Flushing the link backlog and taking a break.
I've been on an unofficial Weblog hiatus for the past two weeks. And I have decided to declare it official. I will be back on thursday Dec. 5th with new wallpapers, new content, freshness and quite possibly a new job.
In the mean time, I've moved the recent hosted section to top-left so you can keep track of what else is going on around here. And I've written up my entire link back log. It might take you two weeks just to get through it.
Media:
- The Reel Truth (part one, part two) is a dry humored look at getting somewhere in hollywood. [Warning: vulgarities. Via: Boing Boing, and MeFi]
- The music video for the White Stripes' I Fell In Love with a Girl is done entirely in Lego™. Genius.
- More Apple Switch Spoofing: John Stuffins switched to canada, and he's not coming back.
- Red Bull beverage hosts Flugtag events all over the world. Challenging the bright, the stupid and the easily amused to build flying machines and then fall them with style into the nearest body of water. Check out the pictures and the movies from last month's Flugtag at the San Fansisco Bay.
- Jake hits the nail sqarely on the head with “What If Hollywood Made The Lord of the Rings”
- Asterisk* has a new album coming out. You can grab two of the new songs off their MP3.com site. And you can catch up on lead man Kelson Herr’s online journal.
- The (formerly Radio Free) Vestiblues Also have a new Albulm coming out. in which they get spiffy and wear dumb clothes.
- And in case you missed it. Or even if you didn't miss it and want to hear it again. On August 9, NPR's This American Life did an amazing feature about about about inmates at a high security prison doing a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. “Shakespeare may seem an odd match for a group of hardened criminals, but he found that they understand the bard on a level most of us might not. It's a play about murder and its consequences, performed by murderers, living out the consequences.”
Art and Literature:
- Hubcap creatures makes creatures out of hubcaps. Which is very neat indeed. I want this one.
- Akiyoshi’s illusion pages: A Japanese professor explores visual illusions.
- Popcult magazine showcases the decline of western magazine design over the past 60 years.
- Dark Passage is a group that explores abandoned buildings, tunnels and subway passages. Exciting. I've always wanted to do this. Remind me to try to join them if I ever move to New York city.
- The Harry Potter Lexicon Is an amazing resouce on all things Harry Potter. Including the origins of words and names, british/american differences and essays on underlying themes and ideas. Be sure to read the interesting essay on the Changing Image of Grown-Ups in the books.
- The Distributed Proofreaders project “provides a web-based method of easing the proofreading work associated with the creation of Project Gutenberg E-Texts. By breaking the work into individual pages many proofreaders can be working on the same book at the same time. This significantly speeds up the proofreading/E-Text creation process.” So if you have a few spare minutes, help them out.
Tech Toys:
- A company called FingerWorks makes a very interesting style of alternative keyboard with a twist: No keys. The entire surface is a touchpad similar to those used in laptop track pads just touch the pad where the key is and the key press is registered. This allows you to switch between typing and mouseing without moving your hands. These touchpads can also sense all of your fingers, even those that aren't touching. which allows gestural imput. There is a sales rep with a chicago office. I should set up a meeting to try it out.
- Digital Photograpy Review has a press release/spec sheet on Kodak's new 14megapixel wonder camera. [Kodak's 14n Page] Which should be available now with a very competetive price tag of $4,000 (body only).
- The throught of how fast a 14 megapixel camera would tear through memry cards is down right frightening. And the idea of carrying my laptop around on every shoot is not very appealing. Mindstor aims to solve all of these problems. $500 buys you a 30gb handheld device that cand download data from any type of memory card. Very cool.
- Todays Tech toys cost: Keyboard - $300. Camera back - $4,000. Lenses and accessories for camera - $1,500. Mindstor - $500. Total = $6,300. Number of pop cans I need to collect - 63,000. Corrected number of pop cans I need to collect now that I remembered that I don't live in Michigan anymore - ∞.
Miscellany:
- Trepanation. Popularized by Stone age surgeons and modern psycothrillers. Dane Carlson’s Portal will learn you all about drilling holes in your head.
- OozingGoo.com teaches you everything you would ever want to know about building your own Lava Lamps. With sytles ranging from White-Trash to Retro-basic.
- Rob at Cockeyed.com has way too much time one his hands.
- John Perry explores the benefits of structured procrastination and concludes that avoiding your most important tasks drives you to acomplish lesser but equally useful items. Which in turn ensures your place as a productive member of society. (Kind of like working up your entire back log of links instead of sleeping or doing actual work.)
- the Wall Street Journal: “Despite Starbucks Jitters, Most Coffeehouses Thrive” In a suprising reverse of the Wall-Mart principle. Having a coffee franchise move in next door is actually good for the little guy.
If I did this more often. It wouldn't take so long. Goodnight!