mike's web log

Roundup

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:58:27 GMT

I'm actually supposed to be working on something. This is more fun.

Big Machines Dancing. (video) "Beauty can be found everywhere, even in a pit surrounded by hulking machines." [via Toolmonger via Friend Dennis]

How to Stop Picking Your Nose. Illustrated.

Diagramming the Obama Sentence. For those of y'all who don't follow all the language blogs.

[T]he elegant balance of the central construction shows that Obama has a good memory for where he's been, grammatically, and a strong sense of where he's going. His tripartite analysis of the problem is clearly reflected in the structure of the sentence, and thus in the three main branches of the diagram.

In diagram form:

[via mxrk]

YouTube Comment Fight! (video) "There's gonna be a rumble tonight!" I guess I'll ask again: is there any point in YouTube comments? [via ... don't remember. Prolly Twitter.]

Roundup

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:35:27 GMT

Birthday boys today, as noted practically everywhere, are Darwin and Lincoln. If you've got some spare time today, read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address ("With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ...").

Bible Illuminated. The New Testament meets National Geographic. Interesting idea. [via Jeff Atwood, who referred to it as "Bible 2.0"]

The Wired.Com Tech Layoff Tracker.[1] Watch the job market in the tech industry tank, bleah. Links included to other, similar (similarly depressing) tracking sites. Speaking of things economic ...

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town. The Fashion & Style section in the New York Times explains the hardship of a $500K cap on executive salaries. I imagine that the sympathy level for this situation is floating at around 0 percent. Golly, they'd have to pull their kids out of private school. Of course, many people can just kiss off higher education for their kids altogether, can't they? As but one thought.

Darwin The Dog Lover. The writer claims that Darwin's scientific skills (implication: leading to the theory of evolution) were sharpened by his interaction with dogs. Sure, what the heck, I'll buy that.

[1] [more]

Roundup

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:53:30 GMT

Kinda went to town on the pix and quotes today, oh well.

Pizza-Pro 3000^tm. No comment.

[v Friend Dennis]

And speaking of tools ...

The Ultimate Dogfooding Story. In the world of software, "dogfooding" refers to testing software by using it yourself. ("Eat your own dogfood.") Jeff links to a post by Erik that references a thingy named Sawstop, which is a safety device for table saws. Here's Erik:

Slide a piece of wood into the spinning blade, and it cuts the board just like it should. Slide a hot dog into the spinning blade, and it stops instantly, leaving the frankfurter with nothing more than a nick.

The interesting part of the story (read Erik's piece) is how this guy tested the device.

Fastidious spelling snobs pushed over the edge. People who get wigged out by spelling errors might be suffering additional stress, given current economic ills.[1] [via Fritinancy]

Lexicon. Facebook has a neat little app that "counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time." (Must have a Facebook account to use, of course.) Here are a few of examples that I found interesting (click to see larger images):

Search term: "Obama" (note spike, which is in November):

[more]

Roundup

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:20:19 GMT

You know what I wouldn't mind? A bit of sunshine. Wrong time (winter) in the wrong place (Seattle), I guess.

Fake reviews prompt Belkin apology. I guess I've just always assumed that some number of product reviews (and restaurant reviews) are by shills. (I'm usually most suspicious of the ones with the really, really bad grammar, haha.)

The #1 Song on this Date in History. What was the #1 song on the Billboard chart on the day that you were born? (Me, it was Elvis Presley, "Too Much.") [via Sarah] [18 Feb 2012: h/t to Rupert Charles for the updated link!]

What the Web knows about you. Check out the list in the sidebar of all the things the author was able to find about himself. [via ... just about everyone]

Facebook and list mania, aka "25 Things About Editors". John McIntyre's editor-specific take on the "25 things about me" meme that's been going around.

Roundup

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:55:04 GMT

Today we concentrate on people's opinions, I guess. Except for that teeth thing.

Grammar Girl's Strunk & Twite: An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide. Grammar Girl posts thoughts (more like commandments) on how to write tweets. [via Fritinancy]

Chew on this: We'll soon be able to grow replacement teeth. "Now comes tooth regeneration: growing teeth in adults, on demand, to replace missing ones. Soon." Finally, a good use for wisdom teeth.

