2024-12-27 TIL: Building Chrome Extensions & Toothpaste Foaming Explained

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Build Chrome Extensions

A Chrome extension is a program installed in the Chrome browser to enhance its functionality, built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• A manifest.json file serves as the blueprint of the extension, defining its name, version, and permissions.
• The background.js file handles tasks and interactions running in the background, even when the extension isn’t actively in use.
• The content.js file is used to inject or modify webpage content dynamically.

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Toothpaste Foaming

Toothpaste foam is caused by surfactants like sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), which create lather during brushing.

• Some toothpastes do not foam due to the absence of these agents but are still equally effective at cleaning teeth.
• Foam doesn’t enhance cleaning performance; instead, the mechanical brushing action and active ingredients are the key factors for maintaining oral hygiene.
• Non-foaming toothpastes can also reduce mouth irritation associated with foaming agents.

2024-12-26 TIL: Cool Papers platform and Norman Rockwell Christmas

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Cool Papers

Cool Papers enhances academic paper browsing with an immersive and efficient experience.

• It uses Kimi Chat AI to answer frequently asked questions, providing concise insights into a paper’s key content. This helps users quickly identify papers worth deeper exploration, streamlining research.
• It provides enriched RSS feeds, even for search results.
• Designed by: kexue.fm | Powered by: kimi.ai

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Norman Rockwell Christmas

Norman Rockwell was an iconic American painter and illustrator, celebrated for capturing the essence of American culture.

• He is best known for his Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations, which spanned nearly five decades.
• Many of his most beloved works focus on Christmas themes, evoking nostalgia and a timeless sense of whimsy that continues to resonate with audiences today.

2024-12-25 TIL: GitHub Comment IDs and macOS Terminal Customization

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GitHub issue comment’s ID

To find a GitHub issue comment’s ID via the web interface:

• Navigate to the specific issue containing the comment.
• Hover over the timestamp near the commenter’s name. The URL will look like:
https://github.com/owner/repository/issues/issue_number#issuecomment-123456789.
• Alternatively, use browser developer tools to inspect the comment’s HTML element and locate the id attribute, which contains the comment ID.

Custom Headings in Issue Comments:

• GitHub’s web interface doesn’t support assigning custom id attributes directly to headings using Markdown.
• However, you can use HTML instead. For example, instead of using Markdown syntax like ## My Heading, use: <h2 id="my-heading">My Heading</h2>.

How To Customize Your macOS Terminal

• Setting a theme from Terminal > Preferences, drag the scheme/terminal/One Dark.terminal file into your Terminal Profiles list.
• Configure .bash_profile in the home directory via vim .bash_profile, then add source ~/.bash_prompt and source ~/.aliases.
• Configure .bash_prompt and .aliases.
  • If you are using zsh (check with echo $SHELL command), you could modify your terminal to open shell with a custom command with /bin/bash.

2024-12-24 TIL: ACDC, Tailscale, GIS RSS Feeds, New Year’s Day, Bearer

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ACDC (Automated Creation of Digital Cousins)

ACDC is a fully automated pipeline designed to generate interactive simulated scenes, referred to as “digital cousins,” from a single RGB image.

• Unlike digital twins, which are exact replicas of real-world counterparts, digital cousins maintain similar geometric and semantic affordances without explicitly modeling the real-world scene.
• Genie 2 and ACDC Pipeline are both advanced AI models designed for generating interactive environments from image inputs, Genie 2 is geared towards creating diverse 3D worlds for AI and human interaction, whereas ACDC focuses on producing simulated scenes to enhance robot learning and deployment.
• AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1973. Their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock and heavy metal, although the band calls it simply “rock and roll”.

Tailscale

Tailscale is a mesh VPN (Virtual Private Network) service that streamlines connecting devices and services securely across different networks.

• It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard protocol, which means only devices on your private network can communicate with each other.
• Unlike traditional VPNs, which tunnel all network traffic through a central gateway server, Tailscale creates a peer-to-peer mesh network (known as a tailnet).

