Free music news blog on lingerie, lyrics, free music, and heroes.

Richard Chamberlain comes out of the closet.

Great piece on what happens to company-wide mailing lists as small companies "grow up".

The making of the most advanced hoops shoe on the market.

Finding Nemo** opens today (and it's getting great reviews) but I'm already looking forward to Pixar's next movie, The Incredibles. The man in charge of the film is Brad Bird, Simpsons alum and director/writer of The Iron Giant, one of my favorite movies of the past few years and probably the most underrated children's film ever. More on The Incredibles:

This is the sixth film from Steve Job's production company Pixar, which has also produced Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. The film, which is about a family of superheroes, is completely CGI and the distributor is Pixar's partner Walt Disney Pictures. Like the Fantastic Four, the film explores the dysfunctional family situations that can result from constantly having to save the world. During the concept stage, the title for this film started out as The Incredibles, then changed to The Invincibles, before finally changing back to The Incredibles. The picture is the brainchild of masterful storyteller Brad Bird, the director of the critically acclaimed animated film Iron Giant, which had mixed results at the box office. Many blamed the distributor of that film, Warner Bros., for poor marketing, and soon after in early 2000 Bird moved on to Pixar.

** We got a new server today at work and the guy setting it up named it "Nemo". When he was testing it over the network later in the day, he got an error message that said, "Cannot find Nemo".

Guide to ripping from vinyl to mp3.

Salam's story, we learn a bit more about the Baghdad blogger.

Solar storm warning!. Expected to reach strong to severe levels (G3 to G4)

Anti-spitting van patrols Beijing..

Nanocrystal quantum dots provide a view from inside capillaries.. Could be used to examine cancer cells within the body.

California landfills filling up with Evian bottles.. Health-conscious water drinkers only recycle 16% of their bottles — versus 60% overall.

Ted Turner: "It's hard to compete when your suppliers are owned by your competitors.". The FCC vote: Monopoly or Democracy?

Dog fart shirt..

Design the Malama Learning Center in Kapolei, Hawai'i.. Wide open architectural competition welcomes all entries.

1. Get the hell out of my way, I'm coming through.

2. Do not stop at the top of the stairs to put your MetroCard back into your purse/wallet. You are between me and my train.

3. Act more like a particle and less like a wave. When you're weaving all over the platform like a drunken sinusoidal, energetic particles like myself — who, in keeping with Newton's first law of motion, like to remain in a uniform state of motion until acted upon by an outside force — cannot easily get past you.

4. Slower traffic keep to the right.

5. Yield to persons crossing the platform from the express train to the local train (or vice versa). They need the right-of-way more than you do for that 15 seconds of your existance on this earth.

6. Have your MetroCard out of its holster before you get to the turnstile. Before.

7. If you are waiting for your train, suppress the urge to wander the crowded platform aimlessly. Pick a spot and stay exactly there. If you need to move, do so with purpose and well-defined direction.

8. I'm embarrassed that I even need to mention this one because it's so bloody obvious, but get out of the way and let everyone off the train before you attempt to board. (Calling Malcolm Gladwell...why haven't you written a NYer article that explains the particularly brain dead human behavior of people crowding into subway cars and elevators before people have exited them?)

9. Get the hell out of my way, I'm coming through.

3-year-old sinks 18 b-ball shots in a row.

Child molesters say Lance should never be allowed to legally wed anyone he loves..

The 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference.

Making pants (v.): when a computer hard drive grinds away for no apparent reason, often in the middle of the night, when no humans are around..

iBlog is what Apple should be doing as the "writing" part of their iLife apps. and there should also be a photoblogging component built into iPhoto

Microsoft pays AOL Time Warner $750million — and lets them keep the lousy browser.. How much would you pay for Netscape Navigator?

"...never pay more than $25 for a web site.". Learning eCommerce with Carpet Boy

In celebration of Bob Hope, some other people also Not Dead Yet.. Whitney Houston's career, notwithstanding.

President precedent.. Belarus leader says the title is his — and his alone.

It's all about the WMDs, or is it?.

Japan on sale at United.com. Roundtrip for two to Tokyo/Osaka from west coast: $549. From east coast: $649. You do the math.

Please, someone, anyone, get Mike Tyson off the streets *immediately*.

Don’t hate [The Strokes] because they suck, they don’t suck at all. Hate them because they’re good. Bastards..

Let's all sing the Voices on the Web song!.

