September 2009
31 posts
3 tags
Farhad Monjoo, writing for Slate, argues that Apple should allow any mp3 player to sync with iTunes, and I agree. Palm’s decision to make its Pre pretend to be an iPod was interesting but strange. iTunes should sync with any player that plugs into it, but since all the music Apple sells (and any music you load in from a CD) is copy-protection-free, Palm could have written its own sync...
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In case you ever wondered why you’re cheering for a
group of young bears, Northern statesmen, or tiny
birds, here’s a Venn diagram of baseball team names
and their etymology.
[I really can’t summarize this link better than Ainsley Drew has at kottke.org, so I’m just quoting her.]
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“The Simpsons’s 21st season marks its “surpassing of the legendary...”
– Newsarama
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Automatically Converting AVI and MKV Videos Into...
Imagine you have an RSS feed that occasionally delivers BitTorrents of video files in avi or mkv format, and you want to play them on an AppleTV. You can convert the video, but it requires using a few different applications and multiple steps. Here’s how to automate the process so that it takes zero clicks.
You’ll need these free downloads:
NetNewsWire, an RSS reader
...
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Sunnydale Tweets is an acting troupe that’s performing Buffy the Vampire Slayer over Twitter in real time. They’re about to start season four. The Twitter account @sunnydaletweets is friends with all of the players if you want to follow along.
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The Inherent Ambiguity of “WTF” →
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In an interview on Complex.com, Joss Whedon talks about Dollhouse and a few other things, including confirming that there will be a “season nine” of Buffy in comics once season eight finishes, and that comic book artist John Cassaday will direct a Dollhouse episode.
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Laptop Battery Myths →
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A new version of NetNewsWire for the iPhone is out, free (with ads) or $2 “premium edition” (no ads). It syncs with Google Reader. Recommended.
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iTunes: How to share music between different... →
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Not unexpectedly, Vampire Diaries only lasted two weeks on our TiVo. It was already up against The Office & 30 Rock, CSI, and Fringe, so it wasn’t going to get recorded once the season started in full, but the first two episodes showed me nothing interesting, so off it goes. The teen drama offered nothing at all new that Gossip Girl wouldn’t provide, if I wanted it, but I feel I...
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Newsarama.com : All Star Memories: Grant Morrison... →
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Roger Federer made an unbelievable between-the-legs shot in today’s US Open semifinal match. It took me a few watches to be able to see that it doesn’t bounce. He just hits it backwards, between his legs. He won the match on the next point.
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Animals with Lightsabers →
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Ben Caldwell’s “Wonder Woman” strip in Wednesday Comics has been the hardest for me to follow. He fills each page with dozens of panels and, even at broadsheet size, it’s all too small. The first issue I found to just be an incomprehensible mess, but one that I knew had some smarts to it, so likely its incomprehensibility was my failing, not his. As the strip has progressed...
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Article looking at the math and game theory behind The Dark Night, zombie movies, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and more.
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905 attendees of Dragon-Con attempted to break William & Mary’s record for the most people doing “Thriller” at once this week.
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“Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out...”
– Birds on the Wires
This is the sort of beautiful thing you’d like to think the internet makes possible, sharing a short work of art.
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For the Mad Men fans out there, “Jon Hamm’s John Ham”.
Might as well check out “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” and “A-Holes: Pitch Meeting” while you’re there.
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YouTube and Copyright Claims
I’ve been going through the Internet Archive restoring lost posts to my archives, and I’ve run across a number of posts with embedded YouTube videos that no longer work. Typically they’re a funny clip from a TV show that the network has requested YouTube take down. Fine. They own the copyright and don’t want their stuff on sites they don’t own that aren’t paying...
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Neat look at building an Atari game simulator looking at not just recreating the games but also at how they looked on 1970s TVs.
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Here’s Yvonne Craig as Batgirl doing a PSA for equal pay for women in 1974. The story behind the spot, and who’s playing Bruce Wayne, courtesy Mark Evanier. Makes me really miss that show.
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New York Times piece on Lego, which has been doing very well compared to other toy companies in the past few years.
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Posterous is a hosted blogging service that looks like a neat alternative to Tumblr. I like the emphasis on using email to create posts. Everyone already had an email address and knows how to use it, so there’s no wasted effort learning a new interface.
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Trying to decide if I agree with this Venn Diagram delineating nerds, geeks, dweebs, and dorks.
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Night of the Living Dead and the Public Domain
I happened to notice that The Night of the Living Dead is available on iTunes for $5. This is notable because one, it’s a great flick, two, $5 is cheap, yet three, it’s actually a work in the public domain, and thus obtainable for free from the Internet Archive. Wikipedia explains:
Copyright status
Night of the Living Dead lapsed into the public domain
because the original...
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Alan Moore Reflects on Marvelman
In an interview with Kurt Amacker at Mania, Alan Moore states that he is okay with Marvel reprinting his Marvelman:
After being initially informed by Neil [Gaiman]’s lawyer,
I had to think about it for a couple of days. I
decided that while I’m very happy for this book
to get published—because that means money will
finally go to Marvelman’s creator, Mick Anglo,
...
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Rumored Apple Tablet May Be Digital Comics's...
Andy Ihnatko, in an interview with Newsarama:
I really believe the tablet is absolutely necessary to
move comics into the digital realm. […] Publishers
trying to go digital, in most cases, have missed the
point up until now. They just don’t know how to deal
with taking a story designed to fill up an entire page
and trying to make it work on a smaller iPhone screen
or...
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In Praise of the Sci-Fi Corridor →
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Chill Pill is a custom web browser for using the Fever RSS reader. I’m playing with it now.
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Kristin Thompson, who literally wrote the textbook on film art, on 3D films.