So I need to generate a PDF, using data coming out of a Rails-based app. I started looking at Prawn and Prawnto, but I need to prepend the PDF with some boilerplate material, ideally another PDF. In other words, I'd like to programmatically generate …
Read more… • Posted in: programming, ruby on rails • Comments (3)
I love this detail from Brandon Sanderson's explanation of the decision to turn the final Wheel of Time novel into 3 parts:
When I'd mentioned 400k to him once, he'd been wary. He explained to me that he felt 400k was unprintably large in today's publishing …
Read more… • Posted in: books, fantasy, links
Some things should be, on the contrary, celebrated for their very groundedness and averageness and relatability. Human interest stories — when they're of true human interest (rather than the products of cable's attempts to sensationalize the serious …
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This has to be one of my favorite TED talks:
Read more… • Posted in: games, play, ted-talks, video
Matt Bors points out that political cartoons are frequently described, maybe attributed to a paper, but rarely to an author.
It may seem like a small gripe, but this is routinely how cartoons are referenced in the media. You would never quote a brilliant …
Read more… • Posted in: links, rant
If you're over 30, you'll probably press a doorbell with your index finger, while anyone under 30 may well use their thumb.
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There's a fascinating article at CJR, "What We Didn't Know Has Hurt Us", about the explosion of classified documents under the Bush administration.
I found this bit mind-boggling:
Far more troubling was the revelation in 2006 that more than twenty-five …
Read more… • Posted in: links, politics, secrecy
So, the original story goes something like this: girl buys laptop, laptop comes with (gasp!) Linux, Linux isn't compatible with her High-Speed Internet or her college classes. Girl drops out of the college.
The original article isn't great journalism …
Read more… • Posted in: geek-culture, madison, media, tech stuff
So, you think things are bad? The Washington Post can tell you just how bad, in glorious, sickening detail:
President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists …
Read more… • Posted in: econ, news, politics
I had a pretty amazingly good 2008, all things considered. I traveled a lot: this was the first year of my life where I can say that I spoke four languages …
Read more… • Posted in: words, year-in-review