« April 15, 2007 - April 21, 2007 | Main | April 29, 2007 - May 5, 2007 »
The top five reasons why people unsubscribe from blog feeds out of 34 identified by ProBlogger:-- via Mark Goren
- Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming)
- Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead)
- Partial Excerpts Feeds
- Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting)
- Too many posts that I see elsewhere (redundant, repeated or recycled news)
The "MacBook Pro Thin" has become the new iTablet of perpetually rumored Apple products.
Mostly technology-centric, this time.
IETF I18n Gasp
Somehow I missed this; John Klensin and Michael Padlipsky have an Internet-Draft entitled Unicode Format for Network Interchange; gosh, if the IETF acknowledges that the Internet needs to treat all the world’s languages as first-class citizens, the next step might be to deduce that the same applies to its documents, the things that describe and define said Internet.
Wrangling Solaris and Rails for Twitter
Joyent runs Solaris and hosts Twitter and Twitter is overloaded; so they brought in the Solaris heavy artillery and learned some weird things about Rails (patch already committed by DHH). I’m bugging the people who were at that meeting to write it up in deep technical detail, there are lots of good lessons in there for both the Rails and Solaris communities.
Reverse-engineering REST
Uh, Google’s showing off code to observe REST applications and induce WADL descriptions? That feels deeply weird to me and I’m too busy to deep-dive right now, but it might be important. [Update: A colleague at Google dropped me a note to point out that this is from a former intern with ambitious naming ideas; its name now doesn’t include “Google”.]
Brain Regain
This piece called India Grows Up tells the story of how the Indian entrepreneurs behind Riya decided to move it from Bangalore to the Bay Area. Anomaly or trend?
Correo
Hey, look at Correo; it’s trying to blend Camino and Thunderbird technologies and come out ahead of Mail.app, which feels like a very hittable target to me.
Before you qualify to criticize Democrats, Mr. Giuliani, you must account for your preparation of your city for these clearly predicted attacks. Tell us, please, what steps you took to make your city safer. Until you do, then I strongly suggest you should keep your mouth shut about Democrats and terrorism. You have not qualified to criticize others, let alone be president of the United States.
Yesterday, Governor Spitzer announced that he planned to introduce legislation to update and change New York State's abortion laws. The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, as Spitzer's bill is called will "encapsulate protections similar to those afforded by Roe, that a pregnant woman has the right to an abortion in two circumstances; first, prior to viability of the fetus, and second, at any time when necessary to protect her life or her health," according to Governor Spitzer's wife, Silda Wall Spitzer. The bill will also change portions of the current law that many abortion rights activists feel are out of date. In addition to provisions for the woman's health, the law would also amend laws that consider abortion as a homicide and repeal a statute that, "criminalizes, among other things, providing nonprescription contraception to minors." The state law would not supersede the ruling by the United States Supreme Court last week to uphold the ban against so called partial-birth abortions. A deputy director from Planned Parrenthood said that Spitzer's bill would make doctors more comfortable with the full range of abortion procedures. Once introduced the bill still has to pass the Democratic-led Assembly and the Republican-controlled Senate. Photo of Governor Spitzer by AP/Mike Groll
A collection of maps of Paris for an art history course, scanned from slides (so they could be a little sharper; 8-bit only). The maps date from 1716 to 1887. Via Plep....
The WSJ has an article about how people re-engineer the Nintendo Wii controller to do all sort of things. This is done through downloading free software on the Web and tweak the code to re-assign the control/movements to specific commands. See wiihacks.blogspot.com and WiiLi.org. Some excerpts I found interesting:
“what has most captivated hackers is a mechanism inside the Wii-mote called an accelerometer that can detect its speed and direction of motion. It is the accelerometer, made by Analog Devices Inc., in Norwood, Mass., that allows Wii players to use their remotes to act out whatever game they’re playing, whether it’s casting with a fishing rod or swinging a tennis racket.
(…)
Nintendo says it is surprised by efforts to reprogram the Wii-mote and discourages the practice. “The Wii Remote was created to play on the Wii system only,” says Anka Dolecki, spokeswoman for Nintendo. But all the interest in the Wii-mote could have an upside for the company. The dozens of free games on the Web that incorporate the Wii-mote have helped add to the buzz surrounding the console.
(…)
Some companies see possible business applications with the Wii-mote. Rick Bullotta, vice-president of SAP Research, an arm of the German software giant SAP AG, is looking at ways to integrate the Wii-mote into their clients’ manufacturing operations. He envisions factory and warehouse employees walking through facilities pointing and waving Wii-motes to monitor and control machines.“Why do I blog this? the wii hacks are more and more documented, it’s interesting to see how this innovation from the gaming area can lead to change in other area.
Examiner column for April 30.
Around the teacher lunchroom, hands are wringing and teachers are beginning to panic. It’s test time, and our students are not as nervous as we would like them to be.
As I lecture on James Joyce, or spend five more minutes going over test-taking strategies, I occasionally spy a silly grin on the face of one of my better students and chalk it up to spring.
Yes, ee cummings was right. Spring is the time when the world is “mud-luscious.” The ominous presence of the balloon-man in his poem is nothing compared to the ominous blue Scantron forms that teachers learn to dread throughout May. Whether our students bubble a, b, c, or d might make or break our careers in high school teaching.
But students are not thinking of their teachers’ careers. They’re thinking about prom. Or about azaleas, or the girl across the room, or the boy who just walked past the door. James Joyce himself could be lecturing in Room 258 on “Dubliners” and I wager my students, looking down studiously, on second glance might be detected text messaging someone across room.
Two of my students admit to text messaging one another, even though they sit side-by-side. “We do it so as not to disturb the class!” they claim. Is it perverse that I see a certain logic there?
Absenteeism is legion. They all have good excuses: they are visiting colleges to make a final decision, there is a family reunion in Kansas, their finance class is taking a trip to a bank. No one is sick, but 8% have an excuse to be out of class.
So begins the game: “Did I miss anything?” It’s noble to say that students are responsible for what they missed, but three weeks later there might be a parent email noting that Johnny was not aware he had work to make up and could the teacher please accept it late? Only the most hard-hearted say no. Teachers consequently find it prudent to take preventive measures, chasing after seven students to say, “Yes--- you missed something!”
Spring is, perhaps most ominously of all, a time for teachers to size up the year. Will their students do well on standardized measures? What could we have done better? How have we messed up?
There is the sober realization that some students simply don’t do well on multiple choice tests. “No way is that student going to pass the test…” can frequently be heard muttered under a teacher’s breath. There are the delightful surprises, as well. Three or four of my students, contrary to the “start slowly and taper off” motto of most seniors, are just revving up in May---for the test? College? The future? Life? Those students are blessings, and I count them daily. (One, two…)
Like all springs, this one will pass, as the luscious mud hardens and yields to summer. Truthfully, I enjoy spring fever. The silly grins that light up their faces might have been mine many years ago. And I have every intention of smiling---after the test!
When I was trying to describe what using the [24" iMac](http://www.apple.com/imac/) is like to some friends, I came up with "It's the IMAX of iMacs!".
Scripts for use with ThisService to perform “Lucky” searches at Google from any application.
This beta version of the AOL site looks a bit familar. (thx, skamptacular) (link)
Yes, friends, I'm still doing the Daily Blabber videos -- now two times a week. But I only share the URLs with you fine folks right here if my hair and makeup look okay. Needless to say, it's been a rough few weeks. I don't look too horrific, so I'm passing along the link to this week's gossip week in review. Topics? Hugh Grant's bean toss, Rosie & Donald and, of course, Miss Britney.
More on WK here.
The Washington Post examines the possible change in the chocolate standard with Chocolate Purists Alarmed by Proposal To Fudge Standards. (I couldn't resist that title!) While the proposed change isn't limited to chocolate (it's more general than I'd realized, basically allowing for the substitution of vegetable fats), it certainly will impact chocolate if it's approved. [thanks Kayhan!]
James Edward Gray has written a tutorial for O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.
The tutorial shows a slightly untraditional way to customize TextMate, as it transforms the text input window into an interactive RPN calculator.
I've been in London this week, working hard at what I do.
It's been exciting and the folks are great and the passion really charges up the discussions.
I just hope we aren't slowed by the Jello.
Wired features a web service called Buy Your Friend a Drink that lets you get a round for your friends without actually having to spend time with them.
Sounds like a great service for generous but absent friends, or for people who would have loved to attend their work colleague's birthday party if it were not being held at Calico Jack's on 42nd St (which unfortunately is one of the relatively few bars that is currently participating in this service) but still want to buy them a cocktail.
It's currently operating in New York. And Hoboken, which I guess makes sense, since what else is there to do in Hoboken but find novels ways to drink. Wired says they plan to expand the number of bars where you can redeem the drink credits that your friends buy for you, and also start up on the west coast. It sounds like the kind of neat and easy gift idea that I hope I would remember to give people (and sort of hope people would give me) but that I wonder how many people will actually think to use. But if you have to start hanging out at Senor Swanky's to get some free drinks from your suddenly altruistic and considerate friends, it's a small price to pay.
written by Amy
Steve Jurvetson let us know about a very cool recent reuse of one of his CC-licensed photos. This incredible macro shot of an ant was used to accompany an article on UCSF’s website about chitin and allergic inflammation.
Photo: Steve Jurvetson, licensed under CC BYJurvetson’s photography has been used under CC licenses many times in print and on TV. As he says in this discussion about Creative Commons on Flickr:
I use a simple attribution license which for me is just perfect. It maximizes the freedom for reuse while maintaining a channel for attention back to this photoblog.
And it really works. I never imagined that my photos would be used by anyone, and certainly not in the unusual places that they have so far… including: Maxim Magazine, Science magazine, on TV with the Charlie Rose Show, the cover of a board game, and numerous textbooks, even one for the blind (go figure!)… Here are some examples.
With the recent agreement the city made with the public school principals' union in the news for it's unusual additions (like a $25,000 incentive for principals to head schools in difficult areas), we suggest you also read the Village Voice article about teachers in "rubber rooms" for the underbelly of the public school dealings. The "rubber rooms" are where teachers who are in the middle of disputes, whether they've been rightly or unfairly removed from teaching duties. One teacher, Georgia Argyis, who was asked to sign a document that accused her to pulling a kindergartener's arm - and then Argyis yelled at the principal and made remarks about her weight, said that being the rubber room was "like being a vegetable."
Rubber room hours match that of a typical school day—Argyris would sign in at 8:30 a.m. and be released at 3:20 in the afternoon, with a 50-minute lunch break. Like something out of a dystopian fairy tale, however, this school had no children, just a few cafeteria workers, social workers, and custodians who shared the same lot... Because teachers in rubber rooms are awaiting their cases to be heard, they aren't technically being punished. But they are restricted from numerous activities—they can't use MP3 players, telephones, or laptop computers. (Most flout those rules, however, and use various devices openly.)... To keep occupied, teachers read, play games like Scrabble or chess, or work on their screenplays. Art teachers work on paintings. Masters degrees get completed. Last year at the Seventh Avenue rubber room, a group of teachers taught each other to knit. Exercise is a popular activity.Another teacher told the Voice, "It's high school on steroids. Or maybe a mixture between a minimum security prison and a senior home." And the teachers are getting paid all during this time. And last fall, John Stossel had an "epic" explanation of the bureaucracy that occurs when trying to fire a teacher. See the two page PDF, which explains that the teacher has to sign a document, it doesn't necessarily mean the teacher agrees he/she did anything wrong, it seems more like an acknowledgment the teacher knows what's going on.
