Business 2.0 presents the Bottom Line Design Awards
Business 2.0 presents the Bottom Line Design Awards. “Good design is nice to look at, but great design exhibits beauty that’s more than skin-deep — it integrates form, function, and market need.”
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Entries for March 2005
NPPA Best of Photojournalism 2005: Still Photography Winners
NPPA Best of Photojournalism 2005: Still Photography Winners. Be prepared to spend a few minutes or hours with this one.
R.W. Apple shadows a clown to
R.W. Apple shadows a clown to discover where circus folk eat when they’re in town.
History of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in the US
History of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in the US. The first video game system I ever owned was an NES “Deluxe Set”. I sold that stupid robot shortly thereafter at a garage sale and used the proceeds to buy another game. (Rad Racer, maybe?)
Low stakes Finnish Hold ‘Em
After sitting down to dinner at Moustache in the East Village, a bunch of us pulled out our phones, which activity I’ve noticed is some kind of nerd group tic. Several at the table had the Nokia 7610 and we were still futzing with them when the waiter came up to take our order. When he saw the phone, his eyes went wide. “What phone is this? You all have the same one? What is this phone and where did you get them?”
We told him a little about the phone and he seemed impressed. Smirking a little, he set down his order pad and reached into his pocket. “Here is my phone,” he said as he placed a recently-released uber-thin Motorola RAZR down on the table, stepped back, and crossed his arms proudly. We all pulled back slightly from the table, silent for a moment, and then leaned in to get a closer look with a collective “oooooh….” The waiter beamed, happy at besting a bunch of geeks at a hand of cell phone poker.
Screenshots of Katamari Damacy 2
Screenshots of Katamari Damacy 2. I’ll be a little disappointed if this is basically the same game with new levels.
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov resisted pushing the missle
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov resisted pushing the missle launch button in the face of an incoming attack (which later turned out to be false). In the 50 years of the Cold War, it’s amazing that we didn’t destroy ourselves, accidentally or otherwise.
Postsecret: send your secret in on a
Postsecret: send your secret in on a postcard and it’ll get put up on this site. Like grouphug.us, but way more effective because of the handmade cards.
What is link prefetching?
What is link prefetching?. Page authors can tell Mozilla/Firefox to preload a “next page” while the user is still on the current page.
Buzz Bin updates weekly about the most talked about movies
Buzz Bin updates weekly about the most talked about movies. Die Hard 4? In 5 years time, all movies will be sequels.
Witold Rybczynski on the poor exterior architecture of the MoMA
Witold Rybczynski on the poor exterior architecture of the MoMA. “The five-story wall slices down next to the sidewalk with the finality of a guillotine. The brutal scalelessness resembles something out of a Kubrick science-fiction fantasy.”
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
January was a rough month for me and I needed a break from all the “heavy” nonfiction I usually read, so I picked up Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a well-received fantasy novel. I’m normally not much of a fantasy reader, but I was in the mood for something fanciful and besides, JS&MN isn’t really fantasy. It contains fantastic things like magicians, Raven Kings, and faeries but belongs more to the 19th century British novel genre…more Jane Austen than JRR Tolkien. (Clarke lists Austen as her favorite author on the book’s site.)
And it’s just plain good, whatever the genre. The simple bold cover drew me in (it looks like the font used is a close cousin to Caslon Antique), but the plot kept me in “I can’t put it down” mode until I had finished. A surprise was how clever and funny Clarke’s writing was…I found myself laughing out loud several times at the book’s cutting deadpan wit. The book weighs in at ~780 pages, but my only disappointment upon finishing was that the story was over…I felt like I’d just gotten to know the characters and wanted to follow them on all sorts of adventures. Luckily, Clarke is working on a sequel of sorts, according to the book’s web site:
The next book will be set in the same world and will probably start a few years after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell finishes. I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it. I doubt that the new book will be a sequel in the strictest sense. There are new characters to be introduced, though probably some old friends will appear too. I’d like to move down the social scale a bit. Strange and Norrell were both rich, with pots of money and big estates. Some of the characters in the second book have to struggle a bit harder to keep body and soul together. I expect there’ll be more about John Uskglass, the Raven King, and about how magic develops in England.
The first chapter is online if you’d like to read it and Metacritic has several reviews.
P.S. For fun, here are Amazon’s Statistically Improbable Phrases for this book: new manservant, madhouse attendants, fairy roads, practical magician.
Edward Tufte and Richard Feynman’s van
Edward Tufte and Richard Feynman’s van. “The Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van.”
Preshrunk, the t-shirt blog, asked me, “what’s in your closet?”
Preshrunk, the t-shirt blog, asked me, “what’s in your closet?”.
Wordpress is using its high Page Rank
Wordpress is using its high Page Rank to game Google AdWords. This stinks like last week’s fish. Is Wordpress and wordpress.org an open source project like we’ve all been told or is it a company? Either way, contributing to spam noise on the web is annoying.
The real identity of Belle de Jour
The real identity of Belle de Jour is out, and it looks like she’s really an author, not a call girl.
Where are they now?
Where are they now?. What ever happened to the folks behind bluemountainarts.com, Ain’t It Cool News, and Webgrrls?
A quick list of advice about writing
A quick list of advice about writing. I like this one: “if you can’t get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said”.
Ever wonder what David Byrne is listening
Ever wonder what David Byrne is listening to? Check out his own personal radio station..
Gastronomica on the traditional sumo diet
Gastronomica on the traditional sumo diet. Use the link to the PDF version to read the entire article.
Bob and Harvey Weinstein to leave Miramax
Bob and Harvey Weinstein to leave Miramax. Oddly, they’ll still make movies for Disney with their new company.
