Links

Sometime between December 2nd and December 9th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• What Is Google Voice?: "Ever since I got my Google Voice account, I have had to repeatedly explain to friends and colleagues what Google's free phone service is and (more importantly) what it isn't. If you, like them, have heard about Google Voice but still aren't completely clear about how it works and why you should care, here are some quick answers."
• Start BitTorrent Downloads Remotely With Dropbox: "Now as long as you keep Dropbox and BitTorrent running, you can start torrents remotely. All you have to do is upload .torrent files to the Dropbox folder from wherever you are, using the web interface, and it should start downloading almost immediately on the other computer. I started doing this at the office, and it's worked for me without a hitch; by the time I get home, my downloads are usually ready. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think."
• 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error
• Happy 30th Anniversary to Star Trek: The Motion Picture!: "30 years ago today, on December 7th 1979 Star Trek leapt from the small to the big screen with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. All week long TrekMovie will be celebrating the anniversary, beginning today with a tribute by Free Enterprise producer Mark Altman, that looks at the film and its place in history."
• How to Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page: A couple good tips, but the biggest is the FBML application. I need to install this and play with it for the CWU Writing Center Facebook page when I get some time.

Sometime between November 30th and December 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• On Language – Against Camel Case: "Word spaces should not be taken for granted. Ancient Greek, the first alphabet to feature vowels, could be deciphered without word spaces if you sounded it out, and did without them. Spaces or centered points divide words on early Roman monuments, but Latin, too, ceased to separate words by the second century. The loss is puzzling, because the eye has to work much harder to read unseparated text. But as the paleographer Paul Saenger has explained, the ancient world did not desire 'to make reading easier and swifter.'"
• Exploding Whale Video Reporter Looks Back Four Decades Later: "We're hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. …we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats."
• Verizon Changes FiOS AUP, -1, Offtopic: "Verizon has changed their FiOS AUP effective yesterday, and added an interesting new clause to their specific examples that we're all familiar with: 'it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to … post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites.' At this point, every FiOS-based Slashdot user is breaking the new AUP." As some of the (less amusing, on-topic) comments to this /. thread note, this is probably simply a poorly-worded clause intended to cover any Verizon-owned/managed forums, or to target spammers, or both. That doesn't make it any less amusing.
• Is Obama Another Mr. Spock?: "He shows a fascination with science, an all-too deliberate decision-making demeanor, an adherence to logic and some pretty, ahem, prominent ears. They all add up to a quite logical conclusion, at least for 'Star Trek' fans: Barack Obama is Washington's Mr. Spock, the chief science officer for the ship of state."
• 12 SF Movie Adaptations That Did the Books Justice: "Whether or not you loved The Road, most people seemed to feel it captured Cormac McCarthy's novel. Sadly, most adaptations do violence to the original books, but not all. Here are 12 adaptations that did right by the books."

Sometime between November 26th and November 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• From the Archives, the Chaos of the WTO: "Ten years ago this week, Seattle was thrust into the international spotlight in a way that most people did not anticipate. Tens of thousands of protesters descended on our normally quiet corner of the United States. They brought with them their grievances and frustrations with the way our world was headed in 1999. Some of these [photos] have never been published before."
• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: An Amazing Lightning Story: "Once in a while, I hear some amazing weather stories. Imagine being hit by lightning while driving. Instant destruction of the car's electronics, with the a window blowing out due the blast? Here is a true story shared by Judy Lew–she described it so well, I thought I would leave her own words, slightly abridged. And some pictures she shared. She sounds like the kind of person you would like to have around in an emergency! This lightning hit occurred on the 520 bridge in Seattle during commute time. This story illustrates how safe it is to be in a car during an electrical storm, since the current will pass around you."
• Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence: As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life
• Panasonic discontinuing Technics 1200 turntables?: The rumours appear to originate from a New Zealand DJ shop called DMC World, which says on its product page: "Panasonic (the manufacturer of Technics) have announced that production of the world famous Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210 DJ turntables will stop at the end of February 2010". The turntables have been around for more than 35 years, and are featured in the London museum of Science and Technology as an important step in how music has been played and presented over the last century. Their popularity has ensued due to their tank-like construction, high torque and effective insulation from acoustic feedback.
• On Twilight: What do you see in him?: Domestic violence is not romantic, and I don't care how much you say she started it, you don't hit your girlfriend. EVER. If the other women in your tribe had the sense that God gave mayonnaise, wolf boy would be lucky to only go to jail. Wait– there don't appear to be any other women in the tribe. sigh And this movie is the one that made $140 million bucks in one weekend. Bigger than Dark Knight. Maybe it's just that I'm older and (hopefully) wiser than the characters and thus out of this movie's target demographic, or maybe I'm a humorless feminist, but knowing that zillions of girls are seeing this getting the idea that a seriously unhealthy relationship is somehow the equivalent of true love — that is profoundly disturbing. Far scarier than a werewolf.

