Tuesday 4/29/03 §
At first blush I was a little disappointed with the selection available in the Apple music store; most of the CDs I've bought recently aren't even listed. But today, serendipity struck in the form of a band I'd never heard of called Atticus Fault. I'm not even sure how I ran across them, but it was far too easy to listen to the track previews, Google up some reviews, determine which tracks reviewers considered to be the standouts, and buy them. (Said standout tracks are "Soundtrack" and "Little People" and they are fine.) Check it out.
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An incredible (and incredibly bandwidth-intensive) colleciton of pirate brag screens from Apple II games. That's where the guys (and they were all guys) who "cracked" the game put in their shout-outs, so the whole world knew which pseudonymous teenager had defeated the publisher's best efforts at stopping illegal copying. And bow before them. If you were in the Apple II scene at all, you saw some of these, and you'll feel unexpectedly fuzzy seeing some of them again. Especially the green monochrome versions.
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Doesn't it suck that 802.11 wireless networking ("Wi-Fi") and the current crop of 2.4 GHz feature phones share the same part of the frequency spectrum? An 802.11 phone is such an obvious solution to the problem that I can't believe Cisco's the first to make one.
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Monday 4/28/03 §
Cancer-proof mouse. (dangerousmeta)
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So, what was your first Apple Music purchase? I'll sheepishly admit that, thanks to my recent penchant for collecting cover tunes, the first thing I paid 99 cents for was a version of "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" by Blue Oyster Cult.
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How to choose a search engine. (BrainLog)
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Friday 4/25/03 §
Scientists have discovered a virus in sheep that kills sixteen of eighteen different toxic strains of E. Coli, without harming the beneficial strains. When given to a herd that didn't already have it, the virus killed 99% of the animals' toxic E. Coli in two days. Plans are to infect other types of animals with the virus to improve the safety of our meat supply. (Futurismic)
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Vacuum your lungs to restore normal breathing when you're nervous.
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Thursday 4/24/03 §
Although you may not realize it, you use technology based on the theories of Edgar F. "Ted" Codd every day. Codd developed the theoretical underpinnings of the relational database in a series of papers published by IBM (his employer at the time) in the 1970s. IBM, however, was not interested in a radical departure from what they were already doing with databases, and it took a guy named Larry Ellison to turn Codd's theories into a product, which eventually was called Oracle.
In 1981, Codd received the Turing Award for his work.
Born in Portland, England, Codd spent most of his professional life in the United States. He died April 18 at the age of 79.
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Tuesday 4/22/03 §
The world takes a step closer to psychohistory with an innovation in the mathematical modeling of conversations. (dangerousmeta!)
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"Keely, the greatest humbug of the nineteenth century." (memepool.com)
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Sunday 4/20/03 §
I've been largely out of things the past week or so thanks to a nasty cold that really didn't start to vacate my skull until yesterday, although I was feeling good enough to do some work on Friday.
I'm not sure if it was the cold medication or the lack of sleep, but I had some bizarre dream experiences. One time I awoke coughing, trying desperately to stop because I knew that each cough was the true name of a demon, and I was summoning them to me by speaking their names. (I should also mention that the demons were not just demons, but also buildings in New York City.) Another time I woke up convinced that I was a user interface element in a Japanese computer program, and I needed to go back to sleep so that the program could continue working. Just this morning I woke up thinking I was a robot and I needed to find and install my missing parts before I could get out of bed. Some day that might actually turn out to be true, but not today.
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Tuesday 4/15/03 §
The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954. (Boing Boing)
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Rael Dornfest has written up a clever hack for Mac OS X that lets you access your e-mail from both Apple's Mail and UNIX Pine, as the mood strikes you. (raelity bytes)
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Sunday 4/13/03 §
Did you know the Michelin Man has a name? Did you know his name is Bibendum? (MetaFilter)
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Friday 4/11/03 §
You ever wonder how they keep food looking good under hot studio lights? Here's how.
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Wednesday 4/9/03 §
Castiglioni Objects.
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Tuesday 4/8/03 §
You knew that Korean animators wouldn't be satisfied with just doing inbetweening for The Simpsons and other American cartoons forever. You need to watch the teaser trailer for Wonderful Days. (Boing Boing)
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Monday 4/7/03 §
Science writer Matt Ridley (The Red Queen, Genome) tears today's Luddites a new one. The best line of the piece is a quote from an Indian biotechnologist: "Organic farming is sustainable, It sustains poverty and malnutrition." (Arts & Letters Daily)
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TiVo Desktop 1.0 for Mac OS X has been released. It lets you access your iPhoto and iTunes library from your TiVo (Series 2 with Home Media Option required). Most cool.
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Cool digital art, suitable for use as desktop pictures: carbon_. Plenty of other great stuff there too. (danelope)
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So, thanks to your blog, you've received a tipoff that your significant other isn't what she seems. How do you tell whether your ostensibly geek girlfriend is lying about having a CS degree (and about everything else she's told you)? Simple -- ask her whether she solved computer science's most famous unsolved problem in college. Unfortunately, AccordionGuy's new girlfriend said she had. Mad Columbo-fu. (Boing Boing)
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Sunday 4/6/03 §
Best Products showrooms were inventive, playful bits of suburban postmodernist architecture. (MetaFilter)
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Wednesday 4/2/03 §
The Internet ABCs as discovered using Google. I wish they'd referenced the word abecedary, though. It's a great word.
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In an alternate universe, punk was mainstream and Van Halen was the best underground metal band that never quite achieved stardom, though they influenced a generation of imitators. Don't miss the footnoted version of the article, billed as a "reader's guide." (Metafilter)
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