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“This guide demonstrates using SSH tunnels and VNC screen-sharing software to use your Mac from any PC over the Internet. It’s fast, secure, cross-platform, and can be done entirely with open source software.” (thx tag)
Christian Marclay will be premiering his new piece, Screen Play, at Eyebeam on Nov 11th. Damn the luck, I’ll be out of town. I loved Marclay’s Video Quartet piece.
Fascinating and disturbing video of a handful of hornets completely annihilating an entire colony of honeybees. (via cyn-c)
Women with higher levels of estrogen judged more attractive than those with lower levels.
This list of famous people who are also secondarily well known says that allegedly (or should that be allegendly?) Charlemagne invented white wine.
Google Desktop 2 is out of beta. This release includes new sidebar panels and support for scriptable plug-ins. No Mac version yet.
Chris Johanesen has a short review of the Eyebeam panel last night. “I’d certainly rather read an insightful and well-written post about sandwiches than an unoriginal, poorly thought out post about politics.” I like that Ebert quote too.
The readers of DJ Magazine picks the top 100 DJs for 2005. Top honors go to Paul van Dyk.
Tom Coates fills us in on the Annotatable Audio project he worked on at the BBC. Basically, you select a timed section of an audio file (music, newscast, etc.) and then you write a little something about it, Wikipedia-style.
Story on Muji, the brandless Japanese retailer that has high brand recognition and customer loyalty. (Say wha?) I’ve got a few Muji things and love them.
Visualization of frequently quoted passages from the Bible. “This visualization is an attempt to understand how people quote the Bible: which parts they choose to quote, & why.” More frequently quoted verses appear in a larger, darker font. (via ia)
Restaurant critic Alison Arnett on how her job works, including how she stays so thin when she eats for a living, her best meal, and the reviewing process.
Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum have proposed some ideas about gravity, extra dimensionality, and string theory that may be testable when the Large Hadron Collider goes online at CERN in 2007.
Beloved DJ John Peel kept a special record box of 142 singles…here’s the list of what was in the box.
Panoramic photo of suburban sprawl near San Ramon, CA. Beautiful and terrifying.
Man makes and then eats a $47 sandwich containing 30,000 calories. It took him 12 hours to eat it. The final product looks absolutely disgusting.
Update: I changed the link because I got reports of it trying to install some kind of scumware on people’s computers. (If you want to risk it or are on a Mac, here’s the original link.)
Transcripts from 42 hours of presentations by Buckminster Fuller. “These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics.” (thx avi)
Beautiful flight pattern visualizations over the US based on data from the FAA. (via ia)
Dooce puts ads on her site to feed her family (she’s supporting them *entirely* by writing her personal web site) and gets an earful of complaint in return. Thought this was particularly insightful about why no subscription fees or donations instead: “By using ads I’m making my livelihood my problem and no one else’s.” I’m not sure if that’s strictly true, but it resonated a lot with me.
New version of Yahoo Maps catches up to Google Maps and does them one or two better. Quite the homage, though. (via df)
Graph of suicides by location off the Golden Gate Bridge. This is a fascinating graph. More overall deaths on the SF half than the Marin half and way more on the bay side. A lot of people walked pretty far before jumping. And lightpost 69…it looks to be about halfway between the towers…lots of symbolism there for the jumpers.
Today was a maintenance day around kottke.org. Some long-overdue backups, upgrading the OS and some applications, cleaning up the desktop, getting rid of some unneeded files on the web server, trimming my newsreader subscriptions, going through my spam, the kind of stuff that gets put off because it just doesn’t sound that fun and you can get by without doing it over the short term. I really don’t mind it so much…there’s a certain satisfaction you get in completing such tasks. The crossing off of todo items from a list, bringing structure to a messy situation, tidying up.
A friend of mine (who I can’t link to because he got cross with me the last time I did) has a theory that most modern sports are about tidying up. Put the ball in the goal, all the balls in the pockets, clear the tennis court of any balls, etc.:
Explaining to [an acquaintance] why I like watching snooker on tv so much (she doesn’t: it’s slow and boring), I realised that snooker is rarely tense, and it’s not enjoyable to watch at all: it’s extremely satisfying, relaxing almost. Snooker is a game where you have to make a big mess at the beginning with the break, and then you’re never going to get them all neat like that again, so it becomes a process of cleaning the balls away into the pockets very very carefully. First you put away the red, then the black, then the red, and, oh, I did that one wrong, so now I have to do the pink, and the red again…
Lots of video games are like that as well. Pac-Man, Katamari Damacy, Dig Dug, Quake, Space Invaders. Chores too, of course. Two chores I find extremely satisfying are bagging groceries and (especially) mowing the lawn. Getting all those different types of products — with their various shapes, sizes, weights, levels of fragility, temperatures — quickly into the least possible number of bags…quite pleasurable. Reminds me a little of Tetris. And mowing the lawn…making all the grass the same height, surrounding the remaining uncut lawn with concentric rectangles of freshly mowed grass. Despite the gigantic blisters I got on both my thumbs last time I cut the grass, I finished with a euphoric giddyness (perhaps akin to a runner’s high) that was simultaneously calming.
Nice overview of what you need to be worried about regarding the bird flu. Right now for your typical non-bird-handling person? Nothing much to worry about.
Surowiecki on the economics of textbooks, i.e. why they cost so damn much. “You can often buy the same textbook abroad for significantly less than it costs in the U.S., so students have learned to buy directly from places like the U.K., and a host of small businesses have sprung up to import books.”
Short Chris Ware interview in the Guardian. When’s he going to cheer up?
Paul Ford and alter-ego Gary Benchley in the NY Times. Paul Ford. Gary Benchley.
Aidan Wasley argues that taken collectively, the six Star Wars films form the greatest postmodern art film ever made. I’ve been waiting for someone to write this article; Lucas’ art film background and interests have always been hinted at but never really examined in that much detail re: Star Wars.
Sony is using DRM on audio CDs (no copying the CD, no iTunes, etc.) to pressure Apple to open up iTunes and the iPod to other formats. This story is so absurd on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.
Information about electrical systems from around the world, including what plugs each country uses. Very handy for travelers.
Responsible spam messages. “Can’t SATISFY your woman? Perhaps the two of you should sit down and discuss the issue.”
Ever seen a crab get sucked into a pipe through a 3mm-wide slit? This is your chance.
Snack has the scoop on which NYC restaurants got how many stars in the new Michelin Guide. Ducasse, Jean-Georges, Le Bernardin, and Per Se got top honors…Daniel and Masa must be a little disappointed with only two stars. (via afb)
M: Do you wanna go get some tea or something?
Me: You guys could go over to Tea and Sympathy.
C: I don’t like that place. They’re not so sympathetic.
Me: Tea and Apathy?
C: No, more like Tea and Antipathy.
Survey: readers in the UK are buying books to look smart. “Some consumers hedge their bets by keeping two titles on the go — one an impressive book to show other people, the other an escapist work to enjoy.”
David Weinberger has some rough notes from a talk that Josh Schachter gave at the Berkman Center.
Examination of how US states brand themselves, focusing on state logos, license plates, and slogans.
In the WSJ, Jason Fry writes about his experiences in starting a weblog about the Mets. If you’re a new blogger, this is a good look at how your first few months might go. “The downside of being a blog writer? Being a blog administrator.”
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