Links for August 25th through August 27th

Sometime between August 25th and August 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Exclusive Excerpt: Stephen Davis’s ‘Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses’: Some think the legend of Guns N' Roses began in the nighttime Los Angeles of 1985, a distant echo of West Hollywood's neon-lit Sunset Strip. Others think it should begin ten years earlier, at the confluence of two Indiana rivers, the Wabash and the Tippecanoe, in the 1970s. But in this telling, the GN'R saga begins in gritty New York, in upper Manhattan, on a sweltering, run-down street in the late afternoon of a summer day in 1980.
  • Nikon D90 plus hands-on preview: After a steady trickle of leaks and rumors Nikon has announced the successor to its popular D80 middleweight digital SLR in the shape of the D90. The D90 looks very similar, but underneath it's a completely new camera that's inherited advanced features from Nikon's pro models and user-friendly features from the D40/D60 range. Oh, and it's the world's first digital SLR with a movie mode. Oher features of note include a new 12.3 MP CMOS sensor, the D3/D300/D700's fab high resolution 3.0-inch screen. live view and continuous shooting at up to 4.5 frames per second.
  • Next up: Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics: The Games, to be spread between dual Olympic centers in downtown Vancouver, where most ice sports will take place, and Whistler, home of most alpine events, will feel more intimate, friendly, and open, Furlong vows. The model Furlong most often invokes is the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which are remembered for the celebratory atmosphere that surrounded every event. A feeling of national pride seemed to ooze through the infrastructure, and Furlong believes Vancouver, one of the world's most diverse cities, can replicate that feeling in a Winter Games. « none %raquo;
  • Don’t Look Back in Awe: Readers new to the [science-fiction] genre are not served well by recommendations to read Isaac Asimov, EE 'Doc' Smith, Robert Heinlein, or the like. Such fiction is no longer relevant, is often written with sensibilities offensive to modern readers, usually has painfully bad prose, and is mostly hard to find because it's out of print. A better recommendation would be a current author – such as Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Stephen Baxter, and so on. « none %raquo;
  • Texas House Sucked Into Wormhole: Last summer, a condemned house in Houston, Texas was sucked into a small wormhole, its wooden facade slowly slurped though another dimension and spit out into an alley behind the backyard. This bizarre mashup of real estate and theoretical physics was created by local artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, who saw in the abandoned house an opportunity to remind people how fragile the fabric of spacetime really is. Below, you can look deep inside the wormhole and see where it comes out on the other end. « none %raquo;

Links for August 22nd through August 25th

Sometime between August 22nd and August 25th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema’s Ultrahigh-Res Camera: …that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete. « none %raquo;
  • Fleshmap: Listen: Music: What do we sing about, when we sing about the body? The chart below, based on a sample of thousands songs, tells the story. The size of a circle corresponds to how often that part is mentioned in each genre. Click on a genre name to see a close-up that shows exactly what words were used. (Mild, but probably NSFW in most workplaces.) « none %raquo;
  • Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop: To Star Wars fans, Chee is the Keeper of the Holocron, arguably the leading expert on everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm—which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics. « none %raquo;
  • Superman: Man Of Steel: Warner Brothers Takes The Time To Make A Superman That Won’t Suck: Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov told the Wall Street Journal that the Superman movie the WB is envisioning will be cut from the same dark and gritty cape as Dark Knight. He wants to explore the darker recesses of Superman's soul explaining that "We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it." (Y'know, this just doesn't sound good to me. Apparently I'm one of the few who didn't think that the last Superman film blew, though, so what do I know? The thing is, dark works well for Batman and probably many others, but — to me — it just doesn't seem right for Superman. This really sounds like the studios deciding that "dark" was the only thing that made the Batman films good, when it wasn't so much the dark tone as the realism and the care taken with the project. Maybe they'll prove me wrong, but…I'm not optimistic.)
  • Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Anathem: sneak peek at glossary: Boing Boing's found a .pdf with a look at some of the glossary from Neal Stephenson's upcoming 'Anathem'. I've had this one on pre-order from Amazon, and I'm really looking forward to it showing up on my doorstep.

