I wonder sometimes if the feeling I get watching Thomas Fischbach’s Dice Stacking Movie Vol. 3 is the same feeling my parents had watching TV for the first time. That I’ll never quite be the same after having experienced this, and that I can’t imagine having experienced it any other way.

Video of the day: San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders comes out in support of marriage equality (via Andre)

This kind of thing excites me: Living in Dust: Gut Renovation on the Cheap

Too frickin’ clever: Need a new dentist?

Man, it just kills me sometimes knowing Elliott Smith is dead. All his songs (with Heatmiser and solo) just seem to get better and better with age.

Hahaha: Geek meditation session

Oh wow, Salt Lick Contest

My favorite thing today: Big Rig Jig (via Telstar Logistics)

Cool story, photos: Big Bear Rescue on the Donner Memorial Bridge (via Andre)

It’s random image mania over here at Justinsomnia tonight!

I just added a section to my Random Image Plugin post on “how to include random images across blogs.” Amazingly enough, I had to draw on the work I do at my day job (re: adserving) to implement this.

The neat thing about this solution is that you can include a random image from a WordPress blog onto any webpage (provided the web browser viewing the page has JavaScript enabled), not just another WordPress blog.

Updated: The Random Image Plugin for Wordpress is now at version 4.1!

New Features:
Support for WordPress 2.3, including the ability to limit display of random images by tags

Nike Designs Shoe for American Indians: the Air Native (I shit you not)

To do when I get home: Read Your Own DHS Travel Dossier

Photo of the day: Mish Mash (lots of pipes)

To read later: Eating local, organic lunches every day at work — for $4 (my dream job—if I got to program in the afternoon)

Cool! The Visible Pinball Project (via Boing Boing)

Photographs? Kim Keever (awesome nonetheless)

For future reference: Unattended, Encrypted, Incremental Network Backups (to check out later: Duplicity)

I don’t know how I feel about this, but it’s worth a read: As of today I have 8,500 days left to live. (where “I” is Kevin Kelly”)

How is xkcd so good? 28-Hour Day

I’m not there, but I’ll be reading Anton’s blog following Michael Ruhlman in Durham

Flickr photo of the day: Dovedale Money Trees

My mom’s college roommate’s husband has published a book: Amazing Rubber Band Cars. (and incidentally will be staying with my parents when O’Reilly’s Maker Faire comes to Austin on October 20-21)

Chapel Hill-based Brian Russell is now available for hire to consult on the creation, care, and feeding of online communities. Check this guy out.

I might have titled this: “Fire in the hole!” Fire in the dryer

Somehow Terrie managed to trade “a bunch of web work” for two kayaks! What a deal: Mango and Blue

This is awesome:

One particular [xkcd] comic happens to mention geographic coordinates, a date and a time. The coordinates are for a park in Cambridge and the time was 2:38, Sept. 23 (today). Hundreds of nerds flocked from all around the world (!) to meet up.

(I wonder if Randall Monroe was there?)

I have to say, I’m very tempted:

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.

Cute picture of dog with baby: he loves the tags

Flickr photo of the day: The Pink Slips

OMG! Horrible!

A year after chef Grant Achatz opened Alinea here in 2005, Gourmet magazine named the restaurant the best in the country, and the prestigious Mobil guide gave it its highest rating of five stars. The young chef’s exotic, lavishly presented creations — a mango duck dish is served on a deflating pillow that releases lavender-scented air — have connoisseurs lining up to book meals that cost an average of $240 a person. But last month, doctors gave Mr. Achatz, 33 years old, devastating news. A cancerous tumor was growing inside his tongue. The disease was so advanced that three doctors told him the only way to cure it was to cut out part of his tongue, leaving one of the world’s most celebrated chefs to ponder life without the ability to taste.

Stephanie has a great shot of me up, fanning a small mountain of charcoal for her dance fundraiser, complete with chef’s hat and apron embroidered by my mom

Kids these days: DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei

This is neat: Mac Mini colocation

A snippet from Joel’s piece on the future of Ajax:

As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies

Good to know:

Avis has the best domestic partner policy of any car rental company. They’ll allow a second driver (same-sex or different-sex) to be on your rental agreement for no additional charge, as long as your driver’s licenses list the same home address.

(conveniently we already have a reservation from Avis for our upcoming Utah trip)

I just like the title of this post: Another Soul Lost to SketchUp (I tried SketchUp when I wanted to create a floor plan of our apartment, but it seemed like the wrong tool for the job, and I went with SmartDraw)

Hopefully this gets more press: the Associate Librarian for Copyright Services for the Library of Congress admitted that she was a “self-proclaimed ‘Luddite’” (via Jason)

The NYT paywall is coming down! Times to End Charges on Web Site (via Andre)

To read later: Cory Doctorow’s What if Google were evil?

Rad: classical red-figure vase style Converse All Stars

T-shirt I wish I owned: How’s my blogging? (saw on Chas)

Flickr caption of the day: The day the world changed

For future reference: Installing Vista ClearType Fonts in Ubuntu

Domain name of the day: xzackly.com (especially if your name is zack)

America, do not trust your government:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law ["Protect" America Act] helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany.

Color me impressed: Marcia and Leona made Valleywag

Highly recommended for teh funny: McDonald’s: The Rap (and everything else on YouTube by GoRemy)

Today I experienced Ninja hands, up close and personal

OMFG this is so awesome: This Carrboro Life (anyone who’s ever lived in Chapel Hill or Carrboro or anyone who has ever listened to This American Life—preferably both—must listen to this!)

Woo! My scooter “parking permit plate” arrived. Pictures. Copious pixelized blurring. Oh yeah.

Dad is sorting our legos: Reducing Lego Entropy

xkcd rocking it: Dating Pools

Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve, is the girl for me

I can’t be the first person to have seen this? Ubuntu Restaurant Now Hiring Line Cooks (more here: Opening: Ubuntu Restaurant & Yoga Studio in Napa)

Rolling Stone does it again: The Great Iraq Swindle

That was how America fought terrorism in Iraq: It hired civilian air-conditioning techs to fix Humvees using the instruction manual while the real Humvee repairmen, earning a third of what the helpless civilians were paid, drove around in circles outside the wire waiting to get blown up by insurgents.

This is really cool: the coffee drinks infographic on a mug

I love it! Non surgical nipple-enhancement: bodyperks (via Webb)

Definition of sucks:

Comcast has punished some transgressors by cutting off their Internet service, arguing that excessive downloaders hog Internet capacity and slow down the network for other customers. The company declines to reveal its download limits.

Photo of the day: Westmount (layer exposures are neat)

Thing I didn’t know: Beekeepers shuffle bees around the nation throughout the year so the bees can pollinate crops as they come into bloom…

We sell fuckin’ boxes! Regrets: Boxes (via Andre)

Regrets: Hobbies is really good too.

Best blog post opening of the day: As those of you who love slow pans over black and white photography are already aware…

Google Trends: yaml vs. json

$500 19″ digital picture frame, running Damn Small Linux: RedPost/Kit (interesting, very interesting, muah ha ha ha)

Something to watch: Gobby (like SubEthaEdit, except cross-platform)