I've just had my lunch, now you can have yours:
Happy invoicing!
- Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering - "I have decided to release this free ebook version of Hacking the Xbox in honor of Aaron Swartz... you will find the story of when I was an MIT graduate student, extracting security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox. You’ll also read about the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft." Andrew "bunnie" Huang's book covers all kinds of hardware and software hacking of the Xbox, from the basics of getting inside, to replacing a power supply, to searching for back doors in the security subsystems.
- What it’s like to die - Sash Mackinnon went into ventricular fibrillation at the age of 21: "Six months ago, I died. I have no recollection of the event, but I've heard the story retold so many times that I may as well have seen it all. I was at the gym in my apartment complex with my roommate, Sam. I was running on the treadmill when I turned and told him I was going to faint. I collapsed and fell onto the still-moving belt, which tore the skin off my knee and pushed me onto the floor. Sam was shocked. He called for help. A personal trainer and her client ran over, called an ambulance, and assisted Sam in giving me CPR while my body slowly drained of color."
- Book of Kells Now Free to View Online - Something to help you get over your St. Patrick's hangover: "The Book of Kells transparencies, originally captured by Faksimile Verlag, Lucerne, Switzerland in 1990, have recently been rescanned using state of the art imaging technology. These new digital images offer the most accurate high resolution images to date, providing an experience second only to viewing the book in person."
- Python 3.3 on an Atari: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 - "Back in 2011, I successfully attempted to get Python 2.7 running on the Atari platform, culminating in a PyOhio presentation demonstrating the port... After having a subsequent talk rejected from PyCon (twice, actually, and I”m starting to think nobody cares about Python on the Atari…), I let the project simply fade. Over the last few weeks, however, I decided to give it a shot once again for fun." Self-confessed Fortran Nut Jeff Armstrong takes a break from formula translation to get the latest version of Python up and running on the Atari ST.
- Hans Sloane and the Pit - "Headlines today: “‘Black Death pit’ unearthed by Crossrail project“. It’s all very exciting when London starts to dig deep under its surface, with various plague pits, Bronze Age transport networks and more being unearthed... In the eighteenth century, building on a plague pit was a matter of national concern. On 16 March 1723, The British Journal (iss. XXVI) reported that Richard Mead and Sloane had been consulted on the matter of Lord Craven wanting to build over the Pest-House Fields."
- The 5 Biggest Cheaters in Game Show History - Link courtesy of northernladuk: "On game shows, cheaters never win. However, they can come pretty close sometimes. Here are the five biggest game show heists by four sinister people who almost got away with it, and one who totally did."
- Color Theory and Mapping - "Maps are the most common way to visually represent large amounts of data, and the most effective way when the geographic data is intrinsic to the story... Color plays a significant role in the user experience, or reader comprehension, so its effects are among of the first things you need to think about as a developer." Miranda Mulligan explains the factors you need to take into account when mapping your data.
- The Beatles - Entertaining reminiscences of 1962 by Christopher Priest: "Everyone of a certain generation has a story to tell about The Beatles, and this is CP's. This true account was written in 1986, nearly a quarter of a century after the events took place... Very little of the story was reshaped in the interests of telling it: almost everything happened more or less exactly as described. A few names were changed, but everyone mentioned in the story is real."
- Knobfeel: reviews based purely on the feel of the knob - Surprisingly, given that title, it's SFW: "Well, here is a treat! The Cambridge Audio 851A Amplifier. Fantastic weight here, and lovely texture. Also, a first for me… They’ve clearly thought about the axial skew on the Knob, so have dampened it with what feels like rubber. So although it is present, it’s like a boat on an ocean of rotation. First class Knob Feel here! Bravo!"
- Vintage Science Fiction Book Covers - Yet another extensive collection of sci-fi book covers. "Vintage" appears to refer to the stories, as this is a 2009 cover for Nevil Shute's On the Beach (which BTW is one of my favourite books; I have a first edition I found in a bookshop in Cheltenham on my birthday some years ago):
Happy invoicing!
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