F.lux Helps Me Sleep
I recently stumbled upon F.lux, an application for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux that changes the color temperature of your display depending on the time of day. Although changing your color temperature is nothing new, F.lux makes it completely seamless: Just set your location and your desired color temperatures (optional), then forget about it.
Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow? Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen? During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun.
F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day. It’s even possible that you’re staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.
Get it here.
New Script: EmailsFromFile
EmailsFromFile is a Python script that finds all email addresses in a file. It shows one email address per line by default, but you can pick your own separator (i.e. a comma or space) if you want.
The script is very simple; the magic lies in the email regular expression (based on the RFC 2822 standard) which is, quite frankly, one of the craziest I’ve seen:(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|"(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*")@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])
You can find more information about email regex here.
Asian Hulk Ant
MAXIMUM STRENGTH
An amazing image of an ant lifting 100 times its body weight has won first prize in a science photography contest.
The image shows an Asian weaver ant hanging upside down on a glass-like surface and holding a 500mg (0.02oz) weight in its jaws.
It was taken by zoology specialist Dr Thomas Endlein of Cambridge University as he researched insects’ sticky feet.
Source (BBC)
ITA Matrix 2 is Great for Finding Flights
I just finished looking at some interesting slides about the Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning by Carl de Marcken, when I happened upon the product portfolio of his company. What I found was Matrix 2, an advanced flight planner. It’s the best flight planner I’ve ever used.
Here are some screenshots to better illustrate what I’m talking about:
Step 1: Search
Step 2: Price Calendar
Step 3: Search Results and Itineraries
Voila!
You can’t book flights through Matrix 2, but it’s an extremely useful tool nonetheless. It’s rather advanced, too, if you need it to be:
Extra Search Options
Check it out for yourself, here.