Courtney Love to play Linda Lovelace in
Courtney Love to play Linda Lovelace in biopic of the Deep Throat star.
Gluehands
When we were kids, my sister and I didn’t have a lot of toys. What toys we did have were fairly basic but open-ended…blocks, lincoln logs, crayons, construction paper, glue, (very dull) scissors, paints, etc., stuff we could use to make all sorts of different things. One of my favorite things to do (and this lasted well into high school) was to take a bottle of plain white Elmer’s Glue, spread glue all over my hands, let it dry, and then peel the glue off like old skin. I don’t know why I liked this activity, but there was something about the peeling that was *so* completely satisfying. When the glue was drying, I could barely wait to tear it off my hands.
Imagine my delight then upon discovering some kindred gluehands addicts aficionados. A few weeks ago, while Youngna was constructing a birthday card for a friend, we busted out the Elmer’s and went crazy with the gluehands. Here’s some photographic documentation of our gluehands bender. More than 15 years later, the peeling is still so satisfying. I may have to pick up some glue the next time I’m at the drug store.
Josh Schachter has taken on some outside
Josh Schachter has taken on some outside investment and is doing del.icio.us full-time. Congratulations to Josh…looking forward to seeing what happens.
Tim Bray is considering switching from a
Tim Bray is considering switching from a Mac to something else. “[Apple] controls the message, nothing that’s not part of the message can be said, nobody is allowed to say anything except for Steve, and they’ll sue your ass if you step out of bounds.”
Paul Shirley, bench-warmer for the Phoenix Suns,
Paul Shirley, bench-warmer for the Phoenix Suns, wrote a blog for nba.com during a recent road trip.
Paul Graham: “All the best hackers I
Paul Graham: “All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs”.
Atul Gawande on doctors, insurance, and money,
Atul Gawande on doctors, insurance, and money, a trifecta that is a pain in the ass for everyone involved. “To me, all the members of the team deserved a million dollars for [saving my son’s life]. Others were footing the bill-so it’s left to them to question the price. Hence the adversarial relationship doctors have with insurers.”
ReadyMade interviews Brad Bird about his job,
ReadyMade interviews Brad Bird about his job, movies, and The Incredibles.
Measuring How NBA Players Help Their Teams Win
Measuring How NBA Players Help Their Teams Win. Over the past two years, Kevin Garnett has been the most valuable player for his team…by a significant margin.
Huge projections onto the cooling tower of a nuclear facility
Huge projections onto the cooling tower of a nuclear facility. Use “zuruck” and “weiter” to see more photos of the project.
Conservatives want to see more quotes from
Conservatives want to see more quotes from other conservatives on Starbucks’ coffee cups. The content of the quotes don’t seem to be an issue, only the political leanings of the contributors.
13 things that science doesn’t have the answers for
13 things that science doesn’t have the answers for. Dark matter, the Pioneer anomaly, cold fusion, the placebo effect, etc. Some great opportunities for discovery.
Update: New Scientist recently published a list of 13 more things that don’t make sense.
Dot-Con Job: The Seattle Times looks at
Dot-Con Job: The Seattle Times looks at the rise and fall of InfoSpace. Very good reporting; the “mansions, cars, yachts” section is worth a chuckle…Jean-Remy Facq sounds like a very special kind of idiot.
Interview with some French food bloggers about the French paradox
Interview with some French food bloggers about the French paradox. “How do French women manage to enjoy chocolate, wine, cheese and bread without gaining weight?”
Be Cool
Anything but cool, I wanted my money back at the end of this one. Catching a John Travolta film is always a gamble and he was alright in this, playing his typical Vincent Vega character, but the rest of it was just crap. I expected to like Vince Vaughn’s character more, but it took about two seconds for you to get his whole schtick and then it just became really really tiresome. I did laugh out loud once — Cedric the Entertainer as a reformed gangbanger-turned-rapper/producer/millionaire rolls up with his posse and they’re all wearing tshirts with basketball jerseys over them and Cedric has a **button-down** shirt with a jersey over it — but that was the only highlight. Metacritic, I will never doubt you again.
Pre-order Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) for $30 off
Pre-order Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) for $30 off the regular price at Amazon.
Five Ford hybrid vehicles race to find
Five Ford hybrid vehicles race to find the slowest commute into Manhattan. The Holland Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge placed 1st and 2nd.
Guardian interview with “the misanthropic, sex-obsessed cartoonist Robert Crumb”
Guardian interview with “the misanthropic, sex-obsessed cartoonist Robert Crumb”.
Andy made some significant changes to Upcoming,
Andy made some significant changes to Upcoming, his collaborative calendaring site. You can now add personal events, tag events, get email/SMS event reminders, etc. Oh, and a REST API.
Bloggers in Malaysia are covering the earthquake
Bloggers in Malaysia are covering the earthquake. Several links to Malasian bloggers and aggregators.
The latest Indonesian earthquake has been updated to magnitude 8.7
The latest Indonesian earthquake has been updated to magnitude 8.7.
The latest tsunami bulletin says “there has
The latest tsunami bulletin says “there has been no major tsunami observed near the epicenter”. “There was however a small tsunami observed on the Cocos tide gage.”
MSNBC is collecting first-hand accounts of the earthquake here
MSNBC is collecting first-hand accounts of the earthquake here. No reports of a tsunami, “everything is calm” in Banda Aceh near the epicenter and “most people have returned to their homes” there.
Scientists predicted another quake in Indonesia last week
Scientists predicted another quake in Indonesia last week. “[Scientists] report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature that stress is building in the Sumatra fault, where the magnitude 9.0 quake struck December 26”.
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