• Tuesday

    Insane. I wouldn't even do the gorilla stunt but the tattoo? That's just insane. (That said, at the recent International Tattoo Convention in New York City, one of the most common sights was cover-up work, so maybe this guy is giving himself a mental "out" with the idea that he might do a big sleeve to cover it one day. The part I don't get is that the phone is only $200. Surely that tattoo cost at least that much.

    Steve Martin's business card

    Remember those "literal video" spoof songs that make fun of music videos? The one for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is good.

    This guy is using Twitter to conduct scientific experiments on psychic phenomenon. Basically you try to guess where he is.

    How does anyone plug anything in in Brazil?

    Metro Dig at Tysons Stirs Underground Intrigue - This is basically the opening chapter of a spy novel. Or maybe another Men In Black sequel.

    How to Learn About Everything - Might be best to first read How to Understand Everything (and Why) - This is really about science learning but I do think it has broader parallels. By coincidence I've been thinking about this kind of general learning lately as I've been watching my son learn to speak. He's at a stage where he's nailing down tenses and prepositions and it reminds me of something we saw here a while ago about how to learn a language quickly. (After poking around I figured out I was confusing two different articles but they were by the same guy: Learn any language in an hour and learn any language in three months.) The idea behind the language articles is to learn the general parameters and most common references.
    From those basic parameters it's a matter of building your vocabulary.

    (Metamodern's map of science is also really neat.)

    Latest stunt from the Improv Everywhere folks is a surprise wedding reception for a newly married-at-city-hall couple. This seems like less of a joke than just a really nice thing to do for some people. I smiled through the whole thing. (Their last stunt, the fake funeral, totally suckered me. I didn't see it on April 1st so I didn't think of April Fool's Day when I saw it.)

    If you like tennis... (Actually, in my experience, if you like tennis you won't think this is funny. If you don't like tennis, this reduces tennis to the ridiculous sport you think it is.)

    Bullet Time is wicked hard but also quick to play a bunch of times so it's not much of an investment. I must have played 15 times but still never lived past 30 seconds.

    Damian Walters show reel gymnastics - I never get sick of parkour videos. What does someone do with skills like this? Stunt man is the only occupation I can think of that could make use of this guy's assets. Maybe also circus.

    Seriously cool balancing trick - Also explains why the fork you're eating with at that restaurant is all bent and wonky.

    Google Holodeck: StreetView In 360 Degrees - I remember once playing with a Microsoft map program that gave you a street view and put you in a car or something to kind of drive around. This reminds me of that only room sized.

    The backgrounds of famous Web memes - How many can you name?

    Topsy is a new Twitter based search engine. There are few out there now and I'm woefully behind on researching them. The idea is that the search engine folks are really enthusiastic about the idea of "real time search" and taking advantage of the immediacy inherent in the content people are pumping into Twitter (not just what they're saying but what they're linking to and submitting to Twitpic, etc.). It reminds me of how people thought of Technorati and its ability to gather data quickly from blogs.

    How Long Did It Take for the World to Identify Google as an AltaVista Killer? A pretty fascinating review of how Google came into the public consciousness.

    Scribble maps - draw on a Google map.

    Slate has a (relatively) new photoblog as well. I didn't know Magnum belonged to Slate.

  • My map quest

    While it's not typical for a TV show's Web support to contribute much to the actual on-air content, last week I got to participate in the production of a segment about an effort to plot as much as we know about North Korea on a Google Earth map file. The segment was based on this Wall Street Journal piece but you can download the file directly from the blog of one of the main participants in the project here.

     

    If you aren't able to make Google Earth work for whatever reason* I plotted some of the interesting points on Google Maps as well on this page so you don't have to do quite the amount of hunting I had to do.

  • Thursday

    Tight day today so I'm not sure I'll be able to post a longer list later but a few quick must-shares right now:

    RunPee allows you to look up movies to find out when is a good time to get up and pee and also describes what you'll be missing while you're up.

