It seems problematic to me that the entire official web presence of the Bush administration, as tainted and manipulative or enraging as you may think it is, just gets wiped clean from the web like that. People need to remember, reference, discuss, and link to that publicly owned, previously published information; it shouldn’t be tossed to the curb like a dead plant or buried in the National Archive backup tape repository.
Perhaps there needs to be a simple directory structure put in place, something like:
The files for each President’s site would live under the associated directory and would never need to be taken down to make room for new files. Of course, maintaining all that, and the different systems and platforms potentially used by each administration would be a total PITA.
Update: Here are the Clinton whitehouse.gov archive and the George W. Bush whitehouse.gov archive. Nice but they don’t address the broken links issue and snapshots don’t capture any dynamic functions (like search, for instance). Also, shouldn’t every page on the site function like a wiki so you can go back and see the history at any time? Quite a few people suggested using subdomains (e.g. 43.whitehouse.gov) instead of directories to keep everything straight; I concur. (thx, arnold & kate)
Out of 26 nominated films, an incredible 23 films are already available in DVD quality on nomination day, ripped either from the screeners or the retail DVDs. This is the highest percentage since I started tracking.
To novice Beatles fans, I warn you not to believe the hype about “Revolution 9.” I’ve listened to it many times over the years, waiting for the light in my head to switch on so I could unlock its mysteries. All I’ve ever gotten out of it is the vague feeling that immediately after listening to it, something is going to rise out from under my bed and butcher me in my sleep.
Each choice is extensively annotated and defended; start here if you want to work your way through them all.
Let me point to the Adjacent Possible of the biosphere. Once there were lung fish, swim bladders were in the Adjacent Possible of the biosphere. Before there were multicelled organisms, the swim bladder was not in the Adjacent Possible of the biosphere. Something wonderful is happening right in front of us: When the swim bladder arose it was of selective advantage in its context. It changed what was Actual in the biosphere, which in turn created a new Adjacent Possible of the biosphere. The biosphere self consistently co-constructs itself into its every changing, unstatable Adjacent Possible.
If the becoming of the swim bladder is partially lawless, it certainly is not entailed by the fundamental laws of physics, so cannot be deduced from physics. Then its existence in the non-ergodic universe requires an explanation that cannot be had by that missing entailment. The universe is open.
Harry Potterybarn.com
Il Huffington Postino
Slumdog Millionaire Dollar Homepage
Behind Enemy Bloglines
Schindler’s Craigslist
Charlotte’s WebCrawler
Freecreditreport.com Willy
And while not strictly adhering to the form, I also chuckled at “Bone Thugs & eHarmony”. The best I could come up with for kottke.org is Girls Gone Wild: Kottke West, which is not so good.
Update: Duh, I totally forgot about Koyaaniskottke. Also: kottke.orgazmo, The Kottke Horror Picture Show, and Kottke Balboa. (thx, andy & charley)
Irate gentleman: “Are you in charge here?” The Doctor: “No, but I have a lot of ideas.”
That’s the Fourth Doctor in The Horror of Fang Rock. However, it should be noted that aside from The Doctor and Leela, everyone else featured in the episode died.
Layer Tennis, the online Photoshop/Flash battle series, is gearing up for another season, starting on Feb 13th and running for twelve weeks. At the end of it all, there will be a single elimination championship tournament. Sign up for season tickets to keep informed and to be able to vote on the outcomes of matches.
When The Notorious B.I.G. was shot dead in Los Angeles, a composite sketch of the shooter done shortly after the killing depicts a clean-cut black man in a suit and bow tie. Was Biggie’s killer the partial basis for Brother Mouzone, the bow-tied hitman from The Wire?
At least until I hear from Mr. Mouzone’s lawyer, I say: case closed! (thx, alex)
I love stuff like this: what is the best Mac ever? Now, I’m no McIntosh expurt like Herr Gruber, but the best Mac ever has to be one of their notebooks…an iBook or Powerbook or MacBook Pro.
