Planet PDX

I’ve been reading some old papers about locking and MVCC in preparation for writing about MVCC in PostgreSQL, and for giving a talk at CouchCamp next week!

I just finished “Locking“, by Jim Gray. He discusses semaphores, and makes the argument for implementing a locking scheduler to handle errors and deadlocks (which he calls interlocks, or a “deadly embrace” – a term I’m sad we’ve stopped using).

An example from the start of the paper illustrates the power of MVCC:

The classic example is an accounting file. Processes reading the file may share it
concurrently. However, a process requesting write access to the file blocks until all processes currently reading have released the file.

A lovely thing about Postgres’ MVCC is that readers (SELECT) don’t require this type of lock, and most writers don’t block readers. For SELECT, the only statements that will block it are those that make changes to tables which move all rows physically around (VACUUM FULL, CLUSTER, REINDEX, TRUNCATE), or make changes to table structure (ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE).

Have a look at the explicit locking docs for more detail on the lock modes automatically used by PostgreSQL.

Related posts:

1. Explaining MVCC in Postgres: system defined columns
2. Online aggregation paper from 1997 and PSU’s database reading group
3. ptop – meeting summary from last nights pdxpug

From Highlanders to hipsters, tartan--or, in a lot of cases outside of Scotland, plaid and check--has been one of fashion's favorite textiles for centuries.

"It's a cloth of duality," said Dr. Jonathan Faiers, author of Tartan: Textiles that Changed the World. "Its history is in the establishment--in clansmanship, the aristocracy and military forces, but because it's become the uniform of rugged masculinity it's also revisited in an ironic way--by subcultures such as grunge, punk and gay clones."

In that sociological sense, tartan is modern and traditional--a staple of Scottish clans and international fashion runways alike. From a color and pattern standpoint--important factors distinguishing one tartan from the next--it's a bold, eye-catching textile with the ability to declare one's family history as immediately as it can one's personal sense of style. It's certainly a favorite with pattern makers here at COLOURlovers.

Today, we're taking a look at how all of tartan's aspects come together.

[thardy1]

When most people think of tartan, they probably think of Scotland. And while the association isn't a false one, it isn't tartan's whole story. While the origin of the patterned cloth itself seems to spark a hot debate between textile historians, most seem to agree fabric woven with tartan-like designs first emerged in ancient Celtic populations between 400 BC and 100 BC--a lot earlier than the documentation of Britain's first tartan, the Falkirk Tartan, found in Stirlingshire, Scotland, and dating to the third century AD. Tartans of various colors and patterns associated with different Scottish regions didn't emerge until the 17th century, and it's thought most modern clan tartans--those associated with specific families--weren't designated until the 19th century.

[sarouchk]

Tartan itself is formed of colored thread woven so that the warp--the lengthwise threads--and the weft--a filler yarn--are at right angles. The weft is woven over and under the warp, creating the illusion of more colors than originally used. The blocks of color and lines formed and repeated throughout the fabric are called "setts." Tartan can be made with any material, though traditional Scottish tartan kilts are typically made of wool.

When it comes to color, Peter Eslea MacDonald reports, via the Scottish Tartans Authority, most 18th-century tartans were all a combination of black, blue, red and green. Today's tartans come in a range of colors--and many are classified by misnomers, MacDonald said. "Old" or "ancient" tartans feature mid- to light shades meant to represent colors produced with natural dyes--but these tartans weren't produced until the last half-century. "Modern" or "ordinary" tartans, produced since the early 19th century, have strong, dark shades. And "muted" tartans, produced since the 1970s, have colors that fall somewhere between old and modern hues. When speaking of a family tartan, the pattern is really what makes it--an old, modern and muted tartan, though they may look different, are all considered the same.

[dantraveling]

The pattern of all tartans are considered plaid, but plaid and check patterns are not all synonymous with tartan.

"A tartan plaid, first of all, is Scottish, as opposed to American or English. It's Scottish," said Doria De La Chappelle, co-author of Tartan: Romancing the Plaid, in a CBS report. The story explains: "... The instantly recognizable Burberry pattern on the company's coats and scarves may look like a tartan plaid, but is in fact officially just 'a check' because Burberry is actually English. In addition, a tartan pattern has to be made up of perfect squares. Technically, a tartan plaid can be turned 180 degrees and is exactly the same. ... A Plaid, on the other hand, can have stripes that clearly run in a specific direction."

[Women's clothing: Vivienne Westwood Anglomania at Net-a-Porter; men's clothing: Diesel at SSense]

A lot of us probably don't get that specific when we don our plaids, checks and tartans--we wear them because we like them, whether we're punk rockers (who adopted plaid as a symbolic rejection of the upper class in the 1970s), grunge fans (who made the plaid flannel shirt ubiquitous in the late1980s and first half of the 1990s--and who're seeing a comeback of their relaxed style on recent runways) or ladies who lunch.

"You could argue that in a recession climate, tartan signals a back-to-basics feel. You can put a sociological spin on it, and there aren't many fabrics you can do that with," Faiers said. And, he said, "People love tartan because it's beautiful."

Header photo by Dano.

Starbucks has long had an iPhone application, but now the coffee company is branching out and embracing another mobile platform as well.

The Starbucks Card Mobile App for BlackBerry will allow BlackBerry users to do basic functions with their mobile phones.  It is interesting to me that it has Starbucks this long to embrace BlackBerry, as RIM devices are the number 2 selling devices in North America (and strong in Europe as well).  Many professional business types utilize Starbucks, so it seems the audience was there a long time ago.

In terms of features, the new Blackberry app for Starbucks will allow users to:

• Check their Starbucks Card balance
• Reload their card with a credit card.  Alternatively, you can set up automatic reloads when your balance gets to a certain threshold.
• Find nearby Starbucks stores
• Check your rewards status.
• Provide mobile payment in Starbucks stores in 1,000 Target locations and a few trial stores in Seattle and Northern California.

To get the new mobile app for BlackBerry, follow this link.  The client is currently available for these more popular BlackBerry models: BlackBerry Bold, Curve, Storm, and Tour.

Post from: Techcraver.com | Craving Tech, Craving Life!

Starbucks Adds BlackBerry App

In looking to write about the forthcoming Twitter push notifications tonight, I grabbed a list of the top 35 UX (user experience) blogs, according to Google’s new blog finder feature. (Didn’t know about that? ReadWriteWeb was the only leading blog that covered it.) The algorithm isn’t that great, in terms of ranking, but it took me from nothing to a whole lot of something in a hurry. It was more an experiment than anything else, to see how well Google’s new blog directory search worked. You know what else might prove useful? Googling for “top UX blogs” and finding human-compiled lists like this one from Whitney Hess.

I usually have much more extensive and rigorous processes for identifying the top blogs in a niche, but I needed something quick and dirty tonight. The real bummer? None of these blogs have ever written about the UX of push notifications! Amazing! I’m pinging some UX pros on Twitter though to see if they’ll comment for a write-up.

In the mean time, someone asked me on Twitter “what are the top 35 UX blogs online?” so I thought I’d share my work. Again, this is quick and dirty. But it’s better than nothing. My list so far is below and you can search the archives of all these blogs from this one URL. I even added 9 more from Hess and still nothing! Can you believe Bokardo, for example, has never blogged the phrase “push notifications”??

Identifying the top blogs in a niche is something I sometimes do for consulting clients and you’d better believe my deliverables are a lot prettier than this but it’s 1:30 AM and I’m trying to write a blog post. I made this list and the custom search engine to search years of UX blogging experience in about 10 minutes, in case you’re curious. Boom!

http://uie.com
http://uxbookclub.com
http://ux.artu.tv
http://dswillis.com/uxcrank
http://blogs.msdn.com/canu
http://uxdige.st
http://uxagile.com
http://www.uxunleashed.com
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net
http://instone.org
http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.com
http://www.everydayux.com
http://developingux.com
http://www.agile-ux.com
http://ux.raquedan.com
http://chrisshattuck.com
http://uxdesignedge.com
http://www.solidstateux.com
http://www.balsamiq.com/blogs
http://uxgroup.wordpress.com
http://blogs.sweux.com
http://uxuniversity.org
http://www.uxforgood.org
http://uxnerd.com
http://www.flyover18.com/christhi
http://uxpillow.blogspot.com
http://www.theuxcritic.com
http://www.uxbydesign.org
http://designingux.com
http://uxp.blogspot.com
http://www.uxmag.com
http://www.uxsuccess.com
http://www.sleepingdeer.com
http://www.epicuserexperience.com
http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog

Then I added these ones from Whitney Hess, too, to the Custom Search Engine. They look great.