    Read Infinite Jest this summer! I'm on page 807 so I should be done soon but I'll still probably follow this group just to see what people are saying. Holding the bulk of the book in my left hand as I read instills a feeling akin to the week before graduation day.

    Sorry I'm late - Another one of those shot-from-above stop action films. Cute.

  • Wednesday

    New NY Times photoblog - "The New York Times introduces Lens, a photojournalism blog that intends to present some of the most interesting visual and multimedia reporting: in photographs, videos, audio slide shows and other formats."

    From the above: This scene of everyone rushing in to get their shot is familiar. The few times I've been in a photojournalistic situation with other photographers the energy has been very similar.

    Tweeting too hard - I don't know how this algorythm works but the results are pretty amazingly consistently jerky.

    Have you ever read "This Recording"? I lost/spent a lot of time flipping through it. I'll probably spend even more listening to the mp3s on this list.

    PicFog is a TwitPic search engine. I don't really have an opinion on how well it works (yes, my searches get results) but as a stream of random images it's remarkably watchable. NOTE: Somewhere in here there's bound to be something objectionable. (If you're lucky you'll see it!)

    I'm not sure I have the emotional stamina for this. I'm exhausted just from watching the trailer.

    It's not hard to make your own Rumsfeld briefing cover sheet. They're offering blanks at the bottom there.

    It's pretty exciting to see Google Street View being done with a smaller vehicle. Not only will they get more side streets and alleys and stuff but I bet they can start doing trails and walking paths and other non-roads.

    Danger Mouse: Oh screw it, the music business part is too complicated. Just go download the music for free and buy something else to support us. Here, buy this book.

    I finally read through the FDA's angry letter to Cheerios for making health claims that qualify it as a cholesterol drug (or something like that). I don't see admonition that their claim is false, just that it's not properly reported according to FDA regulations. The whole thing reminds me of those old Guinness ads that used to make all kinds of health claims. Nevermind the old cigarette ads. (Which is not to equate Cheerios, which I eat almost daily with beer and cigarettes. I just mean commercial health claims in general.) ***I'm faced with two choices here: admit my missing comma mistake or begin consuming beer and cigarettes with my Cheerios and deny any mistake was made. Hmmm...

    What does your refrigerator say about you?

    "What lies beneath the surface of New York Harbor? For starters, a 350-foot steamship, 1,600 bars of silver, a freight train, and four-foot-long cement-eating worms." This article mentions the erosion of dirt over the Lincoln Tunnel and the risks that poses. When MSNBC was in NJ and I took the Holland Tunnel to work every (non-inclement) day my most common mental terror vision was of collapse with resulting flood.

    Launching in London today [actually a week ago], the Espresso Book Machine can print any of 500,000 titles while you wait - The wait is 5 minutes. That's pretty close to a morning's podcast/kindle downloads. Can you imagine sending your morning reading to the corner print machine where you pick it up in book form to read on the way to work?

    What it's like to watch a whale go by.

    Did you read the NYTimes Magazine piece by the guy facing foreclosure? I'd generally thought of bailout recipients as people who'd maybe contracted an illness and were wiped out by medical expenses or something. This guy seems to have just flat-out lived a lifestyle he couldn't afford. I admit I had a bit of a teabagger moment after reading it.

    Non-link item: Last week my wife was traveling, leaving my son and I to fend for ourselves. We did well enough but I have new respect for single parents. I was fully occupied from pillow to pillow and even did some sleep-parenting I think.

  • Wednesday

    Bar tending game - This game features the worst side of bar tending, when the order-in machine is suffering ticket incontinence and the customers are stacking up at the bar while your arm hair turns the consistency of sticky steel wool and the ice cubes that fell into your apron pocket are making you wonder if you peed yourself. I only played once and had a riot by the end of the week. And they didn't even add blender drinks! (Thanks Matt)

    Looks like the Wall Street Journal has picked up on Boston.com's Big Picture format.

