I’m in luck because it would take
I’m in luck because it would take more than 260 cans of Pepsi to ingest enough caffeine to kill me. How much of your favorite beverage can you drink before suffering death by caffeine?
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Entries for August 2005
The Vendy Awards are being given out
The Vendy Awards are being given out to the top street vendors in NYC. They’re currently accepting nominations on the site.
History of the hamburger
Who knew the history of the hambuger was so convoluted? Here’s what we know: somewhere between Kublai Khan and the Big Mac, someone somewhere invented it.
Great interview with Chip Conley, founder of
Great interview with Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, a boutique hotel group based in SF. “All of our employees get to stay in our hotels for free. Anyone who is a salaried employee gets one month paid sabbatical every three years. And we didn’t walk away from it during the downturn.” (via peterme)
Interview with Josh On, creator of They
Interview with Josh On, creator of They Rule. I hadn’t realized he was quite so socialist.
On reading (or not). “Since when did
On reading (or not). “Since when did a regular quota of suitably serious reading matter become obligatory?”
Paul tries to figure out why people
Paul tries to figure out why people review products at Amazon that have already been reviewed by several people. “What motivates someone to submit the 1,282nd review of The Poisonwood Bible to Amazon.com?”
March of the Penguins
This French film[1] is one of those movies that comes along once or twice a year and has Hollywood scratching its head as to why it’s so popular and where the hell did it come from any anyway? Then there’s a scramble to duplicate the success, usually predicated on the idea that the particular subject matter somehow touched a nerve with people, and 9-12 months later, you start seeing things like The Poughkeepsie Witch Project advertised in the Entertainment section of your local newspaper.
March of the Penguins — along with Wedding Crashers, I guess — is the surprise hit of the summer. Like many sleeper hits, there’s something quite unHollywood about it; it wasn’t manufactured to push specific demographic buttons or market tested to within an inch of its life. It’s handmade, crafted, and full of soul. Which isn’t to say that it’s perfect; I thought a little more narration would have filled in some of the gaps…those penguins were so damn interesting, I wanted to hear so much more about them.
[1] MotP just passed Amelie (a better film, IMO) to become the second highest grossing French film in the US. The Fifth Element is still #1.
PBS has put up a companion web
PBS has put up a companion web site to the Nova program on Einstein airing in October. Features include audio clips of several physicists describing e=mc^2 to non-physicists.
Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
Color Code is a “color portrait of
Color Code is a “color portrait of the English language”. It’s a treemap visualization created by assigning over 33,000 words its own color (colors are determined by averaging the colors of images found for each word on the web). If it’s running a little slow on your machine, check out the gallery for some neat examples. By Martin Wattenberg, creator of the grandaddy treemap app, Map of the Market.
Radiohead has a weblog, although it just
Radiohead has a weblog, although it just got going and Thom’s the only person who’s posted to it so far.
Ten ways in which MMORPGs will change
Ten ways in which MMORPGs will change the future. “For now let’s just say it’s the most instantly gripping, involving and demanding entertainment technology ever invented. The addiction rate appears to be about twice that of crack Cocaine.”
The Firefly is a cell phone for
The Firefly is a cell phone for kids. It doesn’t have a keypad, but it’s got dedicated buttons for calling mom and dad and accessing the parentally controlled address book.
A table of gas prices from around
A table of gas prices from around the world. A gallon of gas in Amsterdam is $6.48 while it’s only $0.12 in Venezuela. It’s always so weird to see these types of lists where the US has more in common with Third World and non-democratic countries than with Europe, Japan, etc. (via rw)
Laurie sends along an account of the
Laurie sends along an account of the week she spent in a psych ward. She says she’s “trying to publicize it in order to remove some of the stigma of mental illness”. Reminds me of Heather’s accounts of her psych ward stay last year.
