Key & Peele imagine how Pres. Obama greets different kind of people. As in white people and black people. Handshakes for the others, hug and kisses for the brothers and sisters. Apparently the President was into New Era caps.
via The Awesomer
Key & Peele: Obama Meet & Greet
Dilbert 2014-09-24
Obama Presses China On Global Warming
HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that President Obama spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Summit and challenged China to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming. Obama’s words were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the U.S. if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015. The U.S. and China bear a "special responsibility to lead," said Obama. "That’s what big nations have to do." The U.S., Obama said, would meet a pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020 — a goal that is in large part expected to be met through proposed EPA regulation. There were indications that China might be ready with its own plan, although many experts say they will be skeptical until Chinese officials reveal the details. A senior Chinese official said his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions "as early as possible." This suggests the Chinese government, struggling with air pollution so extreme that it has threatened economic growth, regularly kept millions of children indoors and ignited street protests, was determined to show faster progress in curbing emissions. In recent years, the Chinese government has sent other signals about addressing carbon pollution, some of them encouraging to environmental experts. "Five years ago, it was almost unimaginable to discuss China putting a cap on carbon, but now that is happening," said Lo Sze Ping, chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Beijing. "Chinese leaders have seen that it is imperative to move toward a low-carbon economy."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 GA has been released
The MySQL developer tools team announces 6.2.3 as our GA release for MySQL Workbench 6.2.MySQL Workbench 6.2 is the new version for the official MySQLgraphical development tool .MySQL Workbench 6.2 focuses on support for innovations released in MySQL5.6 and MySQL 5.7 DMR (Development Release) as well as MySQL Fabric 1.5,with features such as: A new spatial data viewer, allowing graphical views of result sets containing GEOMETRY data and taking advantage of the new GIS capabilities in MySQL 5.7. Support for new MySQL 5.7.4 SQL syntax and configuration options. Metadata Locks View shows the locks connections are blocked or waiting on. MySQL Fabric cluster connectivity – Browsing, view status, and connect to any MySQL instance in a Fabric Cluster. MS Access migration Wizard – easily move to MySQL Databases. Other significant usability improvements were made, aiming to raiseproductivity for advanced and new users: Direct shortcut buttons to commonly used features in the schema tree. Improved results handling. Columns have better auto-sizing and their widths are saved. Fonts can also be customized. Results "pinned" to persist viewing data. A convenient Run SQL Script command to directly execute SQL scripts, without loading them first. Database Modeling has been updated to allow changes to the formatting of note objects and attached SQL scripts can now be included in forward engineering and synchronization scripts. Integrated Visual Explain within the result set panel. Visual Explain drill down for large to very large explain plans. Shared SQL snippets in the SQL Editor, allowing multiple users to share SQL code by storing it within a MySQL instance. And much more. The list of provided binaries was updated and MySQL Workbench binariesnow available for: Windows 7 32 and 64bits Mac OS X Lion or newer Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 64bits Fedora 20 64bits Oracle Linux 6.5 64bits Oracle Linux 7 64bits Sources for building in other Linux distributions. Pre-compiled binaries are no longer provided for 32bit Linux distributions, although users may still download and build from sources. Note: Workbench for Windows requires Visual C++ Redistributable forVisual Studio 2013, which can be downloaded from:http://ift.tt/XYqswJ the full list of changes in this revision, visithttp://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/workbench/en/changes-6-2.htmlFor discussion, join the MySQL Workbench Forums:http://ift.tt/1xb39zc MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 now, for Windows, Mac OS X 10.7+, OracleLinux 6 and 7, Fedora 20, Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 or sources,from:http://ift.tt/KHX9aU
via Planet MySQL
MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 GA has been released
How Much Better Is Each New iPhone’s Camera? Here’s An Excellent Comparison
It’s easy to say that the iPhone’s camera has gotten better over time — that’s pretty much a given. But how much better? Lisa Bettany, co-founder of Camera+, decided to put it to the test. Eight generations of iPhone, lined up in a row… all taking the same photo. The results are pretty damn neat. The differences start to get a bit less massive as you reach the… Read More
via TechCrunch
How Much Better Is Each New iPhone’s Camera? Here’s An Excellent Comparison
TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the Alamo…
TrackingPoint has done a pretty good re-enactment video of how the fight at the Alamo went down. Except, you know, with the addition of their Precision Guided Firearms. It is a pretty funny vignette if you have about 4 minutes to spare. And, really, don’t we all fantasize of how historic battles would go down […]
The post TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the Alamo… appeared first on The Firearm Blog.
