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Here when I thought I was just the holsters and hand guards testing guy, our editorial staff throws me for a loop. I’m now responsible for targets as well, and today’s entry is the Target Factory Complete Target Frame. … Read More
The post Gear Review: Target Factory Complete Target Frame appeared first on The Truth About Guns.
via The Truth About Guns
Gear Review: Target Factory Complete Target Frame
I don’t care that I supposedly understand how vinyl records work because I still totally think they’re the work of at least some low level sorcery. Trapping sound and music and voices? Come on! Anyways, my disbelief aside of analog technology aside, here’s a cool microscope view of vinyl records being played.
The video by Applied Science also delves into how they managed to capture the footage using an electron microscope. A little bit technical but really interesting stuff.
via Gizmodo
Incredible microscope view of a vinyl record playing in slow motion
A researcher who studied the posture of people who experience virtually no back pain offers us a few exercises to get that pain-free life ourselves. One involves a simple breathing exercise, another asks us to clench our butts.
Esther Gokhale found that villagers in Ecuador, Portugal, and West Africa had differently shaped spines compared to Americans: J-shaped rather than S-shaped spines. She was able to eliminate her back pain—and that of her clients—by working to get the spine into that J shape.
She shares some of the exercises for better posture and less back pain on NPR. The breathing exercise is the easiest and you’ll likely notice a difference right away:
Lengthen your spine: Adding extra length to your spine is easy, Gokhale says. Being careful not to arch your back, take a deep breath in and grow tall. Then maintain that height as you exhale. Repeat: Breathe in, grow even taller and maintain that new height as you exhale. “It takes some effort, but it really strengthens your abdominal muscles,” Gokhale says.
Another strategy is to squeeze your glute muscles (or buttocks muscles, particularly the gluteus medius, which is high up on your bum) when you walk, since those muscles support your lower back. As a bonus, you might also end up with a more shapely butt.
Check out the NPR article for more tips on improving your posture and getting rid of back pain.
Lost Posture: Why Some Indigenous Cultures May Not Have Back Pain | NPR
Photo by Bigstock.
via Lifehacker
Improve Posture and Reduce Back Pain with a Quick Breathing Exercise
Consider yourself lucky if the plane takes off and you have an empty seat next to you, no strangers to deal with. Travel Codex offers a few strategies to increase your chances of getting lucky.
The “rules” are for sitting in coach on an international flight, but also can apply to domestic flights. For example, even if there are many empty seats available when you select your seats, it’s possible the plane will still fill up by the time of departure. You’ll have a better chance of having no one sit next to you if you choose a seat in the back (particularly an aisle seat, since many people dislike climbing over strangers on the plane):
[Many customers don’t pick seats ahead of time.] If those passengers wait until they check-in, the gate agent might select a seat for them. The gate agent will make some effort to space out passengers, but when things get full they generally move from front to back. If you are worried about a flight selling out and losing the empty seat next to you, sit in the back because that seat will stay empty longer than any of the others.
The article also recommends looking for a cabin configuration, if possible, of 2-3-2 or 2-4-2 seats rather than 3-3-3, because there are fewer middle seats per row. If you don’t have any options except that center section, choose a spot that leaves only one empty seat next to you rather than a lot of empty seats, since people will be more likely to try to sit elsewhere.
None of these tips will assure you an empty seat next to you, but they’re worth a try if you want to minimize your exposure to rude seatmates or gabby ones.
How to Pick a Seat in Coach for International Travel | Travel Codex
via Lifehacker
The Best Place to Sit in Coach If You Hope for an Empty Seat Next to You
It’s becoming very common these days for people to “back up” their DVDs and Blu-Rays onto their computer. This despite the fact that the exact legality for making backups is murky at best. But my own personal opinion is that “if you own it, you can do what you want with it”. Watch it, burn it, eat it, use it as a frisbee in the park, whatever. But how do you do it? Which programs are the best at ripping those disks? Which ones eat copy protection for breakfast? Here are nine free tools to consider. MakeMKV Intuitive cross-platform tool to rip…
Read the full article: 9 Tools to Easily Rip Your DVDs & Blu-Rays to Your Computer
via MakeUseOf
9 Tools to Easily Rip Your DVDs & Blu-Rays to Your Computer
While companies like Facebook have been relatively open about their data center networking infrastructure, Google has generally kept pretty quiet about how it connects the thousands of servers inside its data centers to each other (with a few exceptions). Today, however, the company revealed a little bit more about the technology that lets its servers talk to each other. It’s no… Read More
via TechCrunch
Google Pulls Back Curtain On Its Data Center Networking Setup
If you draw a diagram of information flow and interaction amongst teams and processes in IT, you’ll probably find that although some parts of the organization are “leaf” or “edge” nodes, the people who manage the data are not. The DBAs would usually be one of the lavender circles in the chart to the right, not a blue circle.
