For your film critic friends. Classic metal band identities used to promote (?) broccoli cinema auteurs. I've got one friend in particular who's gonna love these. Ingmar Bergman's is so funny it hurts. (Via Darren.) (#)
Aug. 28, 2008
Aug. 27, 2008
In addition to talking about it here, I’ve been chatting up Muxtape to everyone who’ll listen. But now it looks like Muxtape’s gone the way of the dodo. Enter Opentape, a virtual clone of Muxtape with one crucial difference: it’s your turn to do the hosting.
9:00 pm
Engineers have long (since at least the 1950s) used the term unobtainium when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects save that it doesn’t exist. By the 1990s, the term was widely used, including formal engineering papers. (As an example, Towards unobtainium [new composite materials for space applications], by Misra and Mohan describes how the ideal material (unobtainium) would weigh almost nothing, but be very stiff and dimensionally stable over large temperature ranges.)
The Wikipedia entry on Unobtanium. (Re-blogged from kottke.org.) (#)
I'm starting to think that The Mozilla Foundation might be the best place for tech-savvy folks to spend their philanthropic dollars. They're kicking that much ass right now. Consider Ubiquity, a platform for facilitating interaction between you and the data you view in your browser. I'm more excited by this than I was by the Aurora browser concept, if only because this one's available for download right now. (Via Darren.) (#)
Aug. 26, 2008
10:49 pm
Any application that lets you “friend,” “follow,” or otherwise observe another user should include a prominent (and silent) “PAUSE” button.
I think users of apps like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Delicious, and, yes, FriendFeed, would benefit from an easy and undramatic way to take a little break from a “friend” – without inducing the grand mal meltdown that “unfriending” causes the web’s more delicately-composed publishers.
Merlin Mann, proposing a (frankly ingenious) way to enable polite personal management of your social network. (#)
I sure as donuts wish someone had written a post like this before I needed it. So even if you don’t need it, file under “useful when someone’s looking for an answer.”
Aug. 25, 2008
Oh, heavens. This is fantastic. Wallace and Gromit are, finally, gettin' real paid. British store Harvey Nichols commissioned Nick Park and Co. to dress the duo up in their wares. What with my sparse disposable income, I'm likely not the target market for this campaign. But the Nicks sure snagged my attention. (#)
Aug. 24, 2008
9:08 pm
This fatality (no photograph without something or someone) involves Photography in the vast disorder of objects—of all the objects in the world: why choose (why photograph) this object, this moment, rather than some other? Photography is unclassifiable because there is no reason to mark this or that of its occurrences; it aspires, perhaps, to become as crude, as certain, as noble as a sign, which would afford it access to the dignity of a language: but for there to be a sign there must be a mark; deprived of a principle of marking, photographs are signs which don’t take, which turn, as milk does. Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible; it is not it that we see.
In short, the referent adheres.
Roland Barthes on each photograph's relation to its referent. (#)
Aug. 22, 2008
This topic's been on my mind since a local criminal case got national attention. The network covering the story quoted some truly asinine comments from a local rag that made my hometown look like a backwater hicksville. Just pathetic. It's a terrific list, but the one about linking comments to stories really stands out. The way most media outlets ghettoize their community sections exposes a real ignorance of how social media works. (#)
7:45 am
Everyone born after Ghostbusters 2 just blends into one huge, apple-cheeked, nubile symbol of my mortality.
Jon Stewart, from a Daily show rant addressing Olympic gymnasts – and more generally, all the young dudes. (#)
Aug. 21, 2008
6:16 pm
Messaging platforms like IM and SMS are defusing the idea of location as a hurdle to accessing content, it’s true. But somewhat unwittingly and paradoxically, they’re also tethering themselves to individual clients, to physical hardware with unique stores of data. When the data on a device is the only copy of its kind, its location is more important than ever. Until these services have an IMAP-like solution, they won’t truly be able to liberate us from location, or be as useful or as powerful as they can be.
Khoi Vinh, arguing for an extension of the concepts that drive IMAP email to other messaging protocols. I love the idea of IMAP for SMS. (#)
Most of my friends aren't on twitter, or use it only very occasionally. This article will probably only confound them more. If they, by some strange happenstance (man, I wish they would), decide to join, this is a good, quick primer on some dos and don'ts for being a good twitter citizen. (#)
Aug. 19, 2008
I promised more ExpressionEngine tips, and I intend to deliver. Today, let’s take a look at EE’s SQL query module. Like the gallery module, this one’s only available with a paid license, and for my money, the functionality these two tools bring to the table more than make up for the $100 personal site fee. So just quit yer whining about that price tag.
This is the last novelty blog I'll link for awhile. Promise. It's just that these things are like crack to me. Simple, no nonsense giggles. The concept on this one's a bit narrower than most: show us your worst professionally-made cake disasters. For best results, check out the Beyond Bizarre category first. (Via Guardedly Optimistic.) (#)
Aug. 18, 2008
12:57 am
I never want to forget that something’s fried.
Jeffrey Steingarten, commenting on a dish prepared by Bobby Flay for Iron Chef America. (#)
Aug. 17, 2008
When independent cartoonists are crafting shorts that make Disney and Pixar look like artless amateurs, you know the future is at hand. The Blender Foundation, creators of the popular Blender 3D modeling software, apparently created this film to showcase what kind of work one can produce with their tools. Stunning stuff. (Via Drawn!) (#)
12:42 pm
When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.
Sen. John McCain describing his stance on net neutrality. (#)
Aug. 16, 2008
Have you been watching the Olympic swimming? God knows I have. I'd been hoping someone would publish the official finish photos from Michael Phelps' unbelievable win over Milorad Cavic. I saw it on TV, but seeing these pictures, I'm even more amazed. Kid was a good two feet behind Cavic in the last few meters. That was some seriously lucky timing. (#)
