October 2006

Flickr group of the day: Stick Figures in Peril #

I like when teaching is used as an analogy for programming: I’ll probably teach Mozilla to understand… #

Holy moley, this has got to be the blog name (and URL) of the year! Tryptophantastic (doubleplusgood for evoking “trip the light fantastic“, to my ear at least) #

Something I didn’t know: All westbound flights fly at even numbers with 1,000 feet separation. East bound flights fly at odd numbers, same 1,000 separation #

Heh: it’s amazing how the stuff spreads #

This is fucked! Fox News identifies Foley as a Democrat The first screen is an honest mistake, but the second: “Reid: Did Dems [sic] ignore Foley emails to preserve seat?” C’mon! #

Whoa, could the reach and user-contributed nature of YouTube start to have an appreciable effect on politics?
Exhibit A: F**K The MPAA
Exhibit B: Dick ‘Scarface’ Cheney speech #

Super cool: How to make roses from maple leaves #

Ha. Google maps mashup of the day: If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop? #

This is effin’ cool: Google Code Search for “justin watt” #

Like science? Like blogging? Anton’s putting together a North Carolina Science Blogging Conference on Saturday, January 20, 2007.

This is a free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web.

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All I gotta say is OMG! Dare Obasanjo‘s dad is Olusegun Obasanjo, president of Nigeria #

Word on the street: Michael Ruhlman, author of two of my favorite books and possibly a third, has a blog (thanks Anton and Jackie) #

From Brian R: IU study finds The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to be as substantive as network news #

Give them enough rope… GOP Officials Brace for Loss Of Seven to 30 House Seats #

Quote of the day: Piracy is a business model, bonus insight from Cory:

Content isn’t king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you’d choose your friends — if you chose the movies, we’d call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

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Todo: Creative Commons Salon, Wednesday Oct 11 from 6-9pm, at Shine in SF #

IceWeasel: bad for Firefox, bad for Ubuntu #

Great writeup of WordPress Suicide over at Deep Jive Interests #

Workers with heavy machinery moved in before dawn Thursday and demolished the one-room Amish schoolhouse where a gunman fatally shot five girls and wounded five others. #

One of my favorite photo blogs, worksongs by Andrew Emond in Toronto, is now offering the ability to purchase prints of his work. #

Just installed the Atom 1.0 for WordPress plugin, aka the Kill RSS Plugin #

Lot of gems in here: Adventures in Linux with Ubuntu :) #

Spendthrift idea of the day: Reducing the cost of non-ferrous metal washers #

Another thing I totally didn’t know existed: Mate is a highly caffeinated infusion prepared by steeping dried leaves of yerba mate in hot water #

Ha! A casualty on the information superhighway: Help! YouTube is killing my business!

One place where YouTube’s success isn’t being celebrated is in the offices of Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio. The company, which sells used machinery for making tubes to clients worldwide, has seen its site utube.com knocked off line by millions of online searchers looking for video site.

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Brendan Eich on Mozilla 2 (I don’t know why I love reading this stuff so much, but I do…) #

For when the fam visits: Affordable [hotels in] San Francisco #

WTF headline of the day: Rodent Extinctions Linked To Changes in Earth’s Orbit #

Ha! The Thrilla from Mozilla, Groan: “Browser Battle 2006” #

Holy Moley! Two Gallants get beat up by a cop in Houston: This One Goes to Eleven and Houston Two Gallants show leads to arrests, alleged police brutality (which reminds me, I need to get tix for their doubleheader this weekend at Bottom of the Hill) (Thanks, Jackie!)

Update: It hit Boing Boing: Houston police used excessive force on clubgoers (though no mention of the band…) #

Marcia pisses off (and on) the Litquake crowd: San Franciscans sure are young, well-dressed and attractive #

Eric Meyer on his new oven’s Sabbath Mode

So when the oven is in Sabbath mode, you input the temperature and cook time you want. Then you press start, and for a random amount of time that ranges from 30 seconds to a minute, nothing happens. Then the oven kicks on. Ta-daaa! Indirect action! Sure, you pressed all those buttons, but the random time delay is enough to get around your religion’s restrictions on Sabbath work. It’s all, pardon the term, kosher.