Sometime between November 12th and November 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Official Google Blog: Finding the laws that govern us: Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.
• The History of the Internet in a Nutshell: If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start? Here’s a brief history of the Internet, including important dates, people, projects, sites, and other information that should give you at least a partial picture of what this thing we call the Internet really is, and where it came from.
• It’s true: all the taken men are best: Women: do you have a man? If you do, better beware. Chances are that some lone female has her eye on him. A new study provides evidence for what many have long suspected: that single women are much keener on pursuing a man who's already taken than a singleton. "The single women really, really liked the guy when he was taken," says Melissa Burkley of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, who conducted the "mate-poaching" study with her colleague Jessica Parker.
• Meep! Nonsense Word Gets Students in Hot Water: "Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television show. 'Something happened and one of them said 'Meep,'' he said. 'And then they all started doing it.' The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything. 'It's almost like they look at you like it's a silly question,' he said. But meeping doesn't seem to be funny to Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray, who threatened to suspend students caught meeping in school." Wow, dumb (the principal, not the kids). Also, lots of fun silliness and stories of teenage silliness in the Metafilter post about this article.
• Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal: "The original Mandelbrot is an amazing object that has captured the public's imagination for 30 years with its cascading patterns and hypnotically colourful detail. It's known as a 'fractal' – a type of shape that yields (sometimes elaborate) detail forever, no matter how far you 'zoom' into it (think of the trunk of a tree sprouting branches, which in turn split off into smaller branches, which themselves yield twigs etc.). It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat – there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal." I don't get the math in all of this, but there are some gorgeous pictures. A lot of them look to me like perfect sets for the home planet of Giger's Alien.

Sometime between November 5th and November 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Cyoa: "Outside of the realm of task-oriented books, this sort of hopscotch across the contents is a rarity. And the CYOA books are actually not exceptions in this respect, for they too are books that perform a task. But rather than being a definition retrieval system or associative datastore, their interactive function is to create a gameworld for the reader. This is part of the wonder of these books — they took a pre-existing set of interface conventions designed for utilitarian search tasks and mapped a new activity onto it. They were effectively a new kind of software application for the oldest information-display platform we have."
• Bruji’s Pocketpedia is Back!: "We're very excited to announce that Pocketpedia2 has passed its App Store review and is available once more for download through the iTunes Store."
• Djay » Spin – the All-in-One Controller for Djay: "Spin is the perfect all-in-one hardware solution to control djay, allowing anyone to mix, scratch, and play music as a DJ would right at your fingertips. Whether you are a beginner or a professional artist, Spin offers everything you need to be a DJ with your Mac. Start DJing today with Spin and experience what it's like to create your own mix for podcasts, slide shows, house parties and even bigger venues."
• The Jobless Rate for People Like You – Interactive Graphic: Fascinating, if not entirely surprising, breakdown of how the unemployment rate varies within particular demographics.
• In Which a Fairly Major Secret Is Made Secret No More: "Back in the old days, before Twitter exploded into the phenomenon that it is now, I got a message from Greg Grunberg. Greg plays Matt Parkman on Heroes (this information, which most of you don't need, is provided as a public service to the seven of you who do), and has been in every JJ Abrams project since JJ started making movies in the pre-old days. Greg and I traded several messages about a bunch of different things, and then he sent me a private message that said something like, 'JJ needs voice actors for Star Trek. Would you be interested in doing that?'"

