January 2009
60 posts
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Civic Literacy Quiz →
Fairly old by now I’m sure, but the first time I attempted to take this 33-question quiz, I got bored and didn’t complete it. I revisited it and answered 26 out of 33 correctly, 78.79%.
Intercollegiate Studies Institute:
“More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took [the test] and more than 1,700 people failed, with the average score 49 percent, or an ‘F.’ Elected officials scored even lower...
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Perfect Balance →
Really fun physics game that tests your ability to balance various objects on a fixed point or stick. Protip: if you can’t get past the third level, you probably forgot you can rotate the object with A & D.
I played through all 40 levels of ‘Harmony’ and unlocked the 40 levels of ‘Inferno’—which is fairly similar to ‘Harmony’ but with heavier objects, different shapes, and a faster bonus...
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iAlien vs. Prēdator: Patent Analysis →
Surprisingly thorough and well-written piece from the gadget monkeys at Engadget. They enlisted a real patent attorney to dig up a couple of patents Apple and Palm could use to sue each other for copyright infringement.
No one really wins in a patent dispute—Apple and Palm both hold hundreds of related patents, and infringe on just as many—except their overpaid corporate lawyers.
Expect the...
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Next-generation iPhone clues →
While no specific details of the next-gen iPhone are revealed, the mere fact that the latest firmware already has references to previously unrecorded model ‘iPhone 2,1’—not to mention sightings on ad server logs—is big news.
Macrumors speculates on the possibility of a multi-core CPU/GPU iPhone from Apple’s recent investments in chipmaker Imagination Technologies.
Exciting!
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A gentle introduction to video encoding →
AVI — Also known as “the crappy, obsolete format that just won’t die.” The AVI container format was invented by Microsoft in a simpler time when the fact that computers could play video at all was considered pretty amazing.
Great ongoing series on video encoding.
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My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw and said to me,
“I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly.
I really need you to pay me a compliment.”
So I reply, “Your eyesight’s damn near perfect.”
And that’s when the fight started…
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.
She said, “I want something shiny...
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Revelation
I just found out you can use W A S D to control the camera in Google Maps street view. I feel like I’m in a real-life FPS now.
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World's first 1TB 2.5″ SSD →
Let me get this straight.
You’re telling me… that there’s going to be a 2.5″ SSD—with 60% more capacity than my new Western Digital 640GB Caviar Blue drive (thanks, baby!)—coming out in a few months? My mind = blown.
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“Funeral arrangements have been made for SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAAAY!”
– ‘MachinaDC5’ at Autoblog on a fatal monster truck show accident.
Soo wrong, and I didn’t want to laugh—but this is hilarious.
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“The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in...”
– Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy [via]
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“Good clothes open all doors.”
– Thomas Fuller [via]
On a quotation streak today.
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“331. Be subtle. She sees you.”
– 1001 Rules for My Unborn Son.
Good advice I could’ve used four years ago.
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“If a vagina isn’t used can it heal up and close?”
– Yahoo! Answers [dead link ] [via]
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Welcome to the White House →
Welcome to Web 2.0, whitehouse.gov. [via]
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Designer Toolbox →
A collection of web browser interface elements for design mockups. Lovely!
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Results of 2008 Tumblr Awards →
So the 2008 Tumblr Awards are now over. I didn’t vote like I said I would, but nonetheless, I found several great tumblelogs to follow.
Congratulations to the winners, and better luck next year to all the runner-ups!
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robot-heart:…can we not filter posts anymore? And if you can… how?
I was wondering the same thing. And where are the Queue, Drafts, and Submissions features promised in Tumblr v4?
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Marijuana growing wiki →
I was trying out Tumblr’s new search feature—I wanted to look for posts on Weeds, my new favorite television show—when I discovered Tumblr doesn’t make the distinction between ‘weed’ and ‘Weeds’, which lead to a lot of interesting and wrong results.
One of these results is this marijuana growing wiki! Shelley and I joked about starting our own pot-growing business, modeled after the suburban mom...
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Colicchio launches Friday night All-$10 Menu at... →
Tom Colicchio partners with his executive chef, Damon Wise, on a new menu where all the dishes and drinks are under $10. Called Damon: Frugal Friday, it takes place every Friday night at Colicchio’s Craftbar.
This is very good deal seeing as Craftbar’s usual menu has appetizers more expensive than this.
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sIFR
I’ve been learning about sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), a technique that replaces on-screen text elements with Flash-driven fonts of your choice. Jason Santa Maria’s personal site has some great examples, as does Typophile.
And unlike simply replacing text with images, sIFR allows the benefits of ‘true’ text: selections, copy & paste, and searchable—not to mention on-the-fly...
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Can you guess the movie from just one letter? →
I named 28/46 correctly—pretty much all of the recent films. Combines two of my interests: typography and movies. And quizzes! I love quizzes.
[via]
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We were ballroom partners and poetry classmates
A poem, by her.
From dark brown eyes,
lingering on my shy covered smile,
we are palm to palm, shaking
arm over arm, matching
Lingering on my shy covered smile,
taking tentative light steps,
Arm over arm, matching
Our gazes long uninterrupted
Taking tentative light steps,
slightly raising palms,
our gazes long uninterrupted,
slowly I circle.
Slightly raising palms,
gazes shift...