Photo of Mercury's transit across the sun.

photologgers vs. camgirls on fotolog.net. locked in a photo battle

Fantagraphics in trouble, asking for help.

Wow, you can use Photoshop actions to adjust your photos in iPhoto.

How the ASRG and the IETF plan to can Spam.. Initial technologies deployed within months.

Hacking the Xbox..

Guest?s latest mockumentary is probably the strongest film of the bunch that includes Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap, and Waiting for Guffman. A Mighty Wind tells the tale of a folk singers reunion show and is funny, genuinely touching in parts (the Mitch and Mickey storyline), and features some great original music (and I?m not a big folk music fan). However, Guest?s mockumentary format is beginning to wear a little thin for me; I would have liked it a lot more had I not seen the others first.

Amazon.com thinking about spinning its own iTunes?.

Condom availability does not equal more h0t h-i-g-h skool ac+ion!.

The Manhole Cover World Forum.

Google is sponsoring a puzzle championship.

Careful, New Yorkers! That cab driver could be a terrorist!.

Death of a Web Team. "I'm sick and tired of hearing about the users. Who cares? Fuck the users. We need this to be engaging and exciting!"

Akara: The Wiki-Blog.

First it's a Supercomputer, now it's a TiVo.. The Sony PSX is a PS2 with a DVD recorder, 120gb hard drive, TV tuner, Ethernet and USB 2. DVR much?

AT&T Wireless doesn't want Spam on its services - unless they send it..

And now I know: I'm not a virgin because I'm a geek. I'm a virgin because I have pursued geekdom with a less than pure, directed gaze..

Jargon watch: "cosplay" is dressing up as your favorite cartoon/movie/tv character at conventions.

You'll be ROTFL reading these Microsoft nicknames. macrohard, microcrap, micro, junksoft, LOL! LOL! anti-MS folks are the funniest ever!

CNN.com's first anniversary page from 1996.

Guest's latest mockumentary is probably the strongest film of the bunch that includes Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap, and Waiting for Guffman. A Mighty Wind tells the tale of a folk singers reunion show and is funny, genuinely touching in parts (the Mitch and Mickey storyline), and features some great original music (and I'm not a big folk music fan). However, Guest's mockumentary format is beginning to wear a little thin for me; I would have liked it a lot more had I not seen the others first.

Apple cripples iTunes' music sharing capability and Cory is rightly irritated.

God's phone number in "Bruce Almighty" is Florida woman's mobile number..

Hey kids! It's Skin Irritating Game! Wah-hoo!. Toy patents from hell.

As of this writing, there are 264 comments attached to The Matrix Reloaded thread — about 200 more than I thought there would be — and it's still going strong (14 comments today). The wide array of theories as to what people think the movie is all about and what the next installment holds range from mere speculation on plot points to complex philosophical explanations (some of them quite informed) to disinterested & unimpressed reactions to nutball Kennedy assassination-level theories. Even if you're not interested in the movie, the thread is an interesting look at the various degrees of meaning people get from media.

"Sticky Fingers" The Winona Ryder shoplifting musical.. But will it come to Broadway?

The Meaning of the Matrix. Existential Pop Psych 101.

Can you Survive an Apprenticeship as an American Princess in The Restaurant to Marry My Dad?. NBC's glut of summer reality shows wants YOU!

"We each just practiced our own parts in our homes, listening to the bombs fall.". The story of A. Crassicauda, Iraqi death metal band

Digitally Archiving the Universe. Details about the National Virtual Observatory

How to make that green raining code from the Matrix in Photoshop.

Texas senate passes bill that defines a fetus as an individual.

Finally settled in to watch Microcosmos last week after Tivoing it several weeks ago. James Berardinelli sums up how I felt about the film pretty well (4 1/2 stars at least). My favorite scene features a dung beetle trying to roll a bit of dinner up a hill; a more Sisyphean struggle I haven?t seen. The producer of Microcosmos, Jacques Perrin, has a film out in American theatres right now called Winged Migration that I?m quite keen on seeing as well.

Finally settled in to watch Microcosmos last week after Tivoing it several weeks ago. James Berardinelli sums up how I felt about the film pretty well (4 1/2 stars at least). My favorite scene features a dung beetle trying to roll a bit of dinner up a hill; a more Sisyphean struggle I haven't seen. The producer of Microcosmos, Jacques Perrin, has a film out in American theatres right now called Winged Migration that I'm quite keen on seeing as well.

Web page devoted to the smallest objects in the universe.

