July 2009
38 posts
1 tag
Make Your iPhone Look Like a Sci-Fi Movie Prop →
3 tags
If you use more than one email account in Gmail, you can now change a setting to have Gmail use the other account’s outgoing mail server instead of Google’s. I’m sort of surprised they weren’t doing this all along, and it’s just another annoying part of how everyone else has to cope with Outlook being a crappy product.
3 tags
NetNewsWire Syncs with Google Reader
The newest beta version of the best desktop RSS client, NetNewsWire, now syncs with Google Reader. More surprisingly, they are going to discontinue NewsGator Online (which I never liked), and are referring people to Google Reader. What’s so cool about the syncing is that if you, like me, want to be able to use NNW at home on your Mac but use a PC at work, you can keep switch to Google Reader...
1 tag
Take Back the Beep Campaign
Following up on his previous article, David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep Campaign urges readers to complain to their cell phone carriers about the annoyingly long recordings you hear every time you try to leave someone a message.
Update: here’s part two.
2 tags
Mad Men Yourself
Oozing with style, Mad Men Yourself is a lot of fun. See also these promo pictures for season three.
3 tags
Witness a 600 photo gallery from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Notes:
Heath Ledger Joker is past played out
Love the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh
A good Twi’Lek costume is great, but keeping all the bodypaint intact is tricky
I’m a huge sucker for the fashion design of the new Star Trek. Way hipper than TNG uniforms, but
I like that the girl in the Deanna Troi getup is...
1 tag
Thoughts on the Apple Tablet That Doesn't Exist...
Its interface will not be just like the desktop Mac OS, but it won’t be just a bigger iPhone. Multi-touch, yes, but the iPhone’s interface is based around one app at a time with no multitasking. With a bigger screen this doesn’t make as much sense, yet the Mac OS’s menubars and such wouldn’t work as well with touch.
Apple has a marketing hook up its sleeve no one...
3 tags
All-Purpose Pronoun →
On the origin of using “he” as a neutral pronoun where we once used “they”.
4 tags
Marvel To Publish Mick Anglo's Marvelman - And... →
Rich Johnson:
As I teased yesterday, Marvel are to publish the
Marvelman comic book. It’s been
an up-to-the-wire deal, but Marvel have signed a
contract with Emotiv, who are representing Marvelman creator Mick
Anglo and will reprint the silver age comics published
during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.
Naturally there are questions about the more recent-ish
...
3 tags
Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work: Unlimited... →
Famous set of basic cartooning advice by Wally Wood, now with high resolution scans by the original’s new owner.
3 tags
An Apology from Amazon - kindle Discussion Forum →
Jeff Bezos:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled
illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on
Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid,
thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our
principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we
deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use
the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help
...
3 tags
Alan Rickman's Answering Machine →
From Family Guy, tangentially Harry Potter-related. I kept thinking about it during the movie.
3 tags
My Deathly Hallows Impressions from July 2007 →
Having watched the sixth movie, I immediately started thinking ahead to the last book. Here’s what I wrote about it then, with one addendum about the epilogue.
1 tag
YouTube - Amazing Young Organ Player Rocks Out →
3 tags
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: I'm really... →
I worked for one summer as a news announcer on WNRN (“New Rock Now”) in Charlottesville, VA. Every twenty minutes in the morning and once an hour in the afternoons I’d read a few headlines and engage in some quick banter with the host. (Aside: the morning shift was “Acoustic Sunrise” which I absolutely could not stand. The host was a very nice guy named, if I recall...
3 tags
Using Lottery Effect to Make People Save →
Fascinating. Eight banks in Michigan have a savings account with a monthly raffle. Put away $25 and you get a chance to win $400 each month, and a yearly $100,000 drawing. It seems like each person only gets one “ticket” each month they make a minimum deposit, which is a good call since if you got more tickets the more money you invested, rich people would likely win every time.
2 tags
Sign Up for Google Wave Updates →
Going into “beta” September 30.
5 tags
The Longest Solar Eclipse of the Century →
Dozens of photos collected on the ever-stunning The Big Picture. Love the one with the dinosaur. Wish I’d been on the other side of the planet yesterday.
4 tags
Nobody Watches the Watchmen →
I’ll give them credit, they did a great job capturing the right clichés about Alan Moore.
2 tags
American Drivers Should Learn to Love the... →
3 tags
American drivers should learn to love the... →
4 tags
Holy Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon →
Classic Onion front page “from” July 21, 1969.
5 tags
Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage →
Watch the moon landing coverage as it happened, starting later today.
5 tags
Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage →
Watch the moon landing coverage as it happened, starting later today.
5 tags
Bird Feeder and PHP4/5 // Troubleshooting // Forum... →
Had some trouble with using Dreamhost and some .htaccess rewrites. This fixed it.
4 tags
Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others - Pogue’s... →
Decreases my already low level of desire to get a Kindle. Stick around for the punchline at the end.
3 tags
Never noticed this. In Eyes Wide Shut, when Bill goes to the costume shop:
As Mr. Milich steps out of his apartment, we can see
some lights reflected on the glass door of the building.
These lights are the neon signs in front of Sonata Cafe
and Gillespie’s Diner. Upon cutting to a reverse we can
see both buildings directly behind Bill. He’s apparently
hired a cab to drive...
5 tags
New Haven Commuters, 1961 →
In honor of season two of Mad Men coming out on DVD, look at all the commuters drinking and smoking.
5 tags
YouTube - New York Nearest Subway Augmented... →
It’s like the future. Reminds me of the locative art in Spook Country. (via daringfireball)
7 tags
Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture -... →
40 photos from 40 years ago.
6 tags
Notes on a Dual-Mode Airport Extreme Network —... →
This is exactly what I have set up at home, and it works great. 2 notes: the Nintendo DS needs 802.11b connectivity, if you have one; and this works nicely also if you want to hook one base station up to a printer and another up to an external hard drive. (via daringfireball)
2 tags
Megacorporations
Sometimes the writing in Wikipedia just makes me smile:
“Megacorporation” is a term popularized by William
Gibson derived from the combination of the prefix
mega- with the word corporation.
Easy to criticize, but I don’t think I could do better.
4 tags
Stormtroopers 365 - a set on Flickr →
A different picture of a Stormtrooper action figure’s adventures each day.
2 tags
Kotaku - New Nintendo Release Exacerbates Lefty... →
DS game Base 10 is reportedly unplayable by lefties.
6 tags
YouTube - monty python football →
Love it. (via droct)
5 tags
1 tag
Follow-Up to Twitter Favorites and Retweets
Discussing my idea that Twitter clients should show one’s friends’ favorites on another blog, I’ve learned that this (like many things) is easier said than done. Twitter doesn’t provide a way for a program to say, “give me all of [username]’s friends’ favorites”. Instead, a program would have to ask, “who are [username]’s friends?”,...
4 tags
Flickr adds Twitter integration →
You can set up a special email address that you can send a photo to from your phone which will post it to Flickr and send a link to Twitter.