computer history
History of Slashdot, parts 2 and 3
Slashdot posted part three of the their history today. I missed part 2, so here is the link to both.
History of Slashdot.org Part 2
History of Slashdot.org Part 3
Evolution and history of the computer interface, Macintosh style.
Appleinsider is my go to source for Mac news. What I really like about their articles are the in depth, historical explanations of Mac’s new OS features. Some places just tell you what’s new, but appleinsider gives you the background and history of what led to this change or feature. It’s really pretty nifty.
Here are a few favorites about:
The Doc
Virtual Desktops (Spaces)
The Mail application
TimeMachine (backup up utility)
Good to know what to look forward to, and how it came to be.
Slashdot’s history
Something I’ve wondered, and even dreamed of doing, has just been done. Slashdot is ten years old this year, and one of the creators has written a short history, part 1, of the creation.
http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/02/1553218&from=rss
Tabledump
I had the need once again to dump only certain tables from a database, instead of all 100+ tables. This was where I had a database with about 5-8 wordpress installs. I wanted to backup all of the tables for only one install. There is a way with mysqldump to do this, by listing out all of the tables you want to dump. So I just wrote a bash script to take care of making the list of tables to dump.
It has an array of database table names (without the common prefix) in the script. Then it prompts for the mysql user, database, and prefix. It could be changed to prompt for a file that contains a list or array of table names.
Anyhow, here it is for anyone’s use:
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#!/bin/bash
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#—————————————–#
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# Ammon Shepherd #
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# 09.05.07 #
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# Dump a database with only the tables #
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# containing the prefix given. #
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#—————————————–#
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#This is the list of tables in a wordpress install version 2.0
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#tablearray=( categories comments linkcategories links options post2cat postmeta posts usermeta users )
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#THis is the list of tables for wordpress version 1.5.1.2
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#tablearray=( categories comments linkcategories links options post2cat postmeta posts users )
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# This is the array of tables for wordpress version 2.2.2
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tablearray=( categories comments link2cat links options post2cat postmeta posts usermeta users )
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# This array is for wikimedia tables version 1.5.1
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#tablearray=( archive categorylinks hitcounter image imagelinks interwiki ipblocks logging math objectcache oldimage page pagelinks querycache recentchanges revision searchindex site_stats text trackbacks user user_groups user_newtalk validate watchlist )
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#tablearray=( mw_archive mw_blobs mw_brokenlinks mw_categorylinks mw_cur mw_hitcounter mw_image mw_imagelinks mw_interwiki mw_ipblocks mw_links mw_linkscc mw_logging mw_math mw_objectcache mw_old mw_oldimage mw_querycache mw_recentchanges mw_searchindex mw_site_stats mw_user mw_user_newtalk mw_user_rights mw_validate mw_watchlist )
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echo “This will dump just the tables with the specified prefix from the specified database.”
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echo -n “Enter the database: “
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read dbase
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echo -n “Enter the table prefix: “
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read prefix
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echo -n “The mysql user: “
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read user
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for tablename in ${tablearray[@]}
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do
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tablelist+=“$prefix$tablename “
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done
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`mysqldump -u $user -p –opt $dbase $tablelist > $dbase.$prefix.bak.sql`
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exit 0
History of special effects.
Who doesn’t love a good special effects movie? Of course, when you can’t tell that there are special effects, that’s when you know it’s a good movie.
I stumbled upon this article at AmericanHeritage.com, that describes the beginnings of Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ personal special effects company, makers of all cool films (especially Star Wars). This article also describes another sort of paradigm shift in the film industry.
Personally, these types of effects are my favorite. Using real things in innovative ways. I think it’s unfortunate, in a way, that so many of the stunts and effects are digital. I like the good, old fashioned effects where objects are real, made from real things, like the mother ship on “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” (the movie I haven’t seen, but the ship I have).
Anyhow, it was a good article.
And, just as a side note, I always fear losing these web articles, until now. I use Zotero which allows me to store, sort, tag and view web pages, books, and all sorts of stuff. I’ll be using it to collect data for my research projects this year. It’s also made by the good guys at the Center for History and New Media, where I work. 
- Shameless plug!