Links posted in July 2007
July 27, 2007
Some of you may remember the march madness-like tournament of physicists idea kicked around some time ago - well Wired has done a similar thing with gadgets - have a look.
My co-worker has a problem with monitor flicker. Can any of you physicists/generally smart people help? [more inside]
July 26, 2007
10 Real-Life Superheroes - And you thought superheroes existed only in fiction? Inspired by fiction superheroes such as Batman and Superman, these people wear masks and capes in order to fight real crime on the strets. Here's a list with 10 of the most famous real-life superheroes.
July 25, 2007
July 24, 2007
Vannoni, M and Straulino, S. “Low-cost accelerometers for physics experiments.” Eur. J. Phys. 28 (2007) 781-787.
-- Guess where they come from?
July 23, 2007
Launchy, keystroke launcher for windows. Finally you windows people can experience the nirvana that us mac users have found with quicksilver. Quit wasting time drilling through folders and get what you want by just typing a few letters.
Pablo introduced me to Microsoft's newest toy: Photosynth. It could be used, I suppose, to organize your meager photo collection but the more fascinating application occurs when you set it loose on the terabytes of images online. It can create 3D spaces from millions of user photographs and let you navigate among them and seamlessly zoom to incredible detail. Let Microsoft's own hott nrrrds give you a tour (if you have WMP11) or watch the demo from the TED conference.
[more inside]
Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks -- short, sweet, hilarious
July 22, 2007
Behold the next internet meme. Bunnies humping balloons.
The TRUTH About "Belgium" - The New World Order's Belgian Conspiracy
July 21, 2007
Linkdump!
- The difference atween Noir and Hardboiled
- five.sentenc.es - a better solution to email overload than email bankruptcy.
- Checkers is the new Tic-Tac-Toe: a Canadian researcher has solved checkers, reducing it to a lookup table of dominating strategies. Source code available online.
- How glad am I that I switched? Pretty goddamn glad.
- Rice Paddy Art. Yowza.
July 20, 2007
A different kind of Dark Lord. Harry Potter and the Wal-de-Mart. It's Serious, Sirius!
Scarier than a Dalek. I really like the new version of Doctor Who and happened to find what would happen if the TARDIS collided with South Park and the result was posted on youtube.
Why don't we make up more new sports? Specifically, why aren't we playing a rousing game of wiffle hurling?
Take the Trudy's Mexican Martini Challenge, subtract alcohol, add caffeine, and you get Mark Malkoff's Starbucks Challenge. Can one person visit (and consume something) from every Starbucks in Manhattan in a single day? Well, if that person doesn't mind blurry vision and 20 hours of intense wakefulness: YES.
July 19, 2007
July 17, 2007
Since moving to Texas, I've heard many variants of the following expression:
I: "The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass all the time." (attr. Catfish Hunter, Darrel Royal)
"Sun don't shine on the same dog's ass everyday, but, mister you ain't seen a ray of light since you got here." (Hoosiers)
II: "The sun's got to shine on a dog's ass some time. (And the sun's gonna shine in my backdoor someday.)" (on web)
III: "The sun even shines on a dog's ass some days. Anybody can win the lottery. Know what I'm saying?" (White Men Can't Jump)
Which one is canonical? Read inside. [more inside]
Cartoon Network in their infinite wisdom, commissioned a series of new cartoons featuring The WonderTwins. Each is fantastic in its own way, but I prefer this one
I inserted a real superfriends cartoon in there... the insanity level of the parody almost doesn't measure up.
July 16, 2007
A guy picks his top 10 comedy sketches of all time. Several of my personal all-time-greats appear including "Ass Pennies" and "The Pre-Taped Call-In Show".
Any sketches they're missing?
July 15, 2007
July 14, 2007
Some treehouses are for the hardy. And some are for the, um, foolhardy. Any AE tree'ers interested?
July 13, 2007
Some triathlons are for the hardy. And some are for the, um, foolhardy. Any AE tri'ers interested?
Let me just go ahead and triple-dog-dare any of you out there to get the World of Warcraft VISA card. Sadly, it only gives you free game time instead of virtual gold but there you go.
I don't know if I remember these cartoons from my childhood. But you might.
So, I found out something pretty interesting today. Click on the extended link, and view something very interesting that affects those of us that are still dating... [more inside]
July 11, 2007
In 1947, Life Magazine asked popular cartoonists of the day to draw their iconic characters while blindfolded. On the whole, not bad!
Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations. [more inside]
July 10, 2007
*This* is how you stress test an iPhone - skip past the article and watch the video (with touching ending) first.
July 09, 2007
Cartoons based on HTTP Status Codes. [more inside]
Vanity Fair has a great "oral history" of The Simpsons which takes multiple interviews and distills them into a coherent timeline. I had no idea it was so tumultuous in the beginning.
Lunch Minutes for 7/9/2007, prepared as I wait for this 27-page health insurance form to print:
- DNS problems? I use one of these easily memorable DNS server addresses as the fallback DNS server, although I hear the OpenDNS service is much less evil/broken than attempts that have gone before.
- How does a sewing machine work? This animation pretty much clears it up. Also: those handheld simple thingies, awesome as they might look, are actually useless -- so say Beckto and Lulu.
- This program is not insurance. / This program is indemnity insurance / This program is possibly a ripoff.
- What is Creditable Coverage?
What is indemnity insurance?
More once I've filled out the form.
Terrorist Organization Logos - a taxonomy of designs. [via kottke]
"Although this entry focuses on a relatively trivial aspect of terror organizations, it is in no way intended to make light of terrorism. The guns, the blades, the maps of Israel, and other elements in these logos do effectively communicate with painful clarity what some of these groups intend. While my overview of terrorist logos is meant half-seriously as an examination of graphic design in a place we might not think to look, I don’t want to minimize the devastation these groups have wrought.
July 07, 2007
Stellarium is a free planetarium application available for the PC, Mac, and even Linux. This software is awesome if you like to know where stellar objects reside in the sky.
Throw it on your laptop if you ever go sky gazing and it'll give you a view of the sky that's continuously updated in real time so you always know what you're looking at.
July 06, 2007
Michael K. Brandow is an experienced trial lawyer with more than 16 years experience in Illinois Workers' Compensation and employer liability matters. [more inside]
Wow! Russia! - includes entries on Chelsea ("The most famous Russian football club in the world") and Balalayka ("a weird three-stringed three-cornered guitar ... popular among lapti-wearing bears. Balalayka sounds much better than scotch bagpipe") [more inside]
Presidential Candidates by Server OS - 90% of democrats are Linux or FreeBSD; 69% of Republicans are Windows/IIS.
July 05, 2007
The Grantham Collection - The most gruesome medical instruments ever made were designed for abortion. If you or someone you know has abortion instruments such as these, please contact me. Top dollar will be paid for these items. [more inside]
July 02, 2007
The tie-ins for the upcoming Simpsons movie are many and varied but none is probably so interesting as the few 7-11 locations that were made over to look like Apu's Kwik-E-Mart. The nearest to Austin is Dallas but there are some in other places. This photo tour made me hunger for some Buzz Cola and unnaturally pink donuts with sprinkles.