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Links for August 30th through September 1st

Sometime between August 30th and September 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • A Syllabus and Book List for Novice Students of Science Fiction Literature: "There are a few things to keep in mind about this syllabus for SF 101: Introduction to Literature. It is not comprehensive. It is intended to introduce the novice student of SF literature to the major themes in the genre, as well as books and authors who are representative of different eras in SF lit (including the present day). So you'll find a mix of old and new here, as well as fan favorites tucked in among more literary authors. Back in the mists of time, I used to teach literature and American Studies at UC Berkeley, so I have some experience putting together course materials for university classes very much like one. (In fact, there are a few books on here that I used to teach.) What educators aim to do in overview courses is expose students to the broadest possible set of examples of a genre, not just the 'canon.' It is in this spirit that I chose the books on this list."
  • Comparison - Apple TV vs. Roku vs. Boxee Box: "Despite its startup status, Roku still gets high marks for a product line that's on par with — if not better — than what Apple announced today. Roku's high-end HD-XR, priced at $99, has HDMI and 802.11N wireless connectivity, which is in-line with Apple TV is offering. It also has Netflix Watch Instantly and a video rental service in Amazon Video on Demand that rivals Apple's iTunes store. Roku has also promised a 1080p upgrade to its HD-XR product for personal streaming, going one better than the 720p streaming Apple TV is capable of."
  • Get More Out of Your Roku Digital Video Player: Great collection of extra 'private' channels for Roku, including Twitter and YouTube channels.
  • Parched English Fields Reveal Ancient Sites: "Known as crop marks, the faint outlines of unseen buried structures emerged because of the length of the dry spell, leading the national conservator to label 2010 a vintage year for archaeology. The outlines show up when crops grow at different rates over buried structures. Shallower soils tend to produce a stunted crop and are more prone to parching, bringing to light the new features. 'It's hard to remember a better year,' said Dave MacLeod, a senior investigator with English Heritage."
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Links for August 28th through August 29th

Sometime between August 28th and August 29th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The Top 20 Essential Science Fiction TV Shows: "Science fiction has ruled television for over 50 years, but some shows have brightened our screens and supercharged our brains more than others. Here are the 20 science fiction shows that everybody interested in the genre should see." I don't do quite as well with this list as I do with the earlier-linked list of films, but I've still seen at least some, if not all, of almost 3/4 (13 out of 20) of the shows on this list.
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  • 25 Classic Science Fiction Movies That Everybody Must Watch: "Science fiction has rocked cinemas for a century, and the genre has produced many undisputed classics during that time. But which movies are essential viewing for anyone interested in the genre? We broke down the 25 must-watch science fiction films." As of right now, Primer and Moon are the only two films on this list that I haven't seen yet.
  • How I’D Hack Your Weak Passwords: "Believe me, I understand the need to choose passwords that are memorable. But if you're going to do that how about using something that no one is ever going to guess AND doesn't contain any common word or phrase in it."
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Links for August 25th through August 27th

Sometime between August 25th and August 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

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Links for August 12th through August 23rd

Sometime between August 12th and August 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Ten Things I Know About the Mosque - Roger Ebert’s Journal: "The First Amendment comes down to this: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' It does not come down to: 'The First Amendment gives me the right to repeat the N-word 11 times on the radio to an inoffensive black woman, and when you attack me for saying it, you are in violation of my First Amendment rights.'"
  • Beloit College Mindset List: Class of 2014: "The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since 'digital' has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who's that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. "
  • Russia in Color, a Century Ago: "With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun."
  • Did ‘Star Wars’ Become a Toy Story? Producer Gary Kurtz Looks Back: "After the release of 'Empire'…the partners could no longer find a middle ground. 'We had an outline and George changed everything in it,' Kurtz said. 'Instead of bittersweet and poignant he wanted a euphoric ending with everybody happy. The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn't want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason.' The discussed ending of the film that Kurtz favored presented the rebel forces in tatters, Leia grappling with her new duties as queen and Luke walking off alone 'like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns,' as Kurtz put it. Kurtz said that ending would have been a more emotionally nuanced finale to an epic adventure than the forest celebration of the Ewoks that essentially ended the trilogy with a teddy bear luau."
  • Be Careful With Your Safari Extensions, and Turn Off Auto-Updating: "I'm a big fan of Safari Extensions. I've written several of my own, some of which I share with the Internet public. But because I've built those extensions, I've realized how easily a malicious developer could harvest all sorts of information about you, using a method that could sneak in and evade immediate detection."

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Lazyweb: Automated Crowdsourcing of Website Uptime/Downtime Tracking

Last night, Prairie and I were watching Bones on Netflix’s streaming service when Netflix suddenly stopped responding. In order to find out if there were service-wide problems, my first step was to turn to Twitter to see if there were any other people reporting problems — and as it turns out, there were. Reassured that it was a Netflix issue, and not something going wrong with my setup, we popped in a DVD until people on Twitter started reporting that things were working again.

It seems that using Twitter is becoming a more and more common way to get a quick handle on whether a particular website is having issues. This started me thinking about a website that could act as a simple, centralized tracker of uptime/downtime reports, gathered from real-time scanning of the Tweetstream. I don’t have the coding chops to do this, so I’m tossing the idea out to the Lazyweb in case anyone else wants to run with it.

The basic idea seems simple enough: scan the tweetstream for variations on the types of posts people make when a service is showing signs of problems. Basic search strings would be something along the lines of “* is [down|broken]” and “is * [down|broken]”. Anytime a hit is made on the search string, an entry is made in the database with the reported problem site and whatever might be considered relevant data from the source tweet (the tweet text, time/datestamp, perhaps even geolocation data for those tweets that are carrying it). Tracking reports of websites coming back online could be integrated as well, by watching strings such as “* is [back|up|back up|working]”.

The website would display a regularly updating display of downtime/uptime reports, one line per target website, with a series of stats indicating things like how recently the last problem or resolution tweet was recorded, the number of problem or resolution tweets found within the last 10, 30, or 60 minutes, perhaps a map showing geolocation markers that could indicate if downtime is widespread (indicating downtime at the website itself) or geographically targeted (indicating problems with a particular network, carrier, or ISP between the website and the Twitter users reporting problems), and whatever other data might be useful. It might be possible to use CSS to color-code lines depending upon variable such as the rate of problem tweets being found, too.

Anyway, that’s about as formed as the idea is in my head. If this sounds interesting to anyone else, feel free to grab the idea and run. If someone does build this based on this post, though, some mention or credit would be nice. ;)

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