The Secret saved my life! If you've ever wondered about all the hype around the book/CD/DVD The Secret and its claim to be able to improve your life just through the power of thinking, you might find this book review quite inspiring! [via (again) Fritinancy]

And speaking of Amazon reviews, have a look at the customer reviews for the Playmobil Security Check Point.

[via Friend Megan]

How to Give Directions. I take a professional interest in how people write up recipes and in how they give directions. Both can be harder than they appear. This, another entry in the eHow wiki, is excellent advice for the second of these challenges.

Roundup

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:02:20 GMT

What kind of person uses a computer to generate their cover letter? At night?

4 Types of Person (a guide to stupidity) Odds are that you're not a Mr. Spock.

The Sky in Motion. Beautiful time-lapse movies of the night sky. [via Friend Steve]

Resolution Randomizer. Let the computer make your resolutions. The text is ok, but the graphics are great. (Requires Silverlight.) [via Brad Abrams]

Cover Letters from Hell. Killian & Company posts excerpts from some of the worst cover letters they've gotten. They observe: "An error-free letter is now so freakin' rare that the minimal care required to send a letter with zero defects, combined with a few crisply written simple declarative sentences, will, alone, guarantee a respectful reading of a résumé." [via Fritinancy]

Roundup

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:31:11 GMT

If it's the end of the year, it must be time for end-of-the-year stuff.

The Seven Best Capers of 2008. A roundup (hey, wait ...) of criminal activity this year that showed unusual imagination. With the qualifier that the best capers of all are those that are never detected ...

Motorcycles Finally Go Green. "Motorcycles may deliver 70 mpg or more, but they can be 10 times more polluting per mile than passenger cars." And that's street bikes; traditional two-stroke engines -- still popular on dirt bikes for their power/weight ratios -- are incredibly dirty. (Advanced designs for two-stroke engines ameliorate this considerably.)

The Fargo campus responds to Redmond's December 2008 storm conditions. During our recent snow episode here in the Seattle area, the Microsoft campus was effectively shut down due to, you know, snow and cold. The folks at Microsoft's Fargo (North Dakota) campus were not impressed, and issued their own Real Estate and Facilities announcement.[1]

Saying it wrong on purpose. An article on wordplay via mispronouncinations (<-- haha). Much of the fun is contributed in the comments. (I particularly like refrigulation machine for the fridge.) [via wishydig]

[more]

Roundup

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:02:59 GMT

Sort of a holiday-catalog theme going on here.

A behemoth of a knife! The ultimate Swiss Army knife. They claim it's the complete list, but it does not appear to have, for example, a USB flash drive. That might be a different Swiss Army knife company, tho.

Dogs Understand Fairness, Get Jealous, Study Finds. They even get petulant: "The unrewarded dogs eventually stopped cooperating."

Bad Moon Rising. "Do you suffer from the heartache of Plumber's Butt?" DuluthTradingCompany.com has the solution for you.[1]

[via Friend Dennis]

Fortune this! What if Italian restaurants gave out fortune cookies? (Read the comments.) Sample: "Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a day. Send him to sleep with the fishes and he never needs to be fed again." [via Fritinancy]

[1] We are fans of this catalog, actually. I love that they have a section for "dog stuff."

Roundup

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:33:52 GMT

Getting toward gift-giving season. Let the crass ads begin ...

Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas, aka make your own Pollock. Just move the mouse around and click. [via Daughter Sabrina]

Microsoft's SideSight: Something Apple Should Watch. Taking the touch screen virtual, for (e.g.) devices that don't have enough actual screen space.

Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition). Sample: "Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends." The original is on McSweeney's; Angela Liao has created an image of what the Facebook page would look like:

[via Son Zack]

My First Rifle. Crickett .22 rifles. Perhaps your young one wants the Model 221 in pink.[1] It's probably a pretty good idea for the company to add the tag line "Not a toy." (This ain't no Red Ryder carbine-action range model air rifle, kid[2].)

[via Colleague David]

[1] [more]

Roundup

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:35:17 GMT

It's the Thursday-technology-and-politics edition. I guess.

Etch-a-sketch clock. Robotically controlled Etch-a-sketch draws the time (once per minute).