IM smileys with SARS masks.

Kazaa has a big, bad bug.

The PS2 Supercomputer.

Case wants AOL back. now that he's powerless

Boy Meets Boy. "The Bachelor" meets "Gay for Pay" on Bravo.

Clay should have won!. And the world yawns.

13 yo soccer player Freddy Adu has signed a $1 million endorsement contract with Nike.

With apologies to Gawker Stalker, here are some NYC celebrity sighting reports I've gotten from my readers:

Anna Wintour leaping Matrix-style from a black Lincoln Town Car on 43rd Street behind 4 Times Square, descending upon four unsuspecting interns. I have never before seen such exquisitely-toned intern ass kicked so completely. Her beatings administered, Lady Wintour flew off into the morning sky, the world flexing behind her.

Samuel L. Jackson standing outside of Madame Tussaud's in Times Square. He was very nice, posing for picture after picture with people.

Everyone doing cocaine. (Ed. note: This is funny because everyone in NYC does coke — how quaint! — and it makes us all feel extremely cool to mention it as often as we can.)

Paris Hilton on the subway platform at 135th Street, waiting for the 2 train to the Bronx.

Colin Farrell having sexual intercourse with six famous young women at the same time. Out of respect for their privacy, we won't reveal the names of the six women. Present were Britney Spears, Winona Ryder (boy, did he!), Tanya Harding, Hilary Duff, Kylie Minogue, and Dame Judi Dench. Colin ain't picky.

Graydon Carter riding Tina Brown like a pony through Midtown at 12:15pm. Gray and blonde locks flowed majestically behind. Of course, it may have been an unknown man riding an unknown woman like a pony through Midtown because I have no clue what Graydon Carter and Tina Brown look like and neither do you.

Every actor that has ever been in an independent film in a tiny vegan coffee shop (so hip!) in the West Village (so, so hip!). Seriously, they were all there. I dare you to name someone who wasn't there. When we left, Philip Seymour Hoffman was leading a rousing game of Who's Keeping It Most Real?

Ben Affleck and J.Lo. absolutely nowhere near the block.

Matthew Barney: The CREMASTER Cycle.

Ching Chung!. "Law & Order" at episode 300

next time you come across something and you can't tell whether it's special or not, turn it upside down. if it still doesn't look like anything, then you can ignore it..

An earthquake and a series of aftershocks hit Japan on Monday evening (local time). Some reactions to the quake from folks on the scene: Cerebral Soup, Toyko Tidbits, AkuAku SF, and Vu Deja?.

Attorney Bert Krages has compiled a helpful guide of a person's rights as a photographer:

The right to take photographs is now under assault more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples include photographing industrial plants, bridges, and vessels at sea. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.

Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well being of all Americans. Photography in the United States has contributed to improvements in civil rights, curbed abusive child labor practices, and provided information important to investigating crimes. These images have not always been pretty and often have offended the sensibilities of governmental and commercial interests who had vested interests in a status quo that was adverse to the majority in our country.

Something to keep in mind while you're snapping away at your local Starbucks.

Teaser trailer for The Matrix Revolutions.

Cato drives a Celica.

6,000+ dog pictures. Including over 100 Chihuahuas.

The Absolute Bottom 50 PBS Documentaries. "Everybody Dies, with Bill Moyers"

EPP will change how domains are registered. "Thick" vs. "thin" data, and how and when domain changes propagate.

Happy (Almost) Birthday, St. Petersburg. Russia's old imperial capital turns 300 tomorrow.

An index of famous curves. math, not chicks

An index of famous curves. chicks, not math

iTrick: hookup management for gay men.

Got sunburn?. "Morning after" lotion heals and repairs skin damage.

Brain-powered Web browser..

What is Information Design?.

Sen. Santorum is "major donor" to NYC's biggest gay rights organization.. Though he may not know it.

NYTimes looks at PhotoBlogs.

Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars.

This message may be worth $500!. California attacks Spam.

MS Tunes?. Would you rather rent music or own it?

Creative springtime food from Paris' star chefs.

Panoramic shot from the top of Mount Everest.

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's weblog.

Baby chick regurgitates cat.. Film at 11.

Your entire waking life, photoblogged. Forever.. "Casual Capture" from HP. (Not) Coming Soon!

Reebok® Travel Trainers.. Big in Japan.

Royalty-free stock photography from David Carson.

The case of the missing $58,000,000 salt shaker..

The sounds from San Francisco.. Commercial free, listener supported, Web only.