“-source:Twitterfeed” Those were the magic characters. My longtime RSS mentor Marjolein Hoekstra told me about it tonight. From now on, the Twitter search results page I keep bookmarked and camp on day will be results for the search “benbarden OR qthrul OR marshallk OR rwwmike OR RWW OR sarahintampa OR chcameron OR fredericl OR curthopkins OR alexwilliams OR audreywatters OR adrjeffries OR klintron -source:TwitterFeed” (Those are my co-workers.) Ohhh, yeah!

I like Twitterfeed, but there are SO many spammers who use it that search results get pretty messy. I can deal with weak signal to noise ratios (I do it for a living, in fact) but if there’s an easy way to improve it, I’m pretty excited.

I can’t believe I’ve had this laptop for two years & haven’t had to replace the keyboard yet :knock wood: despite my attempts to feed it some wine one evening.

I’ve dropped it once, from about 2 feet, onto pavement. The hinge cracked, but it still works.

The buttons on the touchpad are losing their oomph.

The fan is pretty noisy, and that has started to get to me over time.

Other than that, it’s still going strong.

Last month I wrote the forward to a new book called The Shift: The Evolving Market, Players and Business Models in a 2.0 World and it’s now available – for free! It’s essentially a marketing vehicle for the very large telecommunication infrastructure provider Alcatel-Lucent, but it’s marketing 2.0 of the best kind: the book makes almost zero mention of the company at all. It just talks about how changes in society and mobile internet devices are combining in such a way that network service providers should offer application programming interfaces to a wider developer community. It’s a really good real, actually.

My forward isn’t my best writing, but I was proud to have been given the opportunity. I wrote a better article, one I’m quite proud of in fact, this week about an acquisition the company made: Acquisition Aims to Change History for Mobile Apps & Data.

I recommend reading the book if you’re into thinking about these kinds of topics. You can read selections online and if you want, the company will send you a free paper copy in exchange for your contact info. They may or may not call you, I’m guessing, to discuss whether you’d like to buy a big telephony infrastructure middleware software package. Or they may want to talk to you if you’re a developer. Either way, it’s no big whoop and it’s certainly worth it to do all the learning you’ll get from the book. It’s fun.

You can check out the book and its corresponding online community here.

August this year was sweltering. Both in terms of weather and local startup news. But some of the most interesting stories revolved around some of our more regular topics around here: open source and, well, beer.

But those aren’t the only topics that struck your fancy last month. So why not take a couple of minutes to thumb through the most popular stories on Silicon Florist according to the Web and RSS stats for August 2010.

1. Free beer (and job offers) from Wieden + Kennedy at Beer and Blog this week. No word on the Old Spice sample packs.
2. On open source and government: An accidental manifesto
3. Google Wave may have hit low tide, but Portland’s contribution to the project is still a high watermark
4. Another Portlander plans to revolutionize banking: Bill DeRouchey joins BankSimple
5. You look like you could use a different job… or maybe a job, period.
6. Paperbacking Portland geogeeking: Adam DuVander releases Map Scripting 101
7. Reminder: New Relic Lunch 2.0 is Wednesday
8. Portland open source, startups, and mobile… oh my! The all time top 30 posts on Silicon Florist (so far)
9. Time for big kid pants: Silicon Florist is three years old
10. Webtrends Apps: Webtrends picks up WYSIWYG Facebook and iPhone app tool Transpond

(Image courtesy Jesse Bikman. Used under Creative Commons.)

Related posts

• Top 10 Silicon Florist posts for March 2010 (0)
• Top 10 Silicon Florist posts for July 2010 (0)
• Top 10 Silicon Florist posts for April 2010 (0)
• Top 10 Silicon Florist posts for January 2010 (1)
• Top 10 Silicon Florist posts for August 2009 (0)

As usual, my Apple nerd friends and I gathered around one of the big TVs in the “living room” area at work, so we could watch the Apple event and announcements live. Usually, it’s me flipping through all the liveblogs, seeing what tidbits we can glean as they dribble out. This time, since there was a live video stream for the first time since 2002, we were sitting pretty – we were watching and listening to Steve Jobs live on the TV. It was great.

Until, five minutes into the thing, the building sirens go off, and security comes over the PA and announces that the building is being evacuated. It was just a scheduled drill, but it was SO HARD to drag myself away from the new and exciting announcements we were just starting to hear!

As we filed out of the building, I brought up the stream on my iPhone (which worked beautifully – as a video streaming guy, I appreciate how difficult it is to get this right on such a large scale). We marched to the evacuation area in the parking lot, and by luck, my car was parked nearby. So I had an idea.

We all piled into my car (which also got us out of the rain), stuck my iPhone and the Apple stream into my car dock, and we continued to watch and listen to the event in my car during the fire drill evacuation. It was a nerd drive-in movie! Never underestimate the ingenuity of an unabashed fanboy.

I was first introduced to the term wayfinding from an architectural firm that hired me to help them get on the web years ago. In architectural terms wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.

While it can be a holistic and even philosophical design approach it mostly boils down to effective signage. When it comes to vast spaces, such as arenas and airports, color systems are often the most effective means of conveying categories of direction.

In other words, all blue signs refer to the International terminal or club section while all green signs signal restrooms. Frequently these systems also include icons to help further delineate or deepen the association.

Help Me Navigate a Space

The real point of the exercise boils down to making it easy for people to navigate in areas that are usually foreign to them.

When you think about it, a website is much like a large public space frequented by visitors that may not be familiar with the lay of the land. A system of color wayfinding might be very effective way to help visitors navigate a web site more effectively.

Color Wayfinding

What if you developed a family of colors and icons that designated any content that was related to a specific product group or service. You could even create color pattern style sheets and assign them to specific blog post categories.

Colors could be used throughout a site to associate with a specific brand or to help segment the content created for specific target audiences.

The coordinated family of colors and icons is a commonly used branding technique offline that should be considered as a navigation and wayfinding tool online.

Of course there are many other issues to consider such as a universal navigation scheme, consistent placement, and site maps, but color as a wayfinding and branding tool just might be a great place to start.

No matter what system or approach your take, employing usability testing with tools like CrazyEgg, UserTesting.com or FeedbackArmy is also a great idea.

“I started working with Needmore two years ago when I started my clothing line, and I had for direction was an amorphous sense of how it should feel and the perception it should convey. Kandace and Ray took that fuzzy goal and came up with a brilliantly simple and elegant design that I’ve received many compliments on, including, “wow, you must be a large company with such a beautiful website”! I recently added new features to the site, and Needmore was able to keep the same streamlined feeling while adding more elements to the screen with ever so subtle tweaks. So not only did they create the original aesthetic, but they were able to accommodate the change in business needs without compromising the original design. Bravo!”

-

Holli Harris, founder HadleyStilwell

P.S. We cannot wait until we can show you the updates!

It’s getting be that time where summer is winding down, school is starting up, and work is—well—who am I kidding? Your work has been crazy the entire summer.

But what better reason to blow off a little steam? So why not take the chance to celebrate with a little First Thursday Portland foray? There are even a couple of tech types that are hosting gatherings for you to attend, Forkfly and Tenfour.

Forkfly

Need a good excuse to wander around the Pearl? Portland restaurant discount aficionados Forkfly may have just what you need.

Come celebrate the official kickoff of Forkfly’s new app, website, and our great relationship with the Pearl District Business Association!

