Links of Interest (March 5th 2009 through August 13th 2009)

Audible.com to sell 2 DRM-FREE titles
It appears Audible.com is going to try releasing Cory Doctorow's next two audiobooks without DRM (a first for Audible.com as far as I know).

Skulpt
"Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python."

Modernizr
Modernizr is a Javascript library that allows client side detection of CSS3 and HTML5 browser features. It allows you to write CSS with conditionals through one of my personal favorite bits of CSS magic: classes on the body tag. It also gives you the ability to do the same in our Javascript.

epub-tools
A collection of open source (BSD) tools for generating and managing ePub documents. Adobe's Java based EPUBGen was just added. Tools now exist for conversion to ePub from Word, RTF, DocBook, TEI, and FictionBook.

Doozers Get "Fraggle Rock" Spin-Off
It's animated, and aimed at ages four to seven, but I'll probably check it out with the kids.

The Zelazny Project
"We plan to print a complete collection of Roger Zelazny's short fiction and poetry, in (most likely) six hardcover volumes. We expect to include all published fiction and poetry we can find, however obscurely published, and a number of unpublished works retrieved from Zelazny's archived papers. We also expect to include the shorter early versions of several novels, several novel excerpts that were published independently as short works and a few of Zelazny's articles on topics of interest to him."

Links of Interest (February 5th 2009 through February 24th 2009)

Plugin Authors, Are you making the best of Readme.txt?
A comprehensive guide to where the WordPress Plugin Directory pulls the data it displays. A must read for plugin developers. Especially important with the recent changes to the directory's search capabilities.

Cross-Browser Inline-Block
If you've ever tried to create a flexible gallery style layout of elements of varying heights, then this is for you.

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet
A compact reference for HTML5 canvas element.

Dalek War Boxset
This Doctor Who Restoration Team article detais the process of restoring color to "Planet of the Daleks" episode 3. It was theorized some years ago that interference on the surviving 16mm B&W telerecording (made by essentially pointing a film camera at a TV) might contain some valid PAL color subcarrier information. Unable to get funding to investigate the idea (which sounds a bit more far fetched than Dalek's to me), the informal Colour Recovery Working Group was started up online. The group succeeded in recovering color information from the telerecording. Meanwhile the Restoration Team commissioned Legend Films to colorize the episode (a process that's come a long way since Turner, but can still look a bit flat in the end). The finished version blends these two sources together, then processes them via VidFIRE (the process of restoring the original 50 field per second interlaced image from a telecline, another process developed during restoration of Doctor Who episodes).

Bacon Stupidity
For the month of February, Michael J. Nelson (MST3k, Rifftrax) has pledged to eat nothing but bacon. Yup, bacon. All month. Just bacon.

Links of Interest (May 9th 2008 through May 29th 2008)

IETester
IETester is a tool that runs the rendering and javascript engines from IE8b1, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5 in a single process so you can see how each one mangles your site in it’s own unique way (currently in beta).

POC : Implementing HTML 5 Video Element using JavaScript and Flash
A proof of concept allowing use of the ‘video’ tag from the HTML5 draft spec, and having it work, even though browsers don’t yet support it.

Audible.com and Blackstone Audio Royalties
SFFAudio shares some information from Robert J. Sawyer on the royalties he receives from audiobooks.

Characteristic Confusion
While investigating line-height Eric Meyer used font-family: Webdings to display “Oy!” (Webdings doesn’t contain ‘O’, ‘y’, or ‘!’). Firefox 3 unexpectedly displayed “Oy!”, which, it seems, is technically correct, leaving him asking “which is less correc

Growl for Windows – alpha now available
Growl is one of the three apps that excited me enough to buy a Mac, and it’s one I really miss when I’m on my Windows box.

Links of Interest (January 28th 2008 through January 30th 2008)

jQuery Validation plugin overview
Examples of how to use the jQuery Validation plugin 1.2 to provide unobtrusive Javascript validation to forms.
The Dissing of SF
Ever have someone ask you for a favor and simultaneously insult your career? Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer had this happen twice in one hour, and he posted his responses.
JavaScript Pretty Date
John Resig has released a prettyDate Javascript library that can take strings like “2008-01-28T20:24:17Z” and turn them into “2 hours ago”. It works standalone or as a jQuery plugin.
JavaScript Memory Leak Detector
Paolo Severini of Microsoft’s Global Product Development team has released a utility to help find Javascript memory leaks in IE. It can be set to detect things that would leak in IE6, things that would leak in IE7, or actual leaks.
Getting HTML 5 styles in IE 7+
Possibly the most interesting thing to come out of the X-UA-Compatible discussions was this method for allowing IE7+ to apply styles to elements it doesn’t support.
Tags: , , , ,
Write to Done
A friend (thanks Kate) recommended this spin off of zenhabits.net which is billed as “Unmissable articles on writing. Twice weekly.” So far it’s living up to it’s promise.
MD044 – Stan Lee Interview
Veronica Belmont interviews Stan Lee on Mahalo Daily. I never get tired of seeing interviews with Stan Lee. Maybe it’s his voice.