Kevin Smith Hasn’t Seen the New Star Trek Film

Really. Thanks to TrekMovie.com for posting this excerpt from a radio interview with Kevin…

Host: So thumbs up on The Watchmen, what else you got?

Smith: I saw a movie last night that I cannot talk about.

Host: Was it good?

Smith: It was phenomenal.

Host: Any stars, any break out stars, and do they trek?

Smith: The stars absolutely trek in this film. It is fantastic. Anybody who was worried doesn’t need to be worried–about this film I cannot talk about…It was in very capable hands. The director did a phenomenal job–the director and his crew. Top notch cast and the guy that plays the lead is an instant star. That dude is going to be so famous. He is so wonderful. He picked up a role that I would say is pretty challenging for someone to step into the shoes of, because it is a role that has been played before many times by the same guy.

Host: How do you out Shatner, Shatner?

Smith: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Host: I was just saying that as an expression.

Smith: Yes, absolutely, in a world of expressions, I would agree with that…I am so not good with this game, you are going to bury me man.

Host: We had you on before The Dark Knight and I remember asking you if you could direct a movie like Dark Knight and you said ‘hell no’ it was so far out of your sphere…but I bring that up to preface this. Let’s say a franchise like Star Trek, not that you have seen the movie or we are talking about the movie, but we are talking about it for example. That is something that is so dangerous to attempt. Is that the kind of project you would like to do? Would you like to be the guy who gets to do a movie like that?

Smith: I would not like to be the guy. In the case of something like Star Trek, it would take a really insanely talented filmmaker–storyteller. Like in the case of Star Trek, JJ Abrams. So leave it to the people who are best equipped for it. I am just the guy who should be watching those movies.

Links for August 20th through August 22nd

Sometime between August 20th and August 22nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Macs, Aperture a big hit at the Beijing Olympics: In the digital photo editing area of the Kodak Photographer’s Center—a massive workroom located in the main press center at the Olympic park—hundreds of photographers at a time assemble to file their images using high-end workstations and tech-support supplied by Apple (the same was true at the 2006 winter games in Turino, Italy).
  • Does The New Business Of Music Change The Way Music Sounds?: If an artist and producer is making an album for their fans is it going to sound different than if they’re making it for a hit in the limited radio marketing channel? In most cases, yes.
  • SourceForge.net: Torrent Episode Downloader: Meet ted! Your new way of downloading tv shows from the web. Add your favourite tv shows to ted and ted will automatically download torrents of new episodes! Ted checks feeds from TorrentSpy, Isohunt and MyBittorrent for new episodes of tv shows.
  • Design and Branding Trends: Olympic Games: Today were taking look at the Summer Olympic logos from 1896 to 2012 London along with some noteworthy facts from each games and palette inspiration from some of the more colorful posters and logos.
  • One-wheel getaway in Des Moines shooting: Under fire after stumbling upon some suspicious activity, a Des Moines man escaped his assailants — by unicycle.

Links for August 19th through August 20th

Sometime between August 19th and August 20th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • FTC targets prerecorded telemarketing drivel: In the ongoing battle to let us eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather and in this case the even more infuriating recorded telemarketing drivel, the Federal Trade Commission today basically outlawed such calls. Specifically, the FTC changed its venerable Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) to prohibit, as of Sept. 2009, telemarketing calls that deliver prerecorded messages, unless a consumer has agreed to accept such calls from a given caller/seller. Between now and 2009, telemarketers must provide an obvious, easy and quick way for consumers to opt-out of any call, the FTC said. Such an opt-out mechanism needs to be in place by December 1, 2008.
  • Adobe Flash ads launching clipboard hijack attack: Malicious hackers are using booby-trapped Flash banner ads to hijack clipboards for use in rogue security software attacks. In the Web attacks, which target Mac, Windows and Linux users running Firefox, IE and Safari, hackers are seizing control of the machine’s clipboard and using a hard-to-delete URL that points to a fake anti-virus program. According to victims on several Web forums, the attack is coming from Adobe Flash-based advertising on legitimate sites — including Newsweek, Digg and MSNBC.com.