    Can you find the 12 faces?

    New Slate site for women is called Double X. I don't want to cast aspersions and this is probably only because I see a lot of lesbian sites while working with Maddow's fan base, but this looks like a lesbian site to me. Or maybe it just looks like After Ellen.

    The first tweet from space.

    The Universe in 2009 - Whoa! (and P.S. I think audio navigation is cool.)

    6 Small Things You Can Do When You Lack Discipline - Who, me?

    I've always been a fan of conspiracy theories - not buying into them but appreciating their creativity and the fantasy world they'd require to be true. The other day I got burned by my own hobby when I tried to share the latest AF1 Photo-Op conspiracy theory with a 9/11 Truther sitting next to me at the coffee place. Uh jeeze. He was miles ahead of me, already convinced the fly-over was part of a mass distraction campaign on the day a major automaker declared bankruptcy. Anyway, A Grand Conspiracy Theory From Pakistan.

    The new Times Wire feature from the NYTimes had everyone talking yesterday. It's basically a feed of everything on the site as its publish, updating every minute. This is one of those ideas I would usually write off to media narcissism (like sit-coms about the TV shows). Just because news producers use a news wire doesn't necessarily mean turning a news wire on to the end user is a good idea. At least, that would been my opinion pre-Twitter, which is essentially a user-assembled personal news wire. I wouldn't be surprised if some people had already turned the feeds from the NYTimes into a Twitter Times Wire.

    Twitter porn name game was a trap - In case you missed it, you didn't miss much. It was one of those things where you pair your pet's name and your teacher's name and get your "porn name." Looking at the results yesterday I wondered what would make people want to bother sharing that. What I should have been wondering is how many people were being hacked as a result of sharing that. (I ranted on a similar point to my wife after seeing her complete one of those Facebook "20 things about me" quizzes that came dangerously close to mixing in those kinds of "mother's maiden name" security questions you're not supposed to share with strangers on the computer.)

    Amazon reviews of milk

    Everyone is linking to this report on happiness. Four pages plus video... maybe for the weekend.

    Adding one more: Wilco is streaming their new record on their site.

  • Monday-ish

    Today's links felt a little dry so I held out until something cool came up. Here it is. The only thing I'm trying to figure is how this guy learned to do this the very first time.

    This emergency prop plane landing is pretty cool too.

    NYTimes guide to TV season finales

    Lots of links today pointing to Stweet, a mash-up of Twitter
    and Google Street View. Put in your city and see Tweets superimposed on the
    street view of the tweet's location.

    What those bicycle racing crashes that make you shrug your
    shoulders and cover your face look like from the inside.

    Ten Twitter Mythconceptions - First of all, if you're not making a "tw-" Twitter pun fake
    word, why on earth would you randomly make up a word like mythconceptions?
    Anyway, good list. Regarding #7, Twitter is not a time suck when it comes to
    posting but can be very distracting when you get to following enough good
    people.

    10 Online Photography Magazines We Love - Another winner from the folks at Photojojo

    I'm not sure what to make of the fact that TweetBook got
    clobbered with traffic today. Do that many people want their old tweets turned into
    e-books? I think I'm missing something.

    This person is selling everything they own before a major
    life change. That's fine and we've seen variations of that before. What's cool
    is that the "everything" is cataloged on one long page of thumbnail images. What would everything you own look like spread out down a
    page item by item? I can't tell if this is a lot of stuff for someone to own. I
    think it's actually not very much.

  • Friday

    Holy moly this is amazing! Death Star destroys the Enterprise. That's kind of a spoiler but even if you don't care about either of those things, this is pretty amazing.

    Meanwhile, I don't know what Disney is doing with Star Wars but the posters are really funny.

    I didn't think I cared about photos of famous folk musicians from the '60s but I ended up clicking almost every one of these individually.

    Web growth peaked in 2007 but might be back with a vengeance in 2009 - or it might not be back with a vengeance indicating that this whole Web fad is ending and we can all go back outside to play.

