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February 28, 2005
Today's Links
Jeff Raskin, the developer most credited with the creation of Apple's Macintosh computer, died on Saturday. He was responsible for the name Macintosh (his favourite apple - spelling difference was deliberate); "click and drag", and he wrote the important text 'The Human Interface'. Links: The Jeff Raskin Center, The DigiBarn tribute page. DigiBarn also has a collection of early documents relating to the development of the Mac.
An amazing collection of colour photographs from World War I. Some people might not know the colour photograph was invented in 1903.
A collection of amusing photographs of ugly London (England). (at flickr)
A great collection of old computer ads. Classics!
Patents o' the Week:
Golf Green Reader - to determine distance to the hole.
Dynamic tornado teardown system - a ground array of jets that produce man man tornedos that divert or destroy the natural ones.
Method of playing card games - someone is trying to reinvent Poker.
Film projection security method and apparatus - using a double projection system - projected to both sides of a screen - one of the projections washes out the image if a recording is attempted (but is invisible to human viewers).
Method and apparatus to simulate an outdoor window for a windowless room. Skid row motels take note! Comes with virtual curtains or blinds as well.
Posted by Hamish at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
Today's Links
The Vice Versa company (Italian) makes some of the coolest kitchen and household gadgets I've ever seen. Wicked design sense and humour. I like their Toaster too.
Longmire does Romance Novels is a collection of riffs on Romance Novel covers.. some of them are truly inspired: "Lord of the Tube Socks", indeed!
This guy has a lot of collections! And a lot of shelves!
The SuperFriends do Office Space. Priceless.
Posted by Hamish at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2005
Today's Links
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes is available for pre-order on amazon.com... It's not due to be released until September. Somehow, amazon.ca lists it as being available in 5-7 weeks. Well, I've ordered it anyway. Here's a (soon to be short-lived) website that has all the Calvin & Hobbes strips posted online. Get'em before Bill Watterson gets to them with his pack of angry lawyers! ** Oh, and here's a page full of rare art by Bill. Here's Calvin & Hobbes Wonderland - a tribute site that's very well put together.
In other comic collection news, Johns Hopkins University Press is publishing "The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg," by Iain Topliss, in May. Could be a good accompaniment to the Complete New Yorker Cartoons.
A terrific (biased) history of multimedia, by two of Toronto's multimedia pioneers, is in the works... Smackerel (Kevin Steele and Dave Groff). Check it out. Lots of goodies to click on.
A collection of Gluttonous Trees. If you give a tree a chance, it will eat anything.
Wired News has a bit on the recent 'hacking' of socialite Paris Hilton's camera phone. Was it hacked or not? Did someone simply steal her password? I prefer to think otherwise: The company in question, T-Mobile, is recovering from a real hacking problem they had earlier this year, and there's a young fellow in court defending himself on the charge. That said, given that there's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary (Brenden Behan), wouldn't it be convenient if T-Mobile thought this one up as a way of promoting themselves? I mean, look at this:
- Hilton is already their employee
- Hilton has a rep for being a moron, and everyone's already seen her goodies, so someone finding her password or whatever is not unlikely, and her posing nude for her own camera phone shots is 'understandable'.
- The camera phone pics that have been distributed are very well shot and consistantly lit - which makes the phone look good
- phone numbers can be arranged quickly and inexpensively.
- extra publicity from the secret service 'investigating the crime'
- The pics, notes and phone numbers + the web access to all of them - a nice package to promote to consumers wanting an all-in-one phone/blackberry thing.
Etc etc... all very suspicious.
These toy cars are pretty cool.
The New Zealand government has a health and safety manual for prostitutes.
Posted by Hamish at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2005
Today's Links
Patents o' the week:
Flake for covert security applcations "having one or more symbols and/or a selected shape are used in a composition, such as ink or paint, to provide a covert security feature to an object.
Aquarium for transgenic fluorescent fish "a tank and an excitation light source which is configured to emit light at a wavelength optimal for causing a transgenic ornamental fish to fluoresce."
Follow-up:
The Wikipedia entry for Hunter S. Thompson is quite informative.