Take part in our Forkfly Adventure Race, with prizes hidden around the Pearl District. The grand prize winner takes home a shiny new iPad!

So swing by Henry’s Tavern some time between 5:00 PM and 11:00 PM on Thursday and partake in a little celebrating.

(Disclaimer: Forkfly is a sponsor of Silicon Florist. Like, right over there. In the sidebar.)

Tenfour

Sometimes, tech startups aren’t the traditional sort of tech startups. Like Small Society. And like up-and-coming agency with a technical bent Tenfour, which is doing a little housewarming for its new Pearl District space by holding a First Thursday gathering with some awesome local artists.

We’re celebrating.

The gang at tenfour has had a great year so far. From a successful rebrand of our agency, our award winning work for Air New Zealand (plus recent nominations for the IAB MIXX Awards for brand awareness and the Sammy Awards) to our swank new space in Portland’s Pearl District, we’ve got a lot to be happy about. We’ve decided the best way to share our good fortune with the public was to open our doors for a First Thursday celebration on September 2nd at 6 pm.

The evening will include an interactive art show, a live DJ, refreshments and delicious eats from Koi Fusion.

But don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at the artists who will be presenting works.

So swing by Tenfour between 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM to get a little culture.

And what’s with the whole “90210″ in the headline?

Well. It’s not just First Thursday you know. It’s also 9/02/10. (Wait for it.)

So when you start to think that maybe you’re going to skip these little get togethers, just think “What Would Brenda Do?” Don’t think “What Would David Do?” because honestly that dude was always a little iffy. And Brandon and Dylan? Never you mind. Unless you can grow some sweet sideburns in time.

(Image courtesy of Alex Pears. Used under Creative Commons.)

Related posts

• 5 best bets for Portland happy hours, cheap cocktails, and discount drafts (3)
• Portland’s PingGadget purports to take a page from Twitter and a page from Foursquare (6)
• REMINDER: Mobile Portland invites panel of educators to discuss mobile and education tonight (1)
• On open source and government: An accidental manifesto (7)
• Portland Panel Picker: Vote for these SXSW Interactive panel proposals from Portland (7)

I went through the Arduino Cult Induction on Sunday and had a good time (once I got to the correct address). I was so happy, I went to Surplus Gizmos and bought another Dorkboard to play with. However, the microcontroller (Mega8) I bought didn't have the bootloader installed. So I tried to use my working Dorkboard to burn the bootloader onto the new Dorkboard. It didn't work. I got a verification error on the first byte.

I was adapting the instructions here: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

Anybody have some helpful tips or suggestions?

Nsyght is a clever service with a terrible name (it’s hard to remember) and stock photo on its home page, but don’t be fooled – it’s really useful. I wrote about it on ReadWriteWeb last week under the title How to Search Inside Twitter Lists, and that’s just what it’s for. After a few minutes to index your stream, Nsyght will let you search inside tweets from your friends, inside particular lists or your own archive for months back in history. It’s awesome. I’ve been using it to filter for images shared by friends on Twitter (great for quick little posts) and to find old Tweets of mine that I can’t find nearly as quickly in any other way. And searching inside a Twitter list of topical experts for their opinions on a particular matter? So hot. It’s like a Custom Search Engine for twitter lists, which is incredibly powerful.

I think of things like this as curating my existing community resources, an all-too under utilized strategy I believe. That’s the kind of thing I’m likely to bring up as a guest tomorrow on Tummelvision.tv, which I cannot recommend highly enough that you check out.

Much loved the world over, Ed Emberley has been inspiring illustrators, young and old, since the 1970s. Either with crayon and a coloring book, or a more formal artistic approach, his incredible influence is clear.

The schematic for doodling Ed's characters is so utterly basic you don't even need to be able to read to understand how, yet the it produces a character with so much style and heart you can't help but be captivated. As a kid, I remember sitting at the kitchen table with one of Emberly's drawing books checked out from the library and I drew every single one of the illustrations in the book. Paper everywhere in disarray filled with marker doodles, I practiced and practiced.

Ed's still quite active today, and if you're lucky enough to be near Culver City, CA you can see an exhibition dedicated to his work at the Scion Installation until Aug 7th. The show features Ed's original mock-ups as well as work from six artists who were influenced by his books as children too.

Here's a few more of my illustrators whose work echos that of the great Mr. Ed (person, not horse, that is.)

The wooooonderful Christopher David Ryan.

The work of Japanese illustrator Toru Fukuda feels familiar too, even channeling the Mr. Men series.

And finally Jim Datz'simmense body of work definitely rocks this vibe with equal parts stunning color and typography.

Images sourced from Google, Contrarymary and Grickily's photostreams, and My Love for You is a Stampede of Horses.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Women In Engineering organization hosted a webinar last week featuring the Women in Engineering ProActive Network. The two organizations are similar in scope - both want to increase the number of women in technical fields - but IEEE WIE is clearly focused on engineers while WEPAN and its Knowledge Center have a broader reach touching many STEM-related disciplines in addition to engineering.

WEPAN started in 1990 and is a national (U.S.) not-for-profit organization with over  600 members across various industries and academia. Its stated goal is to “help members develop a more prepared and diverse engineering workforce,” which more clearly worded means that they’re working to facilitate the development of programs and activities that promote the entry and retention of women in engineering programs.

During the webinar, Diane Matt (WEPAN’s Executive Director) and Jenna Carpenter (IEEE Senior Member, Associate Dean at Louisiana Tech University and WEPAN’s Director of Professional Development) walked attendees through a tour of the WEPAN site and its associated Knowledge Center. Nearly forty percent of the webinar’s participants were academics.

The WEPAN Knowledge Center is an online resource for “research, best practices and professional communities dedicated to advancing all women in engineering.” It began with five hundred resources in June of 2009, and has since doubled its listings. Want statistics on the number of American college graduates with STEM-degrees who happen to be women? Curious about gender gaps and bias in various fields? Looking for organizations or institutions with diversity, outreach and research programs? All of that - and much, much more - can be found in the WEPAN Knowledge Center, and the information is completely open to the public; membership is not required for viewing, a deliberate action to make this information accessible to anyone. (Email registration is required if you want to add resource or access online community content.)

WEPAN also has a large professional community for members, which features a global calendar of events, as well as a the usual selection of social networking options – discussion groups, people and skills search, blogs, in-group email, etc. as well as the ability to track specific groups of professional interest. If you’re interested in mentoring or professional development, this community seems a great place to build your resources. Be sure to visit their main website as well as the Knowledge Center, and check out the FAQ.

Note that membership in the professional community and membership in WEPAN are different animals: only email registration is required to participate in the professional community, but individual membership in the organization is $100 (reduced rates available for student, etc.). WEPAN membership appears to be specifically aimed at academics of various levels, though it’s open to “anyone interested in promoting and achieving improved representation of women in engineering.” WEPAN also has an online store that boasts its own conference proceedings and presentation guides.

The WEPAN Annual Conference, aimed at addressing “recurring and emerging issues”, will be heald in June 2011 in Seattle, Washington. (This year’s conference included tracks on Diversity, Policy, How to Get Funding, Cultivating Tomorrow’s Talent and Effective Messaging.)

Look for announcements of future IEEE and IEEE WIE webinars on their website, or here on dotFiveOne.

I’m playing around with some diagrams for explaining MVCC that I’ll be posting here over the next few days. Not sure if I’ll end up giving up on slides and just use a whiteboard for the talk. I made an illustrated shared buffers deck to go along with Greg Smith’s excellent talk on shared buffers a while back. This is the beginning of a talk that I hope will emulate that.

Here are my first few slides, showing the system-defined columns. The next few slides will describe optimizations PostgreSQL has for managing the side effects of our pessimistic rollback strategy, and reducing IO during vacuuming and index updates.