The complete series of The Wire on DVD (all five seasons) is on sale today only at Amazon for $82. That’s a whopping 67% off the recommended retail of $250. (thx, doug)
Update: The box set is back to its regular Amazon price of $135 (still pretty good).
Update: Amazon lowered the price on the box set a bit…it’s now $124.99, a full 50% off the list price.
After catching up with seasons 1-4 of the series over the past few months, this is the first episode of Lost that I will be seeing live. Exciting! To commemorate, I’ll be liveblogging the first episode of season five, set to begin here in about 10 minutes. Don’t worry, spoilers will be minimal. Check back frequently for updates.
10:32 pm Ooh, Time Elves! They were riding the Smoke Monster!
10:28 pm I was just thinking…someone needs to kill Neil. Then someone did! And that fire to fire thing just after the water to water transition? Nice. Now do earth and wind.
10:13 pm Hurley is in the background of every shot. Spot him if you can.
10:10 pm Water to water cut scene? Brilliance reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And now it’s Weekend At Sayid’s!
10:08 pm Wait, who the hell is Neil?! (No, seriously.)
10:06 pm Intense shampoo? Fuck you.
10:02 pm Boooo! Not her. Boo. No more advice from dead people.
10:00 pm I’m really tired of these initial shots of headless people. Pan up, for God’s sake.
9:58 pmSFJ: “9:54 PM: This is impossible to spoil. We are going in circles.” You got that right. (For those of you unfamiliar with TV lingo, that’s called a crossover, folks.)
9:50 pm She’s dead, right?
9:49 pm Why is Sawyer so angry all the time?
9:45 pm Weird Capital One commercial totally rips off Nintendo. Lawsuit.
9:44 pm I liked this series the first time I saw it…when it was called Star Trek: The Next Generation.
9:43 pm Oh right, it’s not supposed to make sense. Look, there’s someone who we know is dead! (Or do we? (Yes, we do. (Or do we? (Etc.))))
9:42 pm How does he still have the compass? Why doesn’t he just give Richard a big hug and drag him along?
9:40 pm Compasses point north.
9:38 pm Tune in next week for “Name! That! Time!” (I can name that time in 2 scenes, Bob.)
9:31 pm Watch out for the knives!!! Oops, too late.
9:26 pm God, I hope this means we get to see Nikki and Paolo again!
As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels. This doesn’t mean we should always avoid face-to-face meetings - but it is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones.
For all of the talk that Shepard Fairey is just a plagiarist, I think that the clearest indication that his art is above board and adding something new to the world is that until a few days ago, no one knew who had taken the photo of Obama that became the basis of the iconic Hope poster, not even Fairey or the photographer who took it.
Reuters are understandably somewhat put out on their own and Young’s behalf, but like it or not, Fairey’s use of the picture are well within the parameters of “fair use”. His transformative use of the image - both in flipping and re-orienting it, adding jacket and tie and the “O” Obama logo, and converting it to his block print style make it consistent with all legal precedents for use.
Go on, see if this T-Mobile commercial doesn’t make you smile. They did a good job in making it look organic and building to greater and greater coordination. Great commercial…it shows exactly what mobile phones are for.
If the PLAY-DOH compound has started to dry out or if the colors have become messy and mixed, remember: PLAY-DOH compound is inexpensive and easy to buy. Nothing beats a fresh can!
Pact will keep Weiner at the helm of “Mad Men” for the next two seasons. It also covers TV development and includes a component for Weiner to develop a feature project for Lionsgate. There’s no specific idea on the table for the feature, but it won’t be “Mad Men” on the bigscreen, Weiner and Lionsgate execs said.
The origin of methane could either be geologic where water reacts with hot rock and produces methane gas which escapes through pores in the planet’s surface in a process called serpentinization. Or it could be evidence of biology under the surface, where the methane generated by microbes could accumulate and then escape through the rocks.
Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.