Links for August 19th from 06:33 to 18:38

Sometime between 06:33 and 18:38, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The Real Tr2n Trailer: Tron 2 Trailer Video Makes Pants Wet Worldwide: It's a tiny bootleg video, but I don't care. You can see that the 3D looks amazing, the new lightcycles are stunning (and move like real bikes), the world and the whole mood is Batman-like dark. And Jeff Bridges… well, he is Jeff Bridges. What can I say, he looks like a badass version of the Dude. "It's just a game!" he shouts. No, it's not. It's Tr2n. At last. (I'd completely missed that there's finally a sequel being worked on! Crossing my fingers that it's worthwhile….)
  • Jack Cafferty: Is McCain another George W. Bush?: John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy…that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet. He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes. Unless he's reciting talking points or reading from notes or a TelePrompTer, John McCain is lost. He can drop bon mots at a bowling alley or diner — short glib responses that get a chuckle, but beyond that McCain gets in over his head very quickly. I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.
  • Why You Should Turn Gmail’s SSL Feature On Now: Because without it, anyone can easily hack someone’s account and in two weeks it is going to get even easier. Mike Perry, a reverse engineer from San Francisco, announced his intention to release his Gmail Account Hacking Tool to the public. According to a quote at Hacking Truths, Perry mentioned he was unimpressed with how Google presented the SSL feature as less-than-urgent. It is urgent, and here’s why. (I enabled SSL for my Gmail account today. If you're using Gmail, you should too.)
  • Black & White Cheatsheet For Photoshop: Have you ever converted any image to black and white? If yes, do you remember how many different ways and settings are there? Photoshop itself has several ways (filters) how to make b&w images and each filter has many presets… Wouldn't it be great if you could have quick preview with different filters and presets? Well, You can.
  • Olympics: Seeing More Than Medals: What is there besides the winners and the losers? What can I see beyond the peak action? Here's some of what I found… (Some nice photography a bit different than most of what's coming out of Beijing these days.)
  • Three serious class acts:: When he died, Heath Ledger was working on Terrry Gilliam's next film, "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus." Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law are stepping in to finish the scenes Heath hadn't filmed yet — each appearing as his character in a different dimension — and all three are donating their earnings to Heath's daughter Matilda. Terry Gilliam: "They came, they did the work, they allowed the movie to be finished, they didn’t take money – the money goes to Heath’s daughter. That’s extraordinary! I am so glad these guys are so humble. That’s why they make a great addition to the film. It will be bittersweet seeing this movie knowing he was filming it only days before he died. "
  • How many atoms of Jesus do you eat every day?: Taking the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation into account, where the eucharist actually becomes the body and blood of Christ: 3.06*10^18 atoms of Jesus per day. Also, the earth's _entire_ biomass will be made of Jesus in approximately 4.91 billion years.

iPhone/iPod Touch Application Recommendations

Recommendations based purely on my own personal needs, wants, and desires. These are the applications I’ve installed on my iPod Touch that have managed to stick around for more than a few days of experimenting…

Applications:

Utilities

  • WeatherBug: More information than the standard Weather app. I’ve put this on the home screen and moved Weather to a later page.

  • WordPress: I’ve hardly used it, as I’m usually close enough to my main ‘puter to blog from here, but it could come in quite handy the next time I travel.

  • Kiwi: A nice simple Wikipedia interface.

  • Google Mobile App: A one-stop shop for Google’s major offerings. Mostly just a launcher into their iPhone-optimized websites, but handy for using only one spot on the iTouch screen.