Related posts:

1. Postgres mailing list traffic over time
2. FSM, visibility map and new VACUUM awesomeness
3. PgCon 2010 – PL/Parrot, Simulated Annealing, Exclusion Constraints, Postgres-XC

Defense by Darwin:

The latest Needmore Newseltter, including our newest team member and a stealthy updated defense plan.

Traditional publishing methods might be going the way of the dodo (I really wish I could say junk mail or phone books by now) but since this gives way to a drastic increase in the number of creative projects finding there way into the screens, ears and hands of more and more people I wouldn't say that this is a bad thing at all. Sure, we might have to sort through a few bad apples to get to the juicy materials we crave, but i'll choose to sort through my own apples over a bunch of people who don't necessarily share my tastes any day.

With that digested, here are 5 colorful indie magazines (mags) that, with long list of others, have chosen the creative publishing route with MagCloud, one of the many developing platforms for just that. And below that you will find a few sites to help you publish your next project whether it's a magazine, photo book, craft, or music.

wlwl

We Like We Love is a magazine about sharing the things you like & love.

Longshot

Over a 48 hour period from noon August 27, 2010, through noon August 29, 2010, hundreds of writers, editors, artists, photographers, programmers, videographers, and other creatives from all around the world came together via the Internet, and in offices in Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco to make a magazine from start to finish.

RAW

An amateur photography and art magazine featuring contributors from flickr.com.

RAW Magazine is a photography magazine for those who love taking and looking at photographs. We feature one up-and-coming photographer in each issue, and one more prominent photographer. We hope to inspire people who are looking for something more and to help introduce people who aren't familiar with photography to how rewarding it can be.

Rust + Moth

A Journal of Poetry and The Arts

Rust+Moth is a literary journal featuring poetry, photography, and the arts. Since our inception in 2008, we have been dedicated to showcasing exciting and fresh new artists and writers. Our goal is to bring innovative and meaningful work to the public’s eye.

While our regular quarterly issues primarily feature poetry accompanied by striking design, we also release a series of special issues which broaden our content to include photography, short fiction, and the visual arts. In addition, our Spotlight series presents individual artists and writers of special merit, each in his or her own special issue.

Edie

Edie is the love child of two very good friends who enjoy the same sorts of things you do: good music, pretty clothes, fantastic photographs, thought-provoking books, and other fantastically random odds and ends.

Creative Publishing & Distribution

Here are a few of those creative publishing outlets worth exploring for your next project. Do you currently publish through one of them and do you know of any others?

Etsy for Crafts

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

Bandcamp for Music

Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. Rather, we power a site that’s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.

Choice. We offer your tracks in mp3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg...all the formats your überfans demand. Choose between giving away your music, setting a price, letting folks name their price – it’s up to you.

Blurb for Photo Books

Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them... So we put our minds together, and developed a creative publishing service simple and smart enough to make anyone an author – every blogger, cook, photographer, parent, traveler, poet, pet owner, marketer, everyone. (This means you.)

MagCloud for Magazines

Magazine Publishing Reinvented

MagCloud, the revolutionary new self-publishing web service from HP, is changing the way ideas, stories, and images find their way into peoples’ hands in a printed magazine format. Whether you are a novice or experienced publisher, MagCloud offers you a way to create commercial quality magazines, printed on demand with no upfront costs or minimum print runs. MagCloud is creating new ways to bring consumers and publishers together in a web-based marketplace where choice, flexibility and print on demand are the cornerstones of the community.

SILICON FOREST BLOG: The site was online yesterday, but offline today.

I am so thrilled to be joining the Needmore team. Not only does Needmore share the same aesthetics as I do, but I am happy to be at a place that values great design and such a staunch commitment to helping their clients. Because for me, design is about communication, but it is also about helping people convey that information—their vision—in the best way possible.

While I came to design a little bit later in life than some, my desire to communicate with image and words has been with me forever. I used to make silly websites back when the internet was young and GeoCities was still around and cool.  I made a zine in high school, literally cutting and pasting the design. So, I have always have had a hand in design in both web and print worlds, and I’d like to keep it that way. I studied design here in Portland at PNCA, where I learned that design isn’t about gimmicks or decoration, but should be purposeful and with meaning. Design is a process and good design isn’t built overnight.

As a huge typography nerd, I could—and have!—stare at fonts for hours.  Whether it’s picking paper stock, or picking hex color values, I love to obsess over the details in design.

I am looking forward to bringing all these things to Needmore and, of course, more. Not only am I excited to be working with two people who obviously love what they do, but two great people to be around, too.

Wade here, which means it’s time to get all Cocoa-programmer-y.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I released Developer Color Picker 1.5 a few weeks back. I thought I’d take a moment to make an official blog post to mark its release.

The big new feature in this version is the ability to modify colors within the color picker itself, instead of having to switch to a different mode first. I also added hsl(a) mode for CSS-style declarations.

Hopefully these improvements will make the Developer Color Picker even more useful in your development process.

Update 1.5.1: Changed the HSB mode to HSL, which CSS actually uses. Can you tell I’m not a web developer?

SILICON FOREST BLOG: A 100 mbps residential service is in soft trials now and will be available by the end of the year.

Lots of business people know that keeping a well-written, interesting blog can attract more potential customers to their website.

Choosing a name for one’s blog is an important part of creating its business benefit. Nyco Herzog, an experienced blogger and member of the AboutUs content team, covers the technical, SEO and branding implications of naming your blog in her newest article for business owners.

AboutUs.org is building a library of articles offering tips for growing your business on the web. Take a spin through the articles, and let us know if there’s a topic you’d like us to cover. Or perhaps you have some expertise you’d like to share with other business owners. If so, contact me at Aliza@AboutUs.org.

One more (final?) approach evolves out of the emails I’m getting about my iTunes question. It goes roughly like this:

• Change mental model such that the Mac Pro contains the “master” iTunes library.

• Keep all the media files stored where they are already on the Mac Mini + Drobo, and add them by reference to the (now master) Mac Pro library.

• Happily sync iPhone and iPad to Mac Pro as desired.

• Periodically (perhaps via script) have the Mac Mini quit iTunes, copy the Mac Pro’s library file over, and restart iTunes.

In theory since all the path references are the same (relative to /Volumes/Drobo on both machines), this works, even if I add new music or download app updates.

The only theoretical downside is a delay between when I add new items and when they appear on the Mini’s library. This is work-around-able by building a way to invoke the Mini’s update script manually.

I haven’t actually tried this yet, but it seems like the sanest, simplest approach to the problem using existing capabilities. Your feedback is still welcome!

We always need to keep in mind that every choice and every decision that we make, no matter how sound, will please some people, but not everyone. “You can’t please everyone” is a saying that you hear all the time, but I remember being in high school when the impact of this statement really hit me. At that young age, I vowed to think about decisions in a different light with a component of any decision being to understand which people I cared about pleasing, and more importantly, which people could jump in a lake if they didn’t like my decision. This dynamic applies to everyday life and isn’t unique to community managers, but it does come up often when making decisions on behalf of the community.

A few tips:

• Think about the impact of your decisions on the most important contributors in your community. Don’t let trolls and chronic whiners who will never contribute in a meaningful way dictate solutions.
• When a few people want a change, make sure that the change would benefit the community as a whole. Don’t let a vocal minority push a decision that isn’t in the best interest of the whole community.
• Look past your preferences to embrace solutions that benefit the community, even if they aren’t your personal favorites. Do the right thing for the community, not the individual (even when that individual is you).

Additional Reading

• Involve your members in decision making
• Musings on Community Ownership
• Maintaining a Successful Corporate Community

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Zen Sutherland used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Sharing is good

Sometimes, there is a better wheel. Sometimes, a market has an 800 lbs gorilla that could use a little toppling. And yes, sometimes, I use inane marketing drivel when I can’t think of any better way to get into an article.

But see? Now we’ve made it through the intro. So I can tell you about PingGadget, a new Portland startup that’s looking to take the best of Twitter’s short format and combine it with Foursquare-esque location information to deliver a new microblogging platform.

PingGadget purports to match location information to short messages in a way that will change the way people think about sending small snippets of text.

