I can’t believe this list was written 35 years ago. I mean, I wasn’t even born yet, and every item on that list is still 100% on the money. You don’t expect anything to resist obsolescence for that long in a field like computer science. We’re in a major design phase at work right now, and I think I shall… Read more →
Category: Linkapalooza
Professor Membrane’s Science Roundup
I really love the idea that Titan has seas of sand. It’s so ‘pulp science fiction’. You can totally imagine some John Carter analogue, riding some kind of beast adapted to the thicker atmosphere and lower gravity (not to mention temperature!) across the dunes of Titan’s Sea of Shifting Sands. Yay also for the fact that Titan’s winds are apparently… Read more →
Ultimate x 2
“Say that I was foolish/Say that I was blind/Never say that I got left behind” I saw the nerd apotheosis of Flash animation today: The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Batman! Godzilla! Zombie Lincoln! And then it starts to get really good. When I started to spread the word I found out that this actually circulated a couple of months… Read more →
I am not making this up
Please go read this Reuters article: Fortune-telling judge couldn’t see it coming. There’s something funny in every paragraph. Actually, you know what, I’m going to do a commentary. Here’s the first paragraph. I challenge you to read it aloud with a straight face: A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs… Read more →
Reaction Shots
Laughing: as Christopher Rowe does a 70s-cop-flying-tackle citizen’s arrest of Sentator Bill Frist for possession of Latin. Confused: at why Donna Martin is in a movie called Cthulhu. Why not just call it “Shadow Over Riversmouth”? Sad: upon hearing of the death of John Kenneth Galbraith. Awed: at the size of Stephen Colbert’s balls. Pleased: to see local comic retailer,… Read more →
Some follow-ups…
After the jump, four pointers to things following up on previous posts on praising idleness, smart SF authors, currency wonkery, and unhappy grammar nazis. Read more →
A Wednesday Miscellany
Let’s close some tabs in Firefox, shall we? First, I am just loving this story about the big mafia don’s encryption scheme. We live in a world where essentially uncrackable public key encryption is freely and easily available, and this guy–the “boss of bosses”–is using a substitution cipher that my 20 month old daughter could crack. It’s not the simplest… Read more →
Some Software Links
Three sets of links today to useful software lists. First is the eConsultant.com list of free software that solves common problems. This list is going to be useful to every level of computer user–at least for Windows users. If you can’t find at least a dozen things on here you can use then you aren’t really using your computer (or,… Read more →
A Couple Of Articles I Wish People Above Me In The Org Chart Would Read
I don’t often do job blogging, but these articles are worth pointing out. Let’s start with the latest essay from the always interesting Joel on Software: The Development Abstraction Layer. I’m going to pull a very tiny segement out of this article, and the emphasis here is mine: Your first priority as the manager of a software team is building… Read more →
I Love “Overheard in New York”
How could one not? Put the feed in your aggregator. The Monkey Can Take Care of Himself Guy #1: Hey, where’s Gus? Girl: I dunno, he was smoking a cigarette and I left. Where is Gus? Guy #1: Uh oh. Guy #2: You mean you just left him to die alone? –L train Read more →
Book Notes: Agony Column
OK, time to do some initial clean up on my “To Blog” folder. The first thing on the menu is a set of pointers to Agony Column content, to thin out the “Books” subfolder. I’ve mentioned before that Rick Kleffel might be the reviewer who most constantly lines up with my eclecticism, and looking at my “To Blog” folder I… Read more →
Things to listen to
Not music this time, but a bunch of things you can slap in your MP3 player and use to fill up some dead time. I’m going to assume you know what a podcast is, and have software to harvest them. (I use Doppler.) Let’s start with academics. Professor Courtney Brown, of the Political Science department at Emory University in Georgia… Read more →
She’s totally going to stab you in your sleep!
If you ever go to a house and see those pictures on the wall: do not stay the night. Read more →
An Early Saturday Miscellany
OK, I love this BBC story about some crazy plans the American military have had for “non-lethal” weapons. The US military investigated building a “gay bomb”, which would make enemy soldiers “sexually irresistible” to each other, government papers say. Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath. Any guesses… Read more →
Looking back to 2005
I don’t really feel that sense of the end of something, and of something new beginning that we’re meant to feel at the start of a new year. I haven’t gone through any reflecting, and sizing up of 2005, because I don’t feel that usual sense of demarcation that the holiday season typically generates–I just feel each day as part… Read more →