Sometime between October 29th and November 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Meet Stephen King’S Gore Specialist: "King first tapped the Dartmouth-trained practitioner to help him fact-check the terrifying supervirus he'd conceived for The Stand. King knows better than anyone the golden rule for horror and sci-fi: Make it as real as possible. In Dome (out in November), King serves up generous portions of materials science, nuclear physics, and medicine. And that's where Dorr comes in. He's the geek behind the geek."
• xkcd: Movie Narrative Charts: "These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time." The Lord of the Rings box is the most impressive; also done for Star Wars (original trilogy), Jurassic Park, Primer, and 12 Angry Men.
• Obamas give out treats, fruit to White House trick-or-treaters: "This wasn't the first-ever Halloween event at the White House — Tricia Nixon hosted underprivileged children for the holiday, the Fords and Carters welcomed trick-or-treaters from charitable organizations like UNICEF — but it might have been the biggest. Thousands of 5- to 14-year-olds and their families paraded through the crescent-shaped driveway." This is really cool. More and more, the Obamas just seem like really nice people.
• 27-Inch iMacs Reported to Have Flash Playback Issues: "If you were contemplating buying one of those shiny new 27-inch iMacs, maybe don't pull the trigger just yet: according to Engadget, many proud new owners of the computer have become annoyed new owners, reporting pronounced problems in particular with Flash playback." I'm not having this problem myself (knock on wood), but it might be worth keeping an eye out to see how this progresses.
• An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All: "…there is no credible evidence to indicate that [the claim that vaccines harm children] is true. None. Twelve epidemiological studies have found no data that links the MMR vaccine to autism; six studies have found no trace of an association between thimerosal and autism, and three other studies have found no indication that thimerosal causes even subtle neurological problems. The so-called epidemic, researchers assert, is the result of improved diagnosis, which has identified as autistic many kids who once might have been labeled mentally retarded or just plain slow. In fact, the growing body of science indicates that the autistic spectrum…may largely be genetic in origin. […] But that hasn’t stopped as many as one in four Americans from believing vaccines can poison kids, according to a 2008 survey."
• Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac: John C. Dvorak, 19 Feb. 1984: "The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the 'why' out of the equation — as in 'why would I want this?' The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don't want one of these newfangled devices."

Sometime between October 27th and October 28th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Lovecraft 101: Get to Know the Master of Scifi-Horror: "You've heard about Cthulhu, and you've probably heard about the man who created this tentacled horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Now you want to try delving into the world of Lovecraft, but where to start? Let us help you."
• Couple Alive After Car Pins Them to Bed for Almost an Hour – CNN.com: "With motor fluid spraying their faces and the weight of a car numbing their bodies, two Nevada college students struggled to stay calm after a drunk driver allegedly tore into their home, ripping them from their slumber. Kristin Palmer and Trent Wood were asleep in their home last week when a motorist allegedly drove into their bedroom around 4 a.m., mistakenly believing it was his ex-girlfriend's home. The University of Nevada students spent almost an hour pinned between the car and their bed while emergency workers battled furiously to free them. Somehow, the two left the scene with relatively minor scrapes and burns — and a new lease on life, Wood said."
• Stephen King Brings an "American Vampire" Tale to Vertigo: "The idea behind 'American Vampire' is that vampires can evolve, and because King's vampire was turned in the Old West, he thrives in the sunlight of the desert and has powers that are distinctly American. 'As the vampire bloodline, over the last couple thousand years, has hit different populations at different times, it occasionally mutates into a new species of vampires,' Snyder explained. 'And so there's this whole secret family tree of different species besides the dominant one that we're aware of — the one that is the classic, nocturnal, blood-drinking, burned-by-the-sunlight species that came to dominate Europe."
• tron.fm: "Tron 1.5: Rise of the Virals" (Soundtrack): "'Rise Of The Virals' was a fantastic, but much darker storyline from the original — different from the 'Into The Machine' pitch made to Disney by another party. It involved updating the ENCOM universe to a networked system (thanks to the Internet), but also created a darker world — full of programs abandoned as buggy systems (or 'mutants') and abused by corrupt users as viral systems. Furthermore, the story included the death of Flynn and presented questions about the digital life of programs lasting beyond the mortality of their creators — the users."
• 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error

Sometime between October 21st and October 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Underwater Land: "Enjoy seventeen delightful underwater themed songs, written by Shel Silverstein and sung by Pat Dailey for minnows of all ages. Featuring a beautiful 32-page booklet of previously unreleased Silverstein lyrics and illustrations, Underwater Land overflows with the zany humor and poignant wit that has made Shel Silverstein one of the world's most popular and best-loved children's authors of all time. Shel's longtime friend and collaborator Pat Dailey sings with a warmth and wit that will tickle the funny bones of small fry everywhere. No Silverstein collection is complete without this award-winning album. As the Parent's Choice Foundation enthused, 'When it comes to smart and funny family albums, this is the catch of the day!'"
• Maelstrom (1993 Video Game): "Maelstrom is a 1993 clone of Asteroids with an improved graphics and interface. It was created by Andrew Welch, president of Ambrosia Software, and led to the formation of that company. Many of Ambrosia's subsequent shareware titles followed in a similar formula."
• Minimal Mac: "Recently I decided to reorganize my home office by eliminating as many wires as possible. Here's a list of products I used to accomplish my goal"
• Left vs Right: "A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th)."
• Cutting Edge: Just What Is It About Adding Blades That Makes a Razor Better?: "It's all down to 'a phenomenon we refer to as hysteresis'. According to the Chambers Dictionary, hysteresis is 'the retardation or lagging of an effect behind the cause of the effect', or 'the influence of earlier treatment of a body on its subsequent reaction'. In shaving terms, this means that when a razor blade encounters a hair, it doesn't only cut through it, it also pulls it a little way out of its follicle. So if there's another blade following close behind, it will slice into the hair lower down the shaft, before it has had time to retract into the follicle. 'You've actually shaved below the skin level,' Stewart says. 'Can you ever get a closer shave with a single-edge cut-throat razor? In a stroke, no.'"

