Love
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Cool!, Links
Too incredibly brilliant not to share: http://batteriesfeelincluded.blogspot.com/2009/05/309.html
Who Watches the Watchman?
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Cool!, Links
Fascinating piece of technology that I’d never heard of: the watchclock. For fun, read the first part of the article, which describes the scenario and use-case, then try to design a solution before you read further.
Who Watches the Watchman? (via Daring Fireball)
Tags: technology
Science is Fun!
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Cool!
Great xkcd today about what gets kids interested in science.
Experimental Firefox Extensions No Longer Require Login
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Cool!, Links
It’s about freakin’ time. I was so sick of having to use BugMeNot just to download extensions…
Experimental Firefox Extensions No Longer Require Login [via Lifehacker]
Tags: extensions, firefox
Lessons from a Street Performer
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
Should you ever find yourself watching a street performer’s act, and you end up volunteering, either willingly or unwillingly, to be a part of said act, here’s a piece of advice: don’t run away when the performer’s not looking. If you do, you might find out later that you’re missing something that might be important to you. This is what happened to Emily, a rather skittish young German woman who happens to be visiting Brisbane this week, and is now missing her watch.
While I was walking back to the Kookaburra this afternoon, I passed through the Queen Street Mall and stopped to view a street magician. Shortly after I started watching, he approached a girl in the audience to act as his second "assistant." The girl didn’t look particularly happy to have been chosen, but rather than protest she joined the performer in front of the audience. Soon she was introduced s Emily from Germany, to much enthusiastic adulation from the crowd.
The performer continued on with his act, which primarily involved his first assistant, another young woman named Charlie. While he turned to face Charlie and continued on, Emily turned and left, running swiftly into the swelling crowd at the mall. It took a few seconds for both the audience and the performer to figure out what was happening. The crowd started laughing at her departure, but the performer yelled after her, "Wait! You’re missing something!" With that, he pulled a hand watch from his pocket and waved it above his head. Alas, Emily ran on, and was soon lost in the crowd. The performer looked a bit baffled, jokingly offered the watch to anyone who would buy it, then continued on with his act (with a new second assistant).
My first thought was that Emily was in on it, but after the act a few people approached the performer and asked if it was scripted. He explained that it wasn’t. He had removed her watch surreptitiously as part of his act and was planning to reveal it to her later on. His intention was by no means to steal her watch, but when she ran off so unexpectedly he didn’t know what to do.
So people, if you wind up in a street performer’s act, please just be good-natured about it and participate. It’s really not that hard.
Pidgin
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
Imagine my surprise when I was browsing my feeds at Google Reader today to see the word "Pidgin" in my feeds. And in a Lifehacker post, no less! To understand why I would be surprised, you have to remember that I grew up in Papua New Guinea, where a trade language called Neo-Melanesian Pidgin (Tok Pisin in the vernacular) is spoken by roughly 4 million people there. It is commonly referred to as just "pidgin" by people that live in PNG.
In reality, pidgin is a generic linguistic term that refers to a language that develops as a means to facilitate trade in areas where many different languages are spoken by small people groups. Since ~850 languages are spoken in PNG, it makes some sense that a pidgin would be born to facilitate trade and communication. Neo-Melanesian pidgin is based on English and German. One of the defining characteristics of pidgins is that they are typically just a lingua franca, and not spoken as a first language by any people group. Pidgins sometimes develop into creoles, which means that they then become more full-fledged languages, because people learn to speak them as their first (and sometimes only) language. This is the case with Haitian Creole (originally a French Pidgin, now a French Creole).
Anyhow, the Pidgin Lifehacker was talking about is an IM client, much like Trillian. Not quite what I was expecting, but given what a pidgin is, the name is fitting. :-)
Pidgin 2.0 Beta 7 [via Lifehacker]
Acrobat Reader 8 Sucks Less
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
I upgraded to Acrobat Reader 8 last night because frankly, I figured it couldn’t get any crappier than 7. I was right. In fact, it got a bit better. The Yahoo toolbar and advertising bar across the top seem to be gone. The interface is simpler, too. It still has automatic updating on by default, of course, which I immediately turned off just in case the update feature sucks as much as it did in 7.
So it’s getting better. But even without Photoshop Album Starter Edition, which it tries to bundle with the download by default (freakin’ annoying, by the way), it’s still 20.8 MB. My goodness, that’s bloated…
GMail and Farting
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
I was having an email conversation with a bunch of guys back in Chicago today, since I am going back there this weekend. As I was in GMail reading one of the replies, I noticed these sponsored links right next to the thread:
The thread had absolutely nothing to do with farting (nobody had even mentioned the word as far as I can tell)! Anyway, we all got a good laugh out of it. Several of the other guys on the thread were seeing the same links next to the thread in their GMail accounts, so it wasn’t isolated to me. I really wonder what part of the algorithm tied our conversation to those links…
Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats – HO!!!
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
I have gotten into a pretty nostalgic mood the last few years. I’ve started re-watching a lot of the old cartoons I used to watch on static-ridden PAL tapes when I was a kid. One of my all-time favorite shows was Thundercats, and it seems that you can finally get the first season on DVD. All I can say is, "It’s about time!" And with my new job, I might even be able to afford them! :-)
I Have No Friends
Posted by | Filed under Cool!
 |
Netflix has this (relatively) new Friends feature. When I went there the other day, it kindly reminded me, with a happy-looking purple box that I have no friends yet. Totally brightened my day. It would have been worse, but at least there was a link there where I could get a friend if I needed one. Too bad life’s not that easy. Anyway, add me to your friends’ list if you have Netflix.
Lest some of you get the wrong idea… All of the above is mostly sarcastic. I have lots of friends. I just thought the fact that Netflix would blatantly say "No friends yet" on their website was funny. |
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