Biologists are beginning to simulate living things
Biologists are beginning to simulate living things by computer, molecule by molecule. They’re starting with E. coli, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
Great influence map of European art and
Great influence map of European art and sculpture (looks largely French), detailing relationships between masters and students as well as collaborations. Reminds me of a Feynman diagram.
You can now post from Microsoft Word
You can now post from Microsoft Word to your Blogger blog. More interesting to me is how former Pyra folks remember this old idea. Matt says it was “something we talked about building back when the blogger api was brand new” and that Anil Dash, then a Blogger enthusiast, knocked up a working prototype (which I also remember). Ev says it’s “a product that I first thought about five years ago”. Both accounts are no doubt accurate, but how they’re remembered is interesting.
Trailer for Shopgirl, based on a book
Trailer for Shopgirl, based on a book by Steve Martin and starring, tada, Steve Martin (and Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman). “I can either hurt now or hurt later…”
Tags and kottke.org
A few months ago, I began tagging my remaindered links with keywords toward some still-unspecified goal. For instance, this recent post about an interview with Ruth Reichl got tagged with “nyc food restaurants ruthreichl books interviews”. As I said, I haven’t figured out what to do with them yet, but the other day I whipped up a little PHP script to see how the kottke.org tagspace was shaping up. Here are a few results:
# of entries tagged: 933
total # of tags: 3960
# of distinct tags: 1376
tags per entry: 4.244
Most popular tags (#):
science (80)
nyc (80)
movies (80)
business (73)
food (68)
photography (62)
funny (57)
books (53)
lists (53)
www (43)
music (43)
weblogs (40)
art (39)
design (34)
restaurants (34)
sports (34)
apple (33)
google (32)
technology (29)
nostalgia (27)
That’s a fairly accurate description of both what the site is about and what I am interested in. Two of my favorite tags are “lists” and “bestof”. Here’s a sampling from each of those tags:
lists:
100 people who are qualified to carry the “Bad Mothafucka” wallet besides Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winfield
Photo essay of the Hubble Telescope’s top ten discoveries
50 Things to Do with Your iPod
Twelve ways to think differently
Pickup Lines Used by Mario [of Mario Bros. fame]
20 things gamers want from the next generation of game consoles
Money Magazine on the 50 smartest things you can do with your money
40 things that only happen in the movies
24 different ways to lace your shoes
bestof:
Is Shaq the greatest NBA player of all time?
Spin names Radiohead’s OK Computer the best album from the last 20 years
BusinessWeek Design Award winners for 2005
BBC Radio 4 poll results for Greatest Philosopher Ever!!
New bookmark: interesting Flickr photos from the last 24 hours, automagically determined
The dream is to go back and tag every single entry on the site — currently ~8700 — but it would take me approximately forever and I’m not sure it’s worth the time and debilitating injuries to my wrists and fingers from all the typing. I’ve thought about a few alternative approaches (and their associated downsides):
- Feed all my URLs into del.icio.us via the API and scrape out the tags most commonly associated with those links and posts. I literally haven’t looked at the API, so I don’t know if this is even possible. Also, I’m not sure I want to trust the del.icio.us community to collaboratively tag my posts and links…there would probably be a significant amount of correction and addition of tags by hand.
- Use Yahoo’s Term Extraction service to build a list of keywords based on an analysis of my posts and the content of the pages I point to within a post or remaindered links. I have no idea how well this would work in practice, especially in returning terms that make good tags. Probably a lot of hand-correction here too.
- Getting my readers (that’s you!) to tag them for me using the list of tags I’ve already used as a guideline. Unfortunately, you should never trust anyone over 30 or anyone who has access to a HTML textarea into which they can type anything they want. Given enough time, I could probably come up with a system that minimizes the damage a particular malcontent could do, but as with the other two options, I’m still left with a fair amount of correction by hand. A bigger problem I have with this option is there’s a lot in it for me (and the site), but I’m not sure there’s any real incentive for any of you to spend 20 minutes tagging kottke.org posts (I believe this chore would be the first entry in the dictionary under “mindless busywork”), so I’d feel weird about asking.
