For the third — and judging by my track record of being ill at Xmas — the last time, I got up early and walked into central London to hire a bike and cycle around taking photos of the city minus its human population.

Beautiful, and eerie. (via Boing Boing)

Stunning images; I particularly like #25.

As the end of the year grows nigh, the inevitable flood of articles discussing 2011 begins. In Focus has a great collection of images from this year’s most important events. (via kottke.org)

SS2PL stands for strong strict two-phase locking; it’s a locking mechanism widely used in database systems today. It is based on the notion of two-phase locking:

• Expanding phase: locks are acquired and none are released
• Shrinking phase: locks are released and no new locks are acquired

In addition to the above requirements, SS2PL requires that both read and write locks are held until the transaction that acquired them has commited. Essentially, this means that there isn’t a shrinking phase — only an expanding phase. May I ask why, then, is it called strong strict two-phase locking and not something completely different?

I love computer science acronyms.

Redkovka, Ukraine, bears little resemblance to the place it was 25 years ago. Its stores, its school, its factory, and its homes — all are gone, or dramatically changed, as a result of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, about 22 miles away.

(via kottke.org)

A fantastic gallery of 2010′s most significant events.