Archive for the 'Linkapalooza' Category

Wallowing in Links

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Yes, it’s time again for an original-content free collection of pointers to things that amuse, interest, or frighten me.

I believe I have to mention the opening of Knol, Google’s attempt to take on Wikipedia with “authoritative articles” that have specific owners, rather than the anonymous wisdom of crowds. I admit, I have no idea how [...]

Important Lessons For Life

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Just because yours is smaller doesn’t make you less of a man. Unless we’re talking about your brain.

Urban Camouflage

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

This could easily have been the last item in that last link post, but I felt it was gloriously bizarre enough to merit a post all its own:
Man found in WI basement covered in BBQ sauce

APPLETON, Wisc. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A couple telephoned police in the middle of the night after finding a man in [...]

Things on the net that please me

Friday, July 4th, 2008

The story about the classic “car on the roof” trick at Cambridge–my favourite bits are how they used skirt-hitching distractions, and the bit about the case of champagne the Dean sent.
Dawn Tyler Watson & Paul Deslauriers performing Led Zeppelin’s classic Going To California. Make sure to click the “watch in high quality” link.
There’s a new [...]

Twelve Million…

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

It’s been a crazy week at work, which is eating a lot into my personal time, but I don’t really write about the job here.
That being said, apparently going to the weekly poker game with a lot of repressed anger fills in nicely for the “killer instinct” my poker play is usually lacking–since I dodecupled [...]

QOTD: Dorian on Wanted

Monday, June 30th, 2008

(postmodernbarney.com)
You see, there are dumb action movies, and then there are films that are so fundamentally insulting to your intelligence and so massively ill-conceived in theme and structure that you find yourself idly wondering just how good the blow was that the studio executives who green lit the film had to have been snorting.

Shadow Unit & Cool Web Tools

Friday, June 27th, 2008

You may recall that I’ve strongly encouraged people reading this to check out the Shadow Unit project on several previous occasions.
Well, the first “season” of Shadow Unit has been over for a while now, I want to take a few minutes to re-encourage you to check it out. The work got stronger throughout the season–in [...]

Cool Web Tool: The Awesome Highlighter.

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

That’s its name. Not that I don’t think it is awesome–I actually kind of do–but I think it’s even funnier that they called it “The Awesome Highlighter“.
And it does just what you think, based on the name: you give it an URL, then you highlight parts of the page, and you get a link to [...]

Chris Jordan On TED

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

I’m still loving almost every one of the TED Talks, but every now and then one pops up and really grabs me by the collar.
Here’s the one that really hit me this week.
This is a presentation by photographer Chris Jordan, where he presents some of the images from his exhibition, Running The Numbers. (At the [...]

Canada’s Most Ridiculous News Story This Week…

Friday, June 20th, 2008

…is here
The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they’d received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.
How did [...]

The tabs, they must be closed.

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

You know the drill–some things that I found worthy of some comment:

I quite liked Julie Rehmeyer’s short piece on the math scholars who accidentally solved an astrophysics problem. It’s got all the good stuff: pure math, astrophysics (come on, “gravity lensing” just sounds cool, even without any context), serendipity, and above all a good science [...]

Special Effects courtesy of “physics”.

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

..and here, ladies and gentlemen, you see the sky over Sayre’s “lightning farm” as Orannis the Destroyer is freed from his bindings.
OK, maybe not, although that’s pretty much exactly how I pictured that in my head.
What you’re actually looking at there is the sky over the Chaiten Volcano in Chile. No photoshoppery, the image is [...]

Doubly Entertaining: Telectroscope

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Have you seen the Telectroscope?
Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through [...]

Their great chicken-bone and moonshine empire will rise again

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

I know you’re already seen this, but it’s just too good to let go by.

My favourite bit references the hobo signs stuff we were looking at earlier this month:
And they devised a secret language of signs and scrawls used to alert their passing brethren to danger or opportunity. A crucifix chalked on the side of [...]

Y.A.L.P.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

I had a definite plan this morning to do a little geohashing and see who showed up at the local meeting. Too bad the algorithm would have put me in the Atlantic Ocean off the South Shore. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be on land–easy enough to calculate with the online reference implementation.
Actually, if I had access [...]