Saturday 6/28/03 §
The Web site for Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle opens with a page of strange writing. Todd Garrison explains how he cracked the code. (Anita Rowland)
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Who do we have to blame for the current fashion of suing the manufacturer of a product when something goes horribly awry? Turns out, it's the Scots. (MetaFilter)
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Friday 6/27/03 §
The Pre-History of Cognitive Science currently covers the work of four influential philosophers of mind, with many more to be added in the future.
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The Guardian has a thought-provoking piece about the banality of technological innovation. In a society where the words "You can't live without this" can only be taken metaphorically, have we lost sight of the distinction between important and trivial uses of technology?
Although I can sympathize with this point of view, I suspect that much the same piece could have been written at most points in history: "Newfangled appliances such as this 'washing-machine' are indulgences which the wise housewife will spurn. For without housework to fill her days, crushing boredom will spur a domestic decadence unlike any before seen." We're toolmakers. Making tools is what we do. Even when we don't have any pressing need to invent, we do it anyway, because it's fun. Stuart Jeffries might as well chastise us for poking at anthills with sharp sticks.
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Mr. Body Massage Machine: video from the "educational" segments at the end of old G.I. Joe cartoons with surreal new audio. (Danelope)
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IntyOS is a multitasking OS with a GUI for the Intellivision, a 1980s video game console from Mattel. This platform has an obscure processor (General Instruments CP-1610) running at under 1MHz and a whopping 240 bytes of RAM. Someone has too much time on their hands. (Nulll Device)
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Thursday 6/26/03 §
Wind is the Enemy. Just keep clicking... (Leuschke)
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According to sources, Princess Diana was a mutant and will be returning from the dead to join an X-Men team. (The Copydesk)
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Wednesday 6/25/03 §
Victorian visions of the year 2000. (MetaFilter)
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While Penn and Teller's Bullshit! is in reruns, remember these seven warning signs of bogus science.
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Monday 6/23/03 §
Not real impressed so far with today's Safari 1.0 and iChat AV beta releases. Safari doesn't let you open external links (i.e. links clicked in chat sessions or in e-mail) in a new tab anymore. And iChat has the same annoyances as the old version, plus a few more. That's just doing text chat; I haven't even tried the audio and video chat features yet. Probably won't, either.
And I still maintain that, since Apple's applications have taken to starting with "i" recently, the name of Safari should be reversed and the application should be known as iRafas.
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Power Macintosh G5. The slogan should be "Ugly on the outside. Beautiful on the inside." Nevertheless, I'll be buying one this fall.
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Today is this webblog's second birthday. 3 comments
Sunday 6/22/03 §
Ask the DJ is a "mix engine" for Mac OS X and iTunes. What that means, basically, is that it magically performs seamless, beat-matched segues between tracks. Listen to the demo track, it's pretty impressive. (Interconnected)
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Yamaha has downloadable papercraft models of its motorcycles, along with various animals. "Papercraft" means you print 'em, cut 'em out, and fold and assemble the various pieces. Pretty cool. (danelope)
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Mitzi Shore is the owner of the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where many of the biggest comedians of the '70s and '80s were discovered. Her son Pauly (yes, that Pauly Shore) is trying to help her revive the glory days, and not coincidentally, his own career. Surprisingly bittersweet for a story in which the Weasel is a central character, yet not without elements worthy of mockery. For instance, we learn that Pauly wants to do a remake of Dog Day Afternoon set in a Hooters. (randomwalks)
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Genetic sexual attraction is a creepy phenomenon that leads closely-related people who were raised separately to become -- well, take a wild guess. I find it interesting that people rarely feel attracted to the people they were raised with, whether they are related or not. Having children with people we're closely related to is a bad idea from a genetic standpoint, but we can't tell how closely we're related to someone by looking at them, so we evolved an approximation -- one that breaks down when adoption enters the picture. (Follow Me Here)
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Everybody is gonna be linking this, but the New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article on transcranial magnetic stimulation. The effects described are jaw-droppingly amazing, the implications staggering, and the potential effects on not just cognitive science but philosophy profound. (MetaFilter)
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Saturday 6/21/03 §
The Drop. Brilliant article by Eric Norlin on the parallels between digital identity (which is what the company I work for does) and the launch of consumer credit cards in the 1970s. (Scobleizer)
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Boring3D is sort of like a 3D version of explodingdog, albeit without Sam Brown's inimitable perspective. Start at the bottom of the archives and watch the artist get better as you scroll up. (Fury)
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Friday 6/20/03 §
Webexhibits has an engrossing history of the use of pigments in painting. (dangerousmeta)
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How to read Nancy -- the anatomy of a comic strip. (MetaFilter)
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Thursday 6/19/03 §
Tires getting out of balance, Bunky? Feeling a vibration in your steering column at highway speeds that your local tiremonger just can't seem to fix? Find yourself a local establishment that possesses a Hunter GSP9700 Vibration Control System, a device so advanced that the company's representatives will actually smack you if you dare call it a "wheel balancer," and fix those wobbly rubber doughnuts once and for all!
