This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Old Computer Bowl programs on archive.org. Computer Bowl was a technology trivia program from the late 80s/early 90s that featured Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, Andy Herzfeld, and Esther Dyson as contestants.
Search engines still aren’t that good at Trivial Pursuit.
Getting nostalgic: the Nikon Coolpix 300 was my first digital camera. Eight years later, my phone takes much better photos than this thing does.
It’s nearly impossible not to yawn while watching Emilie’s Don’t Yawn Game. I lasted about twenty seconds before it felt like I was going to pull something if I didn’t yawn.
Daniel Engber, creator of Crying, While Eating, on his experience making contagious media.
It’s not every day that a new form of matter is created. Physicists at MIT have created something called a superfluid, “a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity”.
Depressing article on how much hassle it was for the makers of Mad Hot Ballroom to clear all copyrighted music in the film. “If I had known all that I had to go through, I’m not sure I would have done it.”
Zeldman’s observations about judging the May 1st Reboot. Most of the entries lacked originality, had little content, and even less focus on the user. Sounds like many of the winners of interactive design annuals as well.
Food and Wine magazine’s list of the ten best new chefs in America.
Richard Stallman on the absurdity of software patents. Stallman draws a parallel between software patents and hypothetical literature patterns.
Rejected “grandmother cell” suggestion — that individual neurons respond to single concepts — may be true after all. “For things that you see over and over again, your family, your boyfriend, or celebrities, your brain wires up and fires very specifically to them. These neurons are very, very specific, much more than people think.”
An open letter to the Kansas School Board. “Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
Yesterday afternoon, the Washington Post posted a series of stories in their RSS file for the national news page on Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s death. Here’s a screenshot from Bloglines:
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “speculation swirls around the ailing chief justice” and a retirement announcement may come very soon. The Post’s jumping of the gun on the story (and the timing of the CSM article) may indicate that Rehnquist is closer to death than retirement. Thanks to Steve for the heads up.
Update: The Post has issued a correction.
One of my favorite Dashboard widgets is the Weather widget. It’s been pretty hot and sunny for the last few weeks here in NYC so I’ve been seeing quite a few pictures of my favorite yellow celestial object depicted on the widget. I recently had a chance to sit down with Mr. Sun, a long-time resident of both our solar system and the blogosphere, and I asked him about his Weather widget representations. Here’s a portion of our interview:
Jason: How did the Weather Dashboard widget project come about?
Mr. Sun: Funny story. I’m kicking back, combustin’ some rhymes, and this spacecraft approaches me. I’m about to throw a flare upside its flimsy-ass hull, when I notice it is sending a message out into the heliosphere.The damn thing is in Apple format, and I have Windows - so I have to download a special viewer. I finally decode the thing, and it’s from Steve Jobs about an “insanely great” idea. I vaguely knew about him, because I’d been doing some advance work for Satan on how best to burn Gates for eternity. I’m a special consultant, basically. Anyway, I figured — what the heck? So, that’s how it started. Look, what network are you with again? I don’t recognize you.
Jason: Is this the type of work you want to be doing at this point in
your 4.5 billion year career?
Mr. Sun: Look, I’m not going to radiate sunshine up your you-know-what. I’m struggling. Back in the day, I had a great agent — Nicolaus. Not the brightest guy in the cosmos, but totally devoted to me. He made me feel like I was the center of the universe. I remember I worked with Frank Capra on Our Mr. Sun. Just between you and me, that guy was a little too sunny even for me — ringing bells and angels wings — whatever. Then, there was the “Pee-wee incident” involving an unfortunate choice I made in a public setting. I know it’s no excuse, but I’ve warned you people to wear those glasses. I was in a slump. I started to get mean, sloppy, and pathetic. I wasn’t combusting properly — I had bad gas. So yes, I agreed to lend my likeness to the OS X weather widget. Is it where I want to be right now? No. Is it an honest gig? Yes, I think so. I’ve been thinking about starting a blog anyway; someone needs to let those other Sun Shadys know they are just imitating.
Jason: But do you really need any more exposure? You’ve got the most prime advertising position in the world — 5 or 6 billion people a day can see you by just looking up — what more are you looking for?
Mr. Sun: Eyeballs. Is that all you Internet types ever think about? You want to know who had a lot of eyeballs on him? Mahir. Do you want to be that guy for even one minute? I KISS YOU !!!!! You ask me how I can want more. Let me tell you a story that may help you understand. When I was younger, I watched Daedalus and his son fly just beneath me, soaring out of captivity on wings made of feathers stuck with wax to a flimsy wooden frame. Drunk with freedom, Icarus looked directly at me. I felt the panic of his watchful father, but I was mesmerized by his youthful passion. I met his gaze. He moved toward me and the rest they call myth. I made a vow that day to never stay still. Yes, I am fixed in the sky — but not at my core. The fire that sustains me is fueled by the memory of what it took for Icarus to make his way to me, and the debt I owe for my part in his fall to earth. I can’t repay that debt from 93 million miles away, but sitting on your desktop, I can at least start. I am also told the Internet is basically just one gigantic Porn Delivery Device, and I haven’t had any good jacking material since the Soviets from Mir jettisoned their garbage. Did you ever say where you are from? Was it the Wall Street Journal? I’d love to have one of those stencilled sketches of me.
Jason: The photography in this shoot looks more candid than in past shoots by NASA, ground-based astronomers, or vacationing amateurs. In one photo, it looks like you’re crying and in another you appear to be surrounded by a haze of marijuana smoke. Are we finally seeing the real you?
