MarsEdit 1.2: Growl, Picasa and Vox!

MarsEdit 1.2: Growl, Picasa and Vox!:

MarsEdit 1.2 is now available for download (or just ‘Check for Updates’ from the app). This is a free update for all registered MarsEdit users.

Three relatively big changes in this release: [...]

Picasa image uploads for Blogger.com. This is pretty transparent. Just select your Blogger blog as the upload target from Images & Files, and MarsEdit will pop the images into a MarsEdit album in your Picasa Web Albums account. Note that Picasa only accepts JPG format images for upload.

Woohoo! I've been wanting this for a long time. And it looks like it works just fine!

Thank you, Daniel Jalkut.

"REPLACE INTO" for SQL Server

MySQL has handy syntax which lets you look for a record by primary key and, if it exists, update its fields; otherwise insert a new record.

I wish something similar existed for SQL Server. If it does, I can't find it. But there is another way to achieve a similar effect, without too much typing:

BEGIN TRANSACTION;
DELETE FROM my_table WHERE prim_key = @prim_key_val;
INSERT INTO my_table (prim_key, other_field) 
       VALUES (@prim_key_val, @other_field_val);
COMMIT;

I'm probably missing something; haven't thought this through very carefully.

Cottonwood Rumble

Cottonwood Rumble 1
Originally uploaded by Mitch Chapman

I've been meaning to call a tree trimmer. But I really thought the dead branches were the biggest threat.

One smart baby

When Bobi brought Aigerim home from Kazakhstan she was not quite nine months old -- way too young to talk.

Aigerim has a stuffed pig of whom she's very fond. Almost from the moment she saw it she's been calling it "n'Goita" or "Nyáh-do" or "Nyáh-da". (We live in New Mexico, so of course we've been repeating this as "Nacho" or "Puerco Nacho".)

But she also uses this word for other things. Typically, she'll repeat it insistently, arms outstretched, while leaning way out from whomever's holding her, as she tries to reach some object.

Lately Bobi has begun to think this might be a word from the Baby House. So this morning we pulled out the Langenscheidt Russian to check. A search in the English section for "want", "give", etc. turned up nothing. But then I flipped over to the Russian section, and there it was:

Надо - need, want

What an awesome little girl.

China's Solar-Powered City: Rizhao : MetaEfficient

China's Solar-Powered City: Rizhao : MetaEfficient:

"
In Rizhao [City, China], 99% of households in the central districts use solar water heaters, and most traffic signals, street and park lights are powered by photovoltaic solar cells. In the suburbs and villages, more than 30% of households use solar water heaters, and over 6,000 households have solar cooking facilities.

The achievement was the result of an unusual convergence of three key factors: a government policy that encourages solar energy use and financially supports research and development, local solar panel industries that seized the opportunity and improved their products, and the strong political will of the city's leadership to adopt it.

Mayor Li Zhaoqian explained: "It is not realistic to subsidize end users as we don't have sufficient financial capacity." Instead, the provincial government invested in the industry to achieve technological breakthroughs, which increased efficiency and lowered the unit cost.

Found via Ottmar Liebert.

Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans? - space - 22 May 2007 - New Scientist Space

Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans? - space - 22 May 2007 - New Scientist Space:

The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from."

These claims are pretty wild, but they're interesting. If the researchers are right, the Clovis people didn't kill off all the big North American mammals and then starve to death. Instead the lot were wiped out by hellfire and brimstone. Or, rather, by ice, rock and dust that started some very big fires.



Update: If you have an online subscription to Scientific American, the New Scientist article above might make an interesting contrast to this recent article on restoring Pleistocene-era big mammals to North America.

The theory--propounded 40 years ago by Paul Martin of the University of Arizona--is that overhunting by the new arrivals reduced the numbers of large vertebrates so severely that the populations could not recover.

Also see the Pleistocene Rewilding website. It looks like White Man's Burden with a paleontological twist.

ONLamp.com -- Tools for Geographically Distributed Software Development

ONLamp.com -- Tools for Geographically Distributed Software Development.

Lots of familiar stuff. Some items, such as writewith, are news to me and worth investigating, since all of my projects now involve distributed teams.

Reagan, Unscripted: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Reagan, Unscripted: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Interesting reading.

n'Goita

"n'Goita" is one of Aigerim's favorite words. Google didn't turn up any matches, so I thought I should create a definition page for it here.