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There's a right way and a wrong way to use computers in education, according to Theo Gray and Jerry Glynn. The wrong way isn't just ineffective, it actually damages students by teaching them the wrong lessons. Provocative, disturbing, and compelling all at once. (leuschke.org)
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Wednesday 6/18/03 §
Salon has an article today on the iTunes Music Store, arguing that the easy buying of single tracks will mean the eventual end of adventurous album-making. This point is debatable (and worth debating). But couldn't they have found someone who knows how to spell Sarah McLachlan's last name, and who furthermore knows the difference between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Love and Rockets, to write the piece? Sheesh.
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Tuesday 6/17/03 §
Photos from last night's photologger outing:
Thursday 6/12/03 §
Just eight days until the patent on LZW, the compression algorithm used in the GIF image file format, expires. CNET, always looking for an angle, spins it as the possible end of relevance for the PNG file format, which I think is a bit of an overeaction, but it's true that PNG's original reason for existence is about to go away.
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Monday 6/9/03 §
Last month, Jennifer Voitle made nearly $7,000 (in cash and free goods) shopping. (Obscure Store)
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I've also set up a mail server on this machine. Some mail to me may bounce while the DNS switches from mydomains.com forwarding. If you get a bounce, just try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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The '80s Tarot features Thomas Dolby as the Magician. That is just plain cool. (cheesedip)
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Sunday 6/8/03 §
If you're reading this, this site is being served from my home Win2K Server box via my DSL connection. Be gentle.
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Friday 6/6/03 §
This summer, Volkswagen will end production of the original rear-engine Beetle, which has been continuously in production since 1934. (Flutterby)
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Thursday 6/5/03 §
OmniWeb 4.5b1. Apple's HTML rendering engine (as seen in Safari) combined with Omni's geeky tweakability. (For example, you can define your own search keywords, and the View Source window is editable so you can test HTML changes.) Can't wait to see how this develops.
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The Beeb reports that British researchers are very close to perfecting quantum cryptography. Their product could be on the market in as little as three years. Quantum cryptography relies on physical properties of light to create a secure communication channel through an optical fiber. Simon Singh's The Code Book has a good overview of exactly how this works.
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Wednesday 6/4/03 §
Worth1000 is a smarter, more worksafe "Photoshopping" site, focusing on high-quality digital photo manipulation. (#!/usr/bin/girl)
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Monday 6/2/03 §
In 1940s England, serious plans were afoot to build a 2000-foot-long aircraft carrier -- out of ice. (MetaFilter)
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The Amazing Baconizer doesn't just connect movie stars to Kevin Bacon. It connects almost any form of media to any other, based on Amazon.com shared purchases. For example, when I visited, the example randomly offered to connect Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, and proceeded to do exactly that in twelve steps. (Interconnected)
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Hmmmm. Canon PowerShot G5 or Nikon Coolpix 5400?
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Unh! (Follow Me Here)
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