Mice make road signs..

Generate Lorum Ipsum..

The super TVs are coming.. Incl: a transparent vibrating film that functions as a loudspeaker spanned over the display screen.

The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.

Hmm, Mr. T or Queen Elizabeth?. You know you want one.

Best McSweeney's list ev-ver: Top 10 Things I (not me) Love About You, Janine (probably not you).

As some of you know, kottke.org is actually a subsidiary of Glassdog Heavy Industries & Sewing Supply Depot. I've been getting lots of pressure from corporate lately about "creating opportunities for synergy" and "being a team player". To that end, Mr. Lance Arthur will be posting to the remaindered links weblog (rss) for a few weeks. It is hoped that by doing so, I will get my executive washroom privileges back (and, I guess, some good links).

The must-see hit of the summer!. Take that, Wachowskis!

A link to explodingdog from this site is long overdue.

RUU? URU!. Can Myst succeed where the Sims sucked?

Insider tips for NYC restaurants.

The world's cutest cat picture. take that, MetaFilter!

Britain's biggest flowchart [for teens!] magazine.

Great guide to building usable URLs.

It's forklifts all the way down.

Finally, a way to combine ant farming with computers.

Understanding bonds starts here.

Flash animation of a Doctor Who episode written by Douglas Adams.

They celebrate Wacking Day in Texas!.

My God, it's full of buttons.

Six Apart has posted some screenshots and a small list of frequently asked questions about their upcoming TypePad service. Looks like we finally have a weblog service that's easy enough for beginners to use but powerful & flexible enough for power users. Once TypePad launches, Google will have their work cut out for them in trying to catch up with Blogger and Blog*Spot. (And actually, I don't think Google much cares about weblogging software...they're much more interested in the search component, how to help people find information on blogs. Plus, they could easily pull a Microsoft to Six Apart's Netscape, make a free Blog*Spot Pro service, and drive 6A out of the biz...which would totally suck.)

They're making a Free Enterprise 2 with Shatner *and* Nimoy.

Screenshots of new version of AOL. doesn't say whether or not it comes with 3-D glasses

Redesigned 601am.com.

Photos of NYC gargoyles.

Footage of LOTR: Return of the King. QT movie, poor quality

Win up to a whole quarter a day answering trivia questions on Amazon's site.

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research. Mike Kuniavsky

And now we go to PizzaFace, live at the Pentagon. Google News screenshot

Article on the creation of the titles for Catch Me If You Can.

Stewart has video clips of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at GEL.

eBay is going to let people pay for stuff with frequent flyer miles.

GreenCine Daily is a good movie weblog.

Man in England brings Basil Fawlty to life.

K10K is asking for folks to redesign Google's logo.

The 25 Greatest Electronic Albums of the 20th Century.

The Matrix Reloaded thread is still going.

Gareth Lloyd offers up an economic analysis of online music (mit graphs!) using consumer theory in How to make money from internet music (and make everybody better off in the process):

Moreover, I hope to show that despite our present gains, the internet retains great untapped potential. Apple's new iTunes Music Store is, I believe, an important precursor of what is to come. The strength of Apple's business plan lies in reducing search costs below those of the best file sharing software. If other record companies embrace internet distribution, they can do the same, and music listeners will gain access to a huge library of music. I will show that this gives a way for music companies to make money from the internet while simultaneously increasing the welfare and satisfaction of their customers.

The conclusion seems to be that music listeners have a very bright future. The only way that companies can succeed is to stop trying to exploit search costs and make their customers better off. In addition, a general reduction of search costs will lead to important secondary effects. By making it easy to search for new and better music, the internet will force companies to pay close attention to listeners and improve their products. They've long been able to make large profits on inferior products, but once listeners can find better music with minimum effort, the output of major record labels will have to improve in order to maintain market share.

That's a pretty hopeful view; it would be nice to see it come to pass, if only partially. I wonder if the music companies are doing any of this kind of analysis?

Chimps and humans may be so closely related as to be in the same genus (Homo).

The first trailer for Blogumentary is up.

In case you didn't get the chance to see Adaptation at a theatre near you, it's out on DVD tomorrow. There aren't any special features on the disc, but a features-laden version of the film will be out in a few months.

p.s. The Two Towers is out on DVD in August as well.

Use the RIAA Radar bookmarklet to check if an album was recorded by a member of the RIAA.

Computer language geneology.

Juicy Couture founders have hit the big time. I want me some Juicy Couture

Play the Kevin Bacon game with books.