It doesn't post! It doesn't store your password in the keychain! It doesn't automatically refresh! It's useless! Just a demo! Don't worry, Craig! ;)
Download BSTwitterApp.zip.
(BS... my initials come in handy sometimes. ;)
The idea behind this app is to show some basic use of the technologies that folks writing hybrid apps in Cocoa use. It uses NSXMLDocument and XPath to parse the friends tweets, WebKit to display the tweets, and NSURLConnection to download the tweets.
It also demonstrates that just doing the plumbing—downloading and parsing—is only the barest beginning. For Mac apps, the magic is in the user interface. This doesn’t have any of that magic.
(Folks who aren’t developers sometimes think that apps like Twitterrific are 90% under-the-hood plumbing and a 10% sprinkling of user interface. The truth is more likely the opposite: 10% plumbing, 90% user interface.)
The coolest part of this is the code that parses the Twitter friends timeline. The parser is really very small. (And I’ve heard that there are ways to do it in even less code.) The central part of the parser is +[BSTwitterParser _parsedObjectWithNode:], which shows some very basic use of XPath to get data from an NSXMLNode.
First we heard hogs had been fed some of the contaminated pet food, but we were assured those hogs hadn't entered our food supply. Now comes the government report that tainted hogs entered the human food supply after all. But "the potential risk to human health was said to be very low." Let's hope this time they're right.
Apparently, Apple is buying enough flash to build twice as many iPods (or iPhones) in the second half of 2007 as they sold in the second half of 2006.
Here's some we're considering for a baby girl:
- Aethelthryth Bearrocscir Fake
- Ebba Fembar Fake
- Beomia Bisgu Butterfield
- Orva Edla Butterfield
- Viradecthis Orva Fake
- Gobnat Coy Butterfield
Any other suggestions?
Some lawyer is suing his dry-cleaner for $65 million because they lost his pants. God, I hate lawyers. (Not you, I like you.) (link)
Blaine: Slides for Scaling Twitter talk.Blaine’s beautiful scaling Twitter slides. Final chapter in the Rails-vs-Twitter-versy? (And congrats Blaine on becoming a Rails committer!)
The NY Times published an article today about Fulfillment by Amazon and how Amazon is developing other ways to make money. I’m quoted with other merchants in the article about Fulfillment by Amazon, “a program designed to allow independent sellers to use its network of distribution centers to store and ship their products.”
We use FBA to fulfill Clip-n-Seals and hopefully soon our Bike Hugger shirts.
Both of those products have done well from Bike Hugger traffic and we’ve got more products on the way.
Rhode Island is the birthplace of the diner, and the New York Times takes a look at some its oldest historic diners. I'm a huge diner fan, especially of the authentic railcar diners. I wish there were more here in Manhattan, but two I like to frequent are The Square, in TriBeCa, and the Cheyenne, on Ninth Ave near 34th Street. I just wish there were a great one close to my house. Boston has some good ones, especially in Somerville and Cambridge, that I used to go to all the time when I lived there. Mmmm...diner breakfast would be good right now.
This is wonderful: je t'attends depuis la nuit des temps jodie foster. Trivia by Adriana: "Jodie Foster is fluent in French and does her own dubbing." Also worth watching, Jodie Foster quotes Eminem.
This is wonderful: je t'attends depuis la nuit des temps jodie foster. Trivia by Adriana: "Jodie Foster is fluent in French and does her own dubbing." Also worth watching, Jodie Foster quotes Eminem.
Friday, April 27Judith Z. Miller at the Boathouse
For Arbor Day, the Prospect Park Audubon Center at the Boathouse presents "Sticks and Stones," an art exhibit featuring Judith Z. Miller. The Brooklyn artist brings her collection of "Sacred Staffs," necklaces, and amulets to the Boathouse. Made from found natural objects, her pieces are inspired by the Park’s trees. Programming continues with a free children's workshop on Saturday and a free opening reception on Sunday.
1pm-4pm. Just inside the Lincoln Road/Ocean Ave. entrance to the Park. Free.Lightning Bolt at Pratt Institute
Pratt Radio and Todd P showcase experimental music with a free all-ages concert: Lightning Bolt and The Sun Ra Arkestra. Taking place on the Pratt Main Lawn, the show must be over by sunset, so show up early. In the event of rain, an announcement will be made by 2pm. Pratt is a dry campus.
6pm. 200 Willoughby Ave. Free.After the jump: Cherry Blossom Festival
Photo by ElissaSCA.
If you've been following along with this week's Cook the Book feature, you'll have gotten to know the kinds of foods that cookbook author and longtime food blogger Heidi Swanson loves to make and share with readers. But we wanted to know a little more about her. So she's the subject of this week's Meet & Eat.
Name: Heidi Swanson
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: Cookbook author, photographer, content producer
URL: 101cookbooks.com or heidiswanson.comFavorite comfort food?
Beans. I love them - baked, boiled, broiled, sauteed, mashed, you name it. I like all shapes, sizes, colors, and kinds.Guilty pleasures?
Most (all?) of the coffee shops in my neighborhood aren't using organic milk. It's frustrating because I don't like to start my day with a cappuccino or latte made from milk from cows that have been pumped full of bovine growth hormones—but it happens on occasion. I just try to minimize it or drink tea at home.Describe your perfect meal.
The perfect meal - good friends in the kitchen cooking and then enjoying that food together. Aside from that, enjoying a San Francisco burrito on a warm night while sitting on the steps beneath Coit Tower is hard to beat.What food won't you eat?
I'm vegetarian - I don't eat meat (fish, goat, rabbit, cow, chicken, deer, Pig, etc). Beyond that, I'm game for just about anything. I have a theory that if I don't enjoy eating something it is likely because I haven't had it prepared well (by me or someone else)...What's an unexplored food you'd like to try?
I'd like to further learn about (and experience more) Shojin cooking—Japanese Zen monastery cuisine.Favorite food person?
There are so many! I'm having a hard time choosing just one. How about a list of a few of the people I admire for not only doing interesting work in the food (or wine) worlds, but also for carving out their own paths—and on top of that, for being genuinely nice/cool people.
- June Taylor: June Taylor Organic Preserves
- Carl Doumani: Quixote Winery
- Amy Franceschini: Victory Gardens 2007+
- Ben Ripple: Big Tree Farms Bali
- Molly Stevens: food writer and instructor
- Dan Barber: king of Blue Hill at Stone Barns
- Andrea Nguyen: food writer and instructor
When did you first realize you were a serious eater?
I was a picky kid. I think I'm making up for lost time (and meals) now.What do your family and friends think of your food obsessions?
I think they enjoy being the recipients of my (seemingly endless) recipe testing. Another bonus is that they also get all my pass-along cookbooks.Favorite food sites or blogs?
This is tough! Picking favorites is never easy for me. A few personal favorites:
- Food Blog S'cool: A great resource for the growing community of food bloggers.
- Michael Ruhlman's blog: Never a dull moment here.
- Rancho Gordo's New World Kitchen: Steve Sando (my favorite bean producer) recently set up a blog. He focuses on new world ingredients which is an area of interest to me. I like to see what he is cooking, where he is traveling, and the various cooking techniques he uses.
- Ideas in Food: A culinary sketchbook of sorts. I love the way Alex and Aki workshop ideas, the way they attempt to look at ingredients in new ways, and the way they talk through their percieved successes and failures.
- Nigel Slater on Food
Thanks Rhizome!
Link to the news item and below…
Karaoke Or Die
Have you already subscribed to the video feeds of ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’? If not, do it now, as you don’t know what you are missing. ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ is perhaps the most significant project ever from MTAA (artists M. River and T. Whid). Well-regarded within the new media community for works such as ‘1 year performance video (aka Sam Hsieh Update),’ it is with ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ that they reach an audience beyond this field. Unfolding over 50 days, the ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ features both artists in an ‘alcohol-fueled blood feud […] 50 rounds of sing-along fury,’ to use their own words. Taped live over an 8-hour period, these sessions are screened everyday at midnight (New York time). One sees both artists—one singing, the other seated in the back of the studio—both in front of typically cheesy karaoke videos. Viewers can post comments on the performances and vote on the best performer. T. Whid won the first round (with 21 votes) after singing Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome To The Jungle. One reader commented, ‘It’s like American Idol, only different. I feel like my vote counts here.’ Another noted, ‘You suck and so does Guns N’ Roses.’ The current score is tied at M. River: 6/T. Whid: 6, but the contest is just beginning. The artists, themselves, beg the question,’Who will emerge victorious?,’ decrying, ‘Only YOU can decide.’ So don’t miss any other face-off. Log-on today and participate in ‘the most brutal performance art smack down of the new millennium.’
- Miguel Amado
Don’t forget to visit KDM100 daily and vote for T.Whid!
Earlier this week, when Gothamist was looking at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's CherryWatch Blossom Status Map, things didn't look too promising for the weekend. But with yesterday's update, we see that the buds on the Prunus 'Kanzan' (the trees in a row on the left) are starting to open. Just in time for this weekend's Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festival). The schedule for the weekend includes over 60 events and performances in addition to the 200+ trees in bloom. We can't think of a better way to spend the weekend (okay, maybe Yankees-Red Sox). During Sakura Matsuri, there is an admission charge of $8 for adults and $4 for seniors and children. You can buy tickets online before going for expedited admission. For those of you that don't enjoy crowds, we highly recommend that you go early or during the week because the Cherry Blossom Festival gets pretty crowded.
New York City's budget surplus just got a little bigger. The previously projected surplus of $3.9 billion has been upped to a projected $4.4 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30th. Despite the additional projected surplus, Mayor Bloomberg is being prudent with the extra money. While there's a projected surplus for this year, Bloomberg is going to use the extra money to pay down expected future debt. $1.3 billion is going towards the projected $1.6 billion deficit in 2009 and $1 billion toward 2010's $3.3 billion deficit. Where's all the money coming from? City agency cutbacks and surprise revenue from all the large real estate sales (hello, Stuy Town). Further details of the mayor's 2008 Budget and Financial Plan are being presented at City Hall today. Some of the projected surplus will go towards cutting property taxes and the city's sales tax on clothes and shoes as well as funding health programs for ground zero workers and the mayor's initiatives in PlaNYC.
[Download Google Earth] The Google Sketch-up has the ability to draw any type of model without taking extra time. If you have a Sketch-up and 3D warehouse then you can share your 3D art easily with your friend and groups by placing them on Google Earth.
