I know it when I click it
Posted: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 7:53 AM by Will Femia
I'm suffering a mental block on whether "I know it when I see it" originally referred to art or porn, but in this case I mean art. UPDATE: OK, it was porn (see the comments), but I already published with this title so it's in the RSS feed and everything so I'm staying with it. Maybe I'll get some extra traffic from people looking for porn. The arts community is a little harder to follow with the meme trackers and aggregators I use to write Clicked because there isn't the kind of link exchange that pundit bloggers engage in, but in the past couple of days I seem to have hit upon a rash of artsy links.
Santa as interpreted by the artists contributing to DrawerGeeks.
Speaking of sites collecting artists, Patchbox appears to be a hub of artists. (NOTE: I didn't click anything unsafe for work, but something tells me it's in there if you look hard enough - or if you're unlucky and you click when your boss walks by.) Nice inspiration if you like to draw.
Speaking of art, Spit art - You may have read about it in the Times a couple weeks ago.
Still speaking of art, Stuart (student art) looks like some kind of art student face book. I found an article about it here.
More amazing cut paper art
Fork art - In college I would steal forks from the cafeteria and bend the ends of the tines into loops to make them into hinges for a two-fork bracelet. I never considered attempting anything at this level though.
Since I know someone is going to write in as soon as I post today's entry, I should point out that no list of art links is complete with a mention of Deviant Art.
wood s lot also comes to mind when I think of arts blogs.
The right to bear SLRs - Photobloggers are in fact an aid to homeland security because it's useful to have citizens who actually stop and look at the people objects in public spaces.
"But Patriquin will not see victory in Iraq. He was killed by the same improvised explosive device that killed Maj. Megan McClung of the Marine Corps last Wednesday." Don't skip the Powerpoint slide show.
The Saturday night comedy shows have dueling viral clips:
- Tickle me Emo
- More popular in my surfing: SNL's "A special box" - Vulgar theme but nothing unsafe. I don't really get it, but maybe if I was a Justin Timberlake fan I'd be tickled. UPDATE: A quick casual survey also reveals that the kind of music video being parodied is the real joke here. Not really my genre so I missed it.
ILikeTotallyLoveIt is Digg for stuff. So members post links to stuff and other members vote on whether it's cool or not. Cool stuff rises (theoretically).
Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?
Most dangerous roads in the world - Some familiar shots, but still fun.
10 most dangerous toys of all time. I think I played with half of these. It's a wonder I still have both eyes and all my fingers.
Bad Lingo: Blog-Media Clichés - You mean I have to stop using "Um, ..."? Rats.
Worst album covers - There are a few pages out there with this title, but this is the largest quantity I've ever seen. I don't agree with the Scorpions covers, but some of these are so utterly cringe inducing it's hard to look. NOTE: There's a good chance you'll find an unsafe image in here. Certainly there are some suggestive ones.
Speaking of common headlines, 100 keystroke commands - You can probably Google this title and find a bunch of these pages, but I was impressed by the coincidence of finding this page because a colleague was recently asking how to find Notepad on her machine. I started to tell her to look in her Accessories folder when our IT guy told her Start/run/notepad. That got me wondering if there was a keystroke for "run" for the most efficient possible non-mouse way to open Notepad. He didn't know it but this list does. Windows Button + R opens the run window. My new favorite shortcut.
Craigsnumber generates a temporary telephone number for you. It's meant for your classified listings so you're not bothered after you've already sold your item, but the potential for deception is pretty dazzling.
Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying - Currently the most e-mail story at the Times. When my wife and I first met we did a lot of driving (for her job, I'd tag along) and we'd bring a little book called "The Book of Questions." Nothing too heavy but a fun way to explore each other's values without having to have a "these are my needs" talk. Later we had to attend pre-Cana classes as a requirement for marriage in the Catholic Church. We chose the one-day, all-day crash course in a big church basement with 30 or more other couples. As we looked around the room, some couples were weeping and vulnerable discussing for the first time topics my wife and I had long since explored in the Book of Questions. Anyway, that's what this article reminds me of. (What? This can't be part relationship advice column too?)
How to digitize cassette tapes - I'm pretty sure we've seen other links on this. Basically you plug the line out or headphones jack of the cassette player into your computer's line in or mic jack. The trick has always been what software you're going to use to actually do the recording on your computer. This recommends Audacity (which is free).
52 new species discovered on Borneo Island - You probably saw this already. We had it on the cover of the site for a while, but it was a rant point for me yesterday so I wanted to point it out. They're not new species. They're newly discovered, but it's not like God looked down and said, "Oh, you exterminated the white dolphin? No prob! Here's a deck of new species I'll send to Borneo in a bolt of lightning." Maybe there's some scientifically pedantic explanation that says that nothing is a species until it's named, so it's a new species if there's a new card added to the rolodex, but I think in this day and age it's a misleading headline that will lead some people to think that new species simply rise up from the dirt on a regular basis.
Google map out new course for NASA - Non-dairy space maps coming soon.
Speaking of Google, the new annual Google Zeitgeist is out. It's the year's top searches in a variety of categories.
Second Life explained - This is a lengthy reply to last week's Clay Shirky piece. It's full of stats and explanations and, like Second Life itself, is more than can be digested in one sitting. As I read, it occurred to me that the reason I care about the "is Second Life over-hyped" debate is that I'm loathe to invest a lot of time learning about a place that doesn't actually exist if it's not going to have any consequence in the world that does actually exist. So far, to couch it Letterman terms, I do think it's something. Not quite sparks-from-a-metal-crotch-plate, but still something.
"So this, as it turns out, is where to set the Second Life bar: of the 2,000,000+ registered accounts now, roughly 240,000-300,000 are regular users, residents in both the colloquial and literal sense." I spoke on a panel a little while ago and Second Life came up. Someone asked, "But is it 'mass' in the mass media sense?" I said, "Almost," which is probably an over-cautious assessment if they really have that many regular users - though I'm not sure that's an entirely appropriate metaphor.
Ten Years in Prison for 17-Year-Old Who Had Consensual Oral Sex with 15-Year-Old - Legal analysis. So kid, what you in for?