Nick's working the connections as Gawker gets profiled in the NY Times.

Online library of Albert Einstein's writings.

O'Reilly's TiVo Hacks book.

Airport security finally seems to be stabilizing after the frenzy of new procedures and policies following 9/11. American in Chicago is no longer checking IDs as you board the plane; once at the ticket counter to get your ticket is sufficient. The random bag searches at the gate seem to be a thing of the past as well; there were no announcements about them and no space set aside for searching at Chicago, Newark, or Portland airports. Security is still tight at the entrances to the gates (as it should be), but both travellers and airport personnel are so used to the drill by now (laptops out, coats off, take a swig of your drink, any metal on those shoes?) that everything runs fairly smoothly.

Interview with Zadie Smith about the Masterpiece adaptation of White Teeth.

Math is no longer a young man's game, perhaps.

Congratulations, Paul and Shawnde!.

Accuracy of Trinity's hack in Matrix Reloaded has geeks all a-flutter.

Using the iTunes Music Store to let smaller labels sell their music.

I'm suddenly receiving twice the amount of spam per day I was getting just two weeks ago. These big jumps in spam volume seem to happen to me every few months. I'll be getting 100 spams per day for 5 months and then one day, it just jumps to 175 per day and stays at that new level for a few months. Somewhere out there, a young Max Planck is busy formulating a quantum theory of spam.

Speaking of, a design I did for kottke.org more than three years ago still won't die. The folks at Peppy Puppy are using it to pretty up their spam. I am honored. (thx Greg)

Chocolate Suite is an exclusive NYC hotel that serves one guest at a time. starts at only $2000/night

I completely forgot about this until the other day, but I have a bit of a link to the Matrix Reloaded. Rob Dougan has two songs on the soundtrack for the film (one of which you can hear during Neo's fight with Merovingian's henchmen) and the creative agency for his record company commissioned me to do a Quicktime skin to promote Rob's music. Here's the skin (download and open directly with QuickTime to get the full effect...you don't get all the nice transparency in the browser). It was a fun little project to do; I enjoyed designing something other than a web site for a change. (Oh, and ignore the scrolling text at the beginning...that was an unfortunate last minute addition by the client after the budget was gone and sorta bodges up the whole thing.)

The Barenaked Ladies have a weblog.

This thread is a continuation of the uber-thread about the Matrix Reloaded. My original post is here, but I've archived the thread (containing 931 comments) here.

Saddam Hussein's fantasy art collection.

"impeach bush" Google search yields 9,000 more results than "impeach clinton".

1929 New York Times review of the movie Disraeli. George Arliss's first talkie!

Great account of a NY Times staff meeting about the Jayson Blair case.

[No real spoilers] After reading this breathless article about the Matrix Reloaded in Wired last month, I was very much looking forward to the movie and in particular, the special effects. In the end, I think the Wachowski brothers failed in what they were trying to do with the movie, which is disappointing. The completely computer-generated effects (e.g. in the Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths fight) looked, well, completely computer-generated. The fish in the Finding Nemo preview looked more fish-like than the humans in the Matrix Reloaded looked human-like. The technology they used was 1.0 (or maybe even still in beta) and it showed?give it a few years and then we?ll have something.

The other disappointing thing was the tone of the movie. The Matrix Reloaded would have worked a lot better as an action movie that took itself a little bit seriously (taking a page from the fun X2 flick) instead of a drama interspersed with action. The movie was too weighty and took itself too seriously. I don?t mind weighty movies, but the subject matter just didn?t warrant all the seriousness. Neo is Jesus. We get it, but it?s not compelling enough to build a whole movie around.

What did you think? Post your reviews (or a link to your review) in the comments. [Warning, potential spoilers in comments]

Update: The number of comments in this thread (931 to be precise) made it a bit unwieldy for people to read and comment on (as discussed here), so I archived the thread (as a 1.22 MB HTML file) and opened a new thread so that the conversation may continue if the participants wish.

[No real spoilers] After reading this breathless article about the Matrix Reloaded in Wired last month, I was very much looking forward to the movie and in particular, the special effects. In the end, I think the Wachowski brothers failed in what they were trying to do with the movie, which is disappointing. The completely computer-generated effects (e.g. in the Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths fight) looked, well, completely computer-generated. The fish in the Finding Nemo preview looked more fish-like than the humans in the Matrix Reloaded looked human-like. The technology they used was 1.0 (or maybe even still in beta) and it showed...give it a few years and then we'll have something.

