A nice little app that tacks on additional functionality to Spaces in OSX. The background-image-per-space thing could be handy, but by my estimation, the ability to add a new space via hotkey is the most useful feature. (#)

Even if you care not a lick about Python or programming in general, you'll enjoy the first part of James Bennett's rallying cry for Python 3.0. Related note: programmers who are also excellent writers inspire envy in me like nothing else. (#)

Boston.com's Big Picture is hands down my favorite photo blog out there. Here they've assembled the best Obama photos taken in the past few months. I'm particularly enamored with this one. (#)

I don't know much I'd enjoy listening to a whole album of Kaki King beating these melodies out of her guitar, but it sure is something to watch. (#)

This variation of A-ha's video for "Take On Me," with crazy-making special effects translated into easy-to-follow lyrics, confirms a long held suspicion: music videos really are more interesting than the songs they represent. I wish all music videos were like this. (#)

I'd heard talk about the bang-up job Obama did of roasting McCain – and most of Washington – at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner. But seeing it was something else altogether. His performance did more to calm my nerves about this election than anything else ever could have. Truly remarkable stuff. (#)

Mozilla seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping the Firefox nightlies within striking distance of feature parity with Webkit. CSS Transforms are such a simple concept, it's hard to believe they're just becoming available. Apply various Photoshop-like transformations on HTML elements. By my estimation, rotate will be the most used option here. Also: the "translate" option sounds like an interesting alternative to CSS positioning. I'm excited for this feature to make it into Firefox proper. (Via FABW.) (#)

Me and a couple colleagues found ourselves in a pickle when Muxtape shut down. All those great playlists lost! We'd buy all the songs if only we could only remember their names. I was the only one in the group that never copied down any of those playlists for posterity. Lucky for me, Muxtape has made a frozen copy of the system available, just sans music. Amazon MP3 store, here I come. (#)

I'm with Jesse: the "rubber band" method of selecting layers is just awesomely cool. I had no idea that existed. Also: I'm a little ashamed at how giddy that discovery just made me. (#)

Stack Overflow users post some of their favorite programming funnies. Do you write code – any kind of code at all? I can't promise belly laughs, but a couple might bring you close. (#)

Pragmatic Programmers have released some killer screencasts. I was a huge fan of Ryan Irelan's ExpressionEngine series. Now the group's turning their attention to iPhone development. Given the scarcity of good iPhone development tutorials (mostly because of Apple's NDA), these screencasts are bound to be a big hit with aspiring XCode ninjas the world over. (#)

I could play with this junk all day. In honor of their 10th birthday, Google's gone and fetched their oldest available archived index and made it available via a retro search page. Added bonus: most pages are available as they were then via a link to The Internet Archive. Oh, nostalgia. (Via Gruber.) (#)

Just brilliant. Antique photos, most from before the 1920s, each one altered so its copy appears to have been taken from a slightly different perspective. The original and the copy are toggled quickly back and forth on a loop, producing depth. There's this brief explanation, but I can't find any notes on workflow. Anyone know how the photographer is doing this? (#)

Yet another delightful animated short by some unknown-to-me art studio from the way far away. There are some fantastic details here. For instance, I'd love to visit a Greece where every roof has a pool that spans the entire length of the house. Also: it's got one of the true hallmarks of any great two minute film – a killer open-ended ending. (#)

I'm just getting started on a site dedicated to the baby bump and the little whirlwind he's sure to become. I've been concentrating on lifestreaming a lot as of late, so I've decided to use that model for his site – some flickr pics, some twitter tweets. Nothing fancy. Since Jeff Croft's had such success with Django on his lifestream-y site, this seemed like the perfect time to kick the wheels of this celebrated web development framework. Webmonkey's series of Django tutorials is what's making it all possible. Truly one of the best tutorials I've ever read. It's concise and focuses on getting you up and running so you can do now and suss out the inner workings later. (#)

The whole "time lapse video of the last n-years of my life" is becoming its own little meme, built completely by the most anal retentive (and unbearably pretentious) among us. But this one gets more things right than most. For one, consistency – of position and expression. Another: brevity. Two minutes is about as much as I can handle. And most importantly, a joyful levity. Aging doesn't have to be such a total fraking drag. (#)

I've been ignoring all the posts Jeff Atwood's been posting about his latest project, mostly because I assumed if Jeff was into it, that probably meant the whole thing was a good six feet over my head. I didn't realize what he was building was actually right up my alley: a Wiki/Forum/Blog/Reddit-type-thing for programmers of all skill levels. No doubt there'll be the standard n00b insults and petty back-biting, but still – this site has some serious promise. (#)

So this is how all those Objective-C blogs, with authors that clearly know not a lick of CSS, are formatting their code examples. Syntax Highlighter is a JS-based code highlighting utility for bloggers. Makes code pretty colors! Nice line numbering and indentation! Plain text view! If you can deal with slow, this might be a good option for your code-centric niche blog. (#)

I don't post a lot of web design inspiration links here on TNF (I tend to keep a record of those at delicious), but this one's kind of a special case. The personal site of UK developer David Emery is, yes, a little bit of all over the place – but the special touches on this one are especially special. Love the headline blocks that break out of the main column. Love the huge, page spanning photos that accompany each post and page. Love how when you scroll down the work page, said photo changes depending on which item you're scrolling through. (#)

Their tagline sums it up pretty nicely: Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy. I was lucky enough to get a beta invite from a friendly stranger a month ago. This is one seriously terrific service. Because your Dropbox acts almost exactly like a local folder, folks are bound to find some interesting uses. Here's mine, a method for syncing a single Things database across multiple computers. (#)