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Dark horse “originally alluded to an unknown horse winning a race and was so used in a novel by Benjamin Disraeli (The Young Duke, 1831)”. An answer to a “where on earth did that expression come from” discussion I had the other day.
A Selection From George W. Bush’s Eavesdropping Tapes: Matthew Barney and Bjork Place an Ikea Phone Order. “Ask if they have an aluminum igloo.”
From: [email protected]
Subject: Powerbook support
Date: January 10, 2006 4:55:31 PM ET
To: Apple Tech Support
Hello,
I purchased a new Powerbook three weeks ago. It was working fine until a few hours ago when you announced the new Intel-powered MacBook Pro at MacWorld and I started to cry. “Four to fives times faster,” I sobbed, “a built-in iSight, and a brighter, wider screen.”
My display, while not as bright or large as the new MacBook Pro display, illuminated my wet cheeks and red, swollen eyes as my tears rained down on the backlit keyboard. An acrid smell rose up from inside the smooth metal machine as my salty tears joined with the electronics, joyfully releasing the electrons from their assigned silicon pathways to freely arc into forbidden areas of the computer and elsewhere, including, somewhat painfully, my hands.
Is this covered under my warranty and if so, can you send me a new MacBook Pro as a replacement, please? Thank you for your time,
-jason
Kodak has themselves a new logo and gosh it looks plain and boring and undistinctive. Who are the folks convincing companies like Intel and Kodak that these logo/brand overhauls are going to revitalize their companies? Revitalization is a hard business…a new coat of paint isn’t going to cut it.
Update: More on Kodak’s new logo at Speak Up.
Pareidolia: “The erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random.” Here are hundreds of examples on Flickr…light sockets that look like faces, etc.
Going to try doing an live update of what Jobs is announcing at MacWorld. If you’d like to drink right from the firehose, here’s the MacRumors feed. (Note, I’m not at MacWorld, so I have no idea why I’m doing this except it’s kinda fun and old school in a way.)
- 32 million iPods sold in 2005
- Selling at the rate of a billion songs a year on iTunes Music Store
- Offering SNL skits through iTunes, all your old favorites
- Remote control for iPod with an FM tuner in it…listen to FM radio with the iPod
- 40% of the cars sold in the US in 2006 will have iPod integration
- Announced some new Dashboard widgets, including one for snow conditions for skiing
- 10.4.4
- Update to iLife….iLife ‘06
- New iPhoto will handle 250,000 photos (!!!), full-screen editing, more printing options (postcards calendars)
- Photocasting - podcasting for photos (Flickr competitor?), uploads photos to .Mac to iPhoto, people can subscribe, anyone can view photos via RSS
- Create video podcasts with iMovie, dump video to iPod
- iDVD creates widescreen DVDs, something called Magic iDVD that makes it super easy to create DVDs…drag and drop and push a couple buttons
- use iChat to record audio interviews with GarageBand (I think….), ah, ok, GarageBand has a Podcast Studio in it, use it to produce podcasts
- Announcing iWeb. Share photo albums, publish blogs, podcasting, Apple-designed templates. One-click publishing to .Mac. RSS, of course (lots of RSS stuff in iLife). A bit hard to see what this is exactly when you’re not watching these demos in person. Also includes some sort of online media browser w/AJAX…works in any browser. “integrated with your music library”, whatever that means.
- iWork ‘06…. (nothing really new here)
- Talking about new hardware. Intel update…looks like OS X on Intel is ready. New Mac today with Intel chip. It’s the iMac. Ahead of schedule (Apple originally said mid-year).
- Intel iMac is 2 to 3 times faster than the G5, Tiger (10.4.4) is native on the Intel processor, all of Apple’s apps are too.
- Microsoft will make new versions of office for the Mac for a minimum of 5 years
- New Intel iMacs shipping today. They will be doing Intel versions of all their hardware this calendar year.
- Famous Jobs’ “one more thing”….MacBook Pro, Powerbook with Intel chip, 4-5 times faster than the G4 Powerbook, magnetic power adapter
Ok, all done. Check out Apple.com for all the new stuff. Apple’s stock price is up 5 points (~6%) on today’s news.
Binding books in human skin used to be a more common practice than it is now. More here. (via bb)
Erik Spiekermann explains how Nokia’s corporate typeface came to be. Looks like it was based on one of Nokia’s onscreen bitmap fonts. I’ve always wanted to create a “real” version of Silkscreen like that.