Rox Populi has a Hunter S. Thompson Reader.
ESPN has helpfully collected HST's sports articles onto a single page.
Woooo trippy. Try moving your mouse around.
It didn't take long for parodies of The Gates to arrive on the internet. Here's The Somerville Gates, Visits by Batman, Famous Bear and Andy Warhol, The Crackers.
Did you know that 7-Eleven is owned by a Japanese company? I didn't.
Even if it was only for one short hour, the McDonald's in Times Square had its very own washroom attendant.
Posted by Hamish at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2005
Today's Links
Hunter S. Thompson shot himself and died yesterday. Not to make light but I always figured he'd go out in a hail of gunfire. I imagine he got fed up with the world and decided to take the easy way out. HST was one of my favourite authors. I first discovered his writings when I was at camp, where someone had left a copy of "The Great Shark Hunt" in the cabin I was bunking in. I was hooked instantly as it fed into my interest in underground comix and early 70's culture at the time.
RIP Dr. Thompson and all that. Couple of links:
A good page of interviews and other material
King Mswati of Swaziland has decreed that no photographs may be taken of his growing collection of luxury cars - amid criticism that he is spending his country's money on frivolities when many Swazis are starving. Here's a link to a run-down on one of his more recent purchases, a Mercedes Maybach 62, one of the most expensive cars in the world. It looks like a nice ride!
1up.com has a list of the 50 Most Important games ever made. Umm, that would be computer games. The Macintosh computer is #22, for the contributions the platform made to gaming... I can think of a few very important ones: Myst, Prince of Persia, Dark Castle, Marathon, Deja-Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate - all of which were developed on the Mac first.
Posted by Hamish at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2005
Today's Links
Microsoft has a helpful, handy guide to 'computer slang' or 1337$p34k (leetspeak).. Now, as an aficionado of slang this is quite fascinating to me but it is also amusing to think about the underlying paranoia that produced that document. I imagine the London bobbies doing the same thing to try and get a handle on Cockney backward slang in the 1700-1800's. Heck, even now there are glossaries available for Americans who can't understand the language used on Coronation Street. Of course the whole point of creating a dialect or creole of a language is to make it difficult for the controllers to understand the controlled.
Typographica is a blog devoted to the love of typography (obviously) - their current feature is their picks for their favourite fonts of 2004.
Posted by Hamish at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2005
Today's Links
Follow-up: A high-res QuickTime version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie trailer is available here.
The Vatican, helpful as ever, is offering a two-month course in exorcism for their priests who want to bone up on satanism and how to deal with it. "The Power of Christ compels you...The Power of Christ compels you..." Really, though - what can they offer at Vatican U. that a few viewings of The Exorcist in 30 Seconds (and re-enacted by bunnies) couldn't?
On a related note, The Morning News (always entertaining) has "The Fairly Mediocre Satan": "You have a ouija board buried in the closet and you’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby, like, a hundred times. But do you really believe in the power of a ritual? Jay Allen didn’t either, as he remembers from a night of dabbling in the dark arts with a friend."
The teeniest, tinyest online version of Pac-Man ever presented.
The blinkenlights project has added the ability to play classic arcade games like Tetris, Pong, Breakout and Pac-Man using your cellphone and the interior lights in an office building at night.
It's well-known that cats love to stare at televisions and, consequently, computer screens. The Infinite Cat Project is a collaborative undertaking to record images of people's cats watching computer screens - each one looking at the onscreen image of the previous cat - thus creating an 'infinite' image... It's pretty neat and they have almost a thousand images to date.
Posted by Hamish at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
Today's Links
David "Elsewhere" is a 'pop-n-lock' liquid dancer who has been on the vanguard of hip hop dance since 2001, when he blew away the Kollaboration dance competition with his fluid-yet-robotlike motions. He did it again in 2003, and since then has become somewhat of a star - he has done ads for Heineken and 7-Eleven, and he rocked the screen just recently for VW's new GTI ad - which is in itself a tremendous compliment to Elsewhere, as he assumes the role of Gene Kelly in that scene from 'Singin' in the Rain'. There's a nice feature and interview with Elsewhere at Kottke.org. Elsewere's got his own promo video available here.
