Nginx service failover to 1x1 gif with timeout

That's what I love nginx for. Really simple and declarative. At 8086 we have a service that is non-stable, at 8091 there is virtual gif substitutor. On 300ms timeout there will be 1x1 gif as a response. Nginx resides on 8090 for presentation.

http {
  include mime.types;
  default_type application/octet-stream;
  upstream backend {
    server localhost:8086;
    server localhost:8091 backup;
  }
  server {
    listen 8090;
    server_name localhost:8090;
    location /sf.gif { empty_gif; }
    location / {
      proxy_pass http://backend;
      proxy_next_upstream error timeout
        invalid_header http_500 http_502 http_503
        http_504 http_403 http_404;
      proxy_connect_timeout 300ms;
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For
        $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_redirect off;
    }
  }
  server {
    listen 8091;
    server_name localhost:8091;
    location / {
      rewrite ^ http://localhost:8090/sf.gif redirect; }
    location ^ {
      rewrite ^ http://localhost:8090/sf.gif redirect; }
  }
}

Get camera model from video file

Many options have been tested. Finally, exiftool solves the problem.

Business books — short versions

Free and paid, Russian and English:

1. http://www.digest.kyivstar.ua/digests/
2. http://gm.gd.ru/
3. http://bookideas.ru/
4. http://www.getabstract.com/en/
5. http://www.smartreading.ru/
6. http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopesandfears/experience/case
7. http://baguzin.ru/

Efficient RAW processing

Don't struggle with RAW any more, there is a solution:

1. Superfast view and choose best RAW shots by ranking: http://www.fastrawviewer.com/. Just download and use all the time. Released 3 days ago, I'm really happy. Very fast.
2. Extract JPEG previews from your RAW: http://www.picurl.org/blog/2009/07/18/ultra-fast-raw-to-jpeg-conversion-with-exiv2/. In short, if you are a Nikon-guy, then get exiv2 and typically run exiv2 -ep3 *.NEF on your folder.

Public transport in Sweden

1. Public transport of Sweden — separate routes collected at one place.
2. Public transport of Stockholm — the same but for Stockholm.
3. "Buss" objects on osm.org — for those which haven't been collected.
4. Kartor över SL-trafiken — sl.se
5. Innerstad dynamic zoom map from sl.se

Permanent history in cmd

This http://mridgers.github.io/clink/ enables permanent history and other useful stuff for Windows command line.

Priority-based project management

So here we have Project 2013, but what do we see:

Exactly, "Hello Windows 3.1"! But why? I remind the same case with having only 16 colors available to style background of a cell until Excel 2007. But, as Joel Spolsky has described, it's intentional. It's a priority-based development: they had this "issue" on the list for years, but got it to be fixed only recently. I suppose that for Project there is the same case.

Is it good or bad? Well, I hope that Microsoft will be capable of finding additional people to fix that minor but disappointing stuff. Certainly, 95% won't notice a problem, but others 5% will, and that can make sense, because those guys/gals are usually early adopters, evangelists and IT decision makers. It's like a debt, but not technical, rather a task-based debt. Sometimes everyone needs to make a cleanup, at least each year before Easter, right? :)