[via grow-a-brain]

Challenged ballots: You be the judge. Examine pictures of disputed ballots in the MN congressional race (primarily between Al Franken and Norm Coleman) and render your opinion on how the ballot should be counted.

[via Colleague Molly]

Wii Theremin. From Make magazine: "Ken Moore, a user experience designer at Google, created a very convincing Theremin simulator using a Wiimote and a Roland JV-1080 synth." There are videos, including one of Moore playing the Star Trek theme, which seems appropriate, nu?

[via Laurel at O'Reilly]

Roundup

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:14:02 GMT

Tired. So tired.

Kafka for the Kindergarten Set. Aaron Swartz with another dispatch about our educational system. He doesn't like NCLB-inspired testing:

Every year, a couple months before school ends, a kind of controlled experiment happens in NCLB schools: The principal remains the same, the teachers remain the same, the students remain the same. The only thing that changes is that the test is over, forgotten until next year starts. And suddenly everything changes: test prep boards come off the wall, students start writing poetry, they go on field trips and do science experiments, they work in groups and do real reading.

City Museum Photo Tour. Sabrina visited St. Louis over the weekend and sent me a link to this. Looks amazing, I'd love to go.

Fox Says, "Smile, You're Under Arrest". Summary: “It’s COPS as comedy and no one’s ever tried it before." Reality TV: it's a race to the bottom. (Hey, maybe that's a new show: Race to the Bottom.) [via naum]

It's Lovely! I'll Take It. Subtitle says it: "A collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings." Everything from bathrooms with underwear hanging up, to bedrooms with guys lounging on the bed, to $500K houses with plywood in the windows:

Ya know, the bar is very, very low for real-estate listings.

[via Kim]

Roundup

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:45:49 GMT

A dollop of information in an easy-to-open, obselescence-resistant package.

Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging. Yay. Amazon is ~~leaning on~~ working with manufacturers to create less-wasteful and, incidentally, easier-to-open packaging. Here's a picture from their site:

[via kottke ... I think.]

Time stands still. Michael Broschat has a Kodak photo CD that's only 10 years old, but already the format is obsolete and he can't read the images. As the pace of technological innovation accelerates, so does the pace of technological obsolescence.

Monster Smart. [video] Seems to be missing the point, somehow. (Turn audio down -- it's wretched and not needed anyway.) [via Friend Dennis]

How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names. Where did the name iPod come from, anyway? [via Code Project]

Roundup

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:01:50 GMT

A short list today. Spending too much time away from the computer. Ha!

How to get someone to answer your questions. Clever strategy, heh. [via Raymond Chen]

How Math Unraveled the 'Hard Day's Night' Mystery. You know that opening chord for The Beatles' "Hard Day's Night"? Guy figured out how they made it. [via Daughter Sabrina]

Spelling Bee. The Visual Thesaurus people have put up a spelling-bee style spelling test that's strangely addictive. [via Fritinancy]

Roundup

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:07:31 GMT

Happy Birthday, Sarah!

The Things He Carried. "Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show -- security theater is the term of art -- I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness." [via Jeff Atwood]

It's not a compliment. Join wishydig as he hunts for a suitable definition for twittad, a connotative trainwreck of a name that was (apparently) coined in seriousness.

Curiouser and curiouser. Dioramas on a different scale. [via Daughter Sabrina]

Spill

Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts Blogging. Here's the logic: "[...] a bad economy will probably lead to an overall uptick in blogging, Alden says. 'When you don't know where else to invest," he explains, "you invest in yourself.' [...] When you get laid off or your company goes under, it's a good time to build your personal brand by blogging."

Roundup

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:20:09 GMT

Polls, polls, polls. What is this, Livejournal? One more for youse.

Choose wisely. "There is no question, but there are eleven possible answers." [toque salute: Fritinancy]

You Suck at Craigslist. Choice morsels carefully selected from among the ads posted by our ... less gifted writers, let's call them. [via Friend Kim]

Tastespotting. Per the contributor (Daughter Sabrina), "Just like notcouture, except food and not clothes!" Basically, food pr0n.

Men's Reactions Peak at Age 39. Took me a moment to get this. [via Jeff Atwood]

Roundup

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:47:36 GMT

It's the animals-and-quizzes roundup today.

