos of the Apollo landing sites as seen by the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO). This is the first time the sites have been photographed, as no Earth based telescope, or even any satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have the resolution to resolve anything on the moon that’s smaller than about a mile wide.
The giant Apollo 11 post
Jason Kottke posted an enormous collection of links, videos, an articles related to Apollo 11. I haven’t had any chance to look through these yet, but I definitely plan on taking a couple hours and reading just about everything.
Using Twitter favorites to retain value and reduce distraction
Colin Devroe writes about how he uses Twitter favorites to save links for later. It’s nothing new to use favorites to track links, but Colin takes it one step further: he subscribes to his favorites RSS feed, so when he goes through Google Reader, he sees all the links he saved to read later. Brilliant.
Apollo 11 Videos
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA released several restored videos of the mission. I went ahead and put the videos on Viddler, so they’re easy to embed. My favorite is the intro video:
An Explanation of Photoshop Blend Modes
A really in-depth look at each of the blend modes in Photoshop. Definitely saving this one for later.
Remembering Apollo 11
40 years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off from Earth on its way to the moon. The Big Picture has some great photos from the misson. Looking at the photos makes me really wish I were alive at the time, but hopefully we’ll be back sometime soon.
Visual Event
This is an amazing bookmarklet, that highlights all of the events associated with different elements on the page. I’m definitely going to be using this all the time, now that I found it.
Google's Microsoft Moment
Anil Dash takes a look at recent Google developments and decides they’ve reached their “Microsoft Moment”:
Is Google evil? It doesn’t matter. They’ve reached the point of corporate ambition and changing corporate culture that means they’re going to be perceived as if they are. Whether they’re able to truly internalize that lesson, accept it, and act accordingly will determine if they’re able to extend their dominance in the years to come.
Simple APIs using SerializeWithOptions
Viget Labs rolls out a Rails plugin to cleanup your API’s code.
Instead of doing this in the controller:
@speaker.to_xml(
:methods => [:average_rating, :avatar_url],
:except => [:email, :claim_code],
:include => {
:talks => {
:methods => :average_rating,
:except => :creator_id
}
}
)
You move it to the class like this:
class Speaker < ActiveRecord::Base
serialize_with_options do
methods :average_rating, :avatar_url
except :email,
:claim_code
includes :talks
end
end
Great way to DRY up your code.
Get Your API Right
A great post by Trek Glowacki with 8 tips on creating an API. My favorites are #2 - Use Your Verbs and #4 - Use Your Status Codes. It’s amazing how much simpler an API can be if you integrate basic REST principles, and if you’re using Rails, it’s super easy to do.