The PingGadget service specifically focuses on location-centric benefits and use cases and includes a powerful location and category directory. PingGadget features a 493 city location directory with a custom topic directory, including location-centric topics like jobs, classifieds, recycled goods, events, nightlife, music, and volunteering opportunities.

Now, I say “purports” because honestly, I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve just had a chance to read up on it. And you know what? You may be able to see it first. If you’re available for lunch today.

PingGadget – a new microblogging site started by two 2005 University of Portland graduates (Steve Nguyen and Dennis Moulton) and based in Salem, Oregon – will be hosting a lunch and conducting a demonstration of their software. It will begin at noon, is open to all, and will be located at the Hall of Fame Room inside the Chiles Center on the University of Portland campus, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd.

So if this sounds like something you might want to see, head on over to UP at noon to get a glimpse. I’ll just sit here and wait for my beta invite.

No, no. Don’t worry about me. You kids run along and have your lunches. With your cool demos and whatnot. I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Granted, this isn’t the first foray into this type of functionality that the Silicon Forest has seen. Far from it. Most long-time Silicon Florist readers will remember that Shizzow, Simler, and CitySpeek all made similar attempts to provide folks with that type of functionality. Shizzow with its location based shouts, Simler with its topical focus, and CitySpeek with its additional features to extend the traditional 140 character format.

And—if they haven’t already—the PingGagdget folks would be wise to seek the counsel of the creators of those products because they are sure to have some interesting tales to tell. (Especially that Ryan Snyder guy, who just happened to get hired on full time at Mozilla, recently.)

One thing is for sure, the market has changed—somewhat drastically even—since some of those previous forays into microblogging. And Twitter has now become a household word. Foursquare isn’t far behind.

Is the time ripe for another platform? We’ll have to see. Whatever the case, we’ll be keeping an eye on this latest entrant into the stream of consciousness, short message world with great interest.

For more information or to get your beta invite, visit PingGadget. For more insight, see this interview from December 2009 with PingGadget CEO Dennis Moulton.

Related posts

• In Portland, every day is Foursquare day. But April 16? It’s a swarm for the official Portland Foursquare Day. (6)
• Looking to beat the heat with your friends this July 4th? Send out a Beer Signal (1)
• Shizzow shouts at Twitter (2)
• SXSW 2009: 60+ Twitter accounts for Portland and Silicon Forest Twitter types (22)
• Can you find the Portland connection in the Class of Twitter HQ? (0)

Check out Needmore’s newest design — Cultivated Gardens is a small specialty nursery based in Washington, DC run by a passionate garden enthusiast. We designed a minimal, spacious website that focuses on stunning images of pristinely presented topiary and garden pots.

Read more or visit Cultivated Gardens.

When working in agile, do you need requirements? The short answer: yes. Whenever you’re starting a new project, you need to be able to identify the business requirements. Like Scott Ambler says in Agile Modeling, people are going to ask you the “fundamental business questions.” How long is it going to take? What’s the vision? [...]

The past couple of weeks have been very stressful. Mudshark is not doing so well, and the process of figuring out what’s wrong has involved many inconclusive test results, one very conclusive finding (he has a large tumor in his … Continue reading →

Posting some of the photos I took at Gnomedex 10 in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. Gnomedex is my favorite conference, and I look forward to it every August as a “family reunion” of my geek people. This year was bittersweet – it was likely the last Gnomedex ever. I took lots of notes, and intend to write up a few more meaty posts on some of the thoughts I had. But for now, I’m posting these, mainly to push down my lame “Site was hacked” post, which has been sitting here for too long.

All photos were taken with my iPhone 4 – I decided not to lug a “big boy” DSLR with me, and I have to say, the photo quality of the iPhone 4, coupled with the amazing apps I can use to manipulate the photos “in camera” (like Pro HDR, Autostitch, etc.) blew me away. This is now my “pocket carry” camera, and unless I really need a DSLR, probably the only one I’ll carry from now on.

Made this combination panorama and HDR shot on my iPhone 4 with Pro HDR and Autostitch, two of my favorite photo apps. Taken from the front steps of the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle, home to Gnomedex for the last five years.

Chris Pirillo

The End of Gnomedex

Seattle Waterfront Panorama. Using Autostitch, of course.

Seattle Waterfront, Unretouched from iPhone 4. Love the colors on this one.

Would a USB-over-ethernet thingy let me dock iOS devices with a distant Mac?

Quite possibly. Downsides: A little pricey. Probably doesn’t provide enough power to charge a docked iPad.

(Another)

(Wireless alternative)

Art

"Perfectly Flawed" New Work by Stina Persson

Exhibition @ Hanahou | Porfolio

September 9 – October 1, 2010
Opening reception September 9, 7-9 pm
RSVP info@galleryhanahou.com

In her new solo show “Perfectly Flawed,” Stockholm artist Stina Persson abandons her digital safety net to create unaltered works that are beautifully imperfect – or imperfectly beautiful – as a response to the increasingly flawless images with which we surround ourselves.

Over the course of 10+ years working as a commercial illustrator, Stina has found herself conforming to trends of narrowing hips and ever-smoother skin by digitally altering her original watercolors, often without prompting from a client: edges have gradually become cleaner, features more defined, and the painterly more photographic.

Fully conscious of going down this “slippery slope of adjusting, fixing, and retouching,”  Stina is ready to see the handmade, crooked, and flawed gain appeal, an aesthetic inspired by the 1970s, when social and environmental issues didn’t take a back seat to Botox in the public consciousness. For her newest work, the artist asked herself what would happen if she didn’t scan, didn’t retouch, and didn’t work digitally at all. The result of that question is a series of more than 30 new works on paper, watercolor pieces of women with running paint, unconventional color choices, and skewed perspective – imperfections that are natural, unsettling, and beautiful.

Hand Lettering by Daren Booth

Porfolio

Darren uses his collage pieces to determine the color palette for his work.

Video

True Colors

"Four month exhausting hard work in an abonded area, no sun just artificial light. The final result, a stop motion movie with no digital effects at all, everything is handmade. About 5000 pictures are processed with an average by 15 pictures per second. The music is by Pretty Lights from Denver, Colorado, thanks Derek!" - YouTube

Via our friend in common, PureForm.

Design

Work of Schmitz und Wiesner

Porfolio

Header Image Inspiration

Photo by BNF.

“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.”

-  Joe Sparano

It’s worth mentioning that Wi-Fi syncing for iOS devices in iTunes would solve this problem. Wonder if it’ll ever happen…

Another suggestion came in for Syncopation which purports to be able to sync iTunes Libraries across Macs, without necessarily requiring you to duplicate all the individual media files. (Just point iTunes at the media files on your server volume.) I haven’t tried it yet.

SuperSync is a similar app. I don’t know if these programs recognize iOS apps in the library, which would need to be synced to actually solve my problem. (It’s surprising to me how many iTunes utilities still regard iTunes as a container for music only.)

Updated: Thanks @johto for s/:bar/:foo/.

A coworker asked about variable substitution with psql using \set, and so I looked into it a bit further.

You definitely can do things like this:

16:55 sdeckelmann@[local]:5432|postgres=> \set test 'select * from :foo limit 10;'
16:56 sdeckelmann@[local]:5432|postgres=> \set foo 'test'
16:56 sdeckelmann@[local]:5432|postgres=> :test
myint
-------
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
(10 rows)


But, what about something like this:


=> \set test 'select * from :var limit 10;'
=> :test mytable


Unfortunately, this isn’t supported.

The best you could do is something pathological like:

=> \set s 'select * from '
=> \set pr ' limit 10;'
=> :s mytable :pr
=> :s test :pr
myint
-------
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
(10 rows)


Related posts:

1. Quick start on Hot Standby
2. psql and file, CSV exports
3. Background reading: Locking (1970)

This week begins the BTA’s Bike Commute Challenge 2010. Although several members of the Jama team are regular bike commuters, we’re hoping to get even more for the month of September. Some of us have a longer commute than others (from .5 to 13.5 miles), but we’re all excited to participate — especially after we [...]

