2009 Apr 8, 10:40A good gift for a particular subset of people I know. "Also has commentary from Limoncelli and some other internet gods. Worth many geek points - full of lulz!!"
gift wishlist book ietf reference rfc humor 2009 Apr 7, 5:29"In response to the overwhelming demand for this made-up product, ThinkGeek has posted the following: ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have
decided to TRY and bring this to life."
humor starwars thinkgeek awesome 2009 Apr 7, 11:58
This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of
magnitude less time than
what I spent on the Baroque
Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain
macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late
pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not
exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.
On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated
into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long
out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description
of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.
Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft
horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a
government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.
Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a
different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard
series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in
Bob's universe.
atrocity archives neal stephenson jennifer morgue plato bob howard anathem 2009 Mar 26, 2:24"Yesterday's remix challenge -- to mock the ridiculous new "anti-terrorism" posters the London police have put up that tell you to spy on your neighbors -- was a smashing success. I've collected the
25 or so that came in to date below". I enjoyed: "A bomb won't go off here because people tend to be quite nice really." "Terribly convenient, isn't it? Incriminating evidence left right out where
you'll spot it and call it in..." "A bomb won't go off here because the true likelihood of you being the victim of a terror attack is really very low, especially when compared to other causes of
death or injury."
humor politics poster paranoia security via:boingboing.comments photoshop privacy 2009 Mar 10, 5:15"We built this ... (many people wished we hadn't) ... the Rainbow Vomiting Panda of Awesomeness as an experiment (which used Ling Ling fwiw)." WTF? "It's a stream of, on average, more interesting
photos then you'd generally get from polling Everyone's photos. The quality is pretty good, the best thing to do is watch The Panda for a while and figure out if a) you want to build something with a
live stream of photos b) you can build something more better than a vomiting panda (which lets face it, it pretty hard to top!)."
humor panda flickr reference api photos 2009 Feb 28, 1:55
sequelguy posted a photo:
Why do security guards love Segway's so much?
vegas securityguard nevada segway 2009 Feb 28, 1:54
sequelguy posted a photo:
Penn and Teller's stage before their Las Vegas show
vegas rio nevada pennandteller 2009 Feb 28, 1:53
sequelguy posted a photo:
On the bridge in front of Treasure Island just before the first show of 'Sirens of TI' that day.
vegas friends beer nevada collegefriends 2009 Feb 28, 1:52
sequelguy posted a photo:
street vegas nevada crowd 2009 Feb 27, 1:08The Space Game is like advanced Desktop Tower Defense (and from the same people) and set in space.
game online flash space strategy videogame 2009 Feb 23, 11:04"...the two have designed what they are calling a SmartSwitch, which lets people know how much energy they are using, not through colors, but through tactile feedback."
ecology ui interface hci energy light lightswitch 2009 Feb 4, 4:16From Sorting it all Out wrt the weather gadget in Vista's sidebar, this link to China's laws on weather forecast: "Article 22 The State applies a unified system for the issue of public meteorological
forecast and severe weather warning... No other organizations or individuals may issue to the community such forecast or warning." "Article 25 When the media, including radio, television, newspaper
and telecommunication, issue to the community public meteorological forecast or severe weather warning, they shall use the latest meteorological information provided by a meteorological office...
Part of the revenues from the distribution of meteorological information shall be drawn to support the development of meteorological service." Whether an application is legally allowed to provide a
weather forecast is not an attribute I would have imagined necessary for a localization API.
via:michael-kaplan china law legal politics weather forecast localization 2009 Jan 23, 1:47"When you experiment with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it feels like magic. ... Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it
cost for someone to reveal their face?"
privacy research amazon mechanicalturk internet photo experiment social 2009 Jan 20, 6:01Olly Moss designs posters and things that I see people linking to all over the place on the web. Lots of good stuff, esp. the zombies. Check out his flickr account too.
olly-moss design poster movie art 2009 Jan 16, 2:10A graph showing how many people use the word Khan spelled with varying number of 'A's.
humor via:boingboing graph data startrek khan google 2009 Jan 7, 11:18
sequelguy posted a photo:
germany munich graffiti 2009 Jan 7, 11:17
sequelguy posted a photo:
germany munich christmasmarket 2009 Jan 7, 11:17
sequelguy posted a photo:
germany munich 2009 Jan 7, 11:17
sequelguy posted a photo:
germany munich christmasmarket 2009 Jan 7, 11:16
sequelguy posted a photo:
germany munich
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