Some fans of The Matrix films went to Sydney and photographed various locations that were in the first film. Photoset on Flickr.
Beggar Prince is slated to be the first new game released for the Sega Genesis since 1998.
I can’t remember where I first ran across Edward Burtynsky’s photography, but I’ve been developing into a full-fledged fan of work over the past few months. From a Washington Post article on Burtynsky:
Burtynsky calls his images “a second look at the scale of what we call progress,” and hopes that at minimum, the images acquaint viewers with the ramifications — he avoids the word price — of our lifestyle. But what if viewers just see, you know, some dudes and a ship?
“Another photographer might focus on the loss of life or pollution,” acknowledges Kennel of the National Gallery. “He uses beauty as a way to draw attention to something. It’s a very particular strategy.”
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is displaying an exhibition of Burtynsky’s photos until January 15. Well worth the effort to try and check it out. The scale of modernity, particularly in his recent photos of China, is astounding. In Three Gorges Dam Project, Dam #4, this huge dam seems to stretch on forever and you don’t know whether to goggle in wonder or shrink in horror from looking at it.
Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are had been shelved, but Warner Bros has revived it. Jonze wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers. (via rw)
Cute video of some Sims in a Metallica music video.
In 2005, 34 poker players earned $1 million playing tournaments, compared to 78 golfers earning the same playing their sport.
In addition to the James Frey thing, we’ve got people digging into the identity of the secretive writer JT LeRoy (a denial). And True Hoop’s Henry Abbott is trying to figure out who William Wesley is…a powerful NBA figure who came out of nowhere and appears to not have a job or any direct influence on anyone or anything but goes to fights with Michael Jordan and has LeBron James on speed dial.
Affirmations Google Should Consider Putting on Its Search Button Other Than “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Not a great list, but “I Deserve to Google and Be Googled” should be put on a tshirt.
Update: You don’t need to wait too long around here…here’s a “I Deserve to Google and Be Googled” tshirt. (thx, rickey)
The New York Times sure has a boner for Ana Marie Cox and her new book, Dog Days. They’ve reviewed it one, two, three times in the last five days…and that’s not counting Ms. Cox’s nicely timed op-ed about Jack Abramoff from last Thursday.
Adobe has released the beta version of a program called Lightroom (OS X only), a competitor to Apple’s Aperture. Both are pro-level apps for manipulating and organizing digital photos. Here’s the story of Lightroom’s development from one of its developers. (via df)
The Smoking Gun just published a long article (via 3qd) alleging that James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, is not as non-fictional as he’s claimed on Oprah and in countless other interviews. From A Million Little Lies:
Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw “wanted in three states.”
In additon to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book’s most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy’s third victim. It’s a cynical and offensive ploy that has left one of the victims’ parents bewildered. “As far as I know, he had nothing to do with the accident,” said the mother of one of the dead girls. “I figured he was taking license…he’s a writer, you know, they don’t tell everything that’s factual and true.”
TSG became interested in Frey when they attempted to locate his mug shot after his Oprah appearance, had difficulty locating it, and started to dig a little deeper. Along the way, they uncovered several instances in Frey’s book that appear fictionalized or significantly embellished. When contacted for the story by TSG, Frey hired a lawyer and published some of his confidential correspondance with TSG on his blog, at the same time commenting:
So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won�t dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response.
TSG alleges that he also admitted in those conversations that parts of his book were untrue.
The Smoking Gun has a pretty good reputation with these sorts of things, so I expect this to be taken pretty seriously by the media and probably Frey’s publisher and fans. A James Frey message board is already buzzing about the piece. If it holds up, TSG should get some recognition for it…this piece is as good as any investigative piece I’ve seen in a newspaper or magazine. I haven’t gotten around to reading either of Frey’s books…has anyone out there read them? What’s your impression of the books and TSG’s allegations?
The top 10 weirdest USB drives, including drives that look like fried shrimp, a human thumb, and Barbie (her head pops off to reveal the plug).
“Fans are fascinated by the drugs-and-drink-fuelled excesses of rock stars such as Pete Doherty - but they don’t see the heavy personal toll it takes, writes Caroline Butler, who spent years with an alcoholic star”. (via tmn)
The story of the Hindenburg disaster. Amazingly, 2/3 of the zeppelin’s passengers survived the crash. Here’s an audio recording of the famous Herbert Morrison radio broadcast (“oh, the humanity”) of the disaster.