Most people are misunderstanding the question in my previous post: Playback and streaming are fine. As a media server, the Mini is already doing everything I want.

The problem is the Mini server is physically isolated, and so I want to be able to sync my iPhone and iPad to the Mini’s library, but from my desktop Mac. The post goes on to describe one solution I’ve come up with (each Mac runs its own copy of iTunes and shares one library), and the limitations of that (only one copy of iTunes can be running at a time).

One suggestion that was helpful was to enable Remote Apple Events on the Mini and write small AppleScripts to stop/start iTunes remotely.

To stop iTunes on the Mini and launch it locally goes something like this:

-- Quit iTunes on Mini

tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://10.0.1.2"
    quit
end tell

-- Wait for "AppleTVs are connected" dialog to timeout

delay 16

-- Launch local copy of iTunes

tell application "Finder"
    open file "LocalHD:Applications:iTunes.app"
end tell

Now I can sync my phone or do whatever with the iTunes library on my local Mac. When I’m done, I can go the other way:

-- Quit local iTunes

tell application "iTunes"
    quit
end tell

delay 5

-- Launch iTunes on Mini

tell application "Finder" of machine "eppc://10.0.1.2"
    open file "RemoteHD:Applications:iTunes.app"
end tell

I call these scripts “Start iTunes” and “Stop iTunes” and put them in my Scripts folder, so they’re accessible from the menu bar.

You could even collapse these into one script with an iPhone sync command in the middle to make it a one-step process.

That helps, but it’s still not as convenient as being able to simply dock the iPhone and walk away.

One conference I’ve been looking forward to all year is the Design4Mobile conference coming up September 20-24th in Chicago. I was excited before I saw the speaker list. Now, the conference can’t come soon enough!

(This was supposed to be a short post, but I got excited about all the cool speakers and wrote too much. So skip to the bottom to find out how to get a limited number of 15% discount codes for registration.)

I’ve attended a lot of conferences over the last few years. The conferences I’ve attended either have a broader focus and if I’m lucky, they have a mobile track. Some simply have have a session or two on mobile.

Other conferences that are focused on mobile tend to be of two different types. They are either focused on one platform exclusively (e.g., Apple’s WWDC) or are older conferences focused on telecoms (e.g., CTIA).

I’ve enjoyed the majority of the conferences I’ve attended so I can’t complain much about the format. But what has me excited about Design4Mobile is that it is the only conference I know of that is focus on mobile design and user experience. Four days of in depth conversations on these topics.

The conference is organized by Barbara Ballard and Little Springs Design who have been working on mobile design long before the iPhone. They are experts who I follow closely.

That alone would be enough, but come on, the speaker list is just insane. Here are just a few highlights:

• Josh Clark, Global Moxie and author of Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps — I saw Josh speak at SXSW long before I met him on Twitter or knew of his book. His session was the best one I saw. Phenomenal.
• Suzanne Ginsburg, Ginsburg Design and author of Designing the iPhone User Experience: A User-Centered Approach to Sketching and Prototyping iPhone Apps — I saw Suzanne speak earlier this year in Seattle before her book was published. She interviewed a lot of designers and developers in the process of developing her book so it’s great to hear the stories of how different people tackle problems.
• Scott Jenson, Mobile UX Designer at Google — Scott was on a panel with Barbara Ballard at SXSW. He has a practical approach to mobile, has a quick wit, and was talking about how phone can be used without taking them out of your pocket which I found fascinating.
• Corey Pressman, Exprima Media — It’s strange to look forward to seeing someone speak who works down the hall from you, but Corey spoke last week at Mobile Portland and I learned two things. 1. I learned just enough about his thoughts on mobile in education and the future of textbook publishing to want to know more. 2. That he is an excellent presenter and very funny.
• Katrin Verclas, MobileActive — I admire Katrin and her work at MobileActive so much. It is this sort of work that inspires me for what mobile technology can mean for society.
• Luke Wroblewski, Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital — I saw Luke speak at Web Visions a few years ago before he got bitten by the mobile bug. His talk was full of both data and insights. Can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts on mobile and try to figure out what his is up to next (ssshhh… It’s a secret!)

And there are many more people I can’t wait to see. I’ve meant to write this for quite some time to say simply, if you are interested in mobile—particularly mobile design—this is the conference you should attend.

I have a limited number of 15% off registration codes for the conference. If you are interested in a code, please leave a comment or fill out the contact form and I’ll send it to you.

I hope to see you in Chicago!

Last week, Intel cut its sales forecast for the current quarter, reflecting a widely reported slip in demand.

Cooking Up a Story: Stories

A simple idea led two women into a thriving new enterprise. Creating backyard mini-farms for homeowners who want to start growing their own fresh herbs and vegetables, but lack the time or resources to do it themselves. A considerable amount of food can be grown in a small area of land, and depending on one’s geographic location, the food can be grown outdoors throughout much of the year. As food prices rise, these types of mini-farms take on new economic meaning!

It’s no easy task being a farmer. What makes it even more challenging these days is to find affordable land in the first place. I hear frequent stories along these lines from those just starting out, and, from those who have been farming for awhile. The veteran farmers shake their heads and say something has to change if we’re going to rely on getting our food locally.

That’s why when I heard about Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter of Your Backyard Farmer, I got really excited! For the right farmer, and the right landowner, this is such a no-brainer. It’s one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moments! There is so much unused garden space in people’s backyards, most covered in grass (resource intensive, and inedible for humans), many of these plots would make a suitable space for a food garden.

Donna says you’d be surprised by the amount of food that can be harvested from a relatively small space. She figures 100 square feet of space will feed at least one adult (up to a family of 2) throughout the growing seasons (this will vary by geographic region). Picture it, a 10 by 10 bed or plot; that’s not so big. Multiply the number of people you’d like to feed in your family by that 10 X 10 figure, and that’s roughly the amount of growing space you will need to keep your family well stocked with fresh vegetables and herbs (PDF).

So many communities and organizations around the world are looking at creative ways to bring good, clean, fresh food closer to home. There’s City Farmer in Vancouver, BC; Pittsburgh, PA; and Middlesbrough, UK. A successful campaign spearheaded by Kitchen Gardeners International to create a White House Garden serves as powerful inspiration for many of us to start working on our own backyards!

There are lots of different ways ( Resources For City Farms ) to accomplish this effort of growing and providing food locally and lots of folks working hard to make it happen. Do you have other ideas to share? Or, know of other groups that are working toward bringing food home…right to your doorstep? Building a local food economy is just one more step toward a more sustainable way of living. A win-win for everyone including our planet.

—Rebecca

Recipes from this show: Kale Philo Bake; Crookneck Squash and Tomato Slices

Related Posts:

• Preserving Local Farms in Oregon
• A New Kind of Co-op: GROWN Locally
• Food Network: Community Supported Agriculture
• Growing Interest in Farmers Market (video)
• Urban Fruit Gleaning (video)
• Tons of Tasty Tomatoes (video)
• Introducing Insectary Plants for Your Garden (video)
• Cover Crop for the Home Garden (video)

Share and Enjoy:

Cooking Up a Story: Stories A simple idea led two women into a thriving new enterprise. Creating backyard mini-farms for homeowners who want to start growing their own fresh herbs and vegetables, but lack the time or resources to do it themselves. A considerable amount of food can be grown in a small area of [...]

Is there a better way to do this?

The layout:

I have a Mac Mini with attached Drobo acting as an iTunes server for the house. AppleTVs connect to it, etc. The Drobo’s noisy, so I put the whole kaboodle in the garage.

Meanwhile in my office, I have a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro has my iPhone and iPad docks attached to it.

The Mac Pro and the Mac Mini are on the same network.

The situation:

I want to dock my iPhone and iPad on the Mac Pro and sync with the iTunes library that’s on the Mini.