Giuliani, the most rat-faced and most-married of all the former mayors of New York, is now running for President on a platform that his advisers refer to as Operation Two-Faced Gay-Traitor, which is intended to convince national voters that clearly he will use any opportunity to seize power and then turn this country into a morally-pure fatherland united in opposition to both the filthy Arabs and anyone who doesn't want to have sex with Judith Regan—a transformation he can effect in just under ten days, unless he's too busy cheating on a wife or committing incest.
Slate has just released a special series on the brain - taking a critical look at some of the most recent developments in the field and asking researchers how neuroscience has changed their life.
There's a wonderful article by developmental psychologist Alison Gopnick on getting past the hype surrounding mirror neurons - which are being used to explain almost every form of human behaviour despite the lack of evidence.
A host of brain researchers note how neuroscience has impacted on their day-to-day life and changes the way they see the world.
Most strikingly, Christof Koch notes that his research into consciousness convinced him to become vegetarian as "mammals can consciously experience the pains and pleasure of life".
There's also a few articles on cognitive enhancement: notably, one on the history and myths behind popular 'brain supplement' ginkgo biloba and another on neuroplasticity and the new craze for 'brain training' programmes.
Neurotheology, the neuroscience of religious and spiritual experience, also gets a look in with an article examined the development of this new discipline and another on whether technology could induce spritual experiences via the brain.
I have to say, the article on the 'five biggest neuroscience developments of the year' is a bit ropey.
For example:
2. The neural alteration of morality. Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage. The advertised conclusion is that such willingness to kill is objectively immoral. The feared conclusion is that if brain design determines what's moral, you can change morality by changing the brain - and once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology.
In fact, we've known for a very long time that brain damage can make people less moral, as the case of Phineas Gage suggested, and modern studies of 'acquired sociopathy' have reported.
It's also interesting that the study in question found patients with ventromedial brain damage were actually more moral in utilitarian terms.
They were less swayed by the normal emotional response to making decisions that required trading off considerations of group welfare against emotionally negative behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person's life to save a number of other lives).
Whether this is less moral, depends on your moral framework.
Generally, though, the series is well worth checking out and has some fascinating insights and commentary.
Link to Slate special series on the brain.
"DjangoKit is a framework that will take a Django application, and turn it into a stand-alone MacOS application with a local database and media files. It's more of a thought experiment than an effort at producing a real application, but there are a couple of simple examples and the source code is available for download from my subversion repository."
Matt Busch, the artist behind You Can Draw Star Wars has a few video tutorials for kids on the official Star Wars site. This one, about light and shadow, shows what’s missing from a lot of kids’ how-to-draw books — too many have step-by-step lessons (though there’s that, too) that can stifle creativity, but here Matt teaches art and drawing fundamentals using Star Wars simply as a theme. He’s pretty entertaining, too, and if I were still 10 years old, I would eat this stuff up. I certainly drew my share of R2-D2s as a kid.
(Thanks, Robert)
a web-based baby data visualization tool that tracks the sleep patterns, feeding schedules & diaper habits of a newborn baby over time. the "Baby Tracker" application allows new parents to create detailed records & custom charts of Sleep, Diapers, Bottles, Solids, Nursing, Pumping Activity & Medicine, to better understand the baby's daily patterns & needs. it also allows parents to share that information online with family & friends.some of the data visualizations include a "sleep propability distribution chart" line-plot, an "awake, transition & asleep time period" chart, a "visual diapers" sparkline graph & a comparative "1 year ago" feature.
P.S. for the hard-core infosthetics fan who even reads this 3rd paragraph, I can reveal that I probably will become a trixie tracker "customer" this August!
[links: trixietracker.com & trixieupdate.com]
“Whoa!” When I opened up the Design within Reach catalog to see a Biomega AMS 8 Speed Bicycle on page 1. That’s probably the epitome of bikes as a designer item and it’s a commuter bike at that.
The Biomega @ Design follows the UM by Puma, another designer concept bike. We’ll have to post on this further, when I see a bike at DWR’s stores, and then start thinking about who’s going to wrench the bikes for them?
From Shanghailist: Asia Drawing Portal: startdrawing.org is a new (to us) site with the following mission statement:
startdrawing.org is a web resource portal for Asia's artists and drawings. This site was started with the aim of showcasing and sharing drawings from talented artists in Asia, and in the process, promote the joys of drawing.
The selections above were taken from the site's China section. The top item is from Shanghai-based designer Beibang (??), whose website is supposed to be ideaprisoner.com, but we can't get it to load. The painting on the bottom is from Hebei's Zhang Lin Hai (more here).
Technorati Tags: art , asia, cartoon, china, drawing, painting
folks, this blog will be closed out and moved to its new home:
http://jesuspark.blogspot.com/please make a note of it.
Yesterday I wrote about producers changing their approach to foie gras production and I wondered, "By changing their approach to product, aren't producers acknowledging that force-feeding is inhumane?" Some folks wrote in with some thoughts about my question.
Berry:
I would say, not necessarily. Producers could merely be acknowledging that if they don't change their production methods, shrill activists may get their product banned altogether, so they're attempting to compromise.
Kevin:
Obviously the producers have to speak for themselves.
But in my view efforts to find a way other than gavage to create foie gras is simply an acknowledgment that some people object to force-feeding (whether the arguments are correct or not), are passing laws against it, and the producers want to stay in business.
Lisa:
I don't think the only or strongest conclusion is that force-feeding in foie gras production is inhumane, nor do I think that producers exploring alternatives is inconsistent with their statements that the animals don't suffer during the process. An alternative view is that the producers are aware of the power of public opinion--informed or not, scientifically correct or not--and are considering other approaches that may yield the same product but avoid the public condemnation. Trying to find the happy medium, as it were.
All three of you raise valid points, and it's quite possible that the production changes are motivated by a simple desire to stay in business. Still though, I can't help but feel like this is one of those logic problems you see on tests. If force-feeding is inhumane, you change your method. If it's not, you don't. Of course, I never took logic in college, so I'm sure I could be guilty of some kind of logical fallacy here. Thanks for writing folks, it reminds me I should turn on comments again!
"Does it matter who the next French president is, or is France doomed to decline?"
I think Charlie Schick has Twittered about this, but as I get more and more SMS traffic, it would be great if my phone supported multiple vibrate patterns, a la ringtones. (I always have my phone on vibrate, because in I have an impossible time actually hearing my phone ring. Either I'm getting older (speak up, sonny) or I'm deliberately ignoring incoming calls.)
Here's what I want.
- Bzzt == twitter or other automated SMS.
- Bzzt bzzt == SMS from an actual human.
- Bzzt bzzt bzzt == phone call.
- Special pattern of bzzt's == phone call from someone special
Couldn't be that hard, could it?
The cashier at Barnes and Noble, she sure saw me coming. "You trying to catch up before Book 7 comes out?"
"Yes'm," I said, staring at my shoes. My vacation reading plan had gotten me hooked on the Potter series and I was now devouring the series at a work-shirking rate. Oh sugary literature, I can't resist you! The first three books were bit boring (I'd already seen the movies) and had I not been on vacation, I might have given up on the whole thing. I decided to press on, and, like my friend Adriana assured me, it started to get more interesting about halfway through Goblet of Fire when Rowling starts pulling back the curtain on an entire world of wizardry and backstory. I raced through Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Since I somehow hadn't heard any spoilers about the series, the end of HBP left me reeling, my mind racing, my body jonesing for another hit. _______ killed ____________!!!1!1ONE!
That was all a few weeks ago. The other day, I did a very bad thing. While in the bookstore on non-Potter-related business, I stopped by the kids section to see if they carried a book that my friend David had alerted me to, Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7 (warning: spoilers). When David told me about it, I was adamant about not wanting to know anything about Deathly Hallows before it comes out. But now that I was confronted with the thing in person, I was unable to resist taking a peek at the table of contents. Snape. RAB! Horcrux!! Are my pet theories true? I flipped through a couple of chapters, little kids flowing around me in the aisle, feeling exhilarated (and a little disappointed) that the authors' theories agreed with mine and ashamed at what I'd become, a 33-yo man with deeply held theories about future plot developments in a children's book series.
My willpower finally returned and I returned the book to its shelf, but I think I might go back for it. I just need to think of a good hiding place so that Meg doesn't catch me with it. I fear for the future of my marriage and, more importantly, the fates of Harry, Hermione, and Ron! Hurry July 21, you cannot come soon enough.
(View @ Amazon)
Michael Pollan blasts the current US farm bill, saying that all the subsudies for corn, soy, wheat, etc. drive down the price of unhealthy foods relative to healthful foods like carrots, making the bil responsible for the obesity and over-nutrition of the country's population, especially the poor. "A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called 'an epidemic' of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation's agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives." (link)
Looks like mangoes have been reunited with sticks. To translate: the mango on a stick vendor is back on her corner at 14th Street and University. I've walked by a million times but never gotten one, which is odd given my love of mangoes. This just might be the year to try one out! These mango flowers, as I call them, were always for sale in the streets in Mexico when I lived there. But that was before I loved mangoes.
I really like Mark Bittman's recipe for Steamed Chicken with Scallion Ginger Sauce. Super easy prep, delicious, and healthy.
I've always found graphics of animals that are explicitly related to their consumption both disturbing and amusing (e.g. this post from last fall of a cow explaining cuts of beef), so I was totally psyched to find the blog Suicide Food. "Suicide Food is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise." Just like this French poster you can see here of a pig slicing himself into delicious saucisson, or sausage. The site has lots of great graphics of cows happily being sliced into steaks and pigs slathering themselves in BBQ sauce. [via The Ethicurean]
You'll know if his tail is wagging ~to the right, to the right...to the right, to the right~ Sorry, Beyonce.
Every dog lover knows how a pooch expresses its feelings.
Ears close to the head, tense posture, and tail straight out from the body means “don’t mess with me.” Ears perked up, wriggly body and vigorously wagging tail means “I am sooo happy to see you!”
But there is another, newly discovered, feature of dog body language that may surprise attentive pet owners and experts in canine behavior. When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left. continued...
* via ModernPooch and Jamie - thanks!
Designer Eddie Jabbour is on a mission to make a new NYC subway map. The NY Times recently had a piece of Jabbour's efforts. The new map reminds some of Massimo Vignelli's 1972 classic map: too abstract for its own good. Here's Vignelli talking about his map in an outtake from Helvetica and some background on the controversy surrounding it. (link)
Can you imagine Prince, or The Man Formerly Known as Prince, or that weird symbol guy, making fun of somebody else?
I guess if he was going to pick anyone to mock, Paris Hilton would be the best choice.
According to Us Weekly, Par was in the audience for Prince's performance at Club 3121 in Las Vegas last week, when Prince invited the heiress on stage to belt out a tune with him. Obviously Paris was stoked to be called upon by the star, and to be in front of an audience, but when she got on stage Prince handed her a mic and said "“Let’s see if she can really sing."
Well, Paris wouldn't stand for such humiliation and stormed off the stage, said the source, leaving the club just two songs later.
Paris' rep said it never happened and Prince's people had no comment, but it's so true. And I am loving this new feud. I hope to see these two in a celebrity death match. I'm pretty sure Paris could take Prince. What do you think?