The other disappointing thing was the tone of the movie. The Matrix Reloaded would have worked a lot better as an action movie that took itself a little bit seriously (taking a page from the fun X2 flick) instead of a drama interspersed with action. The movie was too weighty and took itself too seriously. I don't mind weighty movies, but the subject matter just didn't warrant all the seriousness. Neo is Jesus. We get it, but it's not compelling enough to build a whole movie around.

What did you think? Post your reviews (or a link to your review) in the comments. [Warning, potential spoilers in comments]

Update: The number of comments in this thread (931 to be precise) made it a bit unwieldy for people to read and comment on (as discussed here), so I archived the thread (as a 1.22 MB HTML file) and opened a new thread so that the conversation may continue if the participants wish.

A black iPod?.

Plush toy microbes.

The first X-Men movie was a good Hollywood blockbuster: fun, entertaining, and not too stupid. Sequels of Hollywood blockbusters usually suck, but X2 might have been even better than the first one.

NYC subway fare increase to be rolled back.

Prevent DDoS attacks by making computers solve a puzzle in exchange for access.

BlogChatter tracks pings in realtime...it's a realtime weblogs.com. won't work with some older browsers

Donate A Phone lets you recycle your mobile phone.

Now that people have had a couple of weeks to tinker with it, it's become apparent that in iTunes, Apple has created their own little Napster. Well, half of Napster anyway. Just like with Napster or Kazaa, users of iTunes can share their music libraries with anyone with anyone they want. Several public sites and applications have already sprung up to help people find folks who are sharing their music, most notably ShareiTunes and SpyMac.

The catch is that you can't save songs from someone else's library to your local library using iTunes. However, a few enterprising developers looked at how iTunes shares music and have been building applications that provide the other half of the Napster experience, the downloading of music from remote libraries. iLeech is a very simple, tiny program that lets you download music from any publically available iTunes library (and there are other apps that do similar things).

Conventional wisdom is that Apple seriously fucked up, the RIAA is going to sue Apple's pants off, and Apple's new iTunes Music Store will be shut down by the some seriously pissed off record companies.

I'd like to believe an alternative theory. Apple had to know what they were doing with iTunes. Their engineers aren't stupid. They left the whole thing wide open and had to know how trivial it would be for developers to figure out the protocol and write apps to download the music directly. Maybe Apple is taking a stand here, saying that this type of software is not illegal and that it is individual users who choose to break the law. Apple knows that it's in our nature to want to share music, photos, and movies with each other and is building applications (social software?) to support that behavior. Apple wants to make a business out of this and maybe they're daring the RIAA to sue them over it. Or daring the RIAA not to sue them. After all, Apple and the record companies are all buddy-buddy now with the iTunes Music Store...are they willing to sue Apple right after getting Jobs on the cover of Fortune with Sheryl Crow? If Apple is in fact taking a stand here, I say, go Apple!

"Blog space" is one of Rem Koolhaus's 30 Spaces of the 21st Century.

About a week ago, the display screen on my cellphone stopped working. As I am used to thinking of a cellphone as a complete collection of functionality, I dismissed the whole phone as broken and began the search for a new one. Shopping for cellphones is just above getting shot in the gut & bleeding painfully for several hours on my fun meter, so I've been procrastinating the task.

In the meantime, I've realized that my supposedly busted Nokia is still a completely functional telephone. I can't see who's calling, see if I have voicemail, read SMS messages, check the signal or battery strength, or dial using my phone book, but I can both call out (by manually dialing numbers) and receive calls no problem. All I need is a rotary dialing mechanism and I'm back to a circa-1980 telephone experience.

There are generally two groups of wine tasters: Hedonists and Thinkers.

The American Chestnut Foundation, working to restore the king of the forest.

Test Shows 99.99% of High School Seniors Can't Read Perl.

I can't believe there's only one result.

The new $20 bill, more uncool money design from the U.S..

The New Media Reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the field.

grandtextauto is a group weblog about computer mediated and computer generated works of many forms.

2001 BBC interview with Ted "Hypertext" Nelson.

"Don't Partially Hydrogenate Me" t-shirts and stickers.

I'm trying something new on kottke.org today. I've invited Meg to post to my remaindered links weblog (located on the right side of the front page, archives here). If it works out well, I'd like to have 1-2 guests posting to it for a few weeks at a time. Welcome, Meg.