    Whoa, I totally forgot about the "There are four lights!" episode. The torture of Jean-Luc Picard was one of the most powerful of the whole series.

    Obama is Spock: It's quite logical - Do NOT miss that photo.

    The latest wildfire Web meme is a keyboard playing cat. The idea is to attach the cat video to the end of another video so the cat plays the clip's characters off the stage. Here's a tool that will attach the playing cat for you. And here's a collection of them so you can see what I'm talking about. The third one is a pretty good use of the cat I think, but the whole thing is a little hard for me to understand.

    In B flat - All the clips feature people playing in the key of B flat.

  • Wednesday

    Feels like I've been clicking on more slow-motion/time-lapse video lately. This guy does a really helpful job explaining what he did including all of the camera settings. The bottom line is that with storage being so cheap and digital cameras being so accepting of automation and batch photo processing, it's easy to essentially shoot video one frame at a time.

    Speaking of video one frame at a time, check out YooouuuTuuube. I count 36 frames all the way across. I don't know if this corresponds to the actual frames in the video but it does work well in presenting a model for how many frames go into a video scene.

    This is the second "death of RSS" piece I've read this week. It's not so much about RSS itself as it is about using RSS aggregators as a primary way to surf the Web. Early adopters who touted RSS readers as the future have found a new future in Twitter. I admit, I use Twitter more than I use my Google reader and if you're looking for a lesson to draw, it's that the best feature of Twitter is the following, not the tweeting. If you think of your follow list the way you think of your RSS subscriptions list, the whole thing makes a lot more sense than if you think of your Twitter follow list in the same way you think of your Facebook friends list. (It also makes me realize that whoever suggested earlier that I send a tweet when Clicked is updated. Maybe I should make an @Clicked.)

    If you followed the top 100 people on Twitter, this is what it'd look like.

    Rachel tweeted that photo of the kid licking the pig snout that was going around last week. Random story this photo makes think of: NBC is always organizing charity events and other helpful programs and that includes regular blood drives. One year I went outside to the RV "blood mobile" to do my part. The first step is to fill out a brief questionnaire; questions about where you've lived, your general health and whether you had sex with a monkey in the Dominican Republican between 1977 and 1979. I nodded to colleagues who were already being drained into plastic bags or who had moved on to recharging themselves with orange juice and cookies, and stepped into the small office to review my answers with the nurse. What I didn't know was that living in England from 1993 to 1994 put me in some kind of quarantine population for Mad Cow Disease so I was disqualified from giving blood. But now I had to walk past all the colleagues I'd just acknowledged without sitting down next to them. I disembarked from the blood mobile burning with the humiliation that they were surely all thinking I'd given the wrong answer to the Dominican monkey sex question. One day I imagine there will be a blood donor questionnaire asking, "Did you French kiss the snout of a pig in 2009" and that poor kid will be disqualified from blood donation and everyone in the blood mobile will suspect why.

    Horizonless projection maps

    What's the matter with Kansas? trailer - I thought Alex Pelosi's documentary for HBO was well done. Hopefully this is more like that and less like a Michael Moore film.

    Seven Must-Listen This American Life Episodes

    Too much Photoshop? Judge for yourself - This is an interesting variation on the Photoshopped model before/after pictures we often see. In case you're not familiar, RAW format is essentially the original file from your camera. I'm actually torn over these pictures. I agree that the photographers went overboard in how they rendered the images. To me they look like HDR or something. They almost cross the line into photo illustration. That said, I sympathize with the photographers in that what the camera sees is not necessarily what reality looked like when the picture was taken. Furthermore, the power of working with RAW format is that you can deliberately shoot a bad picture knowing that you have a lot more room in post production to make correction. So you might deliberately shoot a dark foreground in order to preserve the colors in the sky, knowing you can later add some fill light to the dark areas. So comparing the final with the RAW file is not really fair.

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