  • Google Earth: A little slow, but lots of fun to play with. Nice use of the accelerometer for moving your view around also. Plus, it’s free and makes a good “wow!” tech demo. ;)

  • Amazon Mobile: Because I really, really need a way to make spending more money even easier!

Media/Entertainment

  • Remote: I’m not using it much right now, but it’s fun to play with. It does make it tempting to put an Airport Express in the living room to pipe iTunes into the stereo there, though….

  • Rowmote: Slick little companion piece/replacement for Remote that acts as a remote control over WiFi for a whole host of applications on the Mac. I’ve been using this to control the QuickTime player while Prairie and I watch TV episodes we’ve downloaded from Bittorrent, and it works great. Very handy!

  • Pocketpedia: “I wonder if there’s a way for me to easily catalog my DVD collection and sync it with my iPod?” I said one day. A few minutes later, I had Pocketpedia on my iPod and DVDpedia (which generates this list) and Bookpedia on my Mac. Perfect!

  • Now Playing (formerly Box Office): Movie listings at local theaters, reviews, even trailers, all in one slick little app.

  • Stanza: An e-book reader that ties directly into Feedbooks, allowing you to download tons of free texts. I read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine over the past week on lunch, Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and a number of others. There’s also a desktop client, but I don’t think I’ll use that nearly as often, this is more for easy entertainment when I’ve got a few minutes to kill.

  • Kindle for iPhone: I wouldn’t spend the money for an actual Kindle, but I’ve ended up spending enough time using Stanza for eBooks that I figured I’d give this a try as well. All I’ve picked up so far is the Stephen King short story ‘Ur’, and I haven’t even read it yet, but a few minutes of poking around leads me to believe that Kindle isn’t bad either.

Photography

Social Networking

  • Tweetie: I tried a few, and this is by far the best Twitter app I’ve found. Multiple accounts, saved searches, trend watching, and ping.fm integration. This is my #1 most-used 3rd party app.

  • Facebook: I don’t really use it that often, but often enough that it’s stuck around. I’ve been using Facebook more often recently, and along with that, the Facebook app. Pretty slick, actually.

  • Myspace Mobile: I still hate Myspace, but I have to admit, if their actual website worked half as well as their iPhone app, I might not hate them quite as much. Not bug-free, but so much more bug-free and pleasant to look at than the actual website that this is my preferred method of checking in on those friends who I can’t talk out of the MySpace ghetto.

  • LinkedIn: I don’t stop by here as much, but if I need to, I’ve got the app to do it.

News

  • Mobile News: AP’s news browser. When I just want a quick browse of major news stories, this is the way to do it. I especially like the localization options.

Games

  • Boom!: Minesweeper. ‘Nuff said.

  • Enigmo: I’m not entirely sold on this one. Neat and all, but the screen’s so small on the iPod/iTouch that I lose track of what objects have been placed where. I think I’d like this as a desktop game rather than in its mobile version.

  • Quordy: A great little word game. Prairie and I have both had a lot of fun with this one — since the default is to start a game by shaking the iPod as if you were shaking a Yahtzee dice cup, if we’ve got a few minutes to kill somewhere, Prairie will just say “Shake it! Shake it!” and (rather than breaking into a dance, which I’m sure would be amusing as well) out comes Quordy.

  • Aurora Feint: While I’m not putting a ton of time into the RPG aspect of the game, the Tetris-like game itself is fun enough to keep me engrossed.

  • Jirbo Break: I’ve always liked Breakout clones, and this one works fine for me. I’d made it through all the levels, but they just released an update giving it 99 total levels. Guess I better get back to work!

  • Cube Runner: Marvelously simple, engrossing, and a great demonstration of the accelerometer. Still one of my favorite games.

iPhone/iTouch Optimized Sites:

  • Ping.fm: The dashboard interface to the Ping.fm one-update-does-all website. Now that Tweetie ties into ping.fm directly, I’ve removed this.