Weight Estimates on Air Passengers Will Rise. Fatter Americans not mentioned as a cause

Bottom-up pedestrian paths.

Great use of Amazon wishlists: the wish lists of public libraries.

This is brilliant: rejected Google logos on Fark.

Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. He?s not the smartest or the most clever writer but he weaves deceptively simple stories into larger statements on society and humanity with a skill possessed by very few people doing creative work in any field. I haven?t gotten around to reading Moneyball yet, but Liar?s Poker is probably his strongest work. It?s as hard to put down as any fiction. Great book.

• books
• economics
• Liars Poker
• Michael Lewis
• money
• working

Gawker Stalker map, blech. I thought the whole point of New York is that we leave celebrities the fuck alone..

Edward Tufte has a new 24-page pamphlet out called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint on how to improve your PowerPoint presentations:

In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall. For many years, overhead projectors lit up transparencies, and slide projectors showed high-resolution 35mm slides. Now "slideware" computer programs for presentations are nearly everywhere. Early in the 21st century, several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint were turning out trillions of slides each year.

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?

I love the cover image.

• books
• design
• Edward Tufte
• Powerpoint
• thecognitivestyleofpowerpoint

The Gospel According to Neo, the Matrix and religion.

European summer 2003 music festivals.

Apple/Microsoft pissing match is ultimately pointless...MS is still kicking Apple's ass where it counts.

Wil Wheaton's book, Dancing Barefoot.

Ten years ago, Michael Hauben wrote The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives. It begins:

Welcome to the 21st Century. You are a Netizen (Net Citizen), and you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider everyone as your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you are in contact with much of the world via the global computer network. Virtually you live next door to every other single netizen in the world. Geographical separation is replaced by existence in the same virtual space.

That simple description of netizenship has held up fairly well, although living in the petri dish for the last 10 years has revealed unforseen structure in Hauben's homogeneous "virtual space". I may inhabit cyberspace along with everyone else, but my neighborhood is determined by my social network(s). I can direct my computer to get information from a web site in Finland, but that doesn't make the owner of that site my next door neighbor.

Hauben based his musings on a paper by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor called The Computer as a Communication Device which is worth a read as well.

37signals is hiring.

When will we see the big Barney Google vs. Google trademark suit?.

Ramblings is a nice tech focused weblog by Nathan Cochrane.

Acting on a tip from 'crans, Meg, Lance, and I hit the American Folk Art Museum last weekend. Henry Darger's young girls with penises opus was good, but the three-floor exhibit of Adolf Wölfli's work absolutely blew me away. Wölfli was a Swiss artist who wound up in a mental institution around the turn of the last century (child molestation got him there, schizophrenia kept him there), cranking out art like his life depended on it until he died in 1930.

During that period, he produced over 25,000 pages of drawings, illustrations, and illustrated narrative. Wölfli's drawings are incredibly dense, almost fractal in nature, requiring viewing from multiple distances to begin to see the whole. The American Folk Art Museum provides a good setting for seeing the exhibit, which consists of an impressive sampling of Wölfli's work, from his earliest surviving drawings to the commercial "bread art" he produced to keep himself in pencils and tobacco. If you find yourself in NYC before the exhibit ends on May 19, I'd *highly* recommend checking it out.

More on the Wölfli exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum:
The Far Side (New Yorker)
Primal Time (Village Voice)
The Autobiography of St. Adolf II (artnet)

The Spinning Beach Ball of Death FAQ.

An ode to Burnt Sienna.

Using the touch wheel like a combination lock could provide a simple security mechanism for the iPod.

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players buy old slide shows at yard and estate sales and then play music to them. After catching them on a rerun of Conan O'Brien, my appetite was whet for their appearance at GEL last week. Among other things, they sang a six-part rock opera about a 1977 McDonald's corporate meeting. Half the audience was laughing hysterically while the other half was very, very perplexed as to what was happening (one gentleman looked almost angry that his time was being wasted in this manner). For the unperplexable among you, I recommend checking out one of their shows.

First, there was Kottski.org, now there's kottke-san.org.

Various George Bush caricatures.

Great photographs of plant structure.

I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding over some Nigerian spam.

Tools are the Revolution, Kevin Kelly.

Gehry architecture blamed for inability for police to capture gunman in building.

Hackers and painters.

A comparison of the first draft of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest with the published version.

Hi, Alison.

Interview with Jason Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.

How to design good 35mm slides.

Britney dancing in Japanese commercial.