Amazon.com is hosting the trailer for the movie adaption of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The movie arrives April 29.
Patents o' the Week:
- Implantable chip medial diagnostic device for bodily fluids
- Animated toy utilizing artificial intelligence and fingerprint verification
- Flying Saucer
Tokyo Damage Report - an underground guide to one of the world's most intriguing cities.
Follow-up: Jimi Sweet's page has a terrific series of panoramic QTVR's of Christo's The Gates in New York City's Central Park. The Martins also have a great collection of photos of The Gates.
SpaceImaging.com has a satellite picture of the park - and The Gates are clearly visible - Take that, Great Wall of China!
Sublime Spaces is an awesome collection of photography by Bob Stevens.
Europe is getting all cheesed over whether Greece should be the only place legitimate Feta cheese comes from. Sort of like Champagne or Port, except with bacteria. It would seem the Dutch and Germans disagree with the Greeks.
Here's a fellow who blogged a church meeting in the US where a US Army Recruitment drive occurred. Onward Christian soldiers.
In a somewhat related story, The Virginia General Assembly (why is it always Virginia?) is 'considering a bill to impose...blood alcohol limits on hunters...who say the legislation unjustly targets their right to bear arms." So I'm reading that to mean that hunters can't use guns properly unless they're inebriated?
Some fool has compiled a list for GQ Magazine of The 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time. Should be valid for about five minutes. I still think the best joke ever was this one. But someone else disagrees with me, as does The Comedy Channel. But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the following:
So this seal walks in to a club...
Ba-dump-tsk.
Posted by Hamish at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2005
Today's Links
Boingboing: Canada's copyfight explained, demystified
Michael Geist is Canada's leading copyfighting lawyer, a great speaker and thinker on the subject of copyright. He gave a very good lecture on Canada's "outdated" copyright law. In Canada, the entertainment industry has decided that Canada's copyright (which has been updated dozens of times since it was first introduced" is outdated and must be updated to look like American copyright law, but even worse. For example, Canada's rightsholders want to replace "notice-and-takedown" (an ISP has to remove material when someone complains that it might be infringing) with a "notice-and-terminate" regime (an ISP has to kick off its customer if anyone, anywhere accuses them of infringing). The speech is fascinating and long overdue: there is a wealth of material on the issues with American copyright, but precious little that's specific to the Canadian context. With Canada considering an ambitious overhaul of its copyright law, this speech is required viewing for everyone who wants to understand what's at risk in Canada. Link. (requires Realmedia)
Christo & Jeanne-Claude's latest art exposition, The Gates in New York City's Central park, consisting of 7,500 nylon-covered gates lining many pedestrian paths in the park, is attracting a lot of attention after debuting this weekend. Here's a few links...
"All of the pictures on Flickr tagged with "thegates"": ""
Christo & Jeanne-Claude's Website
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The Morning News has a good bit on being selected for jury duty for the second time.
A neat page showing our solar system to scale - scroll left to right.
I'd like to be, under the sea, in an octopus's garden, in the shade... This may be possible in the near future, thanks to Poseidon Resorts. I am reminded uncomfortably of The Poseidon Adventure.
Further proof that Superman is a dick. Courtesy of National Lampoon.
Posted by Hamish at 08:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2005
Today's Links
Timely: The Art of Propaganda: Nationalistic Themes in the Art of North Korea - a picture gallery. Amazing.
Google's quest for world domination continues: Google Maps [requires Firefox - Safari isn't supported yet] is in beta. Here's a guy who's examined the service and how it works.
White House sponsored correspondent Jeff Gannon quits after exposure by Bloggers. Seems he can add pornographer to his list of dubious accomplishments.
Panoramas.dk has a fullscreen QTVR of the Apollo moon landings. Awesome.
flickr graph 'is an application that explores the social relationships inside flickr.com"
The State of Virginia is thinking about making it an offense to wear low-riding pants - i.e. those that expose 'the crack'o'yo'ass' or, failing that, your rhinestone encrusted thong. Whither the plumber's crack?
