Jigsaw Codex

Dec 16

staff:

The Tumblr Backup app is ready for beta testing!

Download (Mac OS X, requires 10.5 or higher)

Unlike other publishing sites’ approach to backups, our goal was to create a useful copy of your blog’s content that can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD, or hosted as an archive of static HTML files.

Wherever possible, we use simple file formats. Our backup structure is optimized for Mac OS X’s Spotlight for searching and Quick Look for browsing, and we’ll try to use the same structure and achieve the same benefits on other platforms.

Release notes:

Sorry, there’s no Windows version yet.

The output is minimally styled in a plain theme to ensure complete backups, zero external requirements, and a consistent data structure. Custom theme code is included in the backup as a separate file.

To view the backup in a browser, open the index.html file.

Photosets are not yet fully downloaded.

The following are not backed up:

Private tumblelogs

Submissions

Notes

Feed-imported posts

Audio files from reblogged posts

You can launch the app every few days and re-run the backup in the same place, and it effectively performs an incremental media backup: image and audio files are only re-downloaded if they don’t already exist in the target folder. Text content and post data are re-downloaded in full every time.

If you have private posts, be careful if you make the backup publicly available. Private posts are included in a private folder, and their images or audio files are included in the standard images and audio folders.

Are you a programmer? Each post’s XML data, as specified by our API, is embedded inside an easily-parsed-out HTML comment in each post’s HTML file, in case you want to do anything cool with it.

comicallyvintage:

Comics Make No Sense: Delivered Straight to Your Cell Wednesday!

What's in a name?

oscillator:

Synthetic biology has been used to describe many scientific activities for the past hundred years, and is still far from a concrete definition. Nature biotechnology asked 20 experts in the field how they define synthetic biology, leading to a great article that highlights many of the different pursuits of synthetic biology researchers as well as the common emphasis on engineering principles. Kristala Prather sums it up nicely in her response: “If you ask five people to define synthetic biology, you will get six answers.”

oscillator:

FlowingData presents the 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year; according to the article 2009 ”was a huge year for data. There’s no denying it. Data is about to explode.”

Of all the great data visualization, the top pick was Ben Fry’s awesome “On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces”, which shows the evolution of Darwin’s book as he edited and released different editions. It’s an interesting look into the process of scientific work from 150 years ago that still resonates now in the face of controversies over scientific consensus in climate change research. Science evolves, theories change in response to new data, interpretations of data change in response to new ideas (and new ways to use and visualize the data). Darwin’s ideas have significantly changed the way that people do biology, but the details are hardly set in stone, even during his own career. Overall, lovely, informative, and thought provoking—great data visualization!

via SEED