Top 100 GIS RSS Feeds

The best GIS rss feed list curated from thousands of rss feeds on the web and ranked by relevancy, authority, social media followers & freshness.

• Top 60 Map RSS Feeds

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元日 (New Year’s Day)

王安石（宋‧七言絕句）

爆竹聲中一歲除，春風送暖入屠蘇。 千門萬戶曈曈日，總把新桃換舊符。

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Bearer

The person who owns an official document or banknote.

• The passport No. E******** of the PRC was issued to the bearer of this passport.

2024-12-23 TIL: NORAD Santa Tracker, ReadTogether.ai, HappyKids, and Phonewords Explained

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NORAD Tracks Santa

NORAD Tracks Santa is an annual Christmas-themed program in which North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) simulates the tracking of Santa Claus, who is said to leave the North Pole to travel around the world on his mission to deliver presents to children every year on Christmas Eve.

• This tradition began in 1955 when a child accidentally called NORAD’s predecessor, CONAD, asking about Santa’s whereabouts. The commander played along, starting a yearly tradition.
• Today, NORAD uses radar, satellites, and jets to track Santa every Christmas Eve.
  • Although NORAD claims to use these technologies, the website primarily simulates Santa’s journey and displays predetermined location data to users.

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Readtogether.ai

Read books together with your kids.

• Technologies used:
  • How to convert a hard copy into a high-quality E-book.
  • How to extract content from the E-book — gpt-4o + another model for verification.
  • How to read the content — ElevenLabs, Cosevoice + F5-TTS.
• Explore a collection of children’s books shared by users, and add them to your library.

Happy Kids

HappyKids is a FREE and SAFE video streaming app to educate and entertain kids. HappyKids provides kid-safe content in forms of Popular Shows, Movies, Rhymes, Stories, DIYs, Gaming videos, and more.

• Hamer loves it and now prefers it over YouTube Kids.

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Phonewords

Phonewords are mnemonic phrases represented as alphanumeric equivalents of telephone numbers, using a standard phone keypad:

• 2 → ABC

• 3 → DEF
• 4 → GHI
• 5 → JKL
• 6 → MNO
• 7 → PQRS
• 8 → TUV
• 9 → WXYZ

For example:

• You can start a conversation by calling 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478).
• The public NORAD Santa Tracker hotline is 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723).

2024-12-20 TIL: Photos Privacy, Duffy the Disney Bear, Osborne Effect, and BMJ’s Christmas Issue

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They See Your Photos

Your photos reveal a lot of private information.

• “They See Your Photos” is a privacy research experiment that uses generative AI to describe uploaded images.

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Duffy Bear and His Friends

Duffy Bear(达菲熊) is a popular Disney character introduced in 2002 at Walt Disney World, Orlando. Initially called “Disney Bear,” he was later renamed Duffy at Tokyo DisneySea in 2005. Duffy’s Friends:

• ShellieMay (雪莉玫): A teddy bear made by Minnie for Duffy, adventurous and crafty.
• Gelatoni (傑拉多尼): An artistic cat from Italy who paints with his tail.
• StellaLou (星黛露): A lavender rabbit who dreams of being a Broadway dancer.
• CookieAnn (可琦安): A yellow dog who loves inventing new foods, optimistic and passionate.
• Olu Mel (奧樂米拉): A Hawaiian turtle skilled in music, playing the ukulele.
• LinaBell (玲娜貝兒): A curious fox who loves puzzles and nature.
• Tippy Blue: A clumsy seagull and Duffy’s mailman friend.

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Osborne Effect

The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon where customers cancel or defer orders for the current, soon-to-be-obsolete product due to a company announcing a future product prematurely. It is an example of cannibalization.

BMJ’s Christmas Issue

Each year, The BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, publishes a special Christmas issue. The edition spans a wide array of topics and formats that are unlikely to be published any other time of year.