McCain, though it was his own fault (or that of his handlers), didn’t represent himself well during the presidential campaign and it’s nice to see that the very able Senator isn’t being sidelined because of it. Also, it’s quite savvy of Obama to seek out his support. He’s essentially buying McCain stock at a low point and will presumably leverage that purchase when that stock inevitably rises.
After Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1940 election, he invited his opponent, the Republican Wendell L. Willkie, to meet with him in the White House. “You know, he is a very good fellow,” F.D.R. said afterward to his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins. “He has lots of talent. I want to use him somehow.”
Several readers have noted that The White House Site has already been refreshed to the now-familiar Obama look-and-feel. It’s even got a blog on the front page. Will there be a Twitter account? The Wikipedians have been busy too: Obama is listed as the current President on the President of the United States page.
Obama made a small error in the first part of his inaugural speech. He said:
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
Because of Grover Cleveland’s two non-consecutive terms, there have been 44 Presidents but only 43 people have held the office and taken the oath. I’m surprised his speechwriters didn’t catch that little detail. Of course, I think of Al Gore as an ex-President so maybe that’s where it came from.
The design of kottke.org has been mostly the same since 2000…a garish yellow/green bar across the top and small black text on a white background everywhere else. (See the progression of designs since 1998.) People absolutely hated that color when I first introduced it1, but it stuck around — mostly out of laziness — and that pukey yellow became the most visible brand element of the site.
Two days ago, I refreshed the design of the site and, as you may have noticed, no more yellow/green. The other big changes are: bigger text set in a new font, a blue “zoom” border around the page, and the addition of titles to the short posts.
(A brief nuts and bolts interlude… For most of you, the site will look like this. If you’ve got Myriad Pro on your machine — it comes free with Acrobat Reader and Adobe CS — it’ll look like this…this is the “intended” look. And if you’re a fancypants designer with Whitney installed, you’ll get this rarified view, which I did mostly for me. On IE6, the site will be legible and usable but somewhat unstyled. If you’re not seeing something that looks like one of the above screenshots — if the text is in all caps, for instance — please drop me a line with a link to a screenshot and your browser information. Thanks!)
The blue “zoom” border is the biggest visual change, and it’s an homage to what is still my favorite kottke.org design, the yellow zoom from 1999. I like that kottke.org is one of the few weblogs out there that can reach back almost ten years for a past design element; the site has history. In a way, that border is saying “kottke.org has been around for ten years and it’s gonna be around for twenty more”. At least that’s how I think about it.
I’ve already gotten lots of feedback from readers, mostly via Twitter and email. There were a few technical issues that I’ve hopefully ironed out — e.g. it should work better on the iPhone now — and a couple which might take a bit longer, like the border messing with the page-at-a-time scrolling method. Some people like the changes, but mostly people don’t like the new design, really dislike the blue, and generally want the old site back. This is exactly the reaction I expected, and it’s heartening to learn that the old design struck such a chord with people. All I’m asking is that you give it a little time.
My suspicion is that as you get used to it, the new text size won’t seem so weird and that blue border will likely disappear into the background of your attention, just as that hideous yellow/green did. A month from now, your conscious mind won’t even see the blue — chalk it up to something akin to banner blindness…brand blindness maybe? — but your subconscious will register it and you’ll just know where you are, safe and sound right here at good ol’ kottke.org. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll tweak and move some things around. Design is a process, not a result, and we’ll get it to a good place eventually, even if it takes twenty years.
[1] I wish I had access to my email from back then…everyone hated it and wanted the old design back. Before landing on the yellow/green color, I tried the golden yellow from the previous design, a blue very much like the blue in the current border, and then red. I think each color was live on the site for a few days and my intention was to just keep switching it around. But then I got bored and just left the yellow/green. Gold star to anyone who remembers that short phase of the site. ↩
Chances are that if you’re not in Washington DC or staying home from work tomorrow, you’re going to be at your desk or otherwise out and about for the inauguration of Barack Obama. Fear not, you’ll have plenty of viewing options:
Or watch right here on kottke.org, courtesy of Hulu. Or not. The Hulu video is on autoplay, which is *really* annoying. Sorry about that. What the hell, Hulu?!