Update: This article appears to have dropped behind Nerve’s paywall. Sorry about that.
An original painting by Adolf Hitler recently went for 11,000 euros on eBay.
The Del Monte Note is a $20 bill with a Del Monte banana sticker that was affixed to it during the printing process so that the serial number and Treasury seal are partially printed on the sticker. “In the summer of 2004 a college student in Ohio received it as part of an ATM withdrawal and shortly there after posted it on eBay where it sold to the highest of 12 bids.”
Over the holidays, Meg and I went up to Vermont skiing. I skied quite a bit when I was in middle/high school (on the small hills of northwestern WI and east central MN), but I’d only strapped on the boards a couple times since graduating from college. Meg’s family has skied at Mad River Glen for years, so that’s where we went. After three straight days of hitting the slopes, my back got a little wonky, so on the 4th day I brought the camera along to document a run down the mountain:
There are a few photos of Waitsfield (the town closest to Mad River) and the surrouding area at the beginning of the set, but most are from the mountain, including some of the best winter views I’ve ever witnessed. The snow covering the trees, the fog at the top of the hill…it looked almost magical. At one point, I was alone on the mountain with my camera, engulfed in fog, no one within 200 yards. With no wind and all the snow & fog muffling the sound, when I stopped breathing, I couldn’t hear anything at all.
This is no game. “One day we’ll just sit by the fire, chew some tobacky, toast some marshmackies, and maybe strum a tune on the ole guitacky.”
Hello, TiVo. Hurry the hell up and release your HD-compatible Series 3 machine already. Are you trying to make me angry?
Anil Dash offers a list of dos and don’ts for beating the iPod and iTunes.
Joe Woodward profiles David Foster Wallace for Poets & Writers magazine.
Stabilized version of the Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination. Stabilized means the camera movement has been digitally edited out…the video is super-clear now.
A small collection of animated GIF mashups (which are created by using DHTML to layer a bunch of animated GIF over each other).
The Mile Wall is an interesting variation on the Million Dollar Homepage…you buy space (by the inch) on a web page that will horizontally stretch a mile. Right now, the page is 1.7 feet wide…lots of good real estate available.
A selection of photos from our week in Saigon:
Here are my posts from the rest of the Asia trip, my photos from Hong Kong, and my photos from Bangkok.
A collection of pre-Katrina obituaries from New Orleans of people with distinctive nicknames. “New Orleans in the pre-Katrina world was full of characters that you’d sooner expect to read about in a Flannery O’conner short story than meet in real life. ” (thx, sara)
Neat information design on the menu for Alinea. The size, positions, and darkness of the circles on the menu represent the sweetness/tartness, size, and flavor intensity of each course.
Update: Better photo of the menu here.
Satugo is a fun little camera that you can throw in the air or bounce to get some unusual photos. Love the pull-string for the quick but steady shots.
Looks like Sony has finally made a version of the Librie (an electronic ink portable media reader) for the US market. It says that “Random House, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin-Putnam, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Book Group are all on board with titles”, which may mean that the thing is all DRMed up. Still coveting though. (via rw)
I was 15 minutes into White Noise (starring Michael Keaton) before I stopped, Googled it, and realized that it wasn’t the White Noise based on the Don DeLillo novel, which novel I’ve never read and which movie isn’t even out yet. The Michael Keaton-ness of it should have tipped me off sooner, but a man communicating with his dead wife through the TV…that sounds like DeLillo could have written it, doesn’t it?
Ana Marie Cox leaves Wonkette to write books full-time.
This Day in Apple History offers a daily story about what happened on a given day in Apple’s history.
What business are movie theaters in? The fast-food business, the advertising business, or the movie exhibition business? All three, but they take the movie exhibition business the least seriously.
Transcript from the final moments of Asheron’s Call 2, an online game that got turned off on Dec 30 because it wasn’t making any money. “This world will be shutting down in 2 minutes. Please log out.” (via wonderland)
Where does the time go? It’s been more than a month since we got back from Asia, but I haven’t posted my photos from Bangkok or Saigon yet. Time for amends, so with my apologies, here are a collection of photos I took in Bangkok.
Here’s my posts from the rest of the Asia trip and my photos from Hong Kong. Saigon photos tomorrow (hopefully).
Playboy in braille? Yup, they’re produced by the Library of Congress.
Best Google logo yet…a Braille version to celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille.
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