Off-Topic

Using brain waves to levitate ping pong balls. from WaPo, via...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:51:52 -0700

Using brain waves to levitate ping pong balls. from WaPo, via Mike Industries

HardTimes :: Art Hour (via zefrank)

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:02:19 -0700

HardTimes :: Art Hour (via zefrank)

Very late, very funny reaction to Kris Allen winning American...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:00:00 -0700

Very late, very funny reaction to Kris Allen winning American Idol. (thx, Whitta)

"There are several varieties of this kind of innovation, and they go by different technical names...."

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:15:46 -0700

“There are several varieties of this kind of innovation, and they go by different technical names. MIT professor Eric von Hippel calls one “end-user innovation,” in which consumers actively modify a product to adapt it to their needs. In its short life, Twitter has been a hothouse of end-user innovation: the hashtag; searching; its 11,000 third-party applications; all those creative new uses of Twitter — some of them banal, some of them spam and some of them sublime. Think about the community invention of the @ reply. It took a service that was essentially a series of isolated microbroadcasts, each individual tweet an island, and turned Twitter into a truly conversational medium. All of these adoptions create new kinds of value in the wider economy, and none of them actually originated at Twitter HQ. You don’t need patents or Ph.D.s to build on this kind of platform.”

- Steven Johnson from How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live (TIME)

jQuery Tools

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:15:00 -0700

jQuery Tools:

davidkaneda:

A UI library for jQuery with tabs, tooltips, expose, overlay, scrollable, and flashembed — all under 6Kb. From the homepage:

Let’s face it: do you really need drag-and-drop, resizables, selectables or sortable tables in your web applications? Websites are not desktop applications. They are different.

How to Start a Dance Party (via ze frank)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:53:46 -0700

How to Start a Dance Party (via ze frank)

The plot-obstacles to an Alien prequel

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:18:35 -0700

The plot-obstacles to an Alien prequel:

Den of Geek looks at why the proposed prequel(s) are difficult to fit into canon. I’ll give them lots of credit for detailed analysis…

…but they’re wrong. Or at least, they’re overthinking it.

H.R. Giger’s drawings aren’t canon. Art direction isn’t cannon. Events are canon.

So whether the space jockey is fused to the chair or part of the chair, the relationship whatever it was and the eggs can go a dozen different ways.

As far as Weyland-Yutani’s involvement, there’s nothing in canon which establishes they’re the only company around.

I’m not saying an Alien prequel is a good idea. At all. But as the kind of guy who writes these movies, the biggest challenge will be making it great, not making it fit canon.

"Yet, when we buy something for a very low price, we are conditioned to see it as expendable. What..."

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:47:36 -0700

“Yet, when we buy something for a very low price, we are conditioned to see it as expendable. What costs a dollar these days? Hardly anything. A cup of coffee. A pack of sticky notes. A Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. A lottery ticket. Stuff we use up and discard.”

- Persuasive Games: I Want My 99¢ Back

Readernaut

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:28:10 -0700

Readernaut: Book website with a really nice design.

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version (via...

Fri, 29 May 2009 15:59:23 -0700

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version (via dascottjr)

Jaime Sommers in motion. I’d forgotten how much it was...

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:54:56 -0700

Jaime Sommers in motion. I’d forgotten how much it was about the hair. In the few shots where it’s tied back or otherwise not free-flowing, the effect is lost. (via bbgun1967)

pygmy jerboa. apparently an actual living thing. (via BeBe)

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:37:50 -0700

pygmy jerboa. apparently an actual living thing. (via BeBe)

RegExr: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:19:11 -0700

RegExr: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool: Useful. (Thx @davidkaneda)

Amelia Bedelia, 1963

Sun, 24 May 2009 18:58:09 -0700

Amelia Bedelia, 1963

Dear Internet, Please help me find this table. What’s...

Thu, 21 May 2009 15:32:00 -0700

Dear Internet,

Please help me find this table.

What’s awesome about it is that the four three-legged chairs slide in to nest with the table itself.

I saw the original in the apartment at a theatre in New York City. Can’t find the manufacturer.

Update: It’s a Han Olsen Dining Table. The Twitterfolks found it for me about 30 seconds after posting the request.

"Drake’s graduation day started with a nightmare scenario as Glenn Koenen, whose daughter Cassaundra..."

Thu, 21 May 2009 07:47:03 -0700

“

Drake’s graduation day started with a nightmare scenario as Glenn Koenen, whose daughter Cassaundra was set to receive her sheepskin, suffered a heart attack while waiting for the ceremony. According to the Des Moines Register, an ER nurse attending to see her niece graduate, a doctor and two Drake staffers sprang into action and restarted Glenn’s heart with a defibrillator. And while that kind of life-saving heroism is commendable, what happened next is perhaps even more remarkable.

As Cassaundra sat beside his hospital bed, Glenn rued that he’d ruined her graduation day. A nurse contacted the college to see what they could do. What they did exceeded anyone’s expectations: Drake’s college president and other administrators came straight to the hospital room to present Cassaundra with her diploma in front of her dad.

”

- drake walks the walk, gets A+ from Inside Tim’s Head

10 Great Free Fonts for @font-face embedding

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:35:07 -0700

10 Great Free Fonts for @font-face embedding: via SimpleBits.

Video: iRobot Rolls Out One-Pound Machine, Ready to Swarm

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:28:23 -0700

Video: iRobot Rolls Out One-Pound Machine, Ready to Swarm:

via Wired. I like how it’s kind of designed to fall and fail, with flippers to get it going right.

Also, if you’re going to make a product video like this, pick some better music.

Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds: Behind the Scenes of The...

Tue, 19 May 2009 07:58:32 -0700

Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds: Behind the Scenes of The Proposal.

Trailer for The Road

Thu, 14 May 2009 16:54:14 -0700

Trailer for The Road: The Remnants was funnier.