Wearing The Hair Of The Dog. Subtitle: "Portraits Of People In Clothes Made From Their Pets' Fur." I like my dogs a lot, but even I find it slightly weird to make clothes from dog wool. However, I'm not sure why. [via Daughter Sabrina]

A Quick Guide to International Raccoon Appreciation Day. I regret that I missed this, which took place on October 1. The idea is actually to promote appreciation all supposed "nuisance animals," an effort that I approve of.

Can you guess where my accent is from? Think you have a good ear for accents? Give this a try. You'll do particularly well if you can distinguish, say, an Estonian accent from a Lithuanian one, based on 5 seconds' worth of speech. [via wishydig]

Country quiz. Can you identify a country based on its shape? I did somewhat better on this than I did on the accents thing. [Also via Daughter Sabrina]

Roundup

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:55:21 GMT

I'm waiting for A Very Important Delivery today from UPS. Knowing the kind of pace that those guys work at, tho, I'm afraid to even, like, go tinkle lest I miss the harking of the doorbell.

Brain quiz. How much does your brain know about your brain? Haha. I got 9/10, meaning that I was not using 10% of my brain. Haha again.

The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Winners. Always amusing. Samples:

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE. Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.

100 Skills Every Man Should Know: 2008's Ultimate DIY List. There are a number of things wrong with the premise of this article. Among them is that it's hard to sort out the practical from the macho. Note that there are a couple of items that were probably not on the 1962 version of this list. [via Michael B]

Take our survey. A Language Log contributor posts a survey about surveys. Most representative question:

[more]

Roundup

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:39:15 GMT

Editing Readme files today. By definition, a lot of weird technical stuff coming from all directions at the last minute. I love my job. :-)

Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English. "This is a book that will give you confidence to write Canadian English well and correctly." [via Michael B]

YouTube Comment Snob. "YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads" based on criteria like ... more than # number of spelling mistakes, all caps, no caps, and excessive punctuation (!!!! ????). Even if this isn't for real (haven't tried it), the idea of it alone makes me happy. [via Language Log]

Sony Targets College Students With New E-Book Reader. "... includes new features like a touchscreen, note taking and highlighting with a stylus, and a front-lit screen." Alas, they're apparently targeting students who have generous student loans. Or generous parents. Dang, I so want this technology to become affordable.

How to judge a book by its cover. A video review by John McIntyre. "When a book poses a question on the jacket, ask yourself whether you really care about the answer."

Roundup

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:33:12 GMT

We moved the kids' computers into their own rooms, leaving me the "bonus room" to myself. Sarah calls it my "man cave."

Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots. No surprise, really -- when you're trying to secure a computer, by the far the biggest vulnerability is the users. [via comments on a blog]

'I Can Has Cheezburger' book missing online vibrancy. File under Dumb Review Of The Week. I had to check whether this was The Onion, truly.

Better cents? The penny gets a makeover. The US Mint is creating some new designs for the penny. Did you know that? Not me. Here's something interesting: "Nowadays the penny contains mostly zinc; it's only 2.5% copper." Accompanied by the oft-raised question about whether it's time to retire our one-cent coin.

How to Open Rigid Plastic Clamshell Packages Safely. Hey, it's the cure for wrap rage!

Roundup

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:40:12 GMT

Happy first day of autumn, or as we say around here, fall. Note: Offer limited to northern hemisphere. Void where prohibited by geography.

5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do. "Hacking is to this movie what magic is in the Harry Potter stories: plot-hole spackle. All the gaping cracks in logic between scene A to scene C can be neatly smoothed over with the mystical power of hack." Plus four more! [via The Code Project]

Death and Taxes. A "large representational graph and poster of the federal budget." Paging Dr. Tufte. Beautifully executed graphic that uses Flash very effectively to let you navigate and visually study a complex set of data. [via Son Zack]

Internet Memes Timeline. Remember the dancing baby? Hampster dance? Revisit those good times in the long-ago days of the Internet.[1] Wikipedia has a list that overlaps.

Letterfu. Origami meets correspondence. Print a pretty design, write on the back, fold, seal with stamp. I'm not so sure about this, but it's an interesting idea, anyway. [via Steve Spalding]

[1] I was not able to find Mahir ("I kiss you!!!!!", 1999)

Roundup

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:39:12 GMT

Will this be the week that everyone remembers 50 years from now as the week in which the economy's snowball spiral took its final turn downward?