- Some combination of the above approaches.
So yeah, that’s where I am with the tagging.
How did a site dealing with digital
How did a site dealing with digital video codecs become the place for lonely people to go on the web? Moviecodec.com is still the second result for the “i am lonely” search on Google; here’s the thread in question.
I thought this was going to be
I thought this was going to be some sort of Flickr/del.icio.us taggy tag mashup, but Flickrlicio.us is a bunch of hot babes found on Flickr. An anonymous reader: other Flickr + hot chicks sites include FlickrBooty, chicksnbreasts, and flickrchicks. NSFW. And where are the Flickr beefcake sites?
Trailer for 10 mph, the Segway across America movie.
Trailer for 10 mph, the Segway across America movie.
According to a cocktail waitress, how tipping
According to a cocktail waitress, how tipping works in NYC bars is a little different than in restaurants. Tourists, particularly foreign ones, tip poorly, if at all, causing some wait staff to pad bar bills to get their tip that way. Another data point in the “is tipping good/bad?” debate, but I could have done without the sense of entitlement on the part of the author. (via tmn)
Tips on how small bookstores can compete
Tips on how small bookstores can compete with larger booksellers like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
flickrTagFight pits tag against tag in a
flickrTagFight pits tag against tag in a folksonomic battle to the death. fTF has already started a conflict in my household…results of the kottke(145)/megnut(34) tag smackdown are being hotly disputed.
A timeline of splash screen graphics for
A timeline of splash screen graphics for Adobe Photoshop. I didn’t know that Photoshop was developed outside of Adobe and then licensed later. (thx mark)
Positive review of Flock, a new Mozilla-based
Positive review of Flock, a new Mozilla-based browser with drag and drop blogging and Flickring built in.
Andrew Hearst dreams up some magazines covers
Andrew Hearst dreams up some magazines covers done in the style of George Lois, who created several memorable covers for Esquire magazine in the 60s and 70s.
Ten precepts from The Art of War
Ten precepts from The Art of War that never made it past Sun Tzu’s editor. Ex: “When you sally forth to meet the enemy, show your contempt for him by the haughtiness of your prance”.
When Terry Gilliam checked out of a
When Terry Gilliam checked out of a NYC hotel a few minutes late, they charged him for a whole extra day. To get back at the hotel and do a good deed, he tried to find a homeless person to stay in his stead but couldn’t locate one. (via gf)
Jeff Ma, who was a key member
Jeff Ma, who was a key member of the infamous MIT blackjack team, notes the turn around of the Oakland A’s and the reversal of criticism directed toward GM Billy Beane. Even Steven Levitt, who thinks not too highly of Moneyball, has conceded that maybe Beane and the A’s are onto something.
Spirals on nanoparticles show order, specifically our
Spirals on nanoparticles show order, specifically our friend the Fibonacci sequence, which can be seen in places like seashells and plants. In the case of the nanoparticles, the Fibonacci pattern results from minimizing the stress energy in the system.
Can we out-collaborate a pandemic? Alex Steffen
Can we out-collaborate a pandemic? Alex Steffen challenges the blogosphere to sound the alarm about the avian flu. The WHO says: “never before [has] any avian influenza virus caused such extremely high fatality in humans”.
More on the question of tipping in
More on the question of tipping in restaurants: Danny Meyer cautions Thomas Keller against abolishing tipping while stats show that neither customers nor waiters want the practice to end.
Odd size comparison of Yahoo and Google
Odd size comparison of Yahoo and Google indices. I think their assumption (that a “series of random searches to both search engines should return more than twice as many results from Yahoo! than Google”) is pretty flawed. The number of returned results could vary because of the sites’ different optimizations for dictionary words, for searches with small result sets, and differences in how their search algorithms include or exclude relevant results. Put it this way: if I’m looking for a frying pan in my apartment, I’m gonna refine my search to the kitchen and not worry about the rest of the house, no matter how large it is. (via /.)
