Defuddle extracts the main content from web pages. It cleans up web pages by removing clutter like comments, sidebars, headers, footers, and other non-essential elements, leaving only the primary content.
Kepano’s defuddle is a handy little thing that I am going to be using often when saving knowledge as Markdown. It really does a very good job at bypassing sidebars, leaving only the main content.
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Figure 81 indicates the general character of the results that might be expected from practice with the pencil,—not from a few moments of playful practice, but from several hours of thoughtful study.
From the book “Design in Theory and Practice” (page 157), by Ernest Allen Batchelder. I find the “scribbles” fascinating.
art randomWas just telling Horsie about a program I listened to on NPR, which related to horses, and their whinnies. They theorised that the high sound isn’t coming from the vocal cords, but from just above the larynx, being similar to a whistle (in human terms) instead. Horsie told me they don’t use it to communicate anymore because for that they have “Horsemobile”, a portmanteau, so to speak, similar to “T-Mobile”. đ€Ł
horsie humour random“Special Assessments. In addition to the Annual Assessments authorized above, the Association may levy, in any assessment year, special assessments applicable to that year only for the purpose of defraying, in whole or in part, the cost of any construction, reconstruction, repair or replacement of a capital improvement upon the Common Areas, including fixtures and personal property related thereto, and/or for any other purpose deemed necessary by the Board, including to fund a deficit in the annual budget, provided that any such assessment shall have the assent of two-thirds (2/3) of the members of the Board of Directors.”
Our upcoming Home Owner’s Association (HOA) annual meeting is going to be difficult, to say the least. That proposed change above takes away home owners’ financial decision making, and places it solely on the Board of Directors. A no-no, in my opinion.
me politics randomHi, I’m Mark Pilgrim. You may remember me from such classics as “Dive Into Python” and “Universal Character Encoding Detector.” I am the original author of
chardet.
I was so genuinely and happily surprised to read the above! See, I have been a long time fan of him, and this online appearance was a small gift; he seems to be doing well and, well, that makes me happy.
â Via Hacker News.
random tubes via“New York City has a clean-air program that allows people to report commercial vehicles that are parked and idling for more than three minutes, or one minute outside a school. Those who report infractions by submitting a video can collect 25 percent of the fine collected by the city â $87.50 on a $350 fine.”
NYC has a very interesting clean-air program that has created an opportunity for business. Such program would be very lucrative in Florida, as idle parking here is endemic.
nyc random“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”
Cunningham’s Law, eh? Hmm, I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t that be considered trolling?
humour randomNuclear weapons. Not nucular weapons, but nuclear ones. I don’t know from where I got to this page. I picked it up on my desktop, while browsing the iCloud Tabs (tabs open on my phone).
“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we canât get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons.”
It is a good read. I am glad I did.
random thoughts tubesHaving our driveway and sidewalk pressure washed today. Saw a teenager doing it for a neighbour last week and, knowing that a “friendly reminder” is coming our way from the HOA, decided that let someone else have the fun I had had for the last 25 years. So, he was hired to do so. I think $150 USD, after 25 years, is kind of a bargain, isn’t it?
me randomToday, after much thought and deliberation, I re-subscribed to The New York Times. It was hard to pass their $50/year offer, as I have been consuming it more and more through archive.today. One of the first things I did was to install their iOS application, and from it comes my first complaint: the amount of ads on it is distasteful. So much that I will probably mostly use the web version, as I can eliminate them fully that way.
me random rantsâI don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does."
I came across this quote by Frank Ramsey, which almost instantly brought to mind Carl Sagan’s famous one:
“We live on the third piece of debris from the Sun; a tiny world of rock and metal with a thin patina—a veneer—of organic matter on the surface, a tiny fraction of which we happen to constitute.”