• What started in 1982 as an experimental roundup of fun research for the holidays has since grown into one of The BMJ’s most highly anticipated issues each year.

2024-12-19 TIL: Nullable Reference Types, ArcGIS Survey123, Bozo Flag, Parenting Advice, and Slang Insights

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Enabling Nullable Reference Types

The ability to enable Nullable Reference Types was introduced in C# 8. There are two ways to enable it: via file-based declaration or a project-level flag.

• To use file declarations: #nullable enable
• To enable at the project level: <Nullable>enable</Nullable>

Installed ArcGIS Survey123 Website

Organizations may sometimes need to work in completely disconnected environments or be required to host the ArcGIS Survey123 website and/or Survey123 REST API on their own infrastructure. The Survey123 REST API is used to convert survey configurations into forms for use in the Survey123 apps. The website provides functionality to create and manage surveys and to view and analyze the collected data. Both components are separate but work together to offer the functionality seen in the ArcGIS Survey123 website.

feed.bozo

In the context of feed parsing with Python’s “feedparser” library, “bozo” refers to a flag that indicates whether an RSS or Atom feed is not well-formed XML. Feedparser automatically sets the “bozo” flag to “True” when it encounters a non-well-formed XML feed during parsing.

• Why the name “bozo”? Informally, “bozo” is a slang term for a silly or clumsy person, making it a fitting analogy for a poorly structured or non-standard feed.

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Should You Let Your Kid Quit Something?

The advice given in the show was to first reflect on your own intentions, consider your child’s personality, ask how they feel, create a non-binary action plan together, and, finally, have a reflective conversation with your child.

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Tough It Out

To deal with a difficult period or situation without becoming less certain or determined in your plans or opinions.

Body Count

Slang. Refers to how many people you’ve had sex with.

• A “high body count conversation” typically refers to a discussion where someone mentions or boasts about having many romantic or sexual partners.

2024-12-16 TIL: iOS Launch Screen

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iOS Launch Screen

• All iOS apps must include a launch screen storyboard, even if the rest of the app is built without storyboards. Without it, the app defaults to supporting only older 3.5" (or possibly 4") iOS device sizes, resulting in black bars (letterboxing) on larger devices. Including a launch screen storyboard ensures the app can accommodate all screen sizes.
• For SwiftUI, simply adding an empty image name to Info.plist should also work.

2024-12-15 TIL: A Map Rap

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A Map Rap

This rap is absolutely brilliant for GIS day! For the list of Inspiration From Other Famous Mappa Rappas, each name combines rap artists with GIS terms for a fun crossover:

1. Mapplemoore: Based on Macklemore, with a mapping twist.
2. Way-Z: A play on Jay-Z, referencing way (map data term).
3. Lil' Pane: Refers to Lil' Wayne, with “Pane” for map window.
4. Cardi-(graphic)-I: Based on Cardi B, adding “graphic” for mapping interfaces.
5. Post ma-layer: A play on Post Malone, with “layer” for map layers.
6. Known Bugz ‘N’ Symbology: A twist on The Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls, referencing bugs and map symbology.
7. Fat Geo: Based on Fat Joe, with “Geo” for geography or GIS.
8. The Notorious G.D.B.: A play on The Notorious B.I.G., with G.D.B. for Geospatial Data Base.
9. Ludaclips: Refers to Ludacris, with “clips” for map sections.
10. Snoop Catalogg: A twist on Snoop Dogg, with “Catalogg” for map data catalogs.
11. MXD: A reference to Max B, with a nod to the MXD file format in ArcGIS.

2024-12-12 TIL: Web-to-App Linking and Situational Awareness

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Web-to-App Linking

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Situational Awareness

2024-12-11 TIL: Snapdrop, Sora Technology & Driving Instructors

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Snapdrop

A local file-sharing tool in your browser, inspired by Apple’s AirDrop.

• Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript
• P2P connection: WebRTC/WebSockets
• Backend: NodeJS
• Clients: Progressive Web App

中学生能看懂：Sora 原理解读

Key steps and technology behind Sora video generation:

1. Input Data Processing: Using a video compression network to compress images or videos into low-dimensional representations, simplifying processing while retaining rich visual data.
2. Spatiotemporal Patch Generation: Sora breaks down the compressed data into spatiotemporal patches, capturing both spatial and temporal information for complex video content.
3. Text-conditioned Diffusion Model: Sora uses text prompts to guide a Diffusion model that progressively denoises and generates visual content matching the text description.

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Driving Instructors

• 易通行汽车陪练
• 雷厉风行汽车陪练
• 手把手汽车陪练

2024-12-10 TIL: Interview Success Strategies & Top Podcasts of 2024

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Interview Success in SV

I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days, and stumbled into six job offers

• Structured Preparation: Focus on coding problems, system design, and company-specific technologies. Use resources like LeetCode and HackerRank to practice.
• Daily Consistency: Dedicate regular time to solve problems and review core concepts.
• Mock Interviews: Simulate interviews to build confidence and refine communication.

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Top Charts of 2024

• Apple shares the most popular podcasts of 2024
• The above list of podcasts is available as an OPML file for your podcast player

2024-12-09 TIL: Genie 2, Conventional Commits, and Playful Tech Terms

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Genie 2

• A revolutionary foundation world model by DeepMind that transforms single images into fully interactive 3D environments.
• Enables unlimited training scenarios for AI agents by generating diverse virtual worlds.

Large-Scale Foundation World Models vs. Large Language Models (LLMs)

• Purpose: Generate and simulate 3D environments vs. Understand and produce human-like text
• Training Data: Visual data like images and videos vs. Extensive text data
• Applications: Gaming, simulations, AI agent training vs. Chatbots, translation, content generation

Genie 2 vs. World Labs' AI System

• Functionality: Transforms text or images into interactive 3D environments vs. Creates editable 3D scenes in a web browser.
• Technology: Latent diffusion model simulating physics and interactions vs. AI estimating 3D geometry for coherent, plausible scenes.
• Use Cases: AI training and rapid game prototyping vs. Immersive environment design for gaming and film.

Conventional Commits

A commit message standard that integrates seamlessly with SemVer.

• Types:
  • fix: Bug fix → triggers a PATCH version bump.
  • feat: New feature → triggers a MINOR version bump.
• Footer:
  • BREAKING CHANGE: API incompatibility → triggers a MAJOR version bump.

Cursor AI Review (Beta)

• The AI Review feature has transitioned to a “Bug Finder” tab, designed to identify potential bugs in your codebase.
• No longer included in subscriptions; costs may be high.

Mintlify

• A modern standard for creating beautiful, user-friendly public-facing documentation.
• Built to convert users while being easy to maintain.

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h-api

• A playful alteration of “happy” with a focus on APIs, expressing joy or enthusiasm about API development. Example: “I’m feeling h-api today!”

Fayre

• Fayre: An old English term for a fun gathering featuring local goods, akin to a fair or bazaar.

2024-12-08 TIL: Notre Dame and Bullpen

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Notre Dame

巴黎圣母院

• “Each day we have 20 difficulties. But it’s different when you work on a building that has a soul. Beauty makes everything easier.”

Bullpen

牛棚

• In baseball, the bullpen refers to the area where pitchers warm up before entering the game. It also symbolizes the team’s group of relief pitchers.
• Origin: The term comes from Major League Baseball, where a Bull Durham tobacco advertisement hung near the pitcher’s practice area.

2024-12-07 TIL: Dental Health and Baseball Basics

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How do you make a great recruiting video?

Dia

• Your personal insertion cursor

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「六龄齿」

The first permanent molar, also known as the six-year molar, is the earliest permanent tooth to erupt, usually around age six.

• Located as the sixth tooth from the midline, it grows behind the last baby tooth.
• Importance of the First Permanent Molar: Longest-lasting tooth in life. Takes on the majority of chewing functions. Plays a key role in aligning the upper and lower dental arches and guiding other permanent teeth. Requires early protection through fissure sealant application to prevent damage.

