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March 30, 2006

Harrison's Ode to Joy

Yay! Hank's Ode to Joy. The little guy has come a long way. He's going to be playing piano in church for a long time to come...

Movie Primers

Awesome movie primers from GreenCine, a Netflix alternative. Guides to sci-fi, westerns, film noir, and more! (I'm keen on the guides to bollywood and, especially, wuxia.) [via kottke]

March 29, 2006

Beach? Coast? Shore? Also: is the Puget Sound a part of the Ocean?

Yo! All you haters out there! (This means you, Jenn and Pam.) I used my precious weekly AskMetafilter question to ask: Beach? Coast? Shore? Also: is the Puget Sound a part of the Ocean? I want my five dollars.

Vegan Twinkies

How to make vegan twinkies: "The biggest difference between these and regular Twinkies® is that these taste good."

Hack Your Brain With an iPod

Hack your brain with an iPod: "You can modify the electrical activity in your brain (the stuff that's picked up by EEG readings) by hearing sounds that mimic those waves."

Optimizing Performance in Photoshop

Optimizing performance in Photoshop for Macintosh OS X. I have real trouble running Photoshop on my 512mb PowerBook G4: it's just too slow.

Swirling Vortex of Doom

Damn interesting: the swirling vortex of doom. "Lake Peigneur is a shallow, now salt-water, lake near New Iberia, Louisiana that was the location of an unusual man-made catastrophe on 21 November 1980." [via mefi]

Delicious Days

Delicious Days, a foodblog [via matt]

Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

Sci-fi now: brain cells fused with computer chip. I still haven't given up my dream of immortality. It seems to me that the form this is most likely to take is something along these lines: a fusing of mind and machine, so that my consciousness lives on in a computer state. [via dave]

Maladies of the Information Age

Maladies of the information age — I have all of these problems... [via josh]

March 28, 2006

Geoffery Chaucer Hath a Blog

Fun for English majors everywhere: Geoffery Chaucer hath a blog.

March 27, 2006

Film Re-Enactments

Awesome film re-enactments. A single guy performing classic scenes from The Shining, Willy Wonka, and more. This Princess Bride Battle of Wits scene is amazing.

The Last Record Shop

The last record shop. This is a great story: this Ohio record store closed its doors in 1971, and for thirty-five years has sat untouched. What's it like to go inside now? Like walking into a time-machine.

The Best Sci-Fi Concept Albums

The best sci-fi concept albums. I've been looking for science-fiction themed music lately. I'll have to check these out.

Stanislaw Lem: 1921-2006

Polish science-fiction giant Stanislaw Lem died this morning. He was 84. Though Lem was not as well known as Asimov or Heinlein or any of the other "Masters", he was just as important to the genre. Lem was not a fan of traditonal science-fiction, and in his work tried to approach futuristic themes from a more humanistic, almost psychological, perspective. (And his books are funny!) His best-known work, Solaris, was twice made into a film, most recently in 2002. [Woefully out-of-date official site.]

KeepVid

KeepVid allows you to actually download those funny videos you find at YouTube or Google Video. Handy, eh?

March 26, 2006

Pomme & Kelly

Here's a confession: I love Pomme & Kelly, the two young women who are kicking ass in the finals of Google Idol. I love their enthusiasm. I love Pomme's name, though I don't know how to pronounce it. Fun stuff, if you haven't seen it yet.

March 25, 2006

Solar Calculator

Awesome solar calculator for determining the location of the sun at any given moment. (Useful for garden planning.)

US Copyright Office Database

US Copyright Office searchable database (primarily for works registered since 1978)

March 24, 2006

What is Proust's Longest Sentence?

AskMe: What is Proust's longest sentence? I ♥ Proust. [via Macdaddy, who spotted this on a Friday afternoon, when I would have missed it]

Liberal Capitalism

AskMe: What's a liberal capitalist to do?

Tacqueria Nueve

Awesome! Tacqueria Nueve — read this not for the review, but for the story at the beginning of the entry. [via frykitty]

Barnes & Noble Online Buyback

Barnes & Noble on-line buyback: sell your used books to Barnes & Noble by entereing ISBN, getting a quote, and then waiting for them to send packing information. Think I'll be using this? Damn straight, I will! I'll finally finish my book purge!

March 23, 2006

David Weinberger's NPR Commentaries

David Weinberger's NPR commentaries. Also: his "reading blogs is a time-consuming endeavor". [via rich]

The Economic Costs of the Iraq War

The economic costs of the Iraq war: an appraisal three years after the beginning of the conflict [via gates]

All-Reader Day

Good grief — you guys have been sending me so many links lately that I don't have to do any surfing on my own. I'm just posting your stuff!

The World's Longest Mad Lib

The world's longest Mad Lib [via sparky]

Apocalypse Pooh

Apocalypse Now? Apocalypse Pooh! Disney's Winnie the Pooh with dialogue dubbed into Coppola's war masterpiece. [via lane]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Awesome! A MeFi post on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of flow. I'm already working on a weblog entry about this subject (which was introduced to me by Lisa).

