links for 2009-09-10

"An hour and a half after waking, early birds and night owls were equally alert and showed no difference in attention-related brain activity. But after being awake for 10 and a half hours, night owls had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention. More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift."

interesting cloud vs self-hosted use case with numbers

very cool visualization of local EPA data. thanks, James.

it's hilarious how many people know me well enough to have sent it to me as a response to my engagement. but the sad news is that while my fiancee is indeed a Red Sox fan, she's not *that* big a Red Sox fan.

as a big fan of data visualization, i'm very interested to see where this challenge yields

more on this one soon. lots of moving pieces in this space at the moment, but an interesting project

that they do. AT&T's backhaul in SF is nothing short of awful.

where are we going after databases? Cassandra is one answer popping up more and more

thoughts from the Continuent CTO on where clustering is headed

can't wait to get a machine with one of these screens

"All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They're forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century."

this would be more persuasive if i had liked the one Grossman novel i read better – Codex was not good, IMO – but he makes some points about the core importance of story that i agree with. craft is nice, but story should come first.