Jeff, the diseased lung and hopefully new mascot of Marlboro. Thanks LWT.
Is it better to be fearful or fearless?
“It seems like such an odd bargain. If you have no fear, more terrible things will happen to you, but you don’t personally experience them as terrible. If you have a lot of fear, fewer bad things are likely to happen, but it’s very probable that your life is more painful to you. So is it better to be fearful or fearless? Which side of the continuum do you choose?”
From NPR’s new podcast, Invisibilia, Fearless. A transcript is also available.
NPR’s Serial podcast was the hottest thing last year in the podcast world. People started listening to podcasts who had never done so before to follow the story. I hated it. They dragged things out and I got bored and unsubscribed after 3 or 4 episodes. Invisibilia is NPR back on form. It’ll blow your mind. Great show.
Sultan Delight on McCurtain Street
Sultan Delight is a new shop opened on McCurtain Street, Cork, near the Everyman and if this post by Billy Lyons is right, near where the famous Hadji Bey had his shop until the 1970s.
The shop sells chocolate, Turkish Delight, teas and coffees, spices, cakes, biscuits and more. The chocolate on display is delicious! I had a Chocolate Orange and it was lovely. It’s very sweet and filling so you wouldn’t eat too many. The Chocolate Mint is really nice too and there’s a Chocolate Smarty in the fridge here at home I’m eyeing up but my son has first dibs on that. I’m sure he’ll share with his Dad. Yeah.
I also tried a delicious biscuit but I can’t remember what it was called so you’ll have to take my word on it that it was tasty. All the food is hand made, prepared by the owner, Yosra or the chefs at the nearby Sultan Restaurant. There’s also a small alcove in the back where you can enjoy a cup of your favourite beverage and a snack.
Go pay them a visit and look around. It’s wonderful to see such a selection of food in a small shop, you’ll love it!
How to improve your sleep in seconds….
In this post Richard Wiseman recommends reducing the use of screens late at night because of the blue light emitted by them as that can keep you awake for longer.
I read books on my phone but I use Screen Filter To bring the brightness way down. Once I start reading a book I generally get sleepy within a dozen words or so! Anyway, I just installed the Twilight app that changes the temperature of the screen at different times of the day. At night it will make the screen go slightly red. I’ll give it a go tonight. Maybe I’ll look at the screen and fall into a deep sleep..
The irony is, I’m typing this at my PC where I should really have something like f.lux installed if I’m that worried about it.
#ThanksObama
r/ThanksObama no longer accepts submissions as he used the joke himself. If the video goes down, look at the following URLs for mirrors:
Even Barbie uses Vim
via tumblr and r/vim
PHP Notice: Undefined variable: _SERVER in ..
I upgraded Linux on this server a while back and in the course of that upgrade PHP was upgraded too, to version 5.5.9.
Since I had a modified php.ini it asked me to check over any new options. There were a few but I fixed anything that looked like it might break things. I saved the php.ini and let the upgrade go on.
Some time later I saw odd notices in the PHP error log. Usually it referred to wp-comments-post.php but files outside of WordPress raised the warning too:
PHP Notice: Undefined variable: _SERVER in ..
It turns out the fix is rather easy. Jacques Marneweck on his blog posted a solution. Simply switch off “auto_globals_jit” in your php.ini and restart Apache (if required).
From the PHP manual entry for auto_globals_jit:
When enabled, the SERVER and ENV variables are created when they’re first used (Just In Time) instead of when the script starts. If these variables are not used within a script, having this directive on will result in a performance gain.
The PHP directives register_globals, register_long_arrays, and register_argc_argv must be disabled for this directive to have any affect. Since PHP 5.1.3 it is not necessary to have register_argc_argv disabled.
It looks like the bug is ancient although I’m not using APC, and the JIT compiler can be fooled if you access the super globals like _SERVER through variable variables. Sneaky!
The default for auto_globals_jit is “On” so next time you upgrade PHP keep an eye on the error log.
B/W HDR Look in Lightroom
Anthony Morganti uses an interesting technique to create photos with a black and white HDR look in Lightroom. It can transform a photo so it looks something like this. (I added a vignette as well.)
It doesn’t suit all photos of course, it’s also only a starting point as you should develop your photos in whatever way you desire. To avoid repeating all those steps every time I created a Lightroom preset.
Grab that file and install it in the same way you’d install any Lightroom preset. What d’you think?
Robert Rodriguez Jr on Landscape Photography
A thoughtful, frank video from a very talented photographer.
The Slavery of Information
If you produce content that can appear online you should listen to Wil Wheaton read the first chapter of Cory Doctorow’s book, “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free”.