  • Twitter: Since I use Ping.fm to update, I’m fine with using the Twitter mobile client to check updates. I do at times wish I could easily check @ replies, but not often enough to install Twitteriffic (which has just never quite felt “right” for me, in either its desktop or mobile incarnations) or another dedicated client. Tweetie to the rescue again!

  • NewsGator: Even though there’s a well-regarded NetNewsWire app for the iPhone/iTouch, I still just use the NewsGator mobile site. It’s faster and easier to use than NNW mobile, and while I keep poking at NNW mobile, it still hasn’t been able to win me over. I’ve actually been pulled away from the NewsGator family, and now use the Google Reader mobile interface.

  • CNN Moble: Not actually iPhone/iTouch optimized, and not terribly pretty, but works if I just want a quick look at “what’s happening now”.

  • Metafilter: Read-only as far as I can tell, but a slick way to browse MeFi.

  • IMDB Mobile: Again, just a nice way to dig through the IMDB. A little slow sometimes is about my only complaint, but since it’s not actually affiliated with IMDB, I can’t complain too much.

  • Google Reader: Though I’m a long time NetNewsWire (and therefore NewsGator) user, I’m experimenting with Google Reader. Their iPhone/iTouch interface is as slick as their web interface, and definitely gives the Newsgator juggernaut some strong competition. Now if I could only sync Google Reader to NetNewsWire….

  • Tricorder: Pure Star Trek silliness. Could really use being recreated as a standalone app so that it doesn’t have the annoying advertising at the bottom. Perhaps using the accelerometer to affect the displays?

And that’s it for me. Any other recommendations from all of you?

Links for August 18th from 06:12 to 14:58

Sometime between 06:12 and 14:58, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Sports: 25 world records broken at Beijing’s Water Cube | swimming, world, record, phelps, lzr – OCRegister.com: [During this Olympics, the] Water Cube pool has produced 25 world records, the most at any Olympics since Montreal in 1976. Six world records were broken Wednesday, equaling the record for most global marks set in a single day at the Olympics. The Beijing Games were so fast that 14 times in eight events an athlete or relay team swam under the existing world record and didn't win gold. (This article's just about swimming, but it touches on something I've been curious about: is there a World Record for most World Records set at a single Olympiad? It seems like we're seeing new records set in nearly every event we watch.)
  • On your marks, get set, Lego! Welcome to the Olympics where everyone’s quick off the blocks: As the world watches the Beijing Games, enthusiasts from Hong Kong have unveiled their own Olympics — built entirely from Lego. More than 300,000 Lego bricks and 4,500 Lego people were used to create the display, by the Hong Kong Lego User Group.
  • 7 Astounding Yet True Facts About Say Anything…: FACT: The boombox scene gets all the attention, but according to Ione Skye, if she hadn't been dating Anthony Kiedis and Cusack hadn't been in love with someone else, they would've gone home together after they filmed the sequence where Lloyd teaches Diane how to drive. Ah, the romance of stick shift.
  • Glenn Miller Orchestra – “Do You Wanna Dance?”: Wedding the Miller big band style and DeFranco’s top-notch soloing to go-go dance rhythms, lush easy-listening atmospherics and Command’s trademark high-tech aural experience, the album is no mere nostalgia trip for aging jitterbuggers. Rock fans will delight as this august organization tackles such teenage hits as “Cinnamon,” “Sunny,” “For Once In My Life” and “Love Child.” Naturally, the ubiquitous McCartney-Lennon catalog is represented, not once but twice, with “Hey Jude” and “A Little Help From My Friends.” In fact, there’s not a MOR track anywhere to be found on this album — it’s all strictly Top Forty. Do YOU wanna dance?
  • Telstar Logistics: Flight Report: Airborne in an Emirates A380 at SFO: It was the kind of offer Telstar Logistics cannot refuse: "Please join us for an exclusive opportunity to experience and fly on Emirates’ cutting-edge A380 aircraft during a two hour ‘demo flight’ and reception," they said.  So we said, "Sure! Sign us up!"