All kinds of JavaScript XML goodness!

• prototype.js – the grandaddy of AJAX javascript libraries.
• RICO – An open source Javascript library for creating rich internet applications. Rico originated as work done in Sabre Airline Solutions and extends on the excellent prototype.js effort from the Ruby on Rails folks.
• MochiKit – More of an overall utility library, MochiKit has some AJAXish features.
• qooxdoo – Another Javascript toolkit with some AJAX features.
• AFLAX – Ajax meets Flash!
• Cpaint – Presenting application like interfaces with AJAX
• Complex Data Types with AJAX – sometimes it isn’t as simple as the demos make it look.

and … AJAX is the short name for all the technologies that make things like Google Maps so slick, like dragging the map around to find the stuff you’re interested in.

[tags]AJAX[/tags]

Check out the full size photo at photo.net

Ever wonder about all the extra rules people come up with for Monopoly? For us, it was always the Free Parking Bonus, either a $500 bill from the bank to sit on the center of the board, all the taxes and payments collected to go to the center or both. Whichever way you played it, Free Parking gave a few players a nice boost to cash, introduced an additional element of luck and usually sped up the game.

I just found a number of additional rules that players introduced to the game.

We always played with Immunity as a negotiating tactic but I’ve found players who were amazed I would offer such a thing.

Some of the other suggestions looked amazing though … Traveling Railroads? It makes perfect sense! Combining Railroads with Utilities? Another interesting idea, while getting all four Railroads always makes a nice boost in the early game it starts to pale once hotels start popping up. And both utilities only made a difference very early on.

Playing on a double board? It sounds insane! However, with a number of people wanting to play it would be very fun to have everyone in the same game.

I’m gonna have to try some of these out next time I get a chance to play Monopoly.

from boingboing

Just came across Vanilla, a nice, clean web forum software. GPL, XHTML & CSS, extensible and more. Also Filebrowser, a thumbnailer / web file browser.

Interesting artcile from Psychology Today: LookSmart’s Capturing creativity. Robert Epstein (last to receive a Ph.D. from B.F. Skinner) lists four strategies for generating creative output. These are

• Capturing: The main thing that distinguishes “creative” people from the rest of us is that the creative ones have learned ways to pay attention to and then to preserve some of the new ideas that occur to them. They have capturing skills. In other words, get a PDA and learn how to use it.
• Challenging: One way to accelerate the flow of new ideas is by challenging yourself–that is, by putting yourself in difficult situations in which you’re likely to fail to some extent. A challenging situation is like an “extinction” procedure in the behavioral laboratory. We extinguish behavior when we withdraw the reinforcers that usually maintain that behavior. In challenging situations, a great deal of behavior goes unreinforced; it just doesn’t work.
• Broadening: If you want to enhance your own creativity, take courses in subjects you know nothing about. Once a year, at least, take a course at a local college in the last thing you’d ever want to know about. Land’s own breakthrough invention came about because of training he had in crystallography, chemistry, and other fields. The invention of Velcro, the modern theory of electron spin, and countless other advances were made possible because their creators had training in diverse fields. Steve Jobs recently made a point of how his training in caligraphy contributed to the intitial success of the Macintosh.
• Surrounding: Finally, you can enhance your creativity by surrounding yourself with diverse stimuli–and, even more important, by changing those stimuli regularly. Diverse and changing stimuli promote creativity because, like resurgence, they get multiple behaviors competing with each other. If you put a Mickey Mouse hat and pliers on your desk in the morning, your thinking will move in odd directions during the day. Call these items distractions, if you like; they are great reservoirs of creativity

Found this reading a ./ article discussing SAS management styles.