Classic quote from Shaq comparing the three
Classic quote from Shaq comparing the three guards he’s played with to Vito Corleone’s sons in The Godfather. Penny = Fredo, Kobe = Sonny, and Dwyane Wade = Michael.
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Entries for May 2006
Simply Google, a one-pager for navigating and
Simply Google, a one-pager for navigating and searching all of Google’s offerings.
Captain Picard’s blog. With guestbloggers Seven of
Captain Picard’s blog. With guestbloggers Seven of Nine, Will Riker, Worf, and Data.
The worst band names (along with the
The worst band names (along with the best worst band names) of 2006 (so far). Mariospeedwagon!
Listen to three tracks from Thom Yorke’s
Listen to three tracks from Thom Yorke’s new solo project, the eraser. Radiohead it ain’t, and I’m not sure I like it.
Names of books + band names. Charlie Daniels
Names of books + band names. Charlie Daniels and the Chocolate Factory, Motley Crusoe, The Natalie Merchant of Venice, and J-Lolita…you get the idea.
In the beta version of Office 2007, a
In the beta version of Office 2007, a font called Calibri is the default font instead of Times New Roman. The end of a typographic era.
Peterme has a realization: “I am without
Peterme has a realization: “I am without a professional tribe”. I’ve been feeling the same way for quite awhile now and like Peter, I’m not quite sure what to do about it.
Satellite imagery used to spot human rights abuses
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is exploring the use of satellite imagery to detect and prove human rights abuses. It’s difficult to deny the communication potential of these images:
Larger versions of the images are available (before and after).
The images, analyzed by the AAAS staff, show two views of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The first, an archived image from June 2002, shows an intact settlement with more than 850 homes and other buildings; an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived in Porta Farm at the time. The second photo, taken by satellite on 6 April this year, shows that the settlement has been leveled.
International rights groups allege that the forced relocations in Zimbabwe — which affected over 700,000 people over the course of six weeks in 2005 — are an attempt by the Mugabe government to supress opposition to the current regime.
The AAAS and other organizations hope to use satellite imagery in the future as a tool in addressing the human rights abuses in Darfur, Burma, and other areas. (via rw)
Videos of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons from
Videos of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons from the Simpsons. Get ‘em before Fox’s lawyers see them.
Update: If you’d like to automatically grab all the videos, here’s a curl command that’ll do it. (thx, matt)
Maciej takes George Will to task on
Maciej takes George Will to task on bilingual ballots. Will thinks bilingual ballots are “a mockery of the rule of law” because you need to speak English to become a citizen. Maciej says, “the insinuation that voters might want ballots in Spanish because they are cheating, lazy, bad people is malicious and wrong. You choose Spanish on your ballot for the same reason you might choose it in an ATM transaction - not because you have contempt for American civil society, but because you don’t want to make a mistake.”
Unsurprisingly, the WSJ doesn’t much care for
Unsurprisingly, the WSJ doesn’t much care for An Inconvenient Truth. Is there any way of uncoupling political alignment and one’s position on this issue?
Columbia House launches subscription meds program. “Qualified
Columbia House launches subscription meds program. “Qualified seniors may choose either 12 generic drugs for one cent, or five brand-name medications for 49 cents each, plus shipping and handling.”
Minty Boost is a portable USB charger (
Minty Boost is a portable USB charger (for your iPod, digital camera, etc.) that fits inside an Altoids gum tin and uses 2 AA batteries as a power source. You can buy a kit, make one from scratch, or even use the instructions to make kits to sell yourself.
Lots of interesting questions about couples who
Lots of interesting questions about couples who spend a lot of time online “together”. “A couple watching TV, curled up on a sofa together, may have felt ‘together’, a couple surfing on two wifi laptops are visiting different sites, having different experiences. They seem more apart than together. The internet age feels less communal than the TV age did.”
Eyebeam’s Graffiti Research Lab has won an
Eyebeam’s Graffiti Research Lab has won an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2006. Congrats, guys!
A quick study shows that stocks of
A quick study shows that stocks of simply named companies do better than those of more complexly named companies. Even companies with pronounceable ticker symbols did better than those with unpronounceable symbols.
Inspired by the hypertextish sidenotes in David
Inspired by the hypertextish sidenotes in David Foster Wallace’s Host, a piece from the Atlantic Monthly about radio host John Ziegler (screenshot of the article), arc90 whipped up a way to add sidenotes to any web page. Here they are in action.
Short list of hot dog places in
Short list of hot dog places in NYC. What, no Crif Dogs? That’s unpossible.
The top ten stock photography cliches. “The
The top ten stock photography cliches. “The Handshake of Synergy: You’ve made the sale and closed the deal. They can’t back out now—you shook on it!” Also, have you met Alicia or this girl?