DBAs also occupy a central position in the continuum of skills:
• On one hand, they have to understand a lot about how the application code works, because application developers are their customers.
• On the other hand, they need to understand how the application runs in production, because operations staff are also their customers.
DBAs end up knowing a lot about everything, and because they can develop this all-encompassing set of skills and knowledge, the organization relies on them to do so.
Consider the old adage, “if you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” That applies well to DBAs. Meanwhile, developers and operations staff usually don’t experience this as much, because their knowledge sits against one edge of the continuum from Dev to Ops. At the edges, there’s a natural position of rest and withdrawal from “someone else’s job,” but in the center, there’s a tendency to become spread too thin, being drawn to fill that vacuum.
It is vitally important to provide active backpressure against this tendency to enlarge the scope of the DBA’s job. Not to contain, limit, or constrain the DBA per se. In fact, a strategic manager needs to do quite the opposite: enlarge the scope of the Dev and Ops staff’s jobs, so they actually assume more database administration duties themselves. You can enjoy multiple benefits as a result:
Better shared understanding of the vital data systems.
Empathy and improved communication across teams.
More focus and specificity for the DBA’s role and responsibilities.
What happens if instead of doing this, you try to manage down cost, resources, and involvement in your DBA team and data management function? You make your central bottlenecks worse for everyone, but because you’re starving that function while other functions depend on it, the problems will manifest at a distance.
That is why the DBA team’s support for development and operations is so strategic. It’s a vital role in overall data competency for the organization. If you don’t manage it carefully, you’ll potentially bottleneck and stall your entire IT organization.
We will close with a quote from Percona’s founder and CEO, Peter Zaitsev:
Too often customers do not even give their developers access to support, even though these developers are critical in realizing the full value of their application… developers often have to resort to Google to find an answer—and often end up with inapplicable, outdated or simply wrong information. Combined with this, they often apply or resort to time-consuming trial and error.
If you are interested in learning more about building an effective DBA team, download our free eBook.
via Planet MySQL
The Strategic Importance of Database Administration
Think of your favorite open databases. I’m sure Wikipedia and IMDb instantly spring to mind, but you might not be in the need of all that knowledge ever, or a comprehensive database of all things entertainment. Sometimes you need a bit of VLDB (Very Large Data Base) flavor. Something to spice up your data analysis. Something to put the “big” in your big data. Whelp, good person, you’re in the right place. Here are 15 massive online databases you can access and analyze for free, or just peruse at your leisure. 1000 Genomes The 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project…
Read the full article: 15 Massive Online Databases You Should Know About
via MakeUseOf
15 Massive Online Databases You Should Know About
Bed-and-desk combos are great for students or anyone else short on space. Today’s featured workspace is an impressive DIY project combining a spacious place to work and room to nap or turn in for the night.
Flickr user Bartek Woltanski designed the bed with desk and drawers in SketchUp and then put everything together. The light wood color stands out nicely against the dark wall. We’ve seen similar projects before, but this one is especially impressive as Woltanski’s first woodworking project.
If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.
Student DIY Workspace | Flickr
Some of us have switched to standing or walking desks to avoid the possible damaging effects of sitting all day. But these desks may not be a cure-all, for a few reasons.
First, even if people who sit all day are less healthy, that may not mean that a standing or walking desk will improve your health. A few experts weighed in with skepticism in a Boston Globe article:
“Standing all day isn’t the answer,” said Alan Hedge, a design and ergonomics professor at Cornell University. “That’s where we were 100 years ago, and we needed to develop chairs to prevent curvature of the spine, backaches, and varicose veins.”
While standing still burns a few more calories as our hearts work harder to circulate blood upward, it also puts more strain on our veins, backs, and joints, especially if we’re overweight.
“Studies haven’t yet determined how much standing helps healthwise,” said Dr. I-Min Lee, an associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who has studied the risks of sedentary behavior. In population studies, researchers haven’t been able to determine whether the health benefits of reduced sitting time stem from moving around more or from standing still. And results on whether exercise reduces the health risks of sitting are conflicting.
Another hiccup may come when you look at the effects of walking while working, not on your body, but on your work. A small study published in PLOS One found that people at treadmill desks fared worse on tests of learning, attention, and typing. The subjects weren’t accustomed to working on a treadmill, though, so the effects may be temporary.
When I tried a standing desk, I found it was harder to think. Then again, perhaps I should have tried it for more than ten minutes.
If you’ve tried a non-sitting desk, how did it work out for you? Was there a difficult transition period, and how long did it take to get over it? Definitely tell us how long you’ve been happily using the desk, or if you quit, tell us why!
Photo by Kiran Jonnalagadda.
Vitals is a new blog from Lifehacker all about health and fitness. Follow us on Twitter here.