Fissure Sealants

A highly effective method to prevent decay in the grooves of young permanent teeth.

• Involves applying a sealing material on the biting surface and grooves of molars to protect against bacteria and food buildup.
• Non-invasive, painless, and preserves natural tooth structure.
• The material hardens to form a protective barrier over deep grooves, preventing decay.

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A Pro Player Explains The Rules Of Baseball

The count matters

• Hitters don’t want to strike out
• Pitchers don’t want to walk hitters

Baseball Rules for Beginners

strike, ball, hit, foul ball, and fair ball

• 3 strike = out
• 4 ball = walk (batter advances to first base)
• 1 hit = walk
• foul ball, 0 or 1 strike counts as a strike, 2 strikes do not count as a strike.
• 1st base loaded fair play: Caught (Runner must return) or Dropped (Runner advances)

2024-12-06 TIL: DevToys, Cline

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DevToys

How DevToys became cross-platform and extensible

• The development of DevToys 2.0 involved exploring technologies like Uno Platform, .NET MAUI, and Avalonia, but issues with keyboard input and lack of Linux support led to choosing Blazor Hybrid.
• Blazor Hybrid framework allows a web-based UI with native .NET logic, reducing memory consumption and improving performance.
• The team aimed to maintain a native-like UI across platforms using CSS and Blazor web components, emulating Fluent UI on Windows, Aqua on macOS, and Yaru on Linux.

Cline

Cline vs Cursor

• As an IDE extension, Cline excels in deeply integrating with existing development environments. It functions as a versatile AI assistant, offering features such as file manipulation, terminal command execution, and browser automation.
• Cursor focuses on simplifying code writing and editing through natural language processing. It stands out with its predictive editing capabilities and unique support for backend code iteration.

2024-12-05 TIL: Cursor, MAUI Challenges, and Quotation Mark Rules

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Cursor

Cursor, The AI Code Editor.

• Tab: Multi-Line Edits, Smart Rewrites, Cursor Prediction
• Chat: Instant Apply, Codebase Answers, Reference your Code with @
• Ctrl+K: Fast Edits, Terminal Ctrl+K

Switching to MAUI?

Development effort is more than double compared to Native. And the output or quality of apps you get is inferior.

• Lack of UI libraries
• Buggy framework
• Platform-specific bugs
• Lack of proper tools
• Performance issue

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Quote placement

• For American English, place the comma or period inside the closing quotation marks. This is a convention, regardless of logic.
• For British English, the rule is more logical—punctuation is placed inside the quotation marks only if it belongs to the quoted material.
• In Chinese, the punctuation at the end of a sentence typically goes outside the quotation marks, unless the quoted text is a complete sentence.

2024-12-04 TIL: P/Invoke, C# Iterators, Cross-Platform WPF, and ‘Dulce Domum’

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P/Invoke

Ever needed to call native functions from a DLL in your .NET app? P/Invoke (Platform Invoke) bridges the gap between managed and unmanaged code.

• Managed Code: Runs under the control of the .NET runtime (e.g., C#).
• Unmanaged Code: Runs outside the .NET runtime (e.g., C/C++ native libraries).

Key Ingredients for P/Invoke:

1. DllImport Attribute: Declares the external method and specifies the DLL.
2. Marshaling: Automatically converts between managed (C#) and unmanaged (native) types.
3. System.Runtime.InteropServices: Provides tools for defining P/Invoke signatures and managing interop behavior.

yield

In C#, the yield keyword simplifies the creation of iterators, enabling methods to return elements of a collection one at a time without the overhead of creating temporary collections or implementing complex iterator logic.

• Deferred Execution: Using yield return, a method can produce each element only when it’s needed during iteration.
• State Preservation: The method retains its execution state between yield return calls, allowing it to resume from where it left off in subsequent iterations.