Update: The same pigtailed girl uses Vagisil and helps teach people about Java Design Patterns for O’Reilly. (via joe, thx michael)
The Photography Channel has more than a
The Photography Channel has more than a dozen videos of photographers dicussing their craft, techniques, and experiences. A fine resource for photographers.
Dictionary words
I’ve been keeping track of words which return a link to a dictionary definition of the word in Google. Dictionary words are those that are written but not written about, haven’t been subject to the corporate/band/blog word grab, or aren’t otherwise popular words.
germane
paucity
reticent
cantankerous
suppositious
abstruse
whinge
assiduous
surreptitious
proclivity
disparaging
sporadically
hypertrophied
pallor
acerbic
surfeit
Many of the Dictionary.com Words of the Day are probably dictionary words as well.
World Cup fever, who has it? World
World Cup fever, who has it? World Cup Blog has it; they’ve got a blogger covering each team in the Cup and even one covering just the referees.
Greg Allen rips into the Smithsonian for
Greg Allen rips into the Smithsonian for selling their archive (actually *our* archive) to Showtime for $6 million. “So not only did Smithsonian executives sell out America’s patrimony to a single, giant media corporation, they sold it for practically nothing.” Wank. Ers.
More on baby name popularity. Over the
More on baby name popularity. Over the last few decades, the most popular baby names have been used less and less as the number of uniques names has risen. 2005 #1 name Jacob was given to only 1.2% of boys while 1945 #1 name James was given to 5.4%. In other words, the long tail of baby names is flattening.
Moleskine’s City Notebook lets you create your
Moleskine’s City Notebook lets you create your own personal city guidebook. Photos of a prototype here; available for Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam now, Chicago, NYC, SF, Boston in 2007. Love the idea of a writable guidebook.
The tragedy of Kevin Garnett. According to
The tragedy of Kevin Garnett. According to the Wins Produced statistic, Garnett is far and away the best player in the NBA, but his teammates have always been bad. Hopefully Garnett can find “a few co-workers who can help him achieve the recognition his performance indicates he clearly deserves”.
Oh, just go watch this remote controlled
Oh, just go watch this remote controlled airplane video. Go! Now! (via cyn-c)
Global warming skeptic Gregg Easterbrook finally caves: “
Global warming skeptic Gregg Easterbrook finally caves: “based on the data I’m now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert”. (via scott rosenberg, who says too little, too late, Gregg)
Coney Island to get a $1 billion makeover?
Coney Island to get a $1 billion makeover? I have a feeling that Shoot the Freak may not have a place in the new Coney Island.
Kevin Smith’s report from the Cannes Film
Kevin Smith’s report from the Cannes Film Festival, where Clerks II got an 8-minute standing ovation. Harvey Weinstein: “In my thirty years of coming here, I’ve never seen a standing ovation last that long at a midnight show in Cannes. Ever.”
Feature request: per-domain JavaScript disabling. God yes,
Feature request: per-domain JavaScript disabling. God yes, any more than one NY Times story up in Safari throws beach balls like crazy.
US TV schedule for World Cup 2006. Goaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!
US TV schedule for World Cup 2006. Goaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!
Bill Thompson of the BBC weighs in
Bill Thompson of the BBC weighs in on the serendipity of the web debate.
Social, political, economic, cultural, historical, and technological
Social, political, economic, cultural, historical, and technological timelines of the world from 1750 to 2100. Having all the timelines in one view is nice, but the zoomable interface is clunky.
From worst to first
Lest we forget, Steven Frank reminds us that for quite a few years (which period roughly coincides with Steve Jobs’ absence from Apple), the Macintosh experience wasn’t all it could have been. In the midst of those dark times, I made a post about how frustrated I was with the Macintosh.
I’ve never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs’ faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don’t get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
At my first web design job — at a company that used to sell and service Macintosh computers — they had Macs on all the desks. When I left a year and a half later, everyone had Dells running NT 4.0 instead; the difference in speed, stability, and price was not even close at that time. I didn’t use another Mac until I bought an iBook after the second coming of Jobs and the advent of OS X.
BTW, that Mac sucks post has become something of a meme on Slashdot. It’s been used to call out Java 1.4.2 fanatics, TI fanatics, SGI lava lamp fanatics, Apple laywers, Mac Mini hard drive performance, cat fanatics, Google fanatics, Amiga fanatics, Pittsburgh professors, Apple I fanatics, trolling losers, and so on.
Follow-up to Apple Store proposal (she said yes!)
Last week, I reported on a man using the video camera that Apple had set up to record the opening of their new store on 5th Ave in NYC to propose marriage to his girlfriend, one Uschi Lang.