Sometime between October 16th and October 21st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Revised Code of Washington (RCW): "The Revised Code of Washington (RCW) is the compilation of all permanent laws now in force. It is a collection of Session Laws (enacted by the Legislature, and signed by the Governor, or enacted via the initiative process), arranged by topic, with amendments added and repealed laws removed. It does not include temporary laws such as appropriations acts."
• Justice Blocks Release of Ref. 71 Names: "Constitutional-law experts scrambled to apply meaning to an order issued Monday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, temporarily blocking the release of the names of those who signed Referendum 71 petitions, in what has become a months-long legal back and forth."
• The New Literacy: Stanford Study Finds Richness and Complexity in Students’ Writing: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, Stanford researcher Andrea Lunsford finds that today's students are writing more than ever before — but it may not look like the writing of yesterday."
• Essay – the Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate: "A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the Large Hadron Collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."
• Eleanor Cameron vs. Roald Dahl: "From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy over Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory simmered in the pages of The Horn Book. It began with an article, 'McLuhan, Youth, and Literature', by Eleanor Cameron, author of the Mushroom Planet series for children and of The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books. Spread out over the October, December, and February issues, it tied the ideas of Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage) to the confection of Charlie, calling it 'one of the most tasteless books ever written for children'. What followed was a knock-down, drag-out, letter-writing brouhaha, refereed by Horn Book editor Paul Heins, with librarians, parents, teachers, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Roald Dahl himself joining in, and it was one of the main causes of the book's revision that year."

Sometime between October 15th and October 16th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Copyright Website: "Welcome to the Copyright Website, the ultimate copyright portal. Endeavoring to provide real world, practical copyright information for over a decade.. Specialized information for webmasters, musicians, moviemakers, screenwriters, programmers and photographers. General copyright information for educators, students, web-surfers, re-mixers, mash-uppers and confused citizens."
• 5 Reasons It Sucks Being a Joss Whedon Fan: "I like me some Joss Whedon. I consider Angel and Firefly two of the best shows of the last 15 years. I 'grr, arg' along with the end credits every time. The man knows how to write dialog, how to make badasses of the doofiest of nerds, how to make sexpots of the most unlikeliest of actors. He is a ginger titan, a colossus bestriding the tube of boob. Joss Whedon knows how to make great television. If only he did it more consistently, and without all the accompanying bullshit …" The writer's a little too angry and vulgar for me to really enjoy how he writes, but as for what he writes? Dead on. Especially his first point, #5 on the list. It's one big, glaring reason why I can't really consider myself a Whedon fan anymore, and why I can't join the Dr. Horrible cheerleader's club.
• Business Unusual: Work That Skirt!: "In the beginning, there was the notion of just a single washable kilt. A loose, comfortable garment that, Steven Villegas says, 'I could walk around naked in.' And because you couldn’t just go out and buy a man-skirt in those days, Villegas made one. And when he saw how nicely it fit him, he wore the kilt to a Seattle nightclub. At the door a bouncer asked, 'Where can I get one of those?' And before he even got into the party, it occurred to Villegas: It’s a ballsy step, wearing a dress. Like Braveheart, only more so."
• Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.: Holy crap. I'm amazed at the dunderheaded stupidity of people in Seattle getting all uppity about gay marriage, and this kind of crap is going on in Louisiana? In 2009? "A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. 'I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way,' Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. 'I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.' Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said."
• Sublime Text: The Text Editor You’ll Fall in Love With: Good-looking text editor for Windows. May get installed on our Windows laptop, as I'm constantly searching for a decent Windows analog to TextWrangler, my primary text processor on the Mac.