r7000

Try http://builtwith.com

Reflecting today I believe Jim's inspiring message to us is to live life to the fullest even if that requires participation in extreme sports.

Jim did not write a letter. He was the "author" of the sentiment (according to the speaker) by the way he lived his life.

"A message from Babbage's Life..." is too long. A title can trade ambiguity for elegance if the essay is clear.

Like many words in English it does not have such a discrete meaning.

A story or experience can have a "message" the same way it might have a "moral". In fact "moral" is often defined as: the message conveyed by a story.

"Example" would have been a poorer word in its place.

My recent traffic from HN (a few hundred hits):

Chrome: 55% Firefox: 30% Safari: 9% IE: 4% Other: 2%

Interesting stat tidbit:

Browser stats for Mac users only:

Safari: 75%, Firefox: 20.2%, Chrome: 4.5%

I noticed IE drop below 50% last spring on http://flashcarddb.com

It dropped from 50.17% in March to 49.05% in April, continuing to steadily decrease since then.

My traffic is about 70% North American. I have many students. Macintosh is a 20% slice of my OS pie and Safari isn't too far behind Firefox in browser share.

September => IE: 48%, Firefox: 24%, Safari: 16%, Chrome: 10%

My webapp: http://flashcarddb.com/

Maybe surfing the net is more addictive than reading a book.

r/coding is not bad

We were just outside the "secure zone" for the G20 when we felt the rumbling and shaking. Two large U.S. military/governmental helicopters (they said "United States of America" on the side) were taking off from just beside the CN Tower. Man those Americans have powerful helicopters we thought.

Actually two of my friends ended up married to Finnish-Canadians: one from a Northern Ontario family (Thunder Bay) and one recently from Finland. So if we go by personal anecdote Canada is indeed full of Finns. :)

When it comes to cultural homogeneity Canada and Finland are not at all more similar than Canada and the U.S. - which was the issue here. Perhaps the Canadian and Finnish educational systems have more in common than with the U.S. which may have been your point.

Does being officially bilingual, northern, and woodsy have an impact on PISA rankings?

Finns do not make up a large or even a moderate proportion of Canada's population.

Yes Linus is from the Swedish-speaking minority - about 5% of the population right? However, I don't think you are disagreeing that Canadian schools have much more ethnic and linguistic diversity than Finnish schools.

Canada also scores highly in PISA rankings. However it is officially bilingual, has high immigration, many ESL and FSL students.

Within Canada: Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec score higher than the national average and they are the provinces with the highest in-migration.

Are there any reasons to believe that is relevant?

If you take PISA scores to be a good indicator than there are homogeneous and non-homogeneous societies near the top and bottom.

Canada ranks right up there with Finland every year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA sometimes topping Finland in a category. It is easy to find countries that are culturally homogeneous near the bottom of the rankings as well.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series.

A very enjoyable description of the pinnacle of pre-Industrial technology.

Backward? Never. This is the company that changed its name to Consignia and ditched the Crown for a random second-rate swooshy circle thingy.

There is Folkspraak. Although it is meant to be for all Germanic languages (including English) not just the North Germanic languages.

http://www.langmaker.com/folkspraak/folkgrammar.htm

http://www.langmaker.com/folksprk.htm#Introduction

Where I am most companies (from my experience) log on to their bank or other service provider using custom software.

The reasons I commute by transit in Toronto (despite the very accurate drawbacks mentioned above - bring in smart-cards already!) are because it is faster and less expensive. Arguably Montreal's system is better on both counts. The people on the transit system here are the same people you see everywhere in the city.

One note: Toronto never ripped out its streetcar lines. I have always wondered why Toronto's streetcars were spared while most other cities in North America lost theirs.

Hmm, the comments on twitter are much more positive. They are mixed rather than overwhelmingly negative. http://twitter.com/#search?q=thesixtyone

I assume this is because the majority of facebook comments are from "friends" who are more likely to have been regular users already.

Payroll may be difficult to move to the cloud. Like HR it is very personal data. Reporting is potentially a big winner. Taxes too. Very interesting project. Good luck!

Here is my app. Needs some more work on the really intuitive part: http://flashcarddb.com

I use the names of lakes in Algonquin Provincial Park.

You can try my free implementation here: http://flashcarddb.com. You won't be forced to pay for it to keep working.

Hi! It has been by a few people including me. My site is here: http://flashcarddb.com

FlashcardDB allows a choice between two spaced repetition algorithms: Supermemo's SM-2 (like Anki, Mnemosyne) or the Leitner System. New card decks are shared for free.

Take a look at Ryan Bates' Railscasts @ http://railscasts.com. Many are very helpful.

Klavierlack is "piano lacquer". You see that in some high-end automotive advertising.. "black piano lacquer wood trim".

I'd have been in a lot of trouble. I was very sick in my early 20s and from a not so well-off background. The doctor that got me back on track is world-renowned and I was able to waltz right in his office and see him for "free" like anyone else. If I lived in (most?) states I'd probably never even think of quitting my job.