In case there was any doubt that all those cut-and-assemble paper toys that Chris Ware designed and put into his various books actually worked, Ware fan Niem Tran has assembled a whole whack of them, saving us the trouble! ACME Novelty Toy Gallery
(via the Fantagraphics blog)
Brett Terpstra has created a FlickrMate bundle which amongst other allows you to browse your Flickr images (using tm_dialog) and insert a link to the selected image (e.g. in your blog post).
Brett does a lot of interesting customizations and writing about TextMate, so if you’re not already subscribed to his blog, then I suggest doing so! :)
Speaking of Flickr, Michael Sheets pointed me to this great capture.
Confession: I collected stickers when I was a kid. Put them in books. I remember most of these scratch 'n sniffs. Now I collect links and ideas...I wish they scratched 'n sniffed. (via quipsologies) (link)
This is the best movie I've ever seen that I never want to see again.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Is it wrong that I sorta want to poke out Donald Trump's eyeballs with a pencil? Oh, it is? Okay... I'll put the pencil down. Now then -- where where we? Oh, yes -- I was about to tell you what Donald Trump has to say about Rosie O'Donnell quitting The View. Here's part of his conversation with People.com:
What do you think about Rosie leaving?
TRUMP: Well, she didn't leave The View, ABC fired her. They couldn't take it anymore. Her ratings, frankly, were good during the month of January when she and I were going at it, but they've been falling very steadily ever since.[According to CNN.com, ratings for The View during February sweeps were up 15 percent in key female demographics compared to last year. Also, O'Donnell and ABC have both said an inability to agree on a contract is the reason for her departure.]
What do you think led to her departure?
The fact is that the reason she was fired in my opinion, was her comment at the Waldorf-Astoria two days ago. [O'Donnell made off-color remarks about Trump, among others.] I heard that was the straw that broke the camel's back.Do you think this is a good move?
I think it was a good move for ABC. The problem is ... Barbara [Walters] no longer has it, and the show is pretty sad. So they have to bring in somebody very good.Whom would you put in Rosie's spot?
Probably the only one that could really do it would be me, but I would never do it.I'm picking up that pencil again...
Due to problems off the field, defensive tackle Walter Thomas hasn't played a lot of college ball. But his stats -- 6-foot-5, 370 pounds, XXXXXXL jersey, runs the 40 in 4.9, can do backflips and handsprings, benches 475 pounds -- guarantee that he'll be drafted into the NFL this weekend. Shades of Michael Oher, Michael Lewis' subject in The Blind Side. Also, this may be the first NY Times article to use the phrase "dadgum Russian gymnast". (link)
It's been almost eight months since Katie Couric started anchoring CBS Evening News, and I think now we can confidently say that hiring her for this job was a huge misjudgment.
She was probably the most successful and beloved daytime TV host ever when she was on Today, but it appears that people do not want to watch Katie Couric host the news. The ratings are bad. CBS averages 2 million fewer viewers than NBC and ABC every night, and the week of March 26, when the ratings hit bottom, CBS had lost 900,000 viewers since Couric took over for Bob Schieffer.*
But there could be a silver lining: today we found out that a certain popular morning TV show has an opening coming up, which might be a position better suited to Katie Couric's celebrity interviewing and homewares pitching skills.
And best of all, the ideal candidate can finally come forward and take her rightful place in the CBS News anchor seat: self-promotion machine and erstwhile "The View"-er (and one-time actual journalist!) Star Jones. Haven't the American people waited long enough for our 21st century Walter Cronkite?
[*tx ADM]
written by Amy
Sean Penn and Stephen Colbert competing in a metaphor competition:
Good lord that's funny.
Patrick Cullina is the VP of Horticulture and Facilities at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and New York's go-to guy for cherry trees (there are over 200 trees and 42 species at BBG alone!). Anita Jacobs is responsible for all of the programs that go along with the garden, speaking of which... The two-day Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival (New York's Rite of Spring) enters its 26th year at the Garden this weekend. Just after the festival, Hanami: Celebrating the Cherry Blossom Season will be taking place from (April 7th to May 6th). Hanami is the Japanese name for cherry-blossom viewing, so come to the garden before the blossoms disappear! Tell us about Sakura Matsuri and the preparations that go on for it throughout the year. PC: The horticulture staff is hard at work in the late winter and early spring to prepare all of the gardens at BBG for the many visitors we receive each spring. So while the big show might be the cherry blossoms, we are pruning and planting in our other gardens and conservatories as well. There is a lot to see here. Our facilities department does an incredible amount of work also. AJ: Sakura is such a fun festival to put together. I get a kick out the being able to program very traditional Japanese folk dances on the same stage as edgy J-pop from Tokyo. Everywhere you look during the festival you can see pink-haired girls posing next to women with wooden geta shoes and vintage kimonos. This year we have nearly two dozen new performances and presentations. I'm really thrilled to introduce our first-ever manga library, put on by the folks who do the AnimeNEXT convention. Manga and anime are the gateway to Japanese culture for a lot of people around the world, and already we've seen a few blogs where folks chatted first about what Cos-Play costumes they were going to wear to the festival and then later made plans to check out a traditional tea ceremony or presentation about the Art of Geisha. Essentially, I spend about eight months programming and planning for Sakura and then just sit back and let the cherry blossoms do the rest! When do the trees look their best? PC: Different cherries bloom at different times and the timing is all up to Mother Nature. Generally, the cherry blossoms here are best perceived as a progression. The show usually begins in early April with the Okame and (weeping) Higan cherries. As they are approaching peak bloom, the Yoshino cherries and others like them hit their stride. A wide number of Japanese flowering cherries—with variety names like Ukon and Shirotae—then follow, and the show winds up with the Kanzan cherries at the end of April/beginning of May. When you factor in, as the Japanese do, the cherries’ bud stage and the point where petals fall like snow, then you have a show that lasts five weeks or so. This cherry viewing period is known as Hanami. What's it like working in a garden in an urban area? PC: I love it. We get enthusiastic visitors from the many different surrounding the Garden, from across New York, and from around the world. The City itself lends both vitality and emphasis to the Garden, and the Garden returns the favor by serving to ease the encroachments that can come with urban life. For example, if you’re standing in the Japanese Garden, you can hear traffic on Washington Avenue if you try, but you’re more likely to have your attention grabbed by the garden’s beauty. In the Native Flora Garden, which borders Flatbush Avenue, you are more likely to hear bird songs than cars. AJ: When my friends complain about battling rush hour crowds in the city I end up rubbing salt in their wounds by mentioning that I often have to yield to a red-tailed hawk or a line of baby ducklings…I am a real nature addict, so being able throw open the door and be surrounded by dozens of blooming magnolia trees is a dream.
Several folks have emailed, wondering what's happening with my Best chocolate chip cookie search. It's been a month since I asked for recipes, so you could assume I've made quite a bit of progress. Or at least made one of the recipes. But the truth is, I haven't made a single batch of cookies yet! I know I know, at this rate it will take me close to two years to try all the recipes submitted by readers. But I'm on top of it now, and have been organizing the recipes for tasting. I'll post more about it in the next couple days, and will kick off the testing in earnest. Really. I promise! :)
In early 2003, Heidi Swanson, an enthusiastic cookbook consumer, made a resolution: "When you own over 100 cookbooks, it is time to stop buying, and start cooking." From that resolution sprang a food blog—one of the earliest, in fact—called 101cookbooks (soon to be followed by Mighty Foods). Things have come full circle, and Heidi finds herself writing cookbooks these days. The recipe that follows is adapted from her latest, Super Natural Foods. And don't forget: We're giving away five copies of this book. You can enter the drawing here.
Giant Crusty and Creamy White Beans with Greens - serves 6 to 8 as a side dish - Heidi says: "I get more requests for this recipe than any other. The crisp golden crust on the beans encases a rich and creamy center, creating an irresistibly delicious combination. The greens provide a nutritionally packed accent as well as beautiful color. Plan ahead, as you need to soak the beans overnight. You can even cook them a day or two in advance; drain and store them in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use them. I’ve tried this recipe with canned beans of different varieties, but I always ended up with a mushy pot of bean mash—tasty, but not what we’re after. The freshly cooked dried beans maintain their structure much better during sautéing. Giant corona beans, cellini beans, or white cannellini are the best choice here." Ingredients 1/2 pound medium or large dried white beans, cooked (see page 204) 3 tablespoons clarified butter or olive oil Fine-grain sea salt 1 onion, coarsely chopped 4 cloves garlic, chopped 6 or 7 big leaves chard, preferably rainbow chard, leaves cut into wide ribbons and 1 or 2 stems cut into 1/2-inch pieces Freshly ground black pepper Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for topping Procedure 1. Drain the beans, then heat the butter over medium-high heat in the widest skillet you’ve got. Add beans to the hot pan in a single layer. If you don’t have a big-enough skillet, just do the sauté step in two batches or save the extra beans for another use. Stir to coat the beans with butter, then let them sit long enough to brown on one side, about 3 or 4 minutes, before turning to brown the other side, also about 3 or 4 minutes. The beans should be golden and a bit crunchy on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside. 2. Salt to taste, add the onion and garlic, and cook for 1 or 2 minutes, until the onion softens. Stir in the chard, and cook until just beginning to wilt. Remove from heat, and season to taste with a generous dose of salt and pepper. Drizzle with a bit of top-quality extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan. Note: For a twist on bruschetta, serve the beans over grilled slices of rustic bread rubbed with a clove of garlic and a fragrant extra-virgin olive oil. For a cold-weather option, omit the onions and garlic and instead stir in deeply caramelized onions when you add the chard. Photograph courtesy of Heidi Swanson
Wow, you kids really like overanalysis of imaginary pet languages, huh? The best thing about writing Cats Can Has Grammar has been the responses.
- Mat sent me a link to this SF Chronicle story on MeowChat, the online language adopted by cat fanciers when they impersonate their cats in online chat. Note to whomever writes the headlines over at the Chron, if you have to say, "It's not just for crazy cat ladies", it's already not true.
- Danny also brought up MeowChat in my comments here, offering up this overview which gives us a "gives a reasonably good breakdown of that story, though unfortunately in heavily accented meow".
- I made it to Language Log! "After a bit of investigation, though, I've decided that I don't feel badly enough about this to undergo the lolcat immersion required to change it." NO LOLCATS FOR U LOL.
- And finally, I found the tags and descriptions that people used while bookmarking the post on del.icio.us to be delightful.
Menu Pages launched blogs awhile back, and ever since I've had my eye on their Menu Pages Boston blog. Enough time has now passed that I can safely say it's a good read for Bostonians interested in local food happenings. I've been reading it to stay plugged in to my hometown's culinary culture, and would find it really useful if I actually lived there.
Using Gabor filters to mimic the visual pattern recognition of the human visual system, and generating beautiful, sketch-like images as a result.
As Tracy predicted earlier, Rosie O'Donnell confirmed her departure from The View in the first two minutes of today's show. She laughed that it was being considered "Breaking News" by CNN, saying:
"I've decided that we couldn't come to terms with my deal with ABC, so next year, I'm not going to be on The View. However, I will be coming back and guest-hosting. I will be doing one-hour specials on autism and depression and stuff that I'm interested in. I'm just not going to be doing the everyday thing because you know, they wanted me three years, I wanted one year... and it just didn't work, and that's showbiz.. I'm not going away, I'm just not going to be here everyday."