How to Protect Your Email from Hackers. A dude managed pretty easily to hack Sarah Palin's email. The answers to the "security questions" -- what was your high school, what's your mom's maiden name -- are, it turns out, not that hard to find on the Web. (Or guess.[1]) Do something about it.

Driving LED Emoticon. How often have you thought of something neat and then discovered that someone has actually done the work to create and market it? I've thought for years that a sure seller would be an electronic sign that you could stick to your car's rear window and use to flash messages at other drivers. ("Back off, jerk!", like that.) And here it is, sort of:

Large Hadron Rap. In which we learn many things:

The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers
Will rock you in the head

... including that physics techs will probably not be appearing anytime soon as dancers in hip-hop videos. (Neither will I, fwiw.) [via Stepdaughter E]

World's Largest Model R/C Airplane [more]

Roundup

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:54:08 GMT

The consensus at our house is that Creative is a bunch of weasels, because they won't produce Vista drivers for not-even-very-old hardware. Plus just generally.

The Pop Vs Soda Map. Who calls carbonated soft drinks what, where. [via Seth]

The History of IMG and EMBED Tags. A little technical trivia from the history of the WWW. Sort of odd to think that every one of the HTML elements that we all know and love had to be spec'd and discussed, one at a time.

Large Hadron Collider Watch [http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/]. Keeping tabs on the destructive potential of the Large Hadron Collider. Sent to me by Son Zack, who's a physics major, with the comment "Theoretically they will, you know, update it."

Best TV show ever. Not exactly rigorous, but still interesting, poll of TV shows from the last 50 years. A gratifying result for us; we're currently completely obsessed (well, I am, anyway) with the #1-rated show. PS I did vote, yes I did. [via that kottke fellow]

Roundup

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:55:33 GMT

Somehow I ended up with five things today. Guess I'm super-excited about all this stuff.

Procrastination (video). "This morning I got up and got ready quickly because I had to get a lot of stuff done ..." [via (sort of) GOOD blog]

Hurricanes, as seen from orbit. Awesome. [via kottke.org]

Distributed Proofreaders. Help Project Gutenberg by proofreading OCR scans of books, one page at a time. I'm signed up, are you?

Plastic Logic reading device. Wow: "Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it’s thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience - better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today." Man, I can't wait till e-reader devices are commodified.

How to Find Out Anything: 7 Tips. One (perhaps controversial?) tip: know a lot already. Another excellent tip: mine the "invisible Internet" -- stuff that isn't indexed by search engines.

Roundup

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:12:53 GMT

When my bluetooth thing runs out of juice and gets tired, it turns red. Does that make it a redtooth device?

Duke Energy to invest in mini solar power plants. Can you put solar panels on a lot of houses and generate the same energy that a power plant can?

What if I accidentally zapped someone with my stun gun? Not a problem I've personally had as yet, but just in case.

Photo Essay: North Korean Propaganda Posters. A different view of American imperialist running dogs. Tho this one is my favorite:

With the (supposed) caption "Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!" [via ... I forget]

Self-destructing emails. Write a note that is destroyed as soon as the recipient reads it. You write a note on privnote.com and send the recipient a link. As soon as they hit the site, the note is displayed and then destroyed. ('lessn they copy it, oh). I'm going to have to think of something to write that needs that kind of safety.

Roundup

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:34:37 GMT

Brought to you today by Chrome, the browser. As in, that's what I'm typing in. Does it look cleaner to you?

Best geek tattoos. Slideshow. More linked in the comments.

Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow? "Plus, two horrible things your internet service provider wants to do to make it speedier."

How to Cheat at Everything."It's an amazing paradox--a con man has incredible emotional insight, but without the burden of compassion. He must take an intense interest in other people, complete strangers, and work to understand them, yet remain detached and uninvested. That the plan is to cheat these people and ultimately confirm many of their fears cannot be of concern."

Selfish driving causes everyone to pay the Price of Anarchy Some empirical work to back the theory that shortcuts on the road don't necessarily get you there faster. If this interests you, click the link for Braess's Paradox.