End of Shirking: 20 Free WordPress Themes Fresh from September 2014
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In between summer and fall, one can easily get surprised while wearing a t-shirt outside. I chuckled quite a few times already. It is then when I like my office most. Sitting in front of the computer with its warm glow, working on WordPress projects harder than ever – well, at least harder than ever since the middle of spring. WordPress is just that kind of a convenient CMS that can get you up and running in no time. Probably that way I can catch up with all the work I have been negligent of. Wait, would I not be quicker if I took a ready-made theme to accelerate things? Lucky me, as Noupe continues with their monthly series of the freshest WordPress themes for self-hosted sites.
via noupe
End of Shirking: 20 Free WordPress Themes Fresh from September 2014
Build a Modern Concrete Fire Pit from Scratch
There a many different ways to construct a fire pit, from a simple ring of stones to something with more modern aesthetic like this poured concrete version. While the project is labor-intensive, you can build it in a weekend for around $150.
If you’ve never worked with concrete before, this gives a basic overview on how to build a form, prep the ground, and pour concrete from a bag mix. These principles can be used for all types of indoor and outdoor projects, and you don’t need much more than a form, wheelbarrow, and garden hoe for mixing the concrete. You can see the full list of materials and a step-by-step tutorial at the link below.
Concrete Fire Pit | Home Made Modern
Workshop is a new blog from Lifehacker all about DIY tips, techniques, and projects. Follow us on Twitter here.
via Lifehacker
Build a Modern Concrete Fire Pit from Scratch
11 Tips to Keep iOS 8 From Destroying Your Battery Life
While iOS 8 comes with plenty of advantages, upgrading to a new operating system is never without its drawbacks. Maybe battery life just ain’t quite what you’d want it to be, but we’ve got some tips to squeeze the most out of that sucker and stay juiced all day long.
Many of the features on your iPhone are handy if you need/want them. If you don’t, they’re just eating away at that precious battery life behind the scenes, and give you exactly zero help for your trouble. So shut ’em down.
Identify problem apps
One of the handiest new tricks in iOS 8 is the ability to see what apps are using the most battery life. You can check on your own personal problem children by going to Settings>>General>>Usage>>Battery Usage where you can find a list of apps that are chewing up your battery life.
Where you go from here depends on the apps in questions. You can always try to stop using the app so much, but chances are there are other measures you can take as well, like turning off location polling or push notifications. We’ll cover those a little later on, so just remember the apps that are topping this list and be sure to check back for new culprits whenever your battery life starts to sag.
Turn off parallax
Parallax is fun, but it’s the definition of "extra." And maybe it even makes you dizzy. Who needs it? Not you. You can turn it off in accessibility settings, by going to Settings>>General>>Accessibility and setting Reduce Motion to on.
Turn off AirDrop/Bluetooth if you’re not going to use it
AirDrop is great when you are AirDropping. The rest of the time it’s just fidgeting in its seat, looking for another device to play with. Turning it off is easy, just swipe up your Control Center, and hit the toggle.
Stop searching for Wi-Fi
There’s no need to have your phone searching for Wi-Fi when there’s no trusted network in sight. You’ll save yourself some trouble if you get in the habit of turning of Wi-Fi from the Control Center when you leave the house. Alternatively, you can go to Settings>>Wi-Fi and turn Ask to Join Networks to off. This way your phone will hop on Wi-Fi networks it knows, but won’t look around for more without direct orders.
Disable location services (for apps that don’t need it)
Google Maps needs to know where you are, yes. But Facebook? Hop over to Settings>>Privacy>>Location Services to get a full list of the apps that are asking about where you are. You can probably turn off about half, and cut down on a lot of GPS polling.