Urinal Games

Is this something we really need? Piss-controlled urinal-based games [via bb]

How to Become and Early Riser

How to become and early riser — I'm a fairly early riser, when left to my own devices, but then so are most of the people I know

March 22, 2006

Bento Boxes

I quite like these bento boxes [via frykitty]

Muppet Matrix

The Muppet Matrix [via geistweg]

March 21, 2006

Weight Loss Tips

Weight loss tips

Cancer Can't Stand the Heat

Cancer can't stand the heat — Capsaicin, which makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, US and Japanese researchers say. [via Dave]

Excessive Lawn Care

Excessive Lawn Care? Writes Jeff (instead of coming into my office): "From the Lawn & Garden Tractor Forum [which he reads religiously]: Neighbor charged with shooting teen who walked on his grass

Rob's World of Warcraft Cheat Sheet

Rob's big World of Warcraft cheat sheet is an awesome resource. Too bad Joel and I are on hiatus from the game. [via airbag]

How to Spot a Baby Conservative

How to spot a baby conservative. This twenty-year study shows that children who were whiny and insecure tend to grow up to be conservatives and "confident, resilient, self-reliant" children tend to grow up to be liberals. [via kottke]

Google Finance

Google Finance is Google's stock tracking service

March 20, 2006

D&D Cyclopedia

Downloadable D&D Cyclopedia costs $6. I just sold my physical copy on eBay. This is my single favorite version of any fantasy role-playing game. It's just sheer fun.

ColorBurn

Here's a piece of software I can't use, but want to: ColorBurn is a 'widget' for Macintosh that displays a new color palette every day.

How Do I Interview Somebody?

AskMe: How do I interview somebody? I've been wanting to interview aging family members, to get their life history, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Battle for Wesnoth

Battle for Wesnoth is a free, turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme for multiple platforms, including Mac.

Banker John

The story of Banker John is a terrific anecdote, a little gem from AskMe.

BioBrite

BioBrite, sunlight clocks — I want one of these

iDupe

iDupe is designed to process duplicates and dead tracks in iTunes in a smart way.

Website Layout Cookbook

Awesome reference: Website Layout Cookbook — an illustrated reference of website layouts for web designers

Simple CSS Image Switcher

Simple CSS image switcher, for future web designs

Lawn Mowing 2006 - #2

A quick mow after two days of cool, dry weather. It took me 01h 12m to mow the lawn as I listened to Motown tunes. There's slightly less lawn to mow now that we've tilled up new garden space. Also, the mower ran out of gas before I could finish the last patch; I figured it wasn't worth the trouble to finish. (Last mow: February 10th.)

The Final Word is Hooray!

"The final word is hooray!" — remembering the Iraq Invasion's Pollyana pundits

March 18, 2006

Overloaded

A photo gallery of overloaded vehicles

SXSW to MPAA: STFU

SXSW to MPAA: STFU — the battle over copyrights is in full-swing and there's a huge cognitive disconnect between consumers and the multimedia behemoths that own most of the work

Babble

Babble is an internet-wide 24-hour long boggle game, similar to the Iron Sudoku game I posted earlier [via bb]

Strange New Products

Strange new products — there are some real gems here.

March 17, 2006

Does Pressure-Treated Wood Belong in Your Garden?

Does pressure-treated wood belong in your garden?

The Crash-lash

Roger Ebert's excellent commentary on the idiotic rantings of those who think Brokeback Mountain lost Best Picture because Crash was "safe". "Crash was a better film." (I checked imdb yesterday: Crash had a rating of 8.4, Brokeback had a rating of 8.0.) Both were good films, but the sour grapes attitude of the Brokeback camp is asinine.

One Bag

One Bag — the art and science of travelling light. "Overpacking easily heads the list of biggest travel mistakes. Thus this Web site, offering exhaustive (some might say exhausting) detail on the art of travelling light, living for an indefinite period of time out of a single (carryon-sized) bag." [via frykitty]

March 16, 2006

U.S. Eliminated from World Baseball Classic

U.S. eliminated from World Baseball Classic. The final four: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Korea (which still has not lost a game).

Chase Thornton

This in from Lynn: Denise gave birth today. Baby Chase arrived at 8lb 2oz and 21 inches long. He has all his fingers and toes and is healthy and happy to be out. Ryan is still adjusting and isn't sure what he thinks, though. Congratulations, Denise!

Iron Sudoku

Iron Sudoku: competitive web-based social sudoku.

PHP Links

Excuse the geekiness: PHP for Beginners and a recommended PHP reading list.

Windows XP Boots on a Mac!

The contest to boot Windows XP on the Mac is over. The winners will receive $13,854. [via the whole damn internet]

March 15, 2006

Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

Best TV show idea EVER: Who wants to be a superhero? [via Andrew P.]

Real-Life Crash