Sometimes she says "n'Gah'ta" instead. We think this is her name for Ceniza.

Real ID: Mark of the beast

National ID card a disaster in the making | CNET News.com




I wonder why those who are charged with national security so often converge on solutions which destroy the freedoms they are supposed to protect.

In a recent CNET article Mssrs Forno and Schneier summarized the Real ID national identity system system, which was approved by Congress after having been buried in a 2005 "must pass" military spending bill.

There is something in the system to worry everyone. Christians may see aspects of the mark of the beast. Jews may see reminders of sufferings they have already endured. IT types will note the increased risk of identity theft inherent in a national identity database.

... the functionality of a single database remains intact under the guise of a federated data-interchange environment.

...the very last paragraph of the 160-page Real ID document deserves special attention.,, DHS declares that states are free not to participate in the Real ID system if they choose--but any identification card issued by a state that does not meet Real ID criteria is to be clearly labeled as such, to include "bold lettering" or a "unique design" similar to how many states design driver's licenses for those under 21 years of age.

In its own guidance document, the department has proposed branding citizens not possessing a Real ID card in a manner that lets all who see their official state-issued identification know that they're "different," and perhaps potentially dangerous, according to standards established by the federal government. They would become stigmatized, branded, marked, ostracized, segregated. All in the name of protecting the homeland; no wonder this provision appears at the very end of the document.

Hacking Your Body's Bacteria for Better Health -

Wired recently ran an article on probiotics. It had so many interesting observations that I've had a hard time summarizing it.

Okay, the summary is that we need bacteria in order to stay healthy.

Hacking Your Body's Bacteria for Better Health:

We assassinate microbes with hand soap, mouthwash and bathroom cleaners. But some scientists say ... all this killing may actually cause diseases like eczema, irritable bowel syndrome and even diabetes.

"Probiotics have resulted in complete elimination of eczema in 80 percent of the people we've treated," says Dr. Joseph E. Pizzorno Jr., a practicing physician and former member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. Pizzorno says he's used probiotics to treat irritable bowel disease, acne and even premenstrual syndrome.

"After the Second World War, when our lifestyles changed dramatically, allergies increased. Autoimmune diseases like diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease are increasing," says Kaarina Kukkonen, a University of Helsinki allergy expert.

Microbial exposures early in life, scientists believe, cause mild inflammation that calibrates the body's responses to other pathogens and contaminants later in life. Without exposure as infants, researchers say, people can end up with unbalanced immune systems.

"Many of the most difficult problems in medicine today are chronic inflammatory diseases," says Blaser. "These include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, atherosclerosis, eczema and multiple sclerosis. One possibility is that they're autoimmune or genetic diseases. The other possibility is that they are physiological responses to changes in microbiota."

Microsoft's Silverlight

Microsoft has announced details of their competitor to Flash -- and to JavaScript, and to ... It's called Silverlight.

To me the most interesting thing about it is that it allows developers to build browser-side web apps using Python and Ruby instead of JavaScript.

Silverlight apps can use a subset of the .NET framework. Embedded video can run at HD revolutions up to 1280x720.

It all looks pretty interesting. It'd be more interesting if it provided a 3D API; but so far I see no evidence of that.

Sun eyes a JavaScript alternative to AJAX

Sun eyes a JavaScript alternative to AJAX:

"

(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems is working on Web application development technology that presents an alternative to AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a Sun official said on Thursday.

The company's Project Flair is an open-source project now in development... A version of Flair for developers to experiment with is eyed for release later this year.

Small and simple, Flair presents a 'great vehicle for experimenting with [what] I guess what you would call, sort of, collaborative object development, that kind of thing,' said Ingalls.

'AJAX sort of deals with all of the old way of doing things. It makes it simpler ... but underneath it’s still all this junky HTML, Document Object Model, CSS, all that stuff, where 30 years ago, we knew how to do that stuff cleanly with a dynamic programming language and a simple graphics model,' Ingalls said.

'Flair takes us back to that simple model and adds the collaboration [and] Web access to it,' he said.

Anybody have links to more details on Project Flair?

American's imprisonment in Kazakhstan sends chilling message - International Herald Tribune

American's imprisonment in Kazakhstan sends chilling message - International Herald Tribune:

"Despite all the Western donor money and American-financed projects aimed at reforming the judiciaries here," said Michael Hall, an analyst in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with the International Crisis Group ... "this is all part of a bigger Central Asian trend to make their judicial systems subordinate to their presidents."