Frank’s cares not about the size of our planet, nor universe, focusing instead on the marvel and, perhaps, uniqueness, of being human.
random thoughts tubes“‘Pig butchering’ scams resemble the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter. Victims invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities before they are conned out of their money. Scammers refer to victims as âpigs,â and may leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to âfatten upâ the victim into believing they are in trusted partnerships before they defraud the victims of their assetsâthe ‘butchering.’”
Today I learned. There are so many names given to scams, financial and otherwise, that one looses track. Pig butchering was one of those I missed.
random tubesThis site is very neat. It allows you to play—albeit for a short period of time—a multitude of sounds. Amongst my many music likings is trance, and I am enjoying browsing their collection. Especially, psychedelic trance.
â Via @claudrod.
random viaOh my gawd! This is an incident I didn’t know about, and I would have rather remained ignorant about it. Now can’t erase it from mind… I mean, it “went into passengers’ eyes, mouths, hair, and onto clothing and personal belongings, many of which were soaked”. Primordial shudders.
On August 8, 2004, a tour bus belonging to Dave Matthews Band dumped an estimated 800 pounds (360 kg) of human waste from the bus’s blackwater tank through the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago onto an open-top passenger sightseeing boat sailing in the Chicago River below. The incident became popularly known as the Dave Matthews Band incident or Poopgate.
The members of Dave Matthews Band were not on or near the bus during the incident. The band’s bus driver, Stefan Wohl, initially denied dumping the waste, and was supported by the band. However, he was later determined to be the only person on the bus during the incident; in April 2005, he pleaded guilty to the dumping, and the band fired him without pay.
I have to note that Niederegger Lubeck Classic Marzipan is—though pricey in the U.S.—super delicious. I am going to look around to see if I can find the other varieties they produce, as I would love to try them all!
me random
You’ve got to keep your subscription up! đ This cartoon from The New Yorker (one of the few sites still using “www”, I just noticed) made me laugh out loud. In a way, it reminded me of this one.
humour randomI have heard over and over that “you can eat whatever you want, as long as you burn it through exercise”. Well, well, well, another fallacy.
health random“We can’t outrun a bad diet. Pontzer says if we want to tackle obesity, the public health message should focus on changing what’s on our plates.”
Spotted while walking on my 10 minutes break this afternoon. A dumpster cage with the gate clearly, and boldly labeled, “Please Keep the Gate Closed”. It was fully open. Utter disregard. Not even a please does the job these days.
randomThe Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, or NATO phonetic alphabet, was created to clearly communicate the spelling of words. So many people these days are inventing their own! It doesn’t help, at all.
In love with the work of Max. Specifically minimator, graxel, breaklock, commitbeat, and vivus. Go browse his repositories, you will not be disappointed!
random tubesLearning how to fly, just like birds do, it’s quite easy. But don’t take my words for it, read it all by yourself—the illustrated version is awesome! I am talking—if you haven’t followed the previous links—about “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
random tubesThere is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
We long thought T-Rexes were extinct. Imagine our surprise, and utter panic, when we found this one laying on the parking lot next to our car. Lucky for us they were a friendly one, so after exchanging pleasantries we left them on the grass—which is much closer to their natural habitat.
humour randomA FĂ©lix MarĂa SerafĂn SĂĄnchez de Samaniego flable, “La serpiente y la lima”, losely translated from Spanish, while aiming to keep the original rythm.
randomA locksmith’s home, so they say, the Serpent slithered in one day. And foolishly, it bit with might, a steel File, sharp and bright.
“Fool!” the File then did proclaim, “The harm will be your game! How dare you try to make a dent in me, who turns hard metal into dust, you see?”
Whoever tries without good cause, to bring the stronger down, and pause, will only manage, in their plight, to kick against a goad with all their might.
Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) is sunsetting in the near future. Soon it will change colours to become the “Black Screen of Death” (BSOD). Get it? LOL.
“The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen youâd see during a Windows update. But it will list the stop code and faulty system driver that you wouldnât always see during a crash dump.”
I dont think the change is enough. The message should be something more substantial, specific, and clear.
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