So, I got myself one of Apple's new iPods. I only ever used an older-style iPod at the Apple Store a few times so I can't really compare the new with the old, but I love my new little friend so far. Size was an important issue for me (you may insert your own joke here) so I got the 15GB model instead of the slightly larger and heavier 30GB one. It's so small, thin, and light; it feels like it's barely there sometimes.

I'm using it during the morning & evening commutes and at lunch while reading. As someone who is not used to wearing headphones in public, the elimination of audio in the urban environment — the rush of a cab through an intersection, the bustle of someone trying to get by you on a crowded sidewalk, the overheard snippets of an entertaining conversation — is disorienting. I'm relying on my other senses — particularly sight — to keep aware and safe. So far, I like the music but miss the sounds of the city. Perhaps I'll give the iPod a rest 1 or 2 days each week.

Free wireless in Paris.

Hey Charles, did you even look at his weblog? His name is Salam, not Raed..

- I got extremely accustomed to not posting to kottke.org. I almost didn't start up again. Maybe I'll quit again soon.

- No one seems to use the bathroom here at work. I've gotten in the habit of drinking lots of water so I'm in there a few times a day and I never see anyone else in there.

- Thought it was weird that all these PC owners were weighing in on whether the iTunes Music Store was going to work or not when most of them hadn't even used it. I'm in danger of turning into an evangelist here, but it's the user experience, stupid. There are other services that do what the Music Store does, but none are as easy. Apple has made buying music easy by closely incorporating it with other things that people do with their music. I play my music in iTunes, I organize my music in iTunes, I can share my music from iTunes, and now I buy my music in iTunes. (Some quick down sides: no discounts on multi-song or full album purchases, no pooling of payments (I don't want 8 $0.99 payments on my CC)**, and the selection is relatively small and undiverse.)

- I work in midtown Manhattan and my walk takes me up 5th Avenue for a few blocks. I feel so out of place there. Everyone looks like they care so much about their appearance and I'm just wearing what they wear to fit in. I can almost feel it...deep down, they all know I shouldn't really be there.

- I quite like not having a phone.

- Bryant Park is a wonderful urban park. Reminds me of the jardins of Paris.

- The new X-Men movie is quite good and fun, especially for a sequel.

- I checked out America's most postmodern pirate supply store while I was in San Francisco. Mr. Eggers was not in at the time, but while I was making a small purchase, the cashier remarked to one of her coworkers, "Neal Pollack just walked by in a tuxedo." Surrounded as I was by glass eyes and peg legs, this did not seem strange.

- Ladies, no more wearing shoes with 2-inch+ platforms. It looks silly. I saw a woman wearing them this morning; she looked like a Star Wars AT-ST transport tromping down the street. Good for attracting Wookies, I guess.

** I looked at the Music Store preferences and there is a way to pool purchases into a shopping cart for bulk buying. Also, purchases made on the same day are pooled by Apple into one charge on your credit card.

Get your Japanese gadget fix in the US.

Bush and Blair nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for, um, war.

Gridcosm. Whoa..

Computers are like matter, a lot of abstraction and very little substance.

Definition of "FUD": Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

Rappers battle on Kay Slay's mix tapes.

Breakin' 2 - Electric Boogaloo on DVD.

A "basket-blog" on nba.com.

Eastwest.nu, R.I.P..

James Beard Awards announced.

Baghdad blogger Salam Pax posts some new entries.

A bunch of DNS tools.

Tour eBay's new look.

Better Bayesian filtering for spam.

A somewhat technical explanation of using Bayesian filtering for spam.

Magritte's "L'Oiseau de Ciel" sold at auction for $3.8 million.

Mercury is in transit across the Sun today.

Weblog as fiction exercise, shades of Katie Raygun.

The best way to learn about a blogger is to read their first post and their 9/11 post.

A Russian Kottke, home of fine Russian hypertext products.

Keep up with the latest Beckham gossip: will he or won't he leave Man Utd for Real Madrid?.

Beck has a weblog.

Google to offer weblog search tool soon says CEO Eric Schmidt.

Indiana Jones movies on DVD in November.

Exploded view of new iPod.

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at GEL.

Watch me feed little bits of food to Anil while Lance has a seizure.

Adolf Wolfli, mad freak genius.

Shatner's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds named worst Beatles cover ever.

I'm busy with work, some other work, people in town, and dealing with some personal issues. I might not post for awhile.

Also, my cell phone is busted. If you're trying to reach me on it, send me an email instead.