Head over to TV Cocktail to read what Barbara Walters had to say about Rosie's announcement, and vote for whether you'll keep watching the show. Vote now!
Producers in the United States and Europe have been trying to find ways to make foie gras that will overcome the objections of those who see their work as an act of cruelty. The New York Times looks at alternatives to force-feeding geese and ducks to make foie gras, including an approach that simply allows the animals as much food as they want prior to their migratory season. Alas, the self-gorging technique doesn't seem to yield the same results as force-feeding the animals.
By changing their approach to product, aren't producers acknowledging that force-feeding is inhumane? And isn't that the crux of the issue, whether the animals suffer during the process? One side says they do, the other says they don't. If producers are changing how they make foie gras, it seems like they're saying the "animals suffer" argument is correct. And that doesn't bode well for the future of foie gras.
Want to turn your Mac (or Linux) computer into a FON spot? Try out the new beta from Time Warner.
Some have advised Roger Ebert not to attend his yearly film festival because of his changed physical appearance due to recent cancer surgery. Ebert says nuts to that...he may look a little strange, but his brain still works, his thumbs still go up and down, and he can type his columns just fine. "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I'm not going to miss my festival." I love Roger Ebert. (link)
Last night, Ken Griffey Jr. hit the 564th home run of his career to move into 10th place on the all-time list. Reading about his accomplishment, I was surprised he was so far up on the list, given the number of injuries he's had since coming into the league in 1989. That got me wondering about what might have been had Griffey stayed healthy throughout his career...if he would have lived up to the promise of his youth when he was predicted to become one of the game's all-time greats.
Looking at his stats, I assumed a full season to be 155 games and extrapolated what his home run total would have been for each season after his rookie year in which he played under 155 games. Given that methodology, Griffey would have hit about 687 home runs up to this point. In two of those seasons, 1995 and 2002, his adjusted home run numbers were far below the usual because of injuries limiting his at-bats and effectiveness at the plate. Further adjusting those numbers brings the total up to 717 home runs, good for 3rd place on the all-time list and a race to the top with Barry Bonds.
Of course, if you're going to play what-if, Babe Ruth had a couple of seasons in which he missed a lot of games and also played in the era of the 154-game season. Willie Mays played a big chunk of his career in the 154-game season era as well. Ted Williams, while known more for hitting for average, missed a lot of games for WWII & the Korean War (almost 5 full seasons) and played in the 154-game season era...and still hit 521 home runs.
(Comment on this)
Anil Dash: “The rise of these new subspecies of lolcats are particularly interesting to me because ‘I can has cheezeburger?’ has a fairly consistent grammar. I wasn’t sure this was true until I realized that it’s possible to get cat-speak wrong.”
peep: astonomy pic of the day, cool site
Explanation: In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebula. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. The Keyhole Nebula, visible left the center, houses several of the most massive stars known and has also changed its appearance. The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Pictured above is the most detailed image of the Carina Nebula ever taken. The controlled color image is a composite of 48 high-resolution frames taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released to honor its 17th anniversary. Wide-field annotated and zoomable image versions are also available.
"What is Pinhole Day? Anyone, anywhere in the world, who makes a pinhole photograph on the last Sunday in April, can scan it and upload it to this website where it will become part of the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day celebration's online gallery." Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
This Sunday -- mark your calendars! If you're new to pinhole photography you can locate a pinhole photography workshop near you and if you do participate, there's a group for Flickr members to share their photographs.
Don't miss the excellent pinhole groups for tips, tricks and ideas: Pinhole Photography, Pinhole, Homemade Pinhole, Matchbox Pinhole, Digital Pinhole Photography, 35mm pinhole, Polaroid Pinhole,
Photos from tearoom, CinemaCowgirl, Found Photographer and grass.
See more photos in our pinhole clusters.
If you've been reading this blog a long time, you'll recall I have been taking painkillers for the past 10 years for a chronic pain condition that started when I was backpacking around the rainforest in Brazil and took the evil drug Lariam, an anti-malarial. No more! I had to stop taking the medication because of the baby, and as a result, am in pain like I haven't been in 10 years, and not sleeping as a result. Not sleeping makes it worse. It's been hard.
After watching me suffer, my boss and HR said, please, go on disability. I hadn't really considered it. But I talked to my doctor and it was so.
For someone like me who loves work, this isn't easy. When I check my work mail, it makes me crazy because there are all these things I want to take care of. I had to stop looking. On the other hand, I feel much better because I can sleep at strange hours and stress? What stress? It's amazing -- we started the company in 2002 and I haven't really slowed down since. In the end, this is very good for me. I tend to push myself too hard, take on too much. Too many speaking engagements, too many airplanes.
Read, think, blog, eat, sleep, go for walks, see the acupuncturist, do yoga, get massages and get ready for the baby. It's good.
"The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."
-Pfc. Jessica Lynch testifying in Congress yesterday alongside the family of Pat Tillman
Yet another great piece today from our man Mark Anthony Neal here in Saloninterviewing Jabari Asim about his new book, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why::
Mark: Were you conflicted at all when the conversation inevitably had to go to hip-hop? I mean, I imagine that there were all kinds of pressures around you as you turned in the manuscript to make it sexier, and sexier at this moment includes an indictment of hip-hop. But you dealt with hip-hop as it presented itself in a logical way. I thought it was interesting that you could take a so-called conscious rapper like Mos Def and so-called gangsta rappers like N.W.A. and acknowledge that there was a very real consciousness, especially in the case of N.W.A., behind how they employed the N-word.
Jabari: I didn't set out to do that. I've never had strong emotions about hip-hop, one way or the other. I've never been a hip-hop head, though members of my generation are. I never felt that it spoke to me in particular or told my story. I thought that quite a bit of the criticism of hip-hop -- and I say this as an outsider and a resolute non-expert -- is superficial, in that it comes from people who perhaps have never sat down to listen to a hip-hop recording. Criticism, if it's gonna serve any constructive purpose, must be deeply informed. So I had to listen to all that N.W.A. and I had to read those lyrics. And so as I listened to it. There were songs that confirmed what I had heard about these guys -- this is some awful stuff. And then there were other songs that seem to meet all the criteria. My hastily assembled yardstick for the use of the N-word is that I think art is sacred and you just don't respond to it the way you respond to other things. Secondly, if the use of the N-word advances our understanding of the culture in some way, then to me it is valid. N.W.A.'s lyrics easily meet that criteria. People talk about hip-hop spreading the N-word through the culture, but I take pains to point out that popular culture has always spread the N-word. There is serious precedent -- in the 1920s and 1930s, you went into a white middle-class home and the N-word was everywhere. It was on the shelves, it was in the cookbooks, the sheet music on the piano, the toys children played with. Let's not talk about hip-hop introducing this word in some new and unprecedented fashion. The only difference is that hip-hop exists during a period of high technology and spreads these things a lot faster. But let's not pretend that hip-hop has somehow confused white people regarding the use of the word. I think that's a very disingenuous argument.
Dave Marsh gets real with Imus, whiteness, and hypocrisy::Every day, that show was based in explicit racism--every single day. This is, in fact, certain people’s truth about race. It’s Bernard McGuirk’s truth about race. It’s Don Imus’ truth about race.
So how do you put the lid back on once this truth gets shown? You put the lid back on by getting rid of the guy who took the lid off. And then, you go for a scapegoat--and you say that this is just as bad as that.
And the thing that was sitting there, waiting for it to happen, was hip-hop. Because, first, hip-hoppers speak Black vernacular language--they talk the way people talk in their community. And second, hip-hop is made by people who don’t have the education in what you don’t say. They say it. And because they get a lot of attention when they say “bitch” and “ho,” they say it more.
Now, I don’t think I’ve ever met a hip-hopper who, one, didn’t go to church--maybe Ice T doesn’t--and two, didn’t love their mom. You wouldn’t want to be in the same room with them, and call any woman who had the loosest connection to them a “bitch” or a “whore.” Because doing that, then it’s real. Otherwise, there’s this unreality to it.
So this is yet another way that the people who make hip-hop are vulnerable. Young Black men are six times more likely to go to prison then their percentage in the population, and approximately 600 times more likely to be censored.
And now, you have the transferal of the discussion away from the fact that many of the most powerful people in America had been on that show--up to and including the most powerful, Dick Cheney. In fact, three Republican presidential candidates--John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Rudoph Giuliani--all defended Imus, until it became very apparent that the worm had turned, and that Imus was, on that day, where Alberto Gonzales is today.
Plus, this whole argument gives them cover on another issue. They can act like they’re the ones who are anti-corporate, and that the whole of rap has become this “bitch-ho” music because Jimmy Iovine wanted it that way, and Universal and the other media companies want it.
If any of you saw Fox News's John Gibson yesterday sitting in front of Davey D and Chuck Creekmur from allhiphop.com acting like he'd invented all of the anger against hip-hop's language, then you're definitely feeling Dave Marsh as much as I am. (And he likes Can't Stop Won't Stop, which I think is also a nice thing.)
Here's a primer for businesses and organizations that want to take a more active role in tracking their reputation on the Internet: Online Reputation Monitoring Beginners Guide. (via sew)
"sometimes you see a spot in the street that is so good you wake up at 4AM and just go "I GOTTA DO IT"
We have some exciting news to share with our readers - Jen Chung, co-founder, editor of Gothamist, and executive editor for all Gothamist sites, has won a Wired Rave Award! The Rave Awards look for people that are "innovators, instigators, and inventors" in their field, with Jen receiving the award for blogs (she's "The Town Crier"). Lest you think Wired hands the award out to anyone, Jen has some pretty good company. Some of the 2007 Rave Award winners include: Tim Kring, creator of Heroes (and Crossing Jordan!); J.K. Rowling; Alfonso Cuarón; fellow blogger, Arianna Huffington; and the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here's an excerpt from Wired:
Gothamist got big by thinking small: Chung keeps her sites trained on what's going on in readers' backyards. "As we were starting the site, I thought, how many people know who their city council member is?" says Chung, who still has a day job as an advertising exec in Manhattan. "We're relentlessly focused on stories that larger outlets might have mentioned in passing but have otherwise neglected."While it's Jen's name on the award, the honor is shared with all our editors and contributors across the Gothamist Network and with the readers, tipsters, and commenters who make what we do possible. Thanks for your support! And we've got a lot of exciting developments planned for the future -- so stay tuned. The Wired issue with the 2007 Rave Awards is on newsstands now. The bonus for buying the actual magazine, is that you can see for yourself how Jen's head fills up nearly half a printed page! (She also wants you to know you can find your City Council member here or here.)