The Baby Name Wizard - check the progress of your name over the past 100 years. Neat!
Organic HTML - make a flower out of a URL address.
Ananaova reports: In an apparent attempt to deny the reality of their situation, a German zoo is importing female penguins from Sweden (the Swedish penguin volleyball team?) to tempt their gay penguins to go straight. We haven't even settled the issue with our own species and we're starting on the animal kingdom? Sheesh. Get used to it!
Director Roman Polanski has won the right to give evidence in his libel case against Vanity Fair magazine via a video link, to avoid extradition to the US where he is STILL wanted on an outstanding child sex offense.
Posted by Hamish at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Today's Links
Patents of the Week:
- Dog leash for use on bicycle
- Portable laser and process for producing controlled pain
- Subterranean waste disposal process and system
Times are a-changin' in Japan: "Japan ... launched a year-long study on changing the country's male-only imperial succession law to save the world's oldest monarchy from eventual extinction. The recommendation of a 10-member panel of academics and law experts selected by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's office could also ease the enormous stress on the crown princess to produce a male heir."
Boingboing reports that the venerable Bakka Bookstore, the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world, is moving back to Queen St. on March 1st. Yay! I met Douglas Adams there back in the day. Signed my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts. Good times.
Beautiful photographs of snow crystals. Never get tired of looking at this guy's pictures.
Follow-up to the USS San Francisco submarine that collided with an undersea mountain - a somewhat crazy event in these days of sonar and sattelites, etc... Wired News has a good story on "What exactly is under the sea?
Posted by Hamish at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2005
Today's Links
The U. of Texas at Austin is having an online exhibition of materials relating to Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's 'takedown' of President Richard M. Nixon. W&D's notes, drafts of newspaper stories, recordings, etc ... it's a really interesting look into the journalistic process.
The UK Guardian has a chilling account of one man's 33-month stay at the Guantanimo Bay prison.
SFGate.com asks, "Why does Windows Still Suck? Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn't everyone on a Mac?" Good questions.
While it lasts (before it gets shut down) - a website with all this year's Superbowl Ads. You know, the ones advertisers pay millions of dollars for 30 seconds' worth of airtime for...
Wired News: Photographer Seeks Resolution - Megapixel photography - some people aren't willing to wait for higher-resolution digicams- they build their own!
kuro5hin has a terrific article on The Effect of New Media Distribution on Body Image and Self Esteem - suggesting that the rise of amateur film and video production has the potential to alter ideas about attractiveness. No longer are the large studios and networks able to dictate exclusively the 'standard' for attractiveness.
An online collection of Airline Napkins: NapkinAir:The Wipeoreum
Chris Harding created "Make Mine Shoebox" - a self-parody of Hallmark Cards Inc.
Manolo For The Men - an advice column..
Posted by Hamish at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2005
Today's Links
BBC: 'Mermaid girl' to have legs split
"Surgeons in Peru are preparing for an operation to separate the legs of a girl born with the rare condition "mermaid syndrome" or "sirenomelia"."
Myself I wouldn't class this as a mutation... toss her in the ocean and see what happens! Kidding.
Dancing Across the World - Matt Harding, a young man with a big travel budget, dances his way around the world in this amusing (and somewhat large) WMV video file. Strangely beautiful.
Defective Yeti (I love that name) has a page devoted to the awful reviews of Christian Slater & Tara Reid's current work, "Alone in the Dark" - which was a very good video game back in the day, but, as one reviewer put it, it is "so mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality." (SF Chronicle)
Publishing photographs of Paris's Eiffel Tower is illegal. . .if the images were recorded at night that is. The company that manages the tower added a lighting display to the tower, copyrighted that, and forbids publication of said display without permission. While profits from the company do go back to the city of Paris, this is still a horrible development.
Divisiontwo magazine has a column by Jorge Lopez titled "Mac Mini: The Emperor's New Computer" - curious, I read it and my gods, the innaccuracies! Is this the state of Wintel columnwriting today? Read the article and see for yourself. But here are a few of the more glaring errors:'
"If you believe Apple’s marketing department, the new Mini is “smaller than most packs of gum” and weighs “less than four quarters”."Incorrect. That description was of the iPod Shuffle.
