Links

Sometime between April 23rd and April 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Gallery: Flickr Users Make Accidental Maps: "Billions of photos have now been uploaded to the internet, and many are tagged with text descriptions. Some are even geotagged — stamped with the latitude and longitude coordinates at which the image was taken. David Crandall and colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, analysed the data attached to 35 million photographs uploaded to the Flickr website to create accurate global and city maps and identify popular snapping sites." Neat stuff. If you dig into the actual report (.pdf link), you'll find that Seattle is the 8th most photographed city in the world, and the Space Needle is the 8th most photographed landmark in the world. Go Seattle — we're #8! ;)
• Skin Deep Usability: On setting up a new Microsoft Surface touch-screen, "no keyboard or mouse" computer, and discovering (among other issues, like where the power cord goes, or what color 'rhodamine' is), that one 'undocumented feature' is that a keyboard and mouse are required to boot the thing: "The whole experience was probably best summed up by Amanda who, when asked why it was taking us so long to get the machine up and running, and why we all looked so unhappy, replied 'Oh, it's just so…Microsofty.'"
• Locks of Love Helps Disadvantaged Children Suffering From Medical Hair Loss: "Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics." I'm pretty sure I've got at least 10" of hair to chop, so this seems a lot nicer than just tossing it in the trash.
• Get Great Gadgets. and Keep Them. – Last Year’s Model: "We love cool gadgets as much as anybody else. We just want to be thoughtful about the stuff we've bought. Even the most cutting-edge, tech-savvy geeks in the world are choosing to hang on to their phones or their iPods that still work just fine."
• I Can Read Movies: I love, love, love the retro design of these film "novelizations". Beautiful work, and many are quite clever. Related, and also worth seeing: Harry Potter Redesign and Eight Films in Black and Red. Gorgeous work. This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish I was a graphic artist.

Sometime between April 18th and April 22nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Sports fans are weird!: The strangest sports tradition I've heard of leads to probably the best lead in of any article I'll read today: "Throwing the octopus is easy. More difficult is concealing the eight-legged creature until the toss is at hand, a skill that requires determination, luck and the ability to walk normally with 4 pounds of slimy cephalopod stuffed down your pants."
• When Worlds Collide: Spock Confronts the Ultimate Challenge: A six-page mini-comic prequel to the new Star Trek film, from May's Wired magazine (guest-edited by J.J. Abrams).
• Talk Like Shakespeare Day: "In recognition of Shakespeare's 445th Birthday, this Thursday, April 23, 2009, will be Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Shakespeare is a part of our everyday lives. He coined more than 1,700 words still in use in modern English and his plays influence the way we think about the world we live in. Get in on the act!"
• Doe v. Fortuny: Seattle’s Jason Fortuny (aka RFJason) ordered to pay nearly $75,000 for Craigslist sex ad prank: For the background, see Waxy's summary of the incident originally posted in 2006 when the actual incident happened, with multiple updates since then. The main link and Waxy's summary are both SFW, but many of the links from Waxy's post are NSFW. This was one of the most disgusting things I've seen someone do online, and I'm happy to see this judgement come down. Of course, this was only one person's suit against Jason — now that a precedent has been set, will more victims come forward?
• It Was a Dark and Silly Night: Gahan Wilson Meets Neil Gaiman: "…we have some new work by Gahan Wilson: he illustrated this short animated adaptation (directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe) of 'It Was a Dark and Silly Night,' a story by Neil Gaiman, the author of (among many, many other works) 'Coraline.'"

