July 2010
5 posts
All That Oil: Two Hundred Olympic Swimming Pools
If you want to do something with all the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico so far this year, you could consider storing it in several regulation Olympic swimming pools—two hundred, to be precise, but let’s start with just one.
Obviously, you’ll need an empty regulation Olympic swimming pool. Such a pool will be fifty meters long, twenty-five meters wide, and two meters deep...
June 2010
3 posts
“I dreamt about blackness because I don’t dream. I just fall asleep, see black,...”
– Justin Bieber, seventeen.com
May 2010
1 post
March 2010
6 posts
Solar System Music Box →
[via Coudal] Beautiful “music box” in the style of Jim Bumgardner’s Whitney Music Box, modeled after the movement of the planets.
The First Time I Have Written About the Magazine...
On O’Reilly Radar today, Mac Slocum wrote a post called “Trapping content on the iPad won’t work, even if it’s pretty”:
Digital content, like water, will always find a path to freedom. You lock it down, someone else will open it up. That’s why the Wired iPad app — and other offerings from publishers accustomed to silos — should get ahead of the curve...
People will say we’re the next Twitter. Which I don’t agree with. I think we’re complementary to Twitter. Or, we’re the next Facebook. But we’re more of a feature set to Facebook. Or, we compete with Google Latitude. Well, kind of. But Foursquare’s not just about the maps. It’s about what happens nearby. And then people will say Yelp is a competitor...
February 2010
3 posts
“SUMMARY: That’s about all there is to it. Now you need just to go off and...”
– my favorite passage from perlobj. This is why I will always love perl.
January 2010
4 posts
Man opens bag of Cheese Rings, finds one →
Our lede: “A DARWIN man has opened a bag of chips and found only one inside.”
I think we’re done here.
TO FUTURE PERLMAGICK USERS: ImageMagick libraries...
Everything is fine. You’ve done everything correctly. Now, do this:
Open your /etc/ld.so.conf
Look at the output of the “make” command from your ImageMagick install. Search for “MAGICK_LDFLAGS = -L”.
I’m guessing it says “/usr/local/lib”. Hmm—telling.
Add a line to your ld.so.conf with that directory.
Run ldconfig
Thank this guy.
November 2009
2 posts
October 2009
10 posts
“The victim has said she was singing ”A Dios Le Pido” by Colombian...”
– “Police: Karaoke Singer Attacked Over Performance”, the New York Times
“It’s a curious thing, but there was one friend of my mother’s, who I...”
– Maurice Sendak, as interviewed by Steven Heller
“If you want to respect Yo-Yo Ma, try playing a cello. If you want to understand...”
– Lawrence Lessig, Remix
“There is nothing more depressing than a mediocre musician.”
– Michael Haneke in “Happy Haneke”, the New Yorker
September 2009
2 posts
August 2009
4 posts
Smart, Sexy, Spiritual Goddess Desired for Awesome... →
“I seek a spiritual marriage with a true Goddess based on deep love, intense chemistry, extreme passion, and lifelong devotion. Additionally, marriage includes financial and legal dimensions, and the complexities of my Global Vision will necessitate a pre-nuptial agreement. I will be generous, giving the Goddess I seek 100% legal control over an appropriate portion of the anticipated...
WatchBobby McFerrin and the pentatonic scale at the World Science Festival. It’s amazing how much about music and tonality we understand almost instinctively. Spend enough time with any tonal scale, slowly building your way to the edges, and your mind will just fill in the new octaves and intervals.
July 2009
2 posts
Cheap Tricks (updated)
990000:
When in doubt
Add a catchy title or caption
Make it retro/low-fi
Make it soft-focus
Make it really colorful
Make it black and white
Add a baby
Add a puppy/kitten
Do it in slow-motion
Make it abstract
Make it nude
Add explosions
Make it float in mid-air
Add someone famous
Make it bloody
Add a crazy facial expression
Make it freakish
Make it shiny
Add a sunset
Shoot at...
My Raindeer Self
When I was nine, my parents took me to a holiday fair at the mall, where I had my face painted as a raindeer’s. Very late that night, I refused to wash off the makeup and insisted that my dad take my picture and have the film developed at the one-hour photo in town. If I couldn’t be a raindeer for the rest of my life, I wanted to fall asleep with a picture of my raindeer self and look...
June 2009
2 posts
April 2009
2 posts
Chop Chop Square: Inside Saudi Arabia's brutal... →
March 2009
4 posts
Last Chat Today on Omegle
Me: for lunch today, did you have a sandwich?
Stranger: No, I did not have a sandwich
Me: seemed like a pattern.
Me: actually
Me: let me see if i can guess what you had for lunch in six questions
Me: game?
Stranger: Alright
Me: ok, question 1
Me: could you eat it while walking?
Stranger: No
Me: does it require a spoon to eat?
Stranger: No
Me: was it primarily meat?
Stranger: Yes
Me: did it once moo?
Stranger: Nope
Me: was it roast chicken?
Stranger: Nope but close
Me: i'll go turkey
Stranger: sorry it was duck
Me: ah, sophisticated
Me: i don't know why i didn't give you credit
Me: i'd have chosen duck too
Me: it's the steak of birds
Stranger: it is
Without Comment