Last year, it was revealed that a Greenwich Village family had purchased a $4,000 hypoallergenic cat from Allerca (not to mention the $3,000 in insurance and shipping). Now, the Daily News has visited the family and cat! The Greenberg family waited 2 years to get an orange striped cat, which they named Dempsey after McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey. Nina Greenberg tells the News, "It's absolutely incredible. My cousin was fine around him, even though she is so badly asthmatic she has had to be hospitalized. He was definitely worth the expense because my daughters and I always wanted a cat to cuddle and play with. Other people spend that kind of money on a week's holiday - but Dempsey will bring us years and years of love and joy." There's a photo gallery of Dempsey, who is certainly very adorable but no cuter than the pets-adopted-from-shelters we know (here's a link to searching shelter pets). Allerca is jacking up the price of cats to $6,950, plus $995 shipping, so keep that, plus the 2-year waiting list, in mind. Photograph of Dempsey, when he was a kitten
Jorn (feeling that "weblog" is the least interesting of the bunch) has posted a list of terms he has coined over the years. I love his concept of negative intelligence—the internet phenomenon where bad ideas drive out good—a concept he proposed in 1996.[W]hat I notice on netnews is that negative intelligence rules almost everywhere-- newsgroups are great sucking black-holes of negative intelligence, where the greatest bigots have the loudest voices, and the greatest say...The way people get smarter, generally, is by looking at multiple points of view, and letting these pov's 'debate among themselves' in the most even-handed manner possible. But in newsgroups, people who try to lay things out evenhandedly get massively squelched....You may wish to substitute the term "political blogs" for "netnews" as you are reading this.
weevil posted a photo:
It took about 20 tries to get this long exposure picture of lightning.
$ 30 Gorgeous stuff from Dan-ah Kim on Etsy. I love Hello Stranger, some other fantastic ones that she has available for sale on Etsy are Making Pictures, Brooklyn, and Le Sigh. There are also, of course, several illustrations on her website that apparently aren't for sale but are oh so charming, like All My Vices Come To Hunt Me, What A Curious Beast You Are, and Searching For Your Face.
Mike Monteiro mocks up a cover for Post & Permalink, my suggested fake blogging magazine from last night's post about the should-be-fake Blogger & Podcaster. (link)
Firebug’s creator, Joe Hewitt, demonstrates how he uses Firebug.
A familiar image, no? Let’s take a closer look:
Those cans comprise a total of 106,000, the number of cans used in the U.S. every thirty seconds.
Photographer artist Chris Jordan takes an artistic look at “the accumulated detritus of our consumption”. I remember visiting his site last year for his exhibit Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption, but since then he’s added a new exhibit Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait which is just as fascinating and uncomfortable to look at. Jordan’s critical lens captures a rather frightening look at how we live our lives in such a seemingly disposable world, and I can only imagine how they must impact the viewer who sees them in person as large-format prints.
After a series of delays, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a candidate for president in 2008, announced a series of charges against Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington, DC, late in the day.
Gamers in China are facing new limits on how much time they can spend playing their favourite online game. The government in Beijing is reported to be introducing the controls to deter people from playing for longer than three consecutive hours. The measures are designed to combat addiction to online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Lineage II.
More than 20 million Chinese play games regularly, mainly in net cafes...All the biggest online game operators in China have said they will adopt the new system...The operators face little choice as they need government approval to offer online gaming...Among the games affected in initial trials of the system is the MMORPG game, World of Warcraft, which has 1.5 million players in China alone.
Technorati Tags: addictio , game, government, online, play, policy, limitation, world of warcraft, WoW
"my company, Adaptive Path, was started by people only with backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences; none of us even had a design degree."
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by stamen to petermerholz adaptivepath experience credit design quote - more about this bookmark...
TextMate registers a custom URL scheme on your system which allows you to open files in TextMate by asking the system to open a
txmtURL.The format is:
txmt://open?«arguments»where arguments can be:
url— the actual file to open (i.e. afile://…URL), if you leave out this argument, the frontmost document is implied.line— line number to go to (one based).column— column number to go to (one based).If you have TextMate installed, you can try it out by having it open
/etc/profile.One reason for this URL scheme is that many TextMate commands generate HTML output with links that open files in TextMate. For example the TODO bundle has a “Show TODO List” command which will scan your entire project for
FIXMEandTODOtags, then present the found results nicely in HTML, and allow you to click on them to go to the appropriate location. Another example is the Xcode bundle, which has a “Build” command that will show errors and warnings that correctly link to your source code.But seeing how these commands generally run in a custom HTML view inside TextMate, it is possible to use JavaScript extensions, so a much better case for the
txmtURL scheme is debugging web applications!For Rails there is Duane Johnson’s Footnotes plug-in (included in the default Rails bundle) and for PHP, Ciarán Walsh recently added a few commands to easily allow PHP scripts to markup stack traces with proper
txmtlinks (see PHP ? Help ? 3.3 TextMate Support File).An unfortunate reality of web development is that if you work on mainstream sites, you need to test your site in Internet Explorer. If you do this using Parallels Desktop for Mac then (thanks to Ruy) you can have
txmtURLs work in IE.
Dennis leads the way to impeach Cheney first...
"I ain’t a pretty boy no more," Roger Ebert says about his current appearance. Yeah, he was never much of a looker, but he's right. He's been through multiple surgeries over the past several months for cancer in his salivary gland and jaw, and other complications resulting from the surgeries have put him out of commission since last summer. But his 9th annual Overlooked Film Festival starts tomorrow at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and by golly, he's gonna be there.
The column he wrote about his determination to get back to work and out into the world again is fantastic. A few excerpts:
I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc.Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.
For the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.
So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.
I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.
Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies. Then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the festival.
At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Ha! You tell 'em, Roger Ebert.
Some of the movies featured at the Festival include Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which I had zero interest in seeing until I found out it was directed by Tom Tykwer, who also did Run Lola Run; Gattaca, which is awesome; and Holes, which I only heard of last week in connection to rising megastar Shia LaBeouf. And it closes with Ebert-scripted X-rated classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a nice touch.
[tx Cushie]
written by Amy
Maybe it's because it's spring, but it's all teeshirts this week!
Here's Penny Arcade's latest, in reference to the pre-expansion WoW gear purple items (i.e Epics) being not-as-good as the post-expansion gear green items (i.e. Commons). You don't need to care, unless you're a WoWer at which point this will make you smile. In-jokes, don'tcha love 'em?
Love Penny Arcade, love their teeshirts.
Dark skinned professor is suspected of terrorism while recycling at Shippensburg University PA
"Impeachment Should Be on the Table": Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) Ellison said that the most important thing he and his fellow members of Congress need from constituents is that they "keep the drumbeat up" for impeachment.
The Fat Duck, one of molecular gastronomy's main outposts, recently offered a course complete with its own soundtrack served up on iPods shuffle. "Heston Blumenthal, the chef, said he wanted to experiment with using sound to enhance a dining experience. Hence the iPod, playing the soothing sound of the sea breeze and waves gently caressing the seashore." (link)
Hey fam, this is a must-cop from my Portland homies the Lifesavas, out today.
MySpace/Lifesavas
Like tomatoes, the best way to ripen avocados is to place them in a paper bag. This process normally takes 3-6 days, but adding a tomato, apple, or banana to the bag will cut your ripening time in half.
I really should go, wonder if I can sneak away from school
Expert: Arabic-Language School Will Carry Islamist Baggage [NY Sun]
Protestors Rally Against Demolition For Atlantic Yards Project [NY1]
E.P.A. Is Urged to Widen Focus on 9/11 Health Effects [NY Times]
Beer Guy Hit in Leg During Brooklyn Gunplay [NY Daily News]
Firefighter Injured in Fire At Brooklyn Yeshiva [NY1]
4 People Shot in Separate Brooklyn Incidents [7Online]
No Street Named for Carson [Newsday]
Photo: Dhabah Almontaser, principal-to-be of Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran International Academy. Image via Daniel Pipes' homepage.
The guy on the left says - "Maybe one day we'll be on that wall"
The guy on the right replies - "Impossible"Seen On The Streets of Milan
[Map Explorer - Maps of The Earth and Planets] My Maps in Your Blog +KML 24th April, 2007 My Maps in Your Blog +KML Nice simple and quick to do. http://www.dr2ooo.com/tools/maps/ Easier if you have created a KML output in My Maps for fast indexing of kml use google pages (google servers index very fast) source: http://tim.lauer.name/2007/04/23/embed-g mapperz Mapperz Blog Original post by Mapperz...
What Xcode is to app development and what Dashcode is to widget development — that’s what Coda is to web development. Replace Coda’s (lovely) green leaf icon with some sort of blueprint-with-a-tool-on-top and it’d be easy to convince someone that it’s “Webcode”, a new app from Apple itself.
Time Warner Cable will let its home broadband customers turn their connections into public wireless hotspots, reports the Associated Press and confirmed by GigOm.
The deal uses hotspots from FON and use Time Warner Cable for the backbone connection. Ironically, Time/Warner Cable has been among the most aggressive is shutting down public WiFi hotspots that use their network for a backbone.
Fon has forged similar agreements with ISPs across Europe, but so far has met with little success among U.S. consumers. Time Warner Cable, which has 6.6 million broadband subscribers, should boost its presence here, and enable it to compete with the growing municipal wireless networks and WiFi/cellular companies like T-Mobile.
Fon was founded in Spain in 1995. At first, the company offered software that let members, called Foneros, turn Wi-Fi routers into shared access points.
In the fall of 2006, Fon, which counts Google and eBay’s Skype among its investors, started selling and sometimes giving away its own branded wireless router, called La Fonera. Since then, it has distributed about 370,000 of them worldwide.
La Fonera splits a Wi-Fi connection in two: an encrypted channel for the Fonero and a public one for neighbors or passers-by. Foneros can decide how much of their bandwidth to share with the public and can log on to any Fon router without charge. “Aliens,” as Fon calls nonmembers, can register on a Web page and pay a modest $2 or $3 for 24 hours of access.
T-Mobile HotSpot access at Starbucks can cost $10 for a day. But the devil’s in the details. Most cable subscribers (and wireless users) may decide it’s not worth the extra hassle (or expense), especially if municipal wireless networks are available.
I’ve been giving a particular presentation a lot of late, on the importance of an experienced-based approach to the design of products and services. Part of the talk deals with the evolution of product categories, which go through the phases of Technology, Features, and Experience.
So, for example, in 1976 or so, the first VCRs for home use came on the scene, and that was simply a function of a new technology. The technology allowed you to do something you couldn’t do before, and that was enogh. It didn’t matter that the first VCRs were bulky, unattractive, and clunky to use — they allowed you to record television shows to be played back at your leisure, and that new capability was enough to make it exciting.
Then, in the 80s and into the 90s, VCRs entered into this features craze. In this middle tier, it’s typical for companies to compete on features, angling to get more bullet points on their product boxes in some demonstration of superiority. Such an approach lead to almost universal frustration with VCRs, and the blinking “12:00″ the icon of unusable home technology.
In this decade, we’ve entered the world of digital video recorders. And, largely thanks to Tivo, we’ve had a shift towards an experiential design. The Tivo’s designers could have simply taken their technological offering and housed it in the old trappings, offering an incremental improvement to the VCR experience. Instead, they realized that they could fundamentally reshape people’s relationship with television, and this experiential approach has given them amazing traction in the marketplace (though not domination, thanks to market forces in the world of premium television).