Sometime between April 8th and April 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Roger Ebert: Parrot asks, "What’d the frozen turkey want?": "For many laymen, a joke is a heavenly gift allowing them to monopolize your attention although they lack all ability as an entertainer. You can tell this because they start off grinning and grin the whole way through. They're so pleased with themselves. Their grins are telling you they're funny and their joke is funny. The expert knows not to betray the slightest emotion. The expert is reciting a fact. There is nothing to be done about it. The fact insists on a world that is different than you thought. The fact is surprising and ironic. It is also surprising–you mustn't see it coming. That's why the teller should not grin. His face shouldn't tell you it's coming."
• Philnelson’s Diggbarred: "This is a WordPress plugin version of John Gruber's DiggBar blocking code, with some options for the user. With Diggbarred, the user can customize both the message displayed and the styling of the DIV element that contains the message."
• Jam Out With Your Clam Out: "So picture it boys. Your hands are clammy with sweat as you approach the door. Before ringing the bell (Get it? Ring the bell? Gawd, I'm funny.) you wipe those sweaty palms down the legs of your pants. Your date's dad comes to the door, shotgun in hand and asks you a million questions, none of which you hear because over dad's shoulder you see her coming down the stairs. A smile crosses your face because you know tonight's The Night: you got That Feeling as soon as you saw her in this:"
• Uncomfortable Plot Summaries: Falling at various points on the Funny-Uncomfortable scale: "ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications." "BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill." "CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: Deranged pedophile big-business industrialist tortures and mutilates young children." "DOCTOR WHO: Elderly man serially abducts young women." "HARRY POTTER: Celebrity Jock thinks rules don’t apply to him, is right." "LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property." "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: Woman with gold-digging mother nags wealthy man into marriage." "SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS: Layabout stepdaughter shacks up with seven miners." "THE GOONIES: Physically abused, retarded man finds love with overweight preteen." "TWILIGHT: Girl gives up college for stalker."
• How to Block the DiggBar: "…shortly after it was announced, I wrote code to block [the DiggBar] from Daring Fireball. If you attempt to view most pages on DF through the DiggBar, you'll be greeted with a special message just for Digg instead of the regular content of the page. Digg sends a tremendous amount of traffic to sites that make it to the top of their front page, but it's the worst kind of traffic: mindless, borderline illiterates. Good riddance, really."
• Truly Groundbreaking Marketing Research: Understanding Twitter.: "Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies."
• Penmachine: Yes, Master: "…it's true that these new Beatles CDs (and, with luck, eventually iTunes tracks) will be new digital re-masters, but they won't be the first ones. If you already have a complete collection of Beatles CDs from those 1987 digital re-masters, these new ones will probably sound different, maybe better. But they could sound worse."
• Now on YouTube: First Moving Image Ever Made: "In the latest effort to bridge the disconnect between the government and new media, the Library of Congress officially launched its YouTube channel Tuesday. The debut includes 70 historical videos from its vast collection, such as the first ever moving image (a man sneezing), 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio and industrial films from Westinghouse factories."

Sometime between April 6th and April 7th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• A Pirate’s Code of Conduct for BitTorrent: All of this is good, but Article Two is key, in my opinion, and why I have no issues with downloading TV shows, but have no urge to download films: "TV is to be downloaded, movies are to be attended when a man returns to shore. If ye aren't a Neilsen family, what you watch doesn't matter for ratings anyway. Since advertisers pay by rating, it's a theft-less crime. Movies, on the other hand, do see profits of gold and jewels. So support independent/foreign film in the theaters, and save the action flicks with high production values and many beautiful explosions for the big screen, too."
• How I Learned to Stop Being a Bitch and Love the Con: "Every year in early April a warm and happy buzzing grows in me not entirely unlike what a kid feels just before Christmas. The reason? Norwescon. I love it. I always have a great time." Nice post on Tor's website featuring photographs by yours truly!
• Bill Would End Civil Marriage, Create Domestic Partnerships: "Advocates for same-sex marriage plan to introduce legislation in the Maryland General Assembly today that would abolish civil marriage ceremonies now confined to heterosexual unions in the state and replace them with domestic partnerships for all couples. Under their proposal, all couples — straight or gay — would be on equal footing with secular unions. Religious marriage in churches, synagogues and mosques would be unaffected, as would existing civil marriages. The word 'marriage' would be replaced with 'valid domestic partnership' in the state's family law code. 'If people want to maintain a religious test for marriage, let's turn it into a religious institution,' said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), the bill's Senate sponsor." Damn skippy. I'm all for this sort of thing.
• Giant ‘Hand’ Reaches Across Space: "In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light." Actually, I'm pretty sure the website goofed up and used the wrong picture. This looks like the right one to me!
• Alaska’s Mount Redoubt – the Big Picture: "Beginning March 22nd, 2009, Alaska's Mount Redoubt, began a series of volcanic eruptions, and continues to be active to this date. Ash clouds produced by Redoubt have pushed 65,000 feet into the sky, disrupting air traffic, drifting across Cook Inlet, and depositing layers of gritty ash on populated areas of the Kenai Peninsula and Anchorage, about 180 km (110 miles) to the northeast. Mount Redoubt has erupted at least five times since 1900, with the most recent event taking place in 1989. "