"The Mini boots up into a stripped-down operating system which Apple calls OS X, similar to the stripped-down WindowsCE OS found on many handhelds."Stripped-down operating system? You have to be kidding me. Has he read anything about what OSX is and what it can do?
"...no Outlook Express for email...includes a program called Mail...a stripped-down email client that can’t execute scripts or open attachments without user intervention...no antivirus program shipped with the Mac...The OS X comes with some system maintenance utilities...a defragmenter or a registry cleaner are notably absent."I love this. First off, Mail can open attachments and run scripts just fine. No antivirus program? Is one needed? Not yet by a long shot. Antivirus protection is left to the user because virii are simply not a threat to Mac users currently. Unlike the Wintel world. And system maintenance? Most is done automatically through cron scripts, etc (hello Unix backend!) - so it's transparent.
This is my favourite paragraph:
"To see how much industry support the Mac platform has these days, I did a google to see if there were Mac versions of any of my favorite applications; unfortunately I ended up disappointed every time. There are very few first-person shooters for OSX. There is no Mac version of WeatherBug to check the temperature anywhere in the world. Nor is there a Mac version of helpful web and email enhancers like Hotbar. Or any equivalent of the DealHelper software I use to keep track of my passwords. My Office 2003 CD would not install, despite claims I had heard from Mac fanboys that OS X is compatible with Office. Heck, the Internet Explorer icon isn’t even out on the taskbar by default, it’s buried in the c:\applications folder."Ok. Let's go through it:
Very few first-person shooters - ah, but if you check the top-ten releases, you will find at least eight of them have Mac versions.
No Weatherbug - there are many equivalents.
Web and Email enhancers - lots.
DealHelper - Apple includes keychain with the OS.
Office 2003 - duuhhhh brain melting... use the OSX version of Office, idiot!
Internet Explorer not in taskbar - duhhh... Mac users aren't Microsoft slaves... and Buried in the c:\applications folder? What the hell? His Mac Mini has a c:\applications folder? What? He lost me.
Posted by Hamish at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2005
Today's Links
Here's a site with fonts designed after rock group logos.
On that 'note' - here's a Wikipedia entry that explains 'Heavy Metal Umlauts'.
The press and blogosphere have picked up the ball on Jeff Gannon, the 'news reporter' who sits in Bush press conferences and almost always gets "found" by the president, and then proceeds to ask softball questions, which result in articles that have little analysis, essentially reprinting the republican party line verbatim. Now people are calling him out.
Wired News has an amusing story on Microsoft employees embracing the iPod: "Hide Your iPod: Here Comes Bill"
Posted by Hamish at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2005
Today's Links
Wired News has an amusing story on Microsoft employees embracing the iPod: "Hide Your iPod: Here Comes Bill"
Posted by Hamish at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2005
Today's Links
Someone has gone to the trouble of developing an M&M's sorter. Apparently it works for Skittles, too, but I wonder if it works for Smarties?
If you haven't already discovered it, Homestarrunner.com is awesome. This week's StrongBad email is just a little bit left of unbelievable.
krazydad has come up with a collaborative (speculatively) project to make a poster image from 2600 circle photographs from Flickr... check it out - there's a full-size version available on the site.
There's a DOOM boardgame. Roll dice. Frag.
While planning a vacation to Cuba, I came across Gridskipper - "scouring the world for discount flights, chic hotels and pretty people."
Here's a handy site with instructions on how to make a cool 20x30 poster from 98 of your own images using iPhoto and Photoshop.
A site devoted to Canadian milk bags - apparently we are somewhat alone in the world in our affection for bagged milk.
Ask a Nineteeth-Century Whaling Expert: the whole thing is a good read.
Notable Quote from etherfarm:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” Herman Goering
Sounds familiar... Of course no one's seriously trying to compare Bush's government to the Nazis - but it's interesting to see that Bush's technique of population control and government is right in line with Hitler's.
Posted by Hamish at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)