What’s working:

I configured iTunes on the Mac Pro to externally reference the iTunes Library database file on the Mac Mini. That is to say: the Mac Pro has no iTunes Library database file of its own.

This actually works great, but with one annoyance:

Since iTunes locks the library when it runs, I can only run one copy of iTunes on one of the Macs at any given time.

So, to sync my devices, I have to screen-share into the Mac Mini, quit iTunes there, start iTunes on the Mac Pro, sync devices, quit iTunes on the Mac Pro, and restart iTunes on the Mac Mini.

Non-solutions:

I can’t make a duplicate copy of the library because it’s huge (terabytes) and there’s no room.

In theory I could have a separate iTunes library on the Mac Pro that doesn’t perform consolidation or copy-into-library, and just use external references to all the media over the network. But then whenever I add new media and apps I have to remember to do it in two places.

What am I forgetting?

So, is a shared library with manual arbitration of iTunes clients the best existing way to do this, or am I overlooking something?

Failing that, can I automate the above process somehow?

Email me (link at top of page) if you’ve solved this!

For this week's edition of What's Crafty on Etsy, I thought it would be fun to explore further into the depths of fashion and see what people are creating that's fun to wear. Whether for you, your husband, your mom or even your dog, there are tons of crafters that are focused on helping you to look snazzy. Maybe to start, you'd like to add some small details that will make people turn their heads?

You know a new pair of earrings can go a long way. For some women, they prefer large, dangly things, but some of you I'm sure prefer to accent with small details. For you, something like these burgandy pear studs might be just the thing. With a bit of a vintage look, you could easily pair these with a colorful dress, a tank top or even a t-shirt and jeans and still get people wondering where you got them. Seller Fiesty Kitty has tons more where this came from too, and all of it echoes of a time long gone -- think teardrop earrings, cameos, and lots of color. Hey, we like color around here, you know.

But hey, what if you're into the dangly look? After all, some ladies just aren't the type to wear studs (I admit, I am one of them). These brilliant golden dahlia earrings could bring a touch of brilliance to almost anything you might want to wear (even a white tee and jeans would be kicked up a notch if you added these into the mix!) If you like the look but aren't in the mood for a pair of earrings, seller Katheyl also has barrettes, necklaces, bracelets and more, created with all sorts of vivid blooms. So feminine!

Maybe your way of decorating your look is less about jewelry and more about hair. Can't say I would blame you there, as a woman with long hair piled magnificently on top of her head is always a sight to see. Add in a touch like this Autumn Goddess harvest headband, and you may be able to turn heads simply by walking down the street. First Kiss Designs make just about every type of hair ornament you can think of, from hairpins with a single bloom to elaborate pieces such as this. Now all you need is an event to attend!

And what if accessories aren't so much your thing? Some women prefer to make a statement with a bold piece of clothing, rather than a pair of earrings or a bracelet. Featured Etsy seller Minxshop has definitely got the hang of creating clothing that makes a memorable impression. This beautiful blouse with leaf applique is only one of many striking pieces from her shop, and if you like what you see, the designer has her own page on Facebook where you can keep up with her future creations.

Thought we forgot about your little ones, didn't you? I would never! UK seller funkyshapes makes the cutest little booties for your baby's feet you can possibly imagine, in all kinds of patterns and colors that look good enough to eat. Every pair of boots also has the matching ribbons, and the bottoms are even detailed with a contrasting fabric, such as polka dots. Now when your baby kicks, you'll get a smile on your face at the sight of such happy feet!

Looking for colorful men's accessories can be a challenge sometimes, since designers seem to favor colors like brown and tan for men. Sure, those are safe -- but what if you want something that really pops? KitMit's travel symbol wallets definitely have a voice of their own, mixing strong colors with bold prints for a kitschy look. Check out the shop for more colors.

That's it for this week, but join us next week for another roundup of the best colorful finds on Etsy!

Piping logs to syslog is pretty useful for automating log rotation and forwarding lots of different logs to a central log server.

To that end, the command-line utility ‘logger’ is nice for piping output from utilities like pg_standby without having to add syslogging code to the utility itself. Another thing is that logger comes by default with modern packages of syslog.

Here’s an easy way to implement this:


restore_command = 'pg_standby -d -s 2 -t /pgdata/trigger /shared/wal_archive/ %f %p %r 2>&1 | logger -p local3.info -t pgstandby'


Related posts:

1. Customizing the RPMs from pgrpms.org
2. Snow Leopard and PostgreSQL: installation help links
3. Greg’s THREE talks at PostgreSQL Conference East

Peat Bakke posted a photo:

Peat Bakke posted a photo:

A couple weeks ago, Mark Wong and I took a field trip over to the Database Reading Group at Portland State University. It’s a group of students and professors that meet weekly throughout the school year to go over research papers. The papers are picked by the participants, and vary in topic from obscure to very practical.

This week’s paper reading was led by Professor Len Shapiro, and titled “Online Aggregation“. The paper is considered a foundational paper about SQL aggregates (like COUNT() or AVERAGE), and was published in 1997 by researchers from UC Berkeley and IBM. It’s also precursor to research into query parallelization and streaming databases. It was also awarded the SIGMOD “Test of Time” award in 2007, and is cited by over 170 other papers in the ACM archive.

The basic idea behind the paper centered around how to improve user experience in reporting results of aggregate queries – asking questions about how to solve three key problems when solving aggregates: blocking, fairness and control (from a user’s perspective). Roughly: Blocking is what happens when some part of the system waits and doesn’t return results to the user as a result of the waiting. Fairness concerns whether certain types of operations prevent certain groups of data from being processed (the example given had to do with GROUP BY and groups being processed one at a time). Control concerns whether or not a user can exert control over the speed of computation applied to a group (example given being a lever that “speeds up” processing of a set).

One insight from the paper is how online aggregates should be treated differently than traditional query processing – which might favor expensive plans involving sorts so that the output is ordered. When you’re dealing with online aggregates, you prefer unordered, or ideally random order, because your intermediate results will be more representative of the ultimate result. I guess that’s probably obvious once you think about it, but the paper provided some concrete examples.

Another interesting thought experiment involving the planner is how you pick plans that favor non-blocking, fairness and user control. Each of those properties is not narrowly defined, and changes based on individual user expectation. Professor Kristen Tufte mentioned that she’d be interested in how the ideas presented in this paper would be applied today, and Professor David Meier brought up that we might most be interested in applications involving managing Hadoop.

Prof Meier also brought up an interesting paper involving alternating nested loop joins during a discussion about optimizing JOIN algorithms for online aggregates. Another cool thing about the paper is that it involved modifications to Postgres! Granted, it was Postgres95, which doesn’t resemble the modern PostgreSQL 9.0 very much. But it was nice to revisit research that used Postgres that’s still relevant today.

Related posts:

1. User Group Idea: The After-party
2. User Group Idea: Patch Review Party
3. Women in Open Source: a focus group in March

This summer has been a rough one as far as heat and humidity go. Not something that is very pleasant, which is why I am so ready for fall, and the amazing colors associated with this time of year. Deep oranges are some of the fall colors that seem to always pop up in my head when I think of the season, and there are so many great decor choices this hue to help bring in that great crisp welcoming feeling into your home. What are your thoughts on deep orange?

light | wall hook | bowls | glass | pillow | vase set

room 1 & 2

In a battle of blogs, two authors went head-to-head to dispute the strengths and weaknesses of the agile methodology in contrast to a more traditional waterfall approach.  The initial 10 points, written by Donald Patti, were examining weaknesses of agile, while the second author, Bob Hartman, countered in support of agile.  Here are three highlights [...]

If you spend any time in social media, you’ve no doubt been inundated over the last two weeks with requests to “vote for my panel at SXSW.” Ever since SXSW instituted the crowd sourced PanelPicker, folks have taken to the airwaves to pimp their panels to their peers.

Admittedly, I’m part of the problem. But not for much longer. You see, today is the last day you can vote on the proposed 2011 SXSW panels.

What to do? What to do?