Sometime between April 1st and April 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Easy Auto-Download of TV Programs From Usenet: "After getting several threatening letters from Comast over the years, re: questionable Bittorrent activity, we've opted to obtain all our questionably legal materials from a 'safer,' medium, namely Usenet. All-in-all, Usenet is a pretty awesome way to quickly acquire media files without ever having to upload anything, and without anyone being on your back about it."
• Check Username Availability at Multiple Social Networking Sites: "Check to see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. Promote your brand consistently by registering a username that is still available on the majority of the most popular sites. Find the best username with namechk."
• Family Guy == Unfunny: "I've taken the first half of a random episode off my PVR and edited all of the out-of-context things into a separate file, leaving us with a Family Guy storyline (unencumbered by random crap) and a bunch of random Family Guy crap (unencumbered by unfunny Family Guy storyline.) Everything that was in the first segment of the episode is in the two files; nothing has been lost except the opening credits. ¶ If you've watched both of these files, you'll have seen that the contents of the episode simply aren't funny (or as funny anyway) without the context-shift, meaning that it isn't the show or writers that are funny — it's simple juxtaposition that's making you laugh."
• Where Gadgets Go to Die: Facility Strips, Rips and Recycles: "With 15 locations in the United States, Sims Recycling Solutions is one of the world's largest electronics scrap recyclers. Pictured here is the 'demanufacturing' center of the company's Roseville, California facility, where workers disassemble everything from printers, cameras and computers to Jumbotrons for their reusable materials. The facility receives roughly 150,000 pounds of used electronics a day. ¶ Follow along for a photographic tour of the Sims facility, where you'll learn exactly what happens to unwanted gadgets as they're dismantled, their components sorted and their raw materials melted down for scrap."
• Wrong Tomorrow: "'But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.' What does this site do? It keeps track of predictions of the future by public figures. How does it work? When someone makes a prediction, people post it to the site along with a brief description and a URL. We monitor it and change its status to true or false when appropriate."

Sometime between March 30th and March 31st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo’s New Penguin Exhibit Almost Ready: "We got a behind-the-scenes look at the new Humboldt penguin exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo a few days ago. Construction is mostly complete, and they're finishing up some signage and plantings in anticipation of its public opening May 2. The penguins, brought in from a number of zoos, are in quarantine behind the exhibit, and are slowly being introduced to penguins outside their own groups before jumping into their new home."
• I Invented … the Apple Logo: "'For inspiration, the first thing I did was go to the supermarket, buy a bag of apples and slice them up. I just stared at the wedges for hours,' recalls Janoff. The fruit of his labor: a simple 2-D monochromatic apple, with a healthy bite taken from the right side. Jobs loved the conceit-only he suggested it be more colorful."
• Old Moon Images Get Modern Makeover: "Imagery gleaned from the Lunar Orbiters over 40 years ago is now getting a 21st century makeover thanks to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). By gathering the vintage hardware to playback the imagery, and then upgrading it to digital standards, researchers have yielded a strikingly fresh look at the old moon. Furthermore, LOIRP's efforts may also lead to retrieving and beefing up video from the first human landing on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts in July 1969."
• Marketing Genius, Episode II: The Camblr Strikes Back: "The leanness of the script leaves very little room for audience-directed expository dialogue. The word 'X-Wing' is only spoken when an officer must notify Darth Vader what type of ship is landing in Cloud City. The word 'lightsaber' is only used once in A New Hope, by Obi-Wan, to tell Luke what it is he's holding. And heck, of course the word 'Ewok' is never spoken — how would Leia know they were called Ewoks, when the Ewoks themselves could only talk in vowely gibberish? ¶ I now consider this to be an underappreciated stroke of genius: the characters in Star Wars are written to be familiar with their environment, just as their environment is designed to be familiar with them. Neither the environment nor the dialogue is compromised to cater to the audience."
• Marketing Genius: "A few minutes ago, I read this post by John Gruber about this article by Dan Vebber about how the word 'Ewok' — a household term — is never actually spoken in Return of the Jedi. At this point in time — thanks to books, toys, and licensing — everyone and every in the Star Wars universe has a name, species, or designation, but what other relatively well-known Star Wars terms were never actually used in the movies?"
• Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, 2008 the Other Half of Famous Twins: "Both Charlie Sheen and Jenna Jameson had twin boys recently, joining the growing ranks of parents with multiples like Julia Roberts and Brangelina. When these little bundles of joy grow up will they be the next Mary-Kate and Ashley? Or will one seek fame while the other chooses a more subdued life out of the spotlight. We went looking for celebrities that have an unknown twin and were surprised by the stars who have a not so famous other half."