Friday 11/28/03 §
Delivering a scholarly lecture sounds a lot like delivering pretty much any presentation. Good advice for novices, but it's surprising that there would be any novices giving presentations at academic conferences. Surely public speaking is still one of the courses everyone takes at some point. (dangerousmeta)
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Other People's Stories is a collection of stories contributors heard from someone else, so they're at least thrice removed from you, the reader. Don't miss Three Stories Girls Told Me and Deadlock. (LinkMachineGo)
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Chicago's garbage collection strike saves a winning $10.5 million lottery ticket that was accidentally thrown out. Also, there are still people who go by "Zeke." (linkfilter)
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They look like neon spider webs, but they're much more -- they're color-coded graphics showing the path of the spider during the construction of a web. (MonkeyFilter)
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There are 35,000 living dead in India's Uttar Pradesh state. They claim unscrupulous relatives declared them dead in order to steal their property, and the government refuses to acknowledge that it has made an error. (Boing Boing)
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It warms the cockles of my tech writer's heart to read Peter Seebach's IBM DeveloperWorks article on the importance of documentation. (Tomalak's Realm)
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Thursday 11/27/03 §
This being the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, there will be no further posts today. I'm thankful for many things: that I have a job I enjoy (and one that doesn't involve asking "Will that be tall, grande, or venti?" no less), that I live in what may well be the most wonderful locality in the United States, that most of my relatives live thousasnds of miles from what may well be the most wonderful locality in the United States, and last but certainly not least, that I have found an interesting someone to spend my idle moments with. What are you thankful for?
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Wednesday 11/26/03 §
Get a piece of the Concorde -- at least, the one that belonged to British Airways. (Air France has already auctioned off theirs.) Proceeds go to charity. (GirlHacker)
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Bully Magazine judges Seattle to be the tenth worst American city to live in. Good -- that'll help discourage any more people from moving here; we're full up. I was at first surprised that Detroit didn't make the list, but then I remembered that Detroit is actually a soul-sucking locus of despair, not a city per se, and as such doesn't qualify for the list.
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Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet analyzes sample poems, creates a language model, then writes original poems from the model. It's free (a deluxe edition is $30). Kurzweil also sells AARON, an AI painting program, for $20. Both are PC only, it seems, although you can watch AARON in your browser for free thanks to a Java applet. The New York Times has more. (0xDECAFBAD)
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Not only does OneLook offer a dictionary search that finds definitions in over 100 different dictionaries, it also has a reverse lookup that helps you discover just the right word given a definition, explore the words related to a concept, solve crossword puzzles, or even answer basic factual questions (e.g. "What is the capital of Vietnam?"). (Backup Brain)
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Designing sites on a PC, and want to know what they look like on a Mac -- but don't have a Mac handy? Preview your site using someone else's copy of Safari. Takes about twenty seconds. (Lockergnome TNW)
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What do you know -- an article on online dating that's not just a rehash of things you already know. (randomWalks)
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Tuesday 11/25/03 §
Lexicon is a game of definitions for multiple players. (More Like This)
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Irving Tobin reads every day's New York Times, or most of it, anyway. Currently he is a year and a half behind in his reading. "In his daily paper, the United States has not yet invaded Iraq, the D.C. sniper hasn't fired a shot, and Gray Davis is secure in Sacramento." Let's do the Times warp again.... (Kottke)
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Send instant messages to SMS-compatible phones with AOL's new IM to SMS gateway. (Currently works with US numbers only.) (Haughey)
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Glowing handbags use chemicals derived from glowworms and can be powered by a watch battery. (/usr/bin/girl)
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Opus! I was much more amused than I expected to be; looks like Breathed still has the touch. Thanks to Waxy for scanning and posting it.
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Monday 11/24/03 §
glenn mcdonald ruminates on how the iTunes Music Store might change the way we listen to (and think about) music. John Scalzi responds with a piece that is more of a takeoff than a direct reply, but which is nevertheless illuminating. I think I lean toward mcdonald's opinion that something precious is being lost. I almost never listen to albums anymore, instead preferring to let iTunes (or the iPod) randomly choose from among my favorite singles. It's like a radio station that only plays songs I like, sans commercials, right? In the car, randomly-generated MP3 mix CDs (iTunes again) with 100 or so tracks scratch the same itch. When I get bored with one collection of songs, I just burn another. Blank CDs, after all, are so cheap as to be disposable. The problem, if it is a problem, is that all music has become background music to me. I never sit down and just listen anymore.
I bought a very nice set of stereo speakers when I lived in Detroit. I brought them with me to Seattle. And three years after the move, they're still in their boxes. I do almost all my listening sitting in front of the computer or in the car, on a stereo system that is not nearly of the quality of the one that's packed away.
A voice in the back of my head is telling me I should be worried about the same kinds of things that concern glenn. But another voice is telling me I'm just getting older, and music simply is no longer the obsession it was when I was a young man -- and that's normal.
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Codefellas: hackers for the mob. Is it just me, or is Wired interesting again? (null device)
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Larry Niven's classic analysis of what would happen if Superman and Lois Lane actually did the nasty: "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex."
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Sunday 11/23/03 §
Your eyes do not deceive you. I've been tweaking this site and will probably tweak it more in the days to come. I've simplified the design and removed a bunch of distracting site features that I never quite managed to keep up to date (At Length, book and music reviews). You might also have noticed that I've also been posting a lot more the last few days than I often have in the recent months.