I got an email from Uschi and she couldn’t be happier to announce that she said yes to the proposal and that her fiancé James has made her “the happiest woman in the world”. Congratulations, you two!
Update: I emailed Uschi and James for some more details and just got a response back. James had been meaning to propose for a few months — he’d had “the talk” with her father over the holidays — and was looking for a good opportunity. They were both in line for the 6pm opening of the Apple Store on Friday when James noticed the camera and a proposal idea that was “unique, timeless, and surprising” popped into his head.
At 4:30 am, he snuck out of bed without Uschi noticing it and headed back to the Apple Store. Based on the timing of the time-lapse video already posted on Apple’s site, James stood with the signs for about 15 minutes (5 minutes per sign) to ensure that they were visible in the video.
A few days later, James set up a “romantic trail of candles” leading up to his G5, showed Uschi the video — which she had not seen despite some coverage on the web — and she of course said “yes”.
Recent finds in Peru
There’s not enough information in this National Geographic story to figure out if the recent finds in Peru has anything to do with the Norte Chico civilization or not. “We found some old stuff somewhere in Peru”…thanks guys, let us know when you starting writing science news for the post-kindergarten crowd. Here’s a bit more info on the discovery (still no connection to Norte Chico).
Quite a few photographic homages to Rene
Quite a few photographic homages to Rene Magritte. I love this updated classic.
“The Google search box is like the
“The Google search box is like the Tardis — there’s a lot more inside that little box than you expect”.
Fine nerd humor: comparing Girlfriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0. “
Fine nerd humor: comparing Girlfriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0. “If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.” Would like to see Boyfriend 6.0 vs. Husband 1.0 as well.
Update: Husband 1.0 is already there. (thx, jason)
Writer Roger Angell on a leisurely approach
Writer Roger Angell on a leisurely approach to reporting. “Shawn didn’t have a sense of deadline. [David] Remnick now wants it next week, which is fine. It’s that sort of a magazine, and I try to oblige. Shawn thought, Everybody knows what the news is; now tell us something else about it.” More on William Shawn.
Colorfully intricate maps of language distributions. The
Colorfully intricate maps of language distributions. The Asian and African maps are quite complex. (via moon river)
Al Gore, movie star
An Inconvenient Truth, a movie about Al Gore’s global warming crusade, opens today in NYC and LA. John Heilemann has a lengthy piece on Gore for New York magazine, the NY Times has a piece about Gore and the movie, the climate science blog RealClimate has a positive review of the film, and here again is my review. Larry Lessig, who knows a thing or two about bringing tha PowerPoint noize, loves the movie, calling the slideshow “the most extraordinary lecture I have ever seen anyone give about anything”.
An Inconvenient Truth will open in the rest of the US in mid-June; check this theater listing for details. For more news, check out the movie’s blog.
10,000 sheep drawn by workers hired through Amazon’s
10,000 sheep drawn by workers hired through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. Average wage for the artists? $0.69 per hour. (via waxy)
Infinitely zoomable photographic mosaic. Very cool.
Infinitely zoomable photographic mosaic. Very cool.
“Dude, it’s time. Girls, you too. Time
“Dude, it’s time. Girls, you too. Time to pack up the whole in-your-face, raw, hyper-sexualized, porno, skater, white trash, open wounds, self-effacing, Jackass, loose ethics, 80’s bar mitzvah disco, and party-till-you vomit movement, aesthetic and attitude. Go on, scram. Beat it. We don’t want you hanging around anymore.”
Job opening for a web designer
I’m the Design Advisor for a new small company in NYC, and we’re looking for a full-time web designer. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the company here, but I can say it involves the web, contagious media, & weblogs and the people responsible are creative, reasonable, smart, level-headed and not at all “dot com”.
What we’re looking for is a generalist sort of web designer, someone who can develop the information architecture for an information-oriented web application, do visual mockups in Photoshop/Illustrator based on the IA, code the site up with valid XHTML/CSS, doesn’t flee at the sight of a little Perl or PHP code, is familiar with weblogs, and knows some JavaScript. You don’t need to be completely solid on all of that, but if you’re not, you should be a quick on-the-job learner and just generally curious about the world and interested in learning how it all fits together.
I will provide ad hoc feedback and you’ll be working closely with Jonah Peretti and a small team of smart folks onsite in NYC (most likely in Soho or Chinatown). This is a full-time salaried position, benefits are included, and you’ll get equity in the company. The position is open immediately so if you’re interested, send your resume/portfolio to [email protected] with a subject line of “Web Designer position” (plain text resumes and links to online resumes/portfolios are greatly preferred to email attachments). We look forward to hearing from you.
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