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Niddah, please! (OMG!) #

Check out the neat archive format for Postcard from Provence, a painting blog

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Firefox plugin of the day: Tamper Data (whoa!) #

Wikipedia article of the day: Habeas corpus #

Noah parody and YouTube video of the day: Ben takes a photo of himself everyday #

I must be reading this headline wrong: U.S. Says ‘Keep Out of My Space’ #

Hey, I was a toilet for Halloween one year! #

Marketing gimmic of the day: An air sickness bag, printed with the phrase “UNIX barf bag”, was inserted into the inside back cover of every copy, by the publisher. #

Via Jason Kottke at Poptech:

Bruce [Sterling] also related a story told to him by an engineering professor friend of his. The prof split his class into two groups. The first group, the John Henrys, had to study and learn exclusively from materials available at the library…no internet allowed. The second group, the Baby Hueys, could use only the internet for research and learning…no primary source lookups at the library. After a few weeks, he had to stop this experiment because the John Henrys were lagging so far behind the Baby Hueys that it is was unfair to continue.

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I have never heard of or seen this: The Playsam Streamliner Classic Car #

Two great shots of Steve and Terrie Popping Balloons #

Anton in the News & Observer: For conversing by blog, follow the golden rule

Ruby as well: Adding the personal to a public debate #

To read later: The beast has awoken; or, The beginning of Web 2.0 #

HTML element that didn’t survive to HTML 4: <FIG> #

Quote of the day: “Preed the Release Engineer says: friends don’t let friends download Firefox before it’s released.” #

Got to get on this Venus bandwagon: Venus/WordPress Integration #

This is so awesome it blows my mind: Vietnamese-born artist Binh Danh prints photographs onto living leaves #

Two long-ass articles that are sure to be tearing up the blogoshere: The Worst Congress Ever and Why There Almost Certainly Is No God (neither of which I’ve read yet) #

Choice quotes on the front pages this morning:

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world…Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared and distrusted countries in the world.

(via the San Jose Mercury News: Tillman brother’s anger)

And then there’s this awesome zinger from the Chronicle:

The White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.”

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WTF? Store sells ‘Cocaine,’ till callers snort ‘no’ (reminder: install BugMeNot for Firefox to get around newpaper registrations) #

Video of the day! This is our president:

One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

(via arse poetica)

Want to see “the ranch”? Check out my post from last year: Mean time before rendezvous with the Secret Service #

Already pre-ordered: Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America, not because I want to leave the US right now but definitely someday I’d like to live abroad (via Boing Boing) #

Word I cannot remember how to spell for the life of me: vinaigrette #

Reading the Details on our CSS changes for IE7, it’s incredible the number of CSS bugs the web development community (let alone millions of end users) have had to endure with IE6 for 5 long years. #

Rudimentary IE7 support now in IEs 4 Linux: IEs 4 Linux 2.1 beta 3 #

Firefox 2 plugin to check out once I upgrade: Aging Tabs #

Quote of the day: I just love Google, they’re soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome! #

Mine would include pen and chapstick: Brilliant, clever hack for apartment dwellers #

This is who I work with: small, focused groups intent on making a simple, useful product are all I ever want to be a part of. #

THIS IS THE AWESOMEST THING EVAR!!1
The Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator or The TSA Emperor Has No Clothes

Update!!! Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (he should have open sourced the code and spread it around the Internet)

Update 2: FBI returns to “Fake Boarding Pass” guy’s home, seizes computers

Update 3: Let the fake boarding pass parodies begin! Ceci n’est pas un fake boarding pass

Update 4: JavaScript-based fake boarding pass generator #

Ha! the unborn gunman…shot his brother twice in what eventually would have become his heart #

Build your own vagina in a can! Fleshlight #

This is just a proof of concept: Search Federated Media’s network of sites using Google’s Custom Search Engine #

WTF?

Vice President Dick Cheney said this week that dunking terrorist suspects in water during questioning is a “no-brainer,” prompting complaints from human rights advocates that he was endorsing the use of a controversial technique known as waterboarding on prisoners held by the United States.

Dick Cheney should be tarred and feathered #

Popular acronym these days: RSS #

Wow, how cool is that, there’s a new version of Ubuntu out: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft (6 month OS release cycles rock!) #

Ha! Nice. Andre for Halloween: Beard Papa #

GooTube insight of the day: As Google looked at it they bought a 6 month exclusive on widespread video copyright infringement. #

No they didn’t: The happiest Happy Hour South of Ground Zero #

Ha, in Cape Town they have penguins and baboons #