Yeri "tuinslak" Tiete has been contacted by Belgian ICT minister Vincent Van Quickenborne -- on Twitter. The minister has invited Tielte to come discuss the NMBS/iRail issue with him, and states that "NMBS should be happy with your initiative ( Read more... )

I don't know what the hell bizarro universe I woke up in today, but I kinda like it. Democrats proposing tax cuts? In my Congress? It's more likely than you think...

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Don't miss the money shot at 5:11 -- "particularly when we're using a Chinese credit card to pay for it all." Boo yah.

This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway -- call ( Read more... )

Here is the preface to Plumbing for the Arduino, the new Creative Commons-licensed book about parallel programming for the Arduino by Matthew C. Jadud, Christian L. Jacobsen, and Adam T. Sampson:
Embedded programming has always been about dealing with the real world in a timely manner ( Read more... )

An enterprising open-source hacker who goes by the moniker Famulus, using polywell plasma confinement, has achieved desktop-scale nuclear fusion.

There are some really lovely photos of plasmas and lab equipment on the blog, and all the STL files for the polywell itself, plus Ruby source code for running the thing, are available on github. Go to.

( Read more... )

Whoever came up with apport -- the Ubuntu crash-reporting system -- is an unsung genius. Crash reporting isn't anything new, of course, but crash reporting that opens up a ticket in Launchpad and lets you, the user, customise the report and follow the problem-remediation on the web is elegant brilliance. Quality assurance that provides some level ( Read more... )

So, I'm not sure if y'all are talking behind my back, if my Google-juice is better than I thought it was, or if Python developers are just telepathic, but I'd like to note that I'm now two for two when it comes to whining about some library not doing exactly what I want it to and having one of that library's developers pop up within 24 hours to ( Read more... )

The summer 2009 issue of h+ Magazine is out, and there's an interview with yours truly. The reporter, Tyson Anderson, and I had an interesting conversation about the history of biohacking, how I got started with it, the diverse nature of DIYbio, the importance of the amateurs in the history of science, and some of the ethical issues surrounding ( Read more... )

Skype on OS X has the good sense to pause iTunes when starting a call. Thanks for the sensible IPC, Apple!

(Context: couldn't find my cellphone.)

So I've been working with Django lately, and I continue to be pleased with the preeminent saneness with which it handles the interaction between HTML and Python. Here is the latest example.

Suppose you have an HTML form that your Django backend will be processing. Give each input or select element in your form a name attribute, and whatever ( Read more... )