I've changed the site's official tagline to "Once upon a time on the Web," which (in addition to being a reference to a Dire Straits song) reflects a sort of return to roots for the site. My intent is to simply link to things I found stimulating in one way or another -- this is a weblog in the classical sense. Most of the time I don't find politics, current events, the war, or talking about blogging very interesting. That's not to say I'll never talk about these things, but my focus will be on finding and sharing links that made me go "whoa, cool" (or at least "that was interesting"). Not coincidentally, I can post these sorts of items quickly, without having to rewrite the article half a dozen times before I'm happy with it, which will result in more regular posts.
So -- welcome to the revamped, renewed, refocused, and (hopefully) revitalized JerryKindall.com. We'll see how long it lasts...
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The ten biggest myths about spam. (Ars Technica)
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Floraphilia is 24-intimate portraits of flowers from Kevin Lyons's garden. (MetaFilter)
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Progressive rockers Salem Hill have a new album out titled Be. Their sound is not entirely dissimilar to Kansas, and they're big into doing concept albums, so if you like that sort of thing, check 'em out. I quite enjoyed their Robbery of Murder.
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While we're on the subject of Mac news, CookieMonsterFix is a third-party fix for a Safari bug that allows Web sites to read cookies that don't belong to them. (Also MacInTouch)
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$35 iMovie plug-in stabilizes video after recording. Brilliant. (MacInTouch)
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Saturday 11/22/03 §
The Pain Chronicles: A deeply affecting story of a man's struggles with a devastating injury, chronic pain, and drug addiction. (Doc Searls)
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Album cover finder. (muxway)
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Friday 11/21/03 §
How much of life is lived consciously? What is happening in our brains when we are "aware"? Christof Koch wants bring us face to face with the zombie within. (Boing Boing)
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Kurt Wenner creates sidewalk paintings that seem to project out of or sink into the ground. Callum Colvin creates 2D paintings on 3D objects, such that they are only correctly visible from one spot. And Community Bridge is a complete work of trompe l'oeil, from the stones to the ivy to the special features. (MetaFilter)
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Thursday 11/20/03 §
How your office space affects you. (naughtical)
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DQ Blizzard flavor of the Month: Pumpkin Pie. Jones Soda flavor of the month: Turkey and Gravy. Buy yourself some cranberry juice and potato soup and you can have a completely liquid Thanksgiving dinner, complete with dessert. If you want a salad course, grab a V8 too. Oh wait -- what will we substitute for the stuffing? Well, stuffing is made from bread, bread is made from grain. Now, what beverage is made from grain? Beer! I think we have a winner, folks...
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Animation fans will want to check out the trailer to the French animated comedy The Triplets of Belleville. Surrealicious! (linkfilter)
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Patterns for personal Web sites. (Elegant Hack)
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Reason #97 I liked the Internet a lot better when only nerds could figure out how to use it. (Haddock)
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The Loculus of Archimedes, Solved! And here I never even knew Archimedes had a loculus. (leuschke.org)
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Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Open Source Democracy, is available in a free e-book version. (Follow Me Here)
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Don't freeze that trumpet! It's a placebo! (While this may sound like a Firesign Theater line, it is not.) (dangerousmeta)
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Wednesday 11/19/03 §
Aeschylus's play Achilles will be performed for the first time in more than 2000 years after a copy of the play was found stuffed in a mummy in Egypt. Scholars have long known of the play (from its mention in other works of the period) but thought it had been lost. (Follow Me Here)
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The AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service gained a new feature today: you can now log on to your account from more than one location. Previously, logging on at one location would kick you off at any other location you'd left logged in. AIM sends incoming messages to all your logged-in locations, unless they have been marked as Away. In short, people who use AIM at more than one place will find themselves having to log in a lot less frequently.
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The final destiny of old Macs always involves fish. (Boing Boing)
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Let them sing it for you. (#!/usr/bin/girl)
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AT&T has patented a way to get spam past filters. They can now sue any spammer who uses this technique, which will be handy because AT&T is a major ISP that receives a lot of spam. Very clever. (MacInTouch)
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Saturday 11/15/03 §
If your mellow were never to be harshed, how could you be certain it was really ever a mellow at all?
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Friday 11/14/03 §
Yet again, life imitates an Ahnold movie. (GirlHacker)
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Monday 11/10/03 §
JK.com is back on the air. Apparently there was some kind of power glitch the day I left for the Meadows that left the server rolled over on its back with its stiff legs up in the air. If you got a bounce message from any e-mail you sent me, please re-send. (If you didn't get a bounce message yet, I will probably get your mail.)
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Thursday 11/6/03 §
A classic: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. (Plastic)
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Wednesday 11/5/03 §
Unreason's Seductive Charms. (dangerousmeta)
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Atomic Telephony: nuclear testing meets the human element. A fascinating detail from our history.
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If you want kids to become engineers, there are probably better ways to appeal to them than this:
(Thanks for sharing, Warren)
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Tuesday 11/4/03 §
An image forms with a few quick gestures, then is casually destroyed, only to be replaced by another. Sand art at the 2003 SiCAF (Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival). It's a big Windows Media video file, and worth every byte. Probably the best ten minutes you'll waste today. (MetaFilter)
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Monday 11/3/03 §
The Omnifi mobile audio wireless digital transfer system doesn't actually stream music to your car, as the article's headline claims, but it does let you copy tunes to a 20GB hard disk in your car wirelessly. I've been waiting for something like this for a long, long time. The only problem, of course, is that 20GB is obviously completely inadequate. (Follow Me Here)
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At last: proof that, despite repeated claims to the contrary, irony is not dead. (Obscure Store)
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