Turn off background app updates
Immediate app updates are rarely a huge deal, but having enough battery always is. Go to Settings>>iTunes & App Store and then scroll down. You’ll see Updates under Automatic Downloads. Turn it off. Just don’t forget to stop by the App Store and update manually now and then. While you are here you can also turn off automatic updates for music in order to prevent U2 albums from appearing on your phone now and in the future.
Turn off background app refreshing
The brutal downside of good multitasking is running things in the background (duh). But if you go to Settings>>General>>Background App Refresh, you can disable background-runnin’ for the apps that aren’t important. Or all of them if you want to go all the way.
Disable auto-brightness
Chances are, auto-brightness keeps you more well-lit than you need to be. You can shut it off and get your mood-lighting on by going to Settings>>Display & Brightness and flipping the toggle. While you’re there, crank that backlight alllll the way down, or as far down as you can handle. If you step outside, that’s what the Control Center is for.
Go on a push notification diet
Not every app needs to push its notifications; that stuff takes power. Go to Settings>>Notifications and scroll down to the Include section. Then go on a toggling spree.
Don’t push; fetch
If your email isn’t that important, or you have a couple of accounts, go turn the low-priority ones to Fetch instead of Push, which means your phone will go retrieve mail at set intervals instead of having it pushed to you every single time Uncle Harry or a spambot blasts you. This one is pretty dependent on how often you get emails and how crucial they are, so you’ll have to feel it out, but you can set to fetch in Settings>>Mail, Contacts, Calendar>>Fetch New Data
Turn off 4G (if times are tough)
Disabling 4G is going to hurt a little but, but desperate times can call for desperate measures and LTE is a battery-burner. You can choke off the data-hose by going to Settings>>Cellular>>Enable LTE/Enable 4G
And treat your battery right in general
But even without all these tweaks, it pays to treat your lithium-ion battery right from the start, especially if you have a new gadget. Just keep on scrolling down for our tips and tricks that’ll work for any phone.
via Gizmodo
11 Tips to Keep iOS 8 From Destroying Your Battery Life
Scented Duct Tape Review: Why Is the Room Spinning?
When nuclear winter strikes, it’s highly likely that cockroaches and duct tape will be all that survives. But just because our new post-apocalyptic wasteland might appear bleak doesn’t mean it has to smell bleak, too. At least, that seems to be the train of thought behind the Duck Tape brand’s new line of scented tapes. Because why else would you ever buy scented duct tape? We decided to try a few rolls and find out.
According to the Duck Tape’s website, the scented duct tape is "sure to add a fragrant pop to your Duck Tape crafts, decorations, and repairs." And that "pop" comes in a wide variety of flavors, each one certain to transport you back to your marker-sniffing elementary school days. The new scents include bubble gum, cupcake, grape, lemon, mint, and orange cream.
First and foremost, let the record show that this sweeter smelling cousin to the handyman’s best friend is not for the faint of heart. In preparing for our smell test, I opened up about a dozen rolls of the stuff at my desk. This was, I soon discovered, a poor choice. Allow this excerpt from the Gizmodo group chat to explain:
With just one roll of tape open, the smell is arguably pleasant. Strong and a little too sweet, certainly, but nothing overtly offensive. But it’s incredible how much that scent manages to waft in all directions. After about ten minutes of messing with the rolls, I began to experience a mild burning sensation in my nose and throat. My desk mates were also less than pleased.
But potential loss of brain cells aside, Duck Tape mostly delivers. At first sniff, you can vaguely tell a difference between each type, and it’s not too hard to see what they’re trying to hint at—when you can see, that is. Our blindfolded volunteers had a hilariously difficult time distinguishing between various versions. Grape seemed to be universally easy to judge, but guessing the rest was a crapshoot.
So what would you ever actually need to use scented duct tape for? Well, nothing really. The scent seems to wear off after a few days, but just five minutes spent with the stuff was plenty for us. At about $7 a pop, it’s a fun novelty for Duck Tape enthusiasts and hoarders alike, but other than that, you’re probably better off sticking with the classic silver—a silver that’s mercifully scent-free. Your friends and family will thank you. [Duck Tape]
via Gizmodo
Scented Duct Tape Review: Why Is the Room Spinning?