Now, when I give this talk, I make it a pretty clear and linear progression: Technology, Features, Experience, with the point being that, in this modern world, we can no longer compete or differentiate through features, but must often take an experiential approach.
The nuance that is lost, though, and which I’m exploring here, is that, in the case of Tivo, the experiential opportunity is enabled *because* of a technological shift — in this case, the recording to a digital medium and the delivery of the service on what is essentially a computer.
A similar thing happened in the 1880s with photography. George Eastman invented a new type of film, roll film, which was easier to handle than glass plates. In order to develop a market for this roll film, he invented a camera that housed it. He could have created a camera as complex as the ones that used plates, just smaller, but instead he redefined the photographic experience into one of great ease for the picture-taker, and the camera he created, Kodak, launched an entire new market.
Not every experiential awakening is borne of such technological innovation. Microsoft Office 2007 seems like a direct response to Microsoft’s earlier featuritis, recasting its functionality in a way that makes sense for users. The underlying technology is fundamentally the same — the bulk of the changes came from a reimagining and redesign.
Anyway, I don’t quite know what to make of this. I just wanted to put it out there. I find I can be dismissive of technological advances, but have to acknowledge that such advances are the underpinning of these seismic experience shifts.
It seems ages ago that Floyd Landis made his incredible comeback on Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Yet, as we approach the 2007 tour, Landis still find himself in the heat of charges surrounding his positive tests for doping. This afternoon, NPR aired an article citing additional positive tests from Landis’ back-up samples taken throughout various other stages.
a recent patent application by Philips for a new type of screen based on "furry" pixels, or physical pixels made out of a pieces of fabric covered with hair-like strands. applying an electrostatic charge causes the hairs to repel each other & stand on end, revealing the contrasting color of the fabric below. Philips claims it is possible to build an array of pixels as a furry display that can show complete images.
the original idea reminds me of wearable warnings & the technology developed by International Fashion Machines (IFM). see also Philips' lumalive or pixels represented as ping pong balls & air bubbles & flames & water splashes & water droplets.
[link: uspto.gov|via newscientisttech.com]
Karl Rove is facing another investigation of his political activities -- this time from within the executive branch.
Karl Rove is facing another investigation of his political activities -- this time from within the executive branch.
The international trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I am officially as hooked on Harry as everyone else. (link)
Deja vu! According to UsMagazine.com, Vince Vaughn recently spent the night at ex-girlfriend Jennifer Aniston's home. Neither of them is talking about their sleepover, but we are! Take a minute to tell me:
Do you want Jen and Vince to reunite?Spill it below!
We were one of many interested sites examining the Kick Map nearly three years ago, when word of a new subway map design started to filter through the Internet. The new map departed radically from the MTA's current design by graphically displaying separate trains running on the same lines. Encouraged by the interest being shown, map designer Eddie Jabbour contacted the MTA and designers at the agency agreed to meet with him. But when he showed up at the agency’s Midtown offices with copies of his work, they were quick to find fault with it. According to Christopher Boylan, the transportation authority’s executive director of corporate and community affairs, who recalled the meeting, the main criticism was that Mr. Jabbour’s map, like Mr. Vignelli’s, was artistic but geographically inaccurate. “He’s a good designer and it’s an interesting map,” Mr. Boylan said. “The design is important, but the thing we’re concerned with is the best directional guidance. We design a map for use, not solely to look good, and we think it looks good.”Reading the profile of him in The New York Times, it's easy to see that Eddie Jabbour is not a man easily deterred. The graphic designer for Kick Design continues to work on his map nights and weekends, asking his 17-year-old daughter, Ellie, for feedback every weekend when he prints out another revised variation of his design. We like the KickMap design. The New York City subway was the first system to run both local and express trains on the same lines, and continues to be the only system with that design. This can make the system baffling to those unfamiliar with the subway, as confused riders stare at single lines populated with multiple letters and numbers signifying where a train may or may not stop and let them off. We'll admit to having the same trouble when riding an unfamiliar subway line. Criticisms that Jabbour's map is geographically inaccurate and won't let riders know exactly where they are when leaving a station seem misplaced, as a lot of people have trouble figuring out which direction they're facing when leaving a station and generally use street-level signage for that type of orientation.Polls - Take Our Poll This is the post and discussion from subway foamer blog live from the third rail that is actually mentioned in the Times article as encouraging Mr. Jabbour. Here is an exhaustive chart of subway map designs and variations with Frequently Asked Questions of NYC Subway. And, of course, Mr. Vignelli is designer Massimo Vignelli, who also developed the 1972 map and introduced some new typography choices. This page features a full-map comparison of the Kick Map and the current MTA design, with multiple links to close-up comparisons.
I've had this photo up in my browser for a few hours now and every so often, I'll sneak away from what I'm doing and take a peek at it. I love the feeling of motion and its capture: the boy and the pigeon captured by the camera, the pigeon's shadow captured by the sidewalk, the momentum of an unseen car captured by the now-bent steel of the firebox. (link)
John Kerry: Building 7 Was Deliberately Demolished Massachusetts Senator's conclusion directly contradicts 9/11 official story, multi-billion dollar insurance lawsuit For the love of God and our republic, please try to understand that this is unfortunatley real.
May 5th and 6th in Toronto are both loaded with great events for comics fans.
First up, on Saturday May 5th is Free Comic Book Day. Chris Butcher from the Beguiling has put together a fantastic book of original work by the likes of Bryan Lee O’Malley, Darwyn Cooke, R. Stevens, Chip Zdarsky, Ryan North, Kean Soo, and many more (previously: Comics Festival 2007). Artists will be signing all day long at the Beguiling (601 Markham Street). I’ll be there, so come by, say hello, and get some free comics (maybe buy some not-free comics, too!) If you’re not in town, fear not — the Comics Festival book could and should be in your favourite local comics store on the 5th if they know what’s good for them.
Then, the next day, on the 6th, Scott McCloud brings his yearlong 50-state (and, ahem, parts of Canada) Making Comics book tour to Toronto. If you’re interested in cartooning, and making comics, graphic novels, and manga, this is the lecture not to miss. May 6th, 7PM, at OISE Theatre, 252 Bloor St West. Tickets are $10 in advance at the Beguiling, $15 at the door (but it’s sure to sell out, so get your tickets early). The full scoop.
For more info on either event check out Chris Butcher’s blog.
Outside.in redesign launched a redesign and lists the top 10 bloggiest neighborhoods. I'd like to see a longer list. Clinton Hill takes first place. Brownstoner certainly is prolific. (via kottke.org)
Two former Apple executives may be facing securities fraud charges brought by the SEC, due to their roles in the stock options backdating scandal. Steve Jobs may be free, but not everybody is.
"Maybe we should just stop talking about graffiti for a while, since no one seems to know how to think about it."
Any day now, the ramps will be arriving at the Union Square Greenmarket. And when they do, I will be going on a ramp binge.Update:Looks like ramps arrived on Saturday. Doh! I should have gone over to see, but was going other things. Wednesday I'll check for sure. [via Gothamist]
The Sun bloggers regularly get tipped off when we’re going to be rolling out a new computer or OS or licensing scheme. This is something different: the 25th Anniversary Sale. Unless they were lying during the briefing, there are some really decent deals to be had for the next couple of weeks. I wonder if this works for servers like it does for department stores? Also, whether asking bloggers to talk about it helps.
Coda, a new app from Panic is out.
I was lucky enough to get to test this awesome little app, and I can say without any hesitation that it's pretty fly. If you do any web design, check it out; you won't be disappointed.
" Whatever it is that [Richard Serra] does to these slabs of shipbuilding steel, it consistently and reliably takes me to the best place that’s in me."
Big day at outside.in today: we've launched a completely new design for the site, created by our awesome new in-house designer, Doria Fan. My colleague John Geraci has a great survey of all the the process and issues that went into the design -- it's a classic story of starting out trying to solve one very specific problem and ultimately doing something much more ambitious, but also ditching the original objective that started the whole process in the first place.
We've also just announced a list that I've been wanting to compile ever since we first came up with the idea for the site: America's Bloggiest Neighborhoods. It's a pretty fun little sociological experiment -- turns out placebloggers are thriving in gentrifying neighborhoods. Makes sense, but it was a surprise to us until we actually ran the numbers.
If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you'll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and overlaying absurdist captions on the images.
The core behavior has existed for some time; "Image macro" is a generic term for this kind of folk art, and cats have always featured heavily in these types of Internet in-jokes. But a few distinct categories have sprung up that have helped amplify and popularize the phenomenon.
- I'M IN UR X Ying your Z. This construct, based on i'm in ur base, killin ur d00ds has morphed into a catch-all structure for annotating cat pictures.
- Invisible Item. Variations on the seminal Invisible Bike, these are images of cats, usually in midair, with captions that prompt us to fill in imaginary objects or actions that complete the scene. There's something brilliant to these images, speaking to our mind's ability to intuitively extrapolate unseen details.
- Kitty Pidgin. And finally, the newly dominant lolcats, of the family I Can Has Cheezeburger? These seem to be spawning nearly infinite variations, and have exploded in popularity since being named "lolcats" instead of the more general "image macro" or "cat macro".
The rise of these new subspecies of lolcats are particularly interesting to me because "I can has cheeseburger?" has a fairly consistent grammar. I wasn't sure this was true until I realized that it's possible to get cat-speak wrong.
Incorrect kitty pidgin jumped to my attention the first time I saw a reference to Dune being used with a lolcat image. The caption on the linked version of the image, "The spice must flow." is fine, if not particularly cat-like. But the caption on the version I saw first was much more verbose: "I are dunecat. I controls the spice, I controls the universe." Besides being an awkward attempt at overexplaining the punchline (I've never read Dune or seen the film, but the joke is obvious) this was just all wrong. The fact that we can tell no cat would talk like this shows that kitty pidgin is actually quite consistent
.
I was having a conversation with Ben and Ben a few weeks ago where I suggested this consistent grammar for lolcats could be a "cweeole". Knowing a bit more about such things now, I realize this isn't a creole but more likely a pidgin language, used to help cats talk to humans. And since "pidgin" is already a cutesy spelling of a mispronunciation, there doesn't seem to be any really cute way to rename it to reflect its uniqueness. "Kitty pidgin" might be the closest thing we have to a name for this new language.
There's a consistent visual vocabulary to the construct, as well. If it ain't Impact or Arial Black or some other nondescript sans serif font, it ain't lolcat. White letters with a black outline are a must. But codifying a design guide for lolcats is well beyond my abilities.
Unfortunately, the evolution of these grammars online can be very difficult to track down; This kind of nascent web culture is generally frowned upon by Wikipedia (witness the deletion of the I'm in ur base article since the Ask MetaFilter thread just a few months ago) and there are no other sites designed to collect definitive collaborative reference material. It's going to take time to document kitty pidgin with any degree of accuracy.
I've just started bouncing the idea of kitty pidgin off of Erin and Grant, two of my favorite word experts, but I'm confident that someday we'll have kitty pidgin dictionaries. Perhaps we'll even get all the niceties that Klingon and Elmer Fudd-speak enjoy, like a Google translation, a Microsoft Word dictionary, or a cat-native version of the Bible or Shakespeare.