Per the schedule, the swearing-in ceremony will start at 11:30 am ET, which will include Obama’s inaugural address. After the address, Obama “will escort outgoing President George W. Bush to a departure ceremony”, which ceremony I hope involves a kick in the ass and a slamming door. Then there’s a luncheon at the Capitol and a parade to the White House that traditionally starts around 2:30 pm.
First the videos. Someone visiting the Bronx Zoo caught the plane on video, flying low in the sky just after the bird strike. A Coast Guard video monitoring station got a shot of the plane just after it splashed down…you can see the spray from the impact flying in from the left of the video just after the 2:00 mark.
Soon after the plane hits, the camera zooms in and you can see just how quickly people get out and onto the wings. And then this video shows it most clearly:
Look how low and level and steady Sully guided that thing in! Amazing!
The life raft attached to the plane was upside down in the river, just out of reach. Mr. Wentzell turned and found another passenger, Carl Bazarian, an investment banker from Florida who, at 62, was twice his age. Mr. Wentzell grabbed the wrist of Mr. Bazarian, who grabbed a third man who held onto the plane. Mr. Wentzell then leaned out to flip the raft. “Carl was Iron Man that day,” Mr. Wentzell said. “We got the raft stabilized and we got on.” A man went into the water, and the door salesman and the banker hauled him aboard. He curled in a fetal position, freezing.
The Times also comes through with the 3-D flight graphic I asked for the other day but they upped the ante with a seating chart of the plane where you can click on certain passengers’ seats to read their thoughts. Mark Hood in seat 2A described the landing:
When we touched down, it was like a log ride at Six Flags. It was that smooth.
We determined that, generally speaking, the gravity in each Mario game, as game hardware has increased, is getting closer to the true value of gravity on earth of 9.8 m/s^2. However, gravity, even on the newest consoles, is still extreme.
In Super Mario 2, Mario experiences a g-force of 11 each time he falls from a ledge, a force that would cause mere humans to black out. In Madden 2006, the game’s fastest cornerbacks can run the 40 in 2.6 seconds. (via waxy)
We’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?
Come to think of it, it’s amazing that nobody’s made a major documentary about the advertising business before. Are some phenomena just so powerful and ubiquitous we stop thinking about them? Now acclaimed doc-maker Doug Pray goes inside the ever-revolutionary world of post-’60s advertising, profiling such legendary figures as [Dan] Wieden (“Just do it”), Hal Riney (“It’s morning in America”) and Cliff Freeman (“Where’s the beef?”) and inquiring where the boundaries lie between art, salesmanship and brainwashing.
Somewhat related to that is The September Issue, which follows the creation of Vogue magazine’s September issue. You know, the one packed with hundreds of pages of advertising.
You-are-there documentarian R.J. Cutler (“The War Room,” etc.) takes us inside the creation of Vogue’s annual and enormous September issue, which possesses quasi-biblical status in the fashion world. Granted full access to editorial meetings, photo shoots and Fashion Week events by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Cutler spent nine months at Vogue, documenting a monumental process that more closely resembles a political campaign or a sports team’s season than the publication of a single magazine.
The wall units, which are suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling, seem to float an inch above the reflective black granite floor. As they are shifted around, the apartment becomes all manner of spaces — kitchen, library, laundry room, dressing room, a lounge with a hammock, an enclosed dining area and a wet bar.
Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 is a newspaper compiled and printed by a pair of fellows from the UK that is just that…a bunch of stuff that they liked reading on the web last year. I *love* this. And hate it (a little bit).
The hate part first. TOFHWOTI is almost precisely the thing I’ve been wanting to do for years now…take the very best of the best links of the year and bundle them up into a printed artifact of some sort. So seeing it done first and so expertly was a bit of a punch in the nose. Of course, ideas are so cheap and plentiful these days that “I thought of it first” has no value without follow through, something that my schedule for the past few years hasn’t allowed for. This year, *for sure*, dammit! (I’m also pissed that I didn’t get around to ordering a copy for myself until this morning and found that they’re all sold out! Gah! Like I said, no time.)
