July 2006

Michael Ruhlman on high-fructose corn syrup and nitrates #

Has anyone heard about Scoopt?

When you send Scoopt a photo, you automatically grant us an exclusive worldwide licence to market that photo for a period of three months. During this three-month period, you agree not to publish the photo anywhere else.

When the three months are up, the licence becomes non-exclusive. We will still try to sell your photo but now you can also publish it yourself on a photoblog or a picture sharing site — or anywhere else at all.

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This looks like it will raise awareness of Kazakhstan: Borat (though I’m not sure in a good way) #

Photos of the day: Stop, Collaborate and Listen #

Wow, news: Enron Founder Dies Before Sentencing #

Quote of the day: Encoded with ROT26—circumvention will be prosecuted! #

Ms. Robin has moved to wordpress.com #

Discovered via my coworkers: Washlet (yeah, we talk about toilets) #

Neat: photographic recreation of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte #

This is not from the Onion. And might I say that this is a desecration of a national icon.

(via ae) #

WordPress conference in SF: WordCamp 2006 (August 5th) #

Kottke reporting on the Zidane headbutt, Robert Sayre says the game deserves a head butt #

File this under “how to decline an invitation to the White House”

It is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.

Wow. #

To do in Oakland this weekend: The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival (via Mark) #

Santa Rosa in song lyrics:
down in Santa Rosa over the bay
across the grapevine to L.A. #

8 years is like a millenium online!

Lycos is selling its Wired News unit to CondéNast Publications for $25 million, a deal that brings Wired.com and Wired magazine under the same owner after an eight-year separation.

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Geeky for sure: Text-Messaging Shorthand for Geeks Using Server Response Codes #

To read when I get to work: How to install Internet Explorer 6 with Wine #

Innovative sundial ad, from McDonalds? #

Check out some of the new features coming to us in Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 1: browser session restore in case of a crash, support for client-side session and persistent storage, ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs… #

Neat: Katrina Cottages

Rising from the ruins of Katrina, new cottage prototypes revolutionize the concept of affordable housing and embody a movement to rebuild the character of Gulf Coast towns.

(via Sally) #

Hehe, acronym of the day: DUIT #

Weird movie trailer of the day: The Science of Sleep #

Cool: Google Maps meet Wikipedia: Wikimapia #

The internet is made of tubes! Jon exposes Senator Stevens on neutrality #

Too funny to read at work: Easily mispronounced domain names #

Wikipedia article of the day: Bohemian Grove is a 2700-acre campground located at 20601 Bohemian Ave, Monte Rio, California 95462 belonging to a private San Francisco-based men’s fine arts club known as the Bohemian Club. Every year (since 1899) Bohemian Grove is the location of a two-week (covering three weekends) encampment, beginning in the middle of July, of some of the most powerful men in the world. (note: Bohemian Grove is unrelated to Lair of the Golden Bear) #

Craigslist quote of the day: wife says must sell [2003 Honda Silverwing] to get a boat #

I totally already had this idea! “Movie” trailers for books… #

On Grape Nuts: The only positive that comes from this product is that it effectively sharpens your teeth as you eat it, or at least, polishes the pieces of teeth that have snapped off as you fruitlessly gnaw away. #

To read later: The Oil We Eat #

Just, wow: Bush gives German Chancellor Angela Merkel impromptu massage at G8 summit #

Updated: The Random Image Plugin for WordPress

New Feature:
You can now display recent images rather than random images. Neat, huh? #

So sad that this country has inflicted this president on itself.

President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans’ international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.

And from yesterday’s news, but relevant taken together:

“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit,” Bush says, “and it’s over.”

I say, we do appear to have a president completely out of control. #

New interesting idea: Is the nation state under threat from the rise of the super-city? #

This is the best thing EVAR! Human Space Invaders #

Good news in NC: N.C. Law Banning Cohabitation Struck Down #

Wow, Sam Ruby lauds Bloglines: Bloglines—perhaps unwittingly—has found itself in the position of being a de facto reference implementation for feed specifications. #

Infographic of the day: (ashamed of my government) #

Photo of the day:
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Why the US gov’t isn’t supporting a cease-fire: U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis #

Worth reading…

“I realized that the problem was not that they were trying to imitate the other person but that they weren’t capable of ordering anything themselves, and it was just unnecessary cruelty to point that out to them,” Kenny told me not long ago. He said he was getting more and more people of that sort. “Why is that?” I asked. “The country’s going that way,” he said glumly.

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Ex-SILS prof in Wired News:

Conference co-organizer Greg Newby, a computer science professor at the University of Alaska, said the conference reflected “the hacker spirit, which is about exploration and questioning.” He added, “This involves political awakening, as well as open sharing of information.”

(thanks Patrick!) #

Headline of the day: [Nobel] Peace prize winner ‘could kill’ [President George W.] Bush (via ae) #

hehe: Famous logos redesigned in a web 2.0 format! #

Cool: Gallery of Ron Mueck sculptures (nsfw) #

Hehe: Technical Virgin videos #

To read later: Know it all: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? #

Listening to Steven Miles, author of the book Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror on Forum this morning was absolutely horrifying. That our “democracy” could turn so malignant so quickly is perhaps the most terrifying. #

On the baseball cards industry:

A designer shows me how they use Adobe Photoshop to place new caps and uniforms onto players who changed teams over the winter — and in Johnny Damon’s case, they also give him a George Steinbrenner-approved shave and haircut with a single keystroke.

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Linguistic coolness: Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names

I made a quick script to part-of-speech tag the original list of 6,500 artist names that we were considering. This left us with a set of common band name grammars (popular ones were NNP NNP and NNP #.)

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Quote of the day: Very CSI: Mountain View. #

Two excerpts from the same article on the Daily Show’s take on Net Neutrality, first the fluff:

Mocked by comedian Jon Stewart for calling the Internet a bunch of tubes, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Thursday he is open to going on Stewart’s popular “Daily Show” for a rebuttal.

and then the moneyshot:

One congressional aide said the show had explained the controversial Net neutrality issue “better than any corporate lobbyist or policymaker I know.”

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Neat! stool for laptop users #

This is just ripe for search inside the book: Penis Pokey #

In light of Ruby/Rails, it seems that Rasmus is carrying the PHP evangelism torch. So glad I’m using PHP at FM. #

How fucking incompetent can one president be?

President Bush said yesterday that he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice back to the Middle East today to negotiate an end to the bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel, amid widespread criticism that the United States has waited too long to push for an end to the conflict.

I vote NO CONFIDENCE again and again and again.

Joel Spolsky agrees:

maybe the current Bush presidency has given you the idea that it’s ok to make fun of the scientists, inventors, researchers and programmers who are creating the future, finding cures for your diseases, building the spreadsheets you use to figure out how much commission you’re making, and educating your idiot progeny. Maybe a know-nothing in the White House has given you the idea that it’s somehow acceptable now to poke fun of geeks and nerds, in big two-page ad spreads on the inside front cover of a magazine for founders of startups.

You tell it brother! #

To read later: Dave Johnson’s Beyond blogging: Understanding feeds and publishing protocols (pdf) #

Word of the day pulchritude, and an interesting blog post #

Cool! Knock-based commands for your Linux laptop #

This is SO cool: knit wig #