apache friends - xampp

February 8th, 2010

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

Quick LAMP stack with no re-compiles, dependency nightmares, or extensive hair loss.

Posted via web from jerwilkins’s posterous

Chronic endurance training linked to shortened telomeres (consequently, aging & cancers)

January 29th, 2010
Minimum TRF length in the runners, however, was inversely related to their years spent running (r = −0.63, P = 0.007) and hours spent training (r = −0.52, P = 0.035). Therefore, since exposure to endurance running may influence minimum TRF length, and by implication, the proliferative potential of the satellite cells, chronic endurance running may be seen as a stressor to skeletal muscle.

Initially found through conditioningresearch.blogspot.com.

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The Never Ending Language Learner

January 18th, 2010
NELL (“never ending language learner”) is only a prototype so far.  It is to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and perform two tasks each day: (1) reading and (2) learning.  When NELL is reading, it extracts knowledge from web text and adds it to its internal knowledge base.  When it goes in to the learning phase, it applies machine learning algorithms to its newly enlarged knowledge base, thereby enhancing its understanding of language.  The researchers believe that NELL “holds the potential to yield major steps forward in the state of the art of natural language understanding.”

I am a little skeptical of what seems to be a massive corpus-tagging project (see Doctorow’s Metacrap essay — http://j.mp/1Dpk5).

Worst-case scenario, though, is that we’ll wind up with a better understanding of the limitations of such projects, and that is a significant stride forward.

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Dehydration and resistance training

January 16th, 2010
So if you are dehydrated - 3% body mass loss - there will be:

  • impaired resistance exercise performance,
  • decreased repetitions,
  • increased perceived exertion, and
  • hindered HR recovery.

Good and good for ya :)

Posted via web from jerwilkins’s posterous

The Case Against Vertical Navigation

January 14th, 2010
In a study called Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes, results showed that top navigation performed better than left-side navigation. Interestingly, according to the results, even right-side navigation had better success than left navigation.

Well-made case against left-hand site navigation.

Posted via web from jerwilkins’s posterous

Noticeable speed-up in Ubuntu Karmic with this little tweak

January 3rd, 2010
Peter Cordes wrote on 2009-11-29: #5

Markus, and anyone else wondering about interactive performance regressions, NEW_FAIR_SLEEPERS is modifiable at run time; just run

echo NEW_FAIR_SLEEPERS | sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/sched_features

grep –color=tty NEW_FAIR_SLEEPERS /sys/kernel/debug/sched_features

(Ubuntu mounts linux’s debugfs at /sys/kernel/debug, not at /debug like you see referenced on the lkml threads talking about this.)

 To enable for every reboot, put
echo NEW_FAIR_SLEEPERS > /sys/kernel/debug/sched_features
 in /etc/rc.local, or whatever.

Between this and the Compiz adjustment here Karmic is considerably faster.

I’ve also applied this fix for Nvidia graphics cards running Compiz, but not sure if it introduced an improvement.

Anybody with additional ideas on how to speed up Karmic with Compiz, please fire away in the comments.

Posted via web from jerwilkins’s posterous

Why we should be eating horses instead of riding them - The Oatmeal

January 2nd, 2010

Hooray for The Oatmeal! You should totally read this.

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Machine Translates Thoughts into Speech in Real Time

January 1st, 2010
“The results of our study show that a brain-machine interface (BMI) user can control sound output directly, rather than having to use a (relatively slow) typing process,”
Machine Translates Thoughts into Speech in Real Time

Enlarge

Oh Future, I’ll take some more of you, please.

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Fanboy grid:

December 27th, 2009

My laptop ~does~ radiate tendrils of arcane power like that.
Just sayin’.

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Steven Cowley: Fusion is energy’s future

December 23rd, 2009

Compelling case.

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