But damn, is that thing beautiful or what? You don’t even need the physical artifact to see that much. The simple but playful design is just right. Getting it printed super-cheap on newsprint fits nicely with the concept and content. All the little details are accounted for; I wouldn’t change a thing. More like this, please.
The mayor gave Sully the key to the city for landing the airplane safely into the Hudson River but surely he deserves more…like a job in the Obama administration as the Secretary of Transportation (no offense to Mr. LaHood).
This pilot ran out of altitude and airspeed but not ideas. He did a great job of flying, and as a CAPTAIN, he has shown why he wears the four bars!!!
This is an example of quiet professionalism, training, skill, and bravery. Our craft usually goes unnoticed many times a day, but today, we saw our best work!!!
I remember once going to collect my dad after he’d landed his plane in a farmer’s field in an emergency. Of course, it was a much smaller plane — they’re a lot easier to land without engines and glide well. That and he was accustomed to landing amongst the corn and hay…we had a grass strip cut out of the field behind our house that he used all the time.
The owner came out; he was a short but large man, balding, and he wore a rather soiled white apron. Teel asked him if he made a fish soup. The man paused, and then asked how long they could wait for it. Rick and Teel told him — as long as it took, they were in no hurry. […] The owner returned in about half an hour with a huge fish overlapping both sides of the basket, which also contained a mass of greens and several bags of clams and shrimp and other things.
A US Airways plane bound for Charlotte just crashed into the Hudson River after aborting its takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. It’s still sitting in the river, slowly sinking with people standing on the wings being rescued by ferries. Photos on Flickr.
Update: Here’s a screenshot from a flight tracker showing the altitude of the flight….1800, 2800, 3200, 2000, 1600, 1200, 1300, 400, 300… The flight tracker has since taken the data offline.
Update: Some media coverage at NY Times, CNN, and Gothamist. From the CNN article:
The plane approached the water at a gradual angle and made a big splash, according to a witness watching from an office building. “It wasn’t going particularly fast. It was a slow contact with the water that it made,” said the witness, Ben Vonklemperer. “It appeared not to have landing gear engaged. This was bigger than a puddle-jumper or sea plane. It was a silver aircraft and it basically just hit the water,” Vonklemperer added.
Gothamist reports that the plane is being towed to Chelsea Piers.
Update: The NY Times has this helpful map:
Also, an office mate (from Buzzfeed) just got back from checking out the plane and he said by the time he got to the river, the plane had past Christopher St. and when he left, it was pretty close to Canal St. and “moving amazingly fast”. (thx, scott)
In 1963, an Aeroflot Tupolev 124 ditched into the River Neva after running out of fuel. The aircraft floated and was towed to shore by a tugboat which it had nearly hit as it came down on the water. The tug rushed to the floating aircraft and pulled it with its passengers near to the shore where the passengers disembarked onto the tug; all 52 on board escaped without injuries. Survival rate was 100%
The first recorded birdstrike happened in 1908 to Orville Wright, no more than a few months after the first powered planeflights.
Surely years and not months… (thx, mike)
A live shot on the TV just now (6:00pm) reveals that the plane is now down at the Battery and they look like they’re trying to secure it or haul it out of the water (likely the former).
LittleSis (clever name!) bills itself as an “involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited by people like you”. It’s intended to be a resource for anyone who wants to know more about politicians, CEOs, etc., especially:
…investigative journalists, social scientists, political opposition researchers, social justice activists, public interest attorneys, business intelligence types, [and] amateur dirt diggers at the fringes, posting their findings to blogs, message boards, email lists, zines, and elsewhere.
Like Facebook, the site has a particular emphasis on how all these people are connected: politically, financially, socially. The best way to see what it’s all about is to check out some profiles: Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg, and the list of the 400 richest Americans.
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