David Ehlers

I recently had a ie6 that only broke when using digest authentication, all other browsers worked fine. Hence, yet another ie6 specific hack…

From Apache:

The Digest authentication implementation in previous Internet Explorer for Windows versions (5 and 6) had issues, namely that GET requests with a query string were not RFC compliant. There are a few ways to work around this issue.

The first way is to use POST requests instead of GET requests to pass data to your program. This method is the simplest approach if your application can work with this limitation.

Since version 2.0.51 Apache also provides a workaround in the AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack environment variable. If AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack is set for the request, Apache will take steps to work around the MSIE bug and remove the query string from the digest comparison. Using this method would look similar to the following.

This workaround is not necessary for MSIE 7, though enabling it does not cause any compatibility issues or significant overhead.

See the <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_setenvif.html#browsermatch">BrowserMatch</a> directive for more details on conditionally setting environment variables

Video here: Edward Tuft on the iPhone UI

My favorite line: computer administrative debris

Interface design and the iPhone

“The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly
intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on
traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads
to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with
“Where am I?” puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time. To do so requires increasing the information resolution of the screen by the hardware
(higher resolution screens) and by screen design (eliminating screen-hogging
computer administrative debris, and distributing information adjacent in space).”

These two open source scripts are very useful when combined with cron:

s3 Tools : http://sourceforge.net/projects/s3tools/

OpenSource tools to access Amazon S3 file storage. s3cmd - unix-like tools to manipulate stored files from the command line, s3fuse - driver to mount the S3 storage locally.

and

automysqlbackup : http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

A script to take daily, weekly and monthly backups of your MySQL databases using mysqldump. Features - Backup mutiple databases - Single backup file or to a seperate file for each DB - Compress backup files - Backup remote servers

2D ActionScript 3.0 Physics Engine

APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License. APE by Alec Cove. 

This thing is more fun than Gears of War. Heck, it even has Mochi as an element

http://www.octaveengine.com/en/

” OE-CAKE! is demonstration software for 2D-based multi-physics simulation. 
In a way similar to drawing images using paint software, users create objects and can see them move according to the laws of physics. This software supports various physical materials with real life properties such as fluids, gases, rigid (hard) objects and elasticity (soft) objects as building blocks. Users can combine these objects to create and play with more complex objects and mechanisms such as cars, gears and moving dolls. Users can also attach pictures and photos to objects and change their shape, break them apart, or melt them. ”

I love this “shell” interface to google.

http://goosh.org/