TechCrunch is slipping quickly down the slope of technical embarrassment.
After she learned Python, Trigger then had to complete a Django tutorial in order to bring the Python online — she used Heroku to push stuff to a webserver.
This was the first time in WordPress history that a changeset number matched the ticket number that it fixed. I’m calling it a supercommit.
Gravatar emails should be trimmed before being lowered and hashed. props evansolomon. fixes
#19614.
Core revision #18742
wp_strip_all_tags() in wp_trim_words() to remove CSS and JS within tags. Props evansolomon. Fixes
#18726.
One month ago I bought a DNA kit from 23andme and I just got my results. There is far too much data to make any real sense of on first glace, but it’s certainly fun if nothing else.
I have lower than average risks of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — about 30% and 15% lower, respectively. I have a 75% lower than average risk of type 1 diabetes, but a slightly higher (8%) than average risk of type 2.
Of all the diseases I am at high risk for, Venous Thromboembolism (causes blood clots and things) and prostate cancer are at the top. I have about a 1/3 chance of getting each of them. Additionally, I carry one known problematic trait, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency, which makes parts of my body (particularly fragile lung tissue) less able to protect itself from an enzyme released by white blood cells. This increases my risk for lung and liver diseases. I am more sensitive than average to warfarin, a commonly used blood thinner, which means that if I ever need it my optimal dose would be smaller than normal. On a bright note, I have decreased risk of male pattern baldness.
Overall I’m quite “typical” according to 23andme. Most of my appearance factors (hair curl, freckling, etc) fall into the typical range, as do most of my chemical predilections (food preference, alcoholism risk, etc). My ear wax stands out as “wet”, my non-verbal IQ (whatever that is) is likely to be slightly higher, my likelihood of complications if I contract malaria are higher than normal (something I’m glad I didn’t know before going to Vietnam) and my odds of menopause are unsurprisingly not applicable.
My genes corroborate the stories that my mom’s family was northern European and my dad’s was eastern European Jews. This makes me — and this will come as a surprise to literally no one that has met me — overwhelmingly white:
I wrote a post for a new blog I helped start called Perfecting The Upset.
The 1997 Masters is my earliest golf memory, which probably doesn’t make me unique among mid-20′s Americans. What does make me unique is why I remember that tournament. When asked about anyone in the field catching Tiger Woods after Saturday’s third round, Colin Montgomerie said:
“There’s no chance humanly possible that Tiger is going to lose this tournament. No way.”
Read the rest of the post over on Perfecting The Upset.
Despite lots of travel, I’ve squeezed five GolfTec lessons into the last three weeks, with a round at Half Moon Bay Old Course in the middle. Progress is great and my ball striking is improving dramatically — two birdies, lots of good swings and just a few loose ones — and I’m feeling good heading into The Annual.
The lessons have been pretty consistently focused on getting my club on plane and shortening my swing. We worked a lot on “getting to impact faster,” which meant both speeding up my tempo and abbreviating my backswing. The result is a swing the is a lot simpler than what I started with — looking at it, it’s hard to believe that I’m hitting the ball as far, if not further than before, given how little motion there is.
Since my last trip to GolfTech was technically a swing evaluation session rather than a lesson, today was my first lesson.
Last time we worked mostly on my takeaway, getting my shoulders controlling my swing rather than my arms and decreasing the angle in my wrists.
Today still focused mostly on takeaway, but on my swing plane and keeping the club face square through most of my swing rather than opening it and flipping it shut at impact.
A couple weeks ago Nick Momrik introduced me to GolfTec, a data-heavy golf teaching company. Last week I took my first lesson (technically a swing evaluation) and it was great. I’ve been wanting to take some golf lessons for a while but hesitated because I didn’t want to just randomly pick an instructor. GolfTec appealed to me because of how committed they are to using analytics. Also, you get a ton of materials from your lessons to go over at home…as you’re about to see.
First, the “before” swing with a 6 iron:
A Deadspin reader tells a heart-wrenching story of a relationship gone awry. In addition to feeling sympathetic for the guy, it also occurred to me that this is the sort of thing that UI design should really be all about. Screw usertesting.com, put yourself in your real customers’ shoes.
I have often wondered why Facebook put their search box right next to the “tell this to everyone in the world” box.
My status update was just the girls from the previous night name about ten times, often within a couple seconds of each other. To make matters worse about half of them had the caps lock on. This clearly made me look like I was beyond obsessed, and potentially a serial killer.
Full story on Deadspin.