I has a links
Okay, go out and look at some of the finest kitty-related content:
- Kitty pidgin's already made its way into business communications -- our last LiveJournal news post had lots of references to our team-up with Photobucket under the heading "We has a Photobucket". I was especially proud of my quick-and-dirty PhotoShop work in that thread.
- Gordon McNaughton's created a LolCat Build(e)r. A fantastic and essential app, though I have to take issue with the use of CamelCase InterCaps in the word "lolcat".
- Cute Overload is likely the seminal site for taking the "cute culture" aspect of online behavior seriously. Meg Frost always has fun with the content, but I haven't seen any high-profile definitive collections of these genres that predate Cute Overload.
- Choire Sicha is a genius, but if you needed more proof, you can now just head to lolgays.com to be redirected to his Gawker post on lolgays. It's exactly what you think it is.
The Shake Shack camera was fixed there for a couple days but I guess the huge crowds over the weekend taxed its capacity and it's busted again. I'm sure the line is over an hour long though with the gorgeous weather, so no need to check it to see how long you'll be waiting if you head over today. You'll be waiting all afternoon.
Update: Seems to be fixed!
In addition to a just-launched redesign, outside.in took a look at their data for the past six months and came up with a list of the "bloggiest neightborhoods" in the US. "The results below are based on a number of variables: total number of posts, total number of local bloggers, number of comments and Technorati ranking for the bloggers." Interestingly (but upon reflection, not surprisingly), most of the places listed are in the process of gentrifying. Disclosure: I am an advisor to outside.in. (link)
Here's a lovely bit of tee design for Link fans out there, and it's in my favourite teeshirt colour, too!
(Thanks Steve!)
Every spring, we (and legions of other Brooklyn-dwelling food lovers) count the days until the re-opening of the Red Hook ballfields, where vendors grill up pupusas, empanadas, meat on sticks, and other Latin American treats. One Chowhounder cruised by yesterday and reports that a few stands were open (have the vendors picked up on the buzz-generating potential of the "soft opening"?), though the full array of stands won't be up until next weekend. "There were some goat tacos and some fried thing with cheese or chicken," friseelardons reports, "just enough to whet your appetite for when the real thing opens up."
Red Hook Ball Fields 2007 [Chowhound]
Photo by sinned_.
The Washington Post did a many-story exploration of feminism and art in its Sunday Arts section. The most-interesting bit...
A letter from the Paleoanthropology Division of the Smithsonian Institute: "We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents 'conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.' Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the 'Malibu Barbie.'"
Update: Not that there was any doubt that this isn't a real letter, here's the confirmation. (thx, sam & sheldon) (link)
In my world, I look for proof and evidence. Maynor and Ellch’s supposed MacBook Wi-Fi exploit? Still unproven. Dino Dai Zovi’s winning exploit in the CanSecWest contest? Proven. It’s that simple.
Beta users of Adobe's newest CS3 software will want to run a cleanup script before installing the full versions, the company pointed out last week, lest they be plagued with installation problems.
Listeningtowords looks like the beginning of a nice resource for sharing/discussing freely available audio files of lectures. Lots of stuff here I've never seen before. (link)
One dollar can buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Michael Pollan argues this is the year for everyone to get involved in the Farm Bill, and to realize it's really a Food Bill that effects everyone in the United States. I agree with him, but am not optimistic it will happen. At least, not this year. Maybe by the next Farm Bill.
Results of the The Word-Lovers' Boot Camp held by Erin McKean at Gel 2007. Boot campers were encouraged to create a new word of their choosing. The winning word was "crappyjack", meaning "any kind of empty, snacky junk food". David Yee's ubiquinpotaqueous means "the state of water in which it is everywhere, and yet there is not a drop of it to drink". Matt Haughey didn't attend the boot camp but contributes this late entry: "decursivication. n. The process of losing one's penmanship, thanks to automatic billing and an increasingly electronic world." (link)
Ramit points to a contest for Socially Conscious student entrepreneurs. Conscious Lifestyle is offering grants of up to $1000 to 10 students with a socially innovative ideas. Deadline is May 11.
My sister found this fascinating study by MSN done in 2003 on different kinds of friendship carried on in the UK, online and off, Time Pressured Brits Make 396 Friends In Their Life...But Lose 363 Of Them
- Friendship Cultivators -- friends mean a lot to them and they spend a significant amount of their time nurturing friendships. They're always arranging get togethers and are in constant touch with friends online and on the phone
- Friendship Pruners -- make and drop friends quickly according to how useful they are. Friendship Pruners name drop a lot -- they like to be seen to be in social contact with the 'in crowd'. They hate 'dead wood' so frequently prune names from their diaries, online buddy lists and mobile phones
- Friendship Harvesters -- tend to have a very wide circle of friends that they get in touch with on a seasonal basis. They're happy to leave long periods without contact and typically dedicate a set period of time every few weeks or months to a flurry of contact to keep up to date with friends' news and gossip
- Friendship Gatherers -- are quick to make friends but the least proactive at maintaining friendships. They gather friends wherever they go but are socially lazy and once friendship has been established they rely on the other party to keep it going. They often seek out Friendship Cultivators so they can ride on the back of their frequent social contact and arrangements.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has come in for a lot of criticism over the past couple of days, and I think that’s too bad. I admit that I’m not exactly up on the details of the controversy, since I’ve spent the last month concentrating on seeing the ball good, and taking it one day at a time, which (to be fair) is my job, and which has worked out pretty good, I think.But I met the Attorney General several times, back when I was with the Rangers, and he always seemed like a good guy, a friendly guy, very pleasant and agreeable. After the game on several occasions, I’d get a call from Mr. Hicks inviting me to the owner’s box, and there he would be, sitting with the President, and Mr. Hicks and sometimes Condoleeza Rice. The President and Mr. Gonzales were usually on the way to or from one of his summer vacations in Crawford, and they’d stop by the Ballpark when they could, as guests of Mr. Hicks.
The President was always in a good mood when he was at the Ballpark, even after a Rangers loss, talking about all the good times he had as an owner of the club, and you could see that Mr. Gonzales felt the same way, even though he didn’t talk much. It’s funny, he always struck me as kind of a shy and quiet guy, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for him when I happened to catch a bit of his recent appearance at Congress on the TV in the weight room. (Ever since he went on the DL, Mussina spends pretty much every minute rehabbing while watching C-SPAN.) Really, I can barely remember one thing he said to me… he mostly just smiled and nodded at what the President was saying, but in a very friendly way.
It’s funny, one thing I do remember… I’ve met a lot of Hispanic politicians and political figures over the years, and when they speak to me, they almost always make a point of speaking in Spanish. Which is fine. Obviously, I’m perfectly comfortable speaking Spanish or English. But the Attorney General was the only Hispanic political person I can recall meeting who pretty much spoke only English to me. Again, really, he didn’t say more than ten words to me, but that stuck with me. And to be honest, I kind of respected that. A lot of Hispanic politicians try to make a point of being mi hermano, you know? Which I totally understand. I mean, that’s politics. But not Mr. Gonzales. It was like he wasn’t trying to impress anybody. He just seemed content to sit there and be a nice, friendly guy.
So like I said, I felt kind of bad for him, sitting there and trying to answer those questions from the Congress. And even though I don’t really follow the news, it’s hard not to notice that the press has been coming down kind of hard on him, which I totally understand. I’ve been there. It’s hard to do your job when everyone’s trying to kick you when you’re down. But the media’s always like that, always trying to manufacture a story, whether it’s me, or the Attorney General, or those poor soldiers stuck in that Abu Gharib mess. Sometimes it’s all I can do to just say, “Hey, buddy, just go rake your mud somewhere else, OK? I’m just doing my best over here.”
So I want to echo the President’s words and say that Attorney General Gonzales has my full confidence, and I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to be the best Attorney General he can be, which is all anyone can ask of him. I’m pretty sure those Congressmen and guys on the news have never been under the kind of day-to-day pressure that Mr. Gonzales is, and I think they could stand to go a lot easier on him. Like I said, I’ve been there. When I was going through my slump last year, you heard all sorts of people saying I should be traded, that I was washed up, and all sorts of other stuff like that. But had any of those talk radio guys or newspaper writers actually stood in the batter’s box against guys like Johan Santana and Roy Halladay and Curt Schilling? No way. And as much as I tried to make that clear, and that I was doing the best I could, it was like no one wanted to hear it or believe it.
Honestly, I think that’s what’s going on here. I think Mr. Gonzales is probably a nice guy who hit a patch of bad luck, like a pitcher who got tagged with a loss because some of the guys made some tough errors behind him. That’s a rough place to be, whether you’re the pitcher, or the guy who made the errors, or just one of the fans, or the Attorney General, or whatever. It’s just a tough situation. Running the country is like being part of a ballclub… you win or lose as a team, and it’s never just one guy’s fault.
So I believe in the Attorney General, and I think the best thing for this country would be for everyone to just back off a little, and give him some room to answer his critics, kind of like I’ve been able to do. I hope that for once, the media can just get over whatever grudges they’re holding and help bring America together. After all, I wasn’t a Yankee on September 11, 2001, but I know about the pain and heartbreak New York went through that day, and nothing means more to me than knowing that every one of my record-setting home runs for the month of April has helped to heal this city from the scars of that terrible day.
So to borrow a saying from my good friend Manny Ramirez, I think we’ve all got to just let Attorney General Gonzales be Attorney General Gonzales, and give him some “head space.” I know there’s no real off-season in politics. But maybe they can work something out where Mr. Gonzales can just take a few months off, do a little training, give him a chance to read up on some laws or something and come back in better shape than before. I think if everyone in the press and in the Congress could just cool off for a while, they’d see that Mr. Gonzales is actually a pretty terrific Attorney General and a nice guy who’s got feelings too. And then Mr. Gonzales can come back rested and focused, and win a lot of cases or arrest some bad guys or fire a bunch of prosecutors or do whatever being a good Attorney General is all about.
I know that there are already a couple of great players who go by the nickname “A-Gonz,” like the Reds’ Alex Gonzales and the Padres’ Adrian Gonzales, both of whom I consider to be fantastic players and really good friends. But I think it’d be a really nice gesture if they could maybe give up their nicknames for a little while and let the Attorney General be known as “A-Gonz.” Because he’s earned it, and he could use a little pick-me-up right now. And like Alex and Adrian know, there’s nothing that helps an A-Gonz more than knowing that A-Rod is pulling for you and considers you a good friend.
Alex Rodriguez has donated the maximum $2,300 to the primary campaign of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.
"The Truck Number is the size of the smallest set of people in a project such that, if all of them got hit by a truck, the project would be in trouble. Thus, a low Truck Number is bad (1 being the worst), and a high Truck Number is good (equal to the number of people on the team being the best)."
Stewart posted a photo:
![Lightning [Flickr]](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NewsOfTheDead/~3/111815228/http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/472227604_4d0d756045_o.jpg){kind=link}