"The result is a significant retreat in America's ability to project its public and business interests in the region," he said.

"Plus, the U.S. has suffered a massive loss of credibility when it comes to talking about the rule of law and independent judiciaries in the wake of the abuses we've been hearing about in places like Guantánamo." (emphasis added)

The last paragraph is a sideline to the main story. But it shows again that it's in the best interests of the United States to treat its prisoners humanely. Any abuse we lay on our prisoners (call them what you will) can be used as a justification for the mistreatment of U.S. citizens.

Duck and Cover: Ancient Mass Extinctions Caused by Cosmic Radiation

Ancient Mass Extinctions Caused by Cosmic Radiation, Scientists Say:

"Cosmic rays produced at the edge of our galaxy have devastated life on Earth every 62 million years, researchers say."

Not all mass extinctions are explained by this theory. For example, the KT boundary event probably has another cause.

But what an interesting idea: our galaxy is moving "flat-faced", like a pie in a pie fight, relative to surrounding material. A shock wave is generated where galactic matter comes into contact with the surrounding hot gases, and cosmic radiation is generated at that same point.

Periodically on its 225-million-year galactic orbit, our solar system rises up out of the galactic plane, closer to the shock wave, where it is exposed to more of the incoming cosmic radiation than normal.

Researchers aren't sure about the consequences of the increased radiation. Greater ozone depletion may allow more of the radiation to reach the earth's surface and into its oceans. Other effects may include changes in cloud cover, etc.

One possibility is that organisms receive harmful doses of radiation from high-energy particles known as muons, which are produced by cosmic rays colliding with Earth's atmosphere.

"Cosmic rays themselves are not really that dangerous," said Medvedev. "They create [charged particles] that propagate down through the atmosphere—especially muons that can go below the sea level."

Russia's former president Yeltsin dies: Kremlin | Reuters

Russia's former president Yeltsin dies: Kremlin | Reuters:

Many Russians initially viewed Yeltsin as a hero for dismantling Communist rule. His finest hour came when, in 1991, he clambered onto a tank and raised his fist in defiance of hardline coup plotters who wanted to turn back the clock.

...in 1989 he was elected to the new Soviet Congress of People's Deputies and in June 1991 he was elected president of Russia -- still within the Soviet Union -- in a landslide.

Two months later, he faced down tanks in the Moscow streets...

Make your own Ghost Map

From Paul Kedrosky: Twitter for Hypochondriacs:

Who is sick? is a clever idea, and similar in many ways to my 'what's going around?' idea. It allows people with symptoms of something or another -- bloody stool! sniffles! cough! muscle ache! -- to add their location and symptoms to a map.

Why clever? Because it is the data-rich beginnings of grassroots epidemiology via capturing the kinds of conversations that usually only happen in doctors' offices. You, know, 'You have a cold. That's going around'.

Gee, it's like a modern, collaborative version of The Ghost Map.

Tastes like chicken

Tyrannosaurus rex fossil gives up precious protein - life - 12 April 2007 - New Scientist

Why it's called "good" cholesterol

Technology Review: Imaging Cholesterol Buildup in the Heart: " Normally, HDL passes through arteries and attaches to low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or 'bad' cholesterol, carrying it out of arteries to the liver."

'Course that's not what the article is about. Researchers have found a way to attach markers to segments of unstable arterial plaque, using altered HDL. As a result, they can better see where unstable plaque has built up in a patient and can better identify problems which increase the risk of heart attack.

Light Therapy Spares the Scalpel and the Chemo -

Light Therapy Spares the Scalpel and the Chemo -

Imagine you could treat cancer by taking a pill, then directing a laser light toward the location of the tumor. The growth would dissolve with no chemotherapy, and no harm to healthy tissue.

It might sound futuristic, but a select number of cancer patients already benefit from the method, called photodynamic therapy. An upgrade for the procedure could save thousands more cancer patients from the horrors of chemotherapy.

Although chemotherapy has improved over the past decade, the treatment still damages healthy tissue and causes other unpleasant side effects like nausea and a weakened immune system. The researchers hope their work will spare patients from chemo's ravages and even the surgery usually necessary to remove a tumor.