LINQPad

The Ultimate Scratchpad for C#

• LINQPad comes with an integrated tutorial/reference, comprising interactive sample queries.

Avalonia XPF

A cross-platform WPF that enables you to reuse your code and extend your app’s reach.

• Avalonia XPF enables WPF apps to run on macOS and Linux with Avalonia’s Fork of WPF, which allows Avalonia to maintain both API and binary compatibility with WPF. Avalonia XPF replaces the low-level WPF code (MilCore) with Avalonia.
• Avalonia XPF is based on WPF shipped with .NET 6.0 SDK. Currently, unsupported WPF features include Visual3D, Viewport3D, InkCanvas, Win32 interop, and custom Window chromes.

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趿

tā, walk in slippers.

• 趿拉：把鞋后帮踩在脚后跟下
• 趿拉板儿：wooden slippers

Dulce Domum

Dulce Domum (lit. Sweetly Homeward) is a tune composed by Robert Ambrose in 1876. This phrase is used as the title of chapter 5 of the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows.

• lit. is an abbreviation for “literal” or “literally”.

2024-12-03 TIL: NMEA Insights, SQL Tips, and Whimsical Observations: From Pac-Man to The Wind in the Willows

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NMEA Sentences

• Four Common Types: $GPGGA, $GPRMC, $GPGSA, and $GPGSV.
  • $GPGGA and $GPRMC contain location and time-related data.
  • $GPGSA and $GPGSV provide satellite-related information.
• Examples:
  • $GPRMC,194000.000,A,3401.8431,N,11711.4761,W,24.43,145.27,061020,,,D*4F
  • $GPGGA,194000.000,3401.8431,N,11711.4761,W,2,10,1.0,478.9,M,-32.5,M,2.0,0000*4D
• Time and Date Formats:
  • $GPGGA: Time in HHMMSS.SSS format.
  • $GPRMC: Time (HHMMSS.SSS) + Date (DDMMYY), e.g., 194000.000 (UTC 19:40:00.000) and 061020 (6th October 2020).
• Checksum: Ensures data integrity. Calculated by XOR-ing all characters between $ and *. Example: 4D.

SQL for ArcGIS

• Use TIMESTAMP with the format: yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss (24-hour clock, no AM/PM).

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Figure Skating

• A type of skating that involves circular patterns and often includes jumps.
• /ˈfɪɡ.jɚ/

Incisor

• One of the sharp teeth at the front of the mouth that cut food when you bite into it. (切牙、门齿)
• /ɪnˈsaɪ.zɚ/

Pac-Man

• Pac-Man, a classic arcade game by Namco. Named “食鬼” in Hong Kong, “小精灵” in Taiwan, “吃豆人” in Mianland China.
• Ghost Characters: Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (light blue), Clyde (orange).

XJBC (夏季八冲)

• A humorous “coffee brewing technique” requiring:
  • No bean selection, no sifting, no stickers, no blooming, no temperature control, no timing, no circular stirring, no cup warming.

Reading Notes from The Wind in the Willows

1. On Laziness:
   • Finding joy in being the only idle one among busy citizens.
   • The essence of a good holiday is not resting but watching others work.
2. On Fear:
   • A terrifying entity feared by all the small animals in the fields and hedges—the “horror of the Wild Wood.”

Musical Skiers

• Icelandic photographer Haukur Sigurdsson captured this aerial image of Nordic skiers looking like musical notes on a staff.

2024-12-02 TIL: Flock, Location Properties, and Language Nuances

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• The PointsCount is distinct from Count in a Part.
• Location has an AdditionalSourceProperties property, useful for storing extra attributes for a location, such as customized node types like start node, end node, and vertex.
• Flock: Flutter by the community, for the community. Flock is Flutter+.

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• 珩 (héng) is the top gem of the pendants.
• The phrase ‘handled it’ could be pronounced as /ˈhan·dldɪt/.
• The phrase ‘the exhibit instead’ should be pronounced as /ði ɪɡˈzɪbɪt ɪnˈstɛd/.