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  HTML5 History of 20th Century Music

We've seen some neat interactive HTML5 infographics before -- but the periodic table, for example, doesn't really care that much about time.Visual representation of time introduces numerous complications. Traditional ways of representing time visually were, roughly speaking, translations of dimension-type, from temporal to spatial; the mapping selected would depend on what kind of temporal relation was meaningful for the particular application. For example, circles represent cyclical beha...

   HTML5,JavaScript,Music,Timeline     2011-12-16 09:35:55

  Flash Player sandboxing is coming to Firefox

Peleus here. In December of 2010, I wrote a blog post describing the first steps towards sandboxing Flash Player within Google Chrome. In the blog, I stated that the Flash Player team would explore bringing sandboxing technology to other browsers. We then spent 2011 buried deep within Adobe laying the groundwork for several new security innovations. Today, Adobe has launched a public beta of our new Flash Player sandbox (aka “Protected Mode”) for the Firefox browser....

   Flash,Sandbox,Google chrome     2012-02-07 06:16:57

  Hackers vs. Coders

Photo Credit: Pranav MistryBeing a good hacker is an invaluable skill. But is being a coder the same as being a hacker? Is it possible that coders are at a creative disadvantage to hackers who don’t know how to code?Here’s a story that helped me see the difference.I was recently invited to mentor at Startup Weekend. On Friday night, we gathered to eat pizza, pitch ideas, create teams and discuss launch plans. At the end of the day, everyone was feeling great about what theyâ...

   Hacker,Coder,Comparison,Innovation     2011-05-11 02:11:09

  Circumventing browser connection limits for fun and profit

A few days ago, this video hosted by metacafe popped up on digg, explaining how to increase site download times by tweaking your browser settings to increase connection parallelism. To explain why this works, let’s step back a bit to discuss how browsers manage server connections. In building any application, developers are often required to make ‘utilitarian’ choices. Pretentiously paraphrasing Jeremy Bentham, ‘utilitarian’ describes an approach that â...

   HTTP,Concurrent connection limit,Solution,AJAX     2011-12-14 13:01:02

  Why I love Common Lisp and hate Java

“Common what?” is a common reply I get when I mention Common Lisp. Perhaps rightly so, since Common Lisp is not all that common these days. Developed in the sixties, it is one of the oldest programming languages out there. In its heydays it was used mostly for Artificial Intelligence research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the like, and therefore has a lingering association with AI. People not in AI shy away from Lisp. Common Lisp is a powerful and versatile program...

   Lisp,Java,Comparison,Common Lisp     2012-01-30 05:48:16

  Converting Decimal Fractions to Binary

Converting Decimal Fractions to Binary In the text proper, we saw how to convert the decimal number 14.75 to a binary representation. In this instance, we \"eyeballed\" the fractional part of the binary expansion; 3/4 is obviously 1/2 + 1/4. While this worked for this particular example, we\'ll need a more systematic approach for less obvious cases. In fact, there is a simple, step-by-step method for computing the binary expansion on the right-hand side of the point. We will illustrate the metho...

   Decimal,Fractional,Binary     2011-03-19 06:45:35

  Simple Animation in the HTML5 Canvas Element

HTML5 is generating all kinds of buzz these days. Some of the buzz is about HTML5 being a replacement for Adobe’s Flash. I don’t think it’s there yet but it’s certainly on the way to changing the way content is presented on the web. This is a description of a very simple animation in an HTML5 canvas element. It is coded for readability and not for optimized operation. We’ll add a canvas element to a web page and then use javascript to draw on it. We will...

   HTML5,Canvas,Animation,Sample code     2011-07-01 10:20:08

  PHP Sucks! But I Like It!

I read a rather interesting post yesterday called PHP: a fractal of bad design. It's been getting a lot of traffic among the PHP community lately because it's rather inflammatory. But to be honest, it does make a lot of really good points. It also makes a lot of mistakes and misses a bigger picture. A Few Mistakes The post makes quite a few mistakes and odd apples to oranges comparisons. Let me point out the major ones that I saw. No Debugger - PHP has xdebug which works quite...

   PHP,Bad design,Like     2012-04-12 06:15:42

  Windows 8 will support more development languages

Windows OS already supports many development languages, including C++, JavaScript/HTML5, iVisual Basic, Visual C# and XAML. However, Microsoft is trying to add more development language supports in the next-generation PC operating system Windows 8. Microsoft revealed that they would support more development languages for Windows 8 app development at the Lang.Next Conference this week.Microsoft development manager and chief executive Martyn Lovell, claimed that "I hope the developers can create a...

   Window 8,Development languages,Lang.Next     2012-04-05 06:03:23

  Google Dart? Don’t bet against JavaScript

Procotols, programming languages and operating systems all compete in a constantly evolving software ecosystem. Out of that ecosystem only a few technologies truly have staying power and survive over the long term. An example? How about Ethernet? It’s been a survivor over the last thirty years despite existing in a constantly changing landscape that’s been populated with many worthy competitors. Ethernetâ€...

   Google Dart,JavaScript,Comparison,Future     2011-12-06 09:49:39

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