I’ve got an idea. Vote. Sure it won’t shut us… err them up. But at least you’ll assuage some of that guilt.

That’s right. Get to voting. You. Yes, you. You there waiting for the work day to end. You there early to Beer and Blog. You on the motorcycle. You two girls. All of you go vote early and often for these awesome Portland panels. Right now. Do not delay. Do not pass go.

Scoot.

• Be Heard: How to Innovate At Big Companies featuring William Hertling
• Build Something, Build Anything featuring Jason Glaspey
• Business at Play featuring Mike Bonifer
• Case for a Caregiver Centric Personal Health Record featuring Sheetal Dube
• Cryobank.com Connecting Your Enterprise to the Web featuring Al “@uselink126″ Partridge
• Creative Ways to Fund Your Awesome Project featuring Amye “@msamye” Scavarda
• Design as Lifestyle: An Honest Day’s Work featuring Duane King
• DIY Motion Tracking for Public Spaces featuring Todd “@mrballistic” Greco
• Driving App Discovery in An Overcrowded Marketplace featuring Ben “@einar” Jacobsen
• Engaging Tourists: Traveling Beyond the Branded Website featuring Stephen “@stlandau” Landau
• Feeding the Beast with Distributed Content Marketing Systems featuring Jamie “@Beckland” Beckland
• The Fine Line Between Creepy and Fun featuring Audrey “@spinnerin” Eschright
• From Personal Blogger to Professional Marketer featuring Melissa Lion
• Go Where No Ad Has Gone Before featuring Kate “@gok8″ Ertmann
• Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information featuring Dawn “@geekygirldawn” Foster
• How Founders Can Maintain Control Of Company Vision featuring Gene Kim
• Live Streaming for Good: Producing “30 Hour Day” featuring Mike “@drnormal” Gebhardt
• Pies, Ties and Behavioural Economics featuring Crystal “@skinny” Beasley
• PR and SEO Battle for Social Media Domination featuring Carri Bugbee
• Predictions, Preferences, and Personalization: Recommendation Engines Grow Up featuring Erin Jo Richey
• Real-Time Streams Need Real-Time Feedback featuring Marshall “@marshallk” Kirkpatrick
• Social Contests: Brand Loyalty Builders or Lazy Marketing? featuring Kelly R Feller
• Social Media Unhinged: Lounge Lizard Rock Opera Version! featuring Carri Bugbee
• Speed-Launching Location Web Apps featuring Adam “@adamd” DuVander
• Startup Beta Launch How-To; Recruit Users. Incorporate Feedback featuring Joshua Siler
• Startups, Bacon, and Speed Iteration featuring Renny Gleeson

And with any luck, your Twitter and Facebook streams will soon return to normal. Except for the bitching and kvetching about panels not making the cut, of course.

Related posts

• Portland Panel Picker: Vote for these SXSW Interactive panel proposals from Portland (7)
• What did I miss? Recapping Twitter Chirp, Facebook f8, Inside Social Apps, and iPadDevCamp (2)
• Governor of social media: What Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn say about the Oregon 2010 gubernatorial candidates (5)
• memePDX 023: Open Source Bridge, Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Twitter, Oregon Film Lunch 2.0, Ustream funding, and Facebook (2)
• Who are you? Google? Facebook? Twitter? JanRain shares industry trends on distributed identities and social media platforms (3)

Here at COLOURlovers, it's easy to be spoiled by the millions of colors we have available at our fingertips. We can create colors, palettes and patterns to fit our every mood, meet every whim--you know where I'm going with this.

A well-stocked closet can further that creativity in everyday life. When you have bold colors and prints at the ready you can layer them up, mixing patterns, piling hues or opting for a single bright piece against a monochromatic look. But the basics aren't to be discounted in any scenario; a white shirt, black pants, a little black dress, a good brown belt, well-fitting denim and a pair of trim chinos are staples that form the foundation--and in some cases, the entirety--of any good wardrobe.

But members here probably already know that, which explains why COLOURlovers' top colors are all strong, solid basics. Putting them into play here are members of Flickr's wardrobe_remix street fashion community.

"Black"

ninjascience's classic black is CL's most-loved and most-followed color. It's a crisp essential the fashion world loves, too, and the reasons are many: It's stark and striking at the same time, it creates a strong line, it's a clean backdrop for accessories and detail, and, you know, it's slimming.

[Jemibook; mssarabeth]

[supernab]

[mysolitaryconsignment; renr]

"camel spider"

CL's most-viewed color, edesigned's "camel spider," instantly reminds me of the traditional Burberry trench coat, a piece the house remakes year after year in both its classic and updated forms. The beauty of this color, as with the trench coat, is its mutability--it's a neutral that pairs well with virtually any color and every other neutral, and it can be as straightforward or as modern as you'd like it to be.

[songsandfairytales; pineapplemint]

[thenewclotheshorse]

[fancytreehouse; DailyFashionBoost]

"Now or never"

Like camel spider, peony's "Now or never," the CL color with the most comments , is a soft, warm neutral. Its dusty tone is a favorite in the fashion blogger world, I'd guess because it, too, bridges the gap between popular vintage florals and tough, edgy boots.

[verhext; LuluLetty]

[Clodo; eunicetsy]

[cantamus; What Would a Nerd Wear]

How do you wear COLOURlovers' favorite colors? Are they also the basis of your wardrobe? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Government data as a platform for innovation is something I find exciting. Unfortunately, every time we write about it at ReadWriteWeb, very few people read our articles. Consumer data from private companies, be it Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare, for example, finds far more interested readers.

Both have a few things in common: they are stories about data that you and I produce being leveraged by independent developers to build new services and ways to make use of that data. I love EveryBlock and the way it shows me the 911 calls, restaurant reviews and news stories about the area I live in. It uses mostly government data. I really liked the story I wrote about it (“The Day Everyblock Came to Town“) but it got far fewer pageviews than the equally local story Boom! Tweets & Maps Swarm to Pinpoint a Mysterious Explosion.

Maybe that’s because it was about an explosion, and maybe because it indicated some fulfillment of the promise of data exploited. But I think it’s in part because it’s about Twitter data instead of about public data in the traditional sense of the word. Readers just don’t find government data very interesting. It’s a part of a larger problem I think: people don’t care about nonprofit or social good stories either. Far, far fewer people read stories about human rights, watchdog organizations, etc. than they do the big corporate market leaders online. We cover social good stuff anyway, because it’s important, but we always recognize that those stories are going to perform poorly in terms of readership.

Thoughts?

Mobilize, a conference put on by GigaOm, is an amazing mobile event.  The theme this year is called “Mobile, Meet Cloud”.  But the topics on the panel discussions and keynotes vary and are all interesting.  This is one Silicon Valley event that is put on in an informative and interesting manner.

Mobilize is a one day event and the topics this year include: App vs. Web, The Internet Of Things, Location Services, Mobile Payments and more.

There are keynotes provided by Dr. Tero Ojanpera, EVP at Nokia in the Service group; Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and Chairman of One Laptop Per Childl and Ilja Laurs, Founder and CEO of GetJar.

So, as you can see, they’re put together quite a lineup.  The one-day event takes place at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA on September 30.

Post from: Techcraver.com | Craving Tech, Craving Life!

Join Me at Mobilize 2010

Two weeks ago, Agile Alliance hosted the Agile2010 conference in Orlando, Florida. Although the Jama team couldn’t make it down for the conference (especially with the impending release of the Review Center…), we followed conference happenings through friends, blogs, Twitter, and Flickr. As event attendees continue to discuss conference take-aways  online, we’ve noticed a few [...]

Twentieth Anniversary Mac Box 2:

Box 2 of 4.

Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh Box 1:

It says box 1 of 4. I only have boxes 1-3. I wonder what was in the 4th.

Twentieth Anniversary Mac Plug:

That’s not USB!

This plug connects the computer to the Bose subwoofer.

Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh Box 1 - Inside:

When brand new, this computer came with a leather CD case containing the OS discs, and a special TAM pen. Bonkers.