Mr. Sun: Looks can be very deceiving. In this case, however, they are not. Last year, I cried nonstop for three of your earth months. I cried because I burn anyone who comes close to me. I cried because I shine alone in the blackness of space. I cried because just once, I’d like to feel pretty and I know that will never happen. As for the haze of smoke around me, I am made of gas. If I wasn’t churning gas around, you’d all be as frozen as Ted Williams head, so maybe you should think twice before demoting me from life-sustaining star to orbital stoner. Look, I’ve been around the block a time or two when it comes to humanity. At first, you were fearful of me. Later, you worshipped me as a god. Now, you ask me these cynical questions. Fine, no problem. I’ll be around to see the cycle repeat itself a few thousand more times. I’m just a star, an ordinary star. Deal with it.
Thanks for joining us, Mr. Sun.
AFI’s top 100 movie quotes. Anything missing from the list or something that should be dropped?
Great ongoing collection of old mall photography. Includes shots of Southdale in Edina, MN, the very first mall ever built.
Google is doing an online payment system, but will not be competing with PayPal.
Hillary in 2008?. A poll of more than a hundred political insiders — Republicans and Democrats both — on Hillary Clinton’s chances if she were to run for President in 2008.
Babble obscures conversations in office environments. It takes your phone conversation and makes it sound like the hum of office conversation by layering your voice over itself several times.
I’m going to be on Attack of the Show on G4 TV this afternoon/evening. The show airs live at 7pm ET/4pm PT. So check your local listings and watch me be awkward and make mistakes in real-time (kinda like what I do on kottke.org already).
Update: Well, that wasn’t so bad. The show’s barely been over for 20 minutes and Matt already has a torrent of the segment up on his site. Meg and Lia took pictures. Thanks, guys.
Spin names Radiohead’s OK Computer the best album from the last 20 years.
The trophies for the Contagious Media Showdown were printed on Eyebeam’s 3-D printer. But even better, each trophy had that winning site’s traffic graph printed on it…the trophy for big winner Forget-Me-Not Panties is on the right.
How the black market for stolen credit cards and identities works.
Scientists are opting out of public debates on evolution vs. creationism or intelligent design.
Slideshow of a few of the buildings and such on the World Monuments Fund watch list.
A photoblog that features photography of photographers.
My recent design refresh is already bearing fruit around these parts. Behold the new photo album template, which you can see in the Ireland photos, some recent Paris photos, photos from the High Line, etc. The album pages are the first non-white background pages to make it onto kottke.org in quite awhile, which was part of the reason for the design refresh. I tried the photos on white, but I felt they looked better on a darker background, so I went with that. The photos are also larger than they previously were, up from 600 pixels wide to 720 pixels. The file sizes are also quite large (sorry!)…BetterHTMLExport doesn’t do the best job in compressing jpgs while preserving image quality. Photoshop’s “Save for Web” does a much better job, but that would be a lot more time consuming for me. The search for the perfect solution goes on…
But my favorite part of the albums are the navigation. If you mouseover the right half of the photo, you get an arrow overlaid on the photo that suggests that you can click to move to the next photo (which, of course, you can). Then you can click on the left side of the photo to go back. If you’re using Safari or Firefox or anything but IE really, the arrow images are tranparent png files that blend in with the photo in the background. Fun!
Up next: the photo page needs some help.
Fun new book from O’Reilly’s Hacks series: Astronomy Hacks. “This handy field guide covers the basics of observing, and what you need to know about tweaking, tuning, adjusting, and tricking out a ‘scope.”
Eyebeam is currently accepting proposals for their fall/winter Artist in Residence program. If you get in, I will be within heckling distance of your workspace.
A ridiculously long list of all the Microsoft browser user agent strings.
George Weller was the first foreign reporter to visit Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped. For the first time, these are his reports from there, which at the time were censored by the US military.
Small corrections (from Dave Eggers) to Neal Pollack’s piece in the Times Book Review. Includes a response to the response from Neal.
Eliot’s presentation has some great thoughts about photoblogging and where it’s going. Overproduction, overconsumption, and inappropriate audience participation are some of the pitfalls of photoblogging. This probably goes for regular blogging as well.
We checked out the critically acclaimed Me and You and Everyone We Know (blog) on the opening weekend of the IFC Center here in NYC. The Center occupies the former Waverly Theatre space on 6th Avenue, right across the street from the basketball court on West 4th Street.
The auditorium we were in doesn’t have stadium seating like most newer theaters do, but the sound was great and they’ve got digital projection (which was a little surprising). And they don’t show any commercials before the show starts (and the manager says there never will be), but they did have a film short and one brief preview. However, the butter from the concession stand only comes in two baffling flavors to top your popcorn: rosemary flavor and truffle flavor. We opted for the truffle and quickly wished we’d done without…popcorn that tastes like a side of mushrooms with your chicken breast is pretty yucky. Stick with the basics, gang.
There were also some folks from the projectionists union picketing outside the theater, alleging that the IFC Center was employing non-professional projectionists. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but for our showing last night, the person pressing play on the HD rig in our auditorium seemed to know what they were doing.
Four nuns and a priest from Romania face murder charges after crucifying another nun. I think it was probably all the violent TV and video games they were exposed to.
Ben Wallace, superstardom, selling out, and race in sports. “As racist as it really is, the fact that white people can walk around the Palace in fake black Afro wigs without black folks taking offense is a testament to the power of racial ‘go beyond’ that he has single-handedly generated.”
The Morning News redesigns a bit. It looks a bit fresher, contemporary, and more like what it should look like (if that makes any sense at all).
Socials & More