When bent, why does dry spaghetti break
When bent, why does dry spaghetti break into three or more pieces instead of two? This was one of the simple problems Richard Feynman amused himself with but never solved. Someone’s come up with the answer: when the first breakage occurs, it causes a local increase in the curvature of the two pieces, resulting in more breakage. (thx dj)
Amazon Associates $10 cap removed
Sometime in the last 6-9 months (it’s been that long since I last looked at my account), Amazon changed their policy on placing an upper limit on the amount an associate can earn on big ticket items:
Only personal computers (both desktops and laptops) have referral fees capped at $25. No other product lines have their referral fees capped.
Previously, the most you could earn if a referral was $10, even if the item cost $3000 and the referral rate was 5%. Sometime in the last month and a half, someone used my associates code to purchase a printer for close to $600 and gave me $28 for “selling” that printer for them. I don’t link to Amazon as much as I used to (my referrals and revenue have been flat several quarters despite increasing site traffic), but the associates must be pretty happy with this change, particularly those that can move big ticket items on a regular basis. For the right blog or site, the revenue generated by putting up Amazon ads featuring more expensive items might compare favorably to using AdSense or the like.
So, if you’ve been waiting to buy that Segway, a book on Bhutan, a 65” plasma TV, or a 5-carat diamond, you know what to do. *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*
An interview with Ruth Reichl, currently the
An interview with Ruth Reichl, currently the editor of Gourmet, on Garlic and Sapphires, a book about her experiences as a NY Times restaurant critic. (via meg)
Explaining what a scientist is using Goofus
Explaining what a scientist is using Goofus and Gallant as an example. Goofus and Gallant have also been pressed into service to explain 21st century etiquette, politics, and journalism.
Barcode tattoos + mobile phones with cameras = business
Barcode tattoos + mobile phones with cameras = business card (or, say, a list of your sexual preferences) on your arm.
Modelling nuclear decay in atoms may tell
Modelling nuclear decay in atoms may tell us something about dating and relationships. One of the findings: people who date often are beneficial to the dating ecosystem “because they break up weak couples, forcing their victims to find better relationships”.
Among Roger Ebert’s most hated films are
Among Roger Ebert’s most hated films are Catwoman, Baby Geniuses, Battlefield Earth, and The Usual Suspects(?!?). About North, he says: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie.”
Today’s helpful feature: how to tell if
Today’s helpful feature: how to tell if you didn’t get invited to the exclusive Foo Camp soiree. One method: see it referenced in a blog post and realize that it’s in 4 days and there’s no way your invite is still forthcoming.
A short history of traffic and traffic management.
A short history of traffic and traffic management.
A little less conversation and a little more philosophical voyeurism
Jeremy Heigh makes an interesting observation about a recent thread on kottke.org, which I think applies broadly across the blogosphere:
…we were trying to understand how to better leverage all the great, individual thinking being done on blogs because what Kottke hosted wasn’t a conversation at all. It was nearly 80 people carrying on their own conversations with themselves while others watched. That’s not a conversation — that’s philosophical voyeurism spiced with a hint of insanity.
I think choice of topic, the way in which the question is posed, and the pace of the commenting[1] has a lot to do with it. Despite the large number of comments, there are some threads on kottke.org which have been more conversational in nature and from what I hear, there’s still the occasional MetaFilter thread that’s worth reading for the conversation. But as Jeremy notes, there’s still a ton of chaff out there obscuring the wheat.
[1] Sometimes I’ll get 30 responses to a post in the first hour…that’s one every two minutes. That can be a velocity and volume not conducive to conversation.
A list of the NBA’s most overrated
A list of the NBA’s most overrated players, including Karl Malone, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing. (via truehoop)
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