2008 Oct 15, 10:47The artist Harriet Russell encodes the destination postal address of her letters with anagrams, crosswords, and other puzzles: "Despite fears of a Royal Mail backlash, Russell found the system more
than willing to play her game. The crossword edition was returned completed with the comment "Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre". Only 10 of the 130 letters posted lost their way through the system,
some held particularly testing anagrams, others were without a postal code."
humor puzzle crossword art mail postal-system harriet-russell book 2008 Oct 13, 2:40Watch out for too good to be true washing services (or free network traffic anonymization): "The laundry would then send out "color coded" special discount tickets, to the effect of "get two loads
for the price of one," etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was
coded. While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle -- every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in
the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue." From the comment section of Schneier on Security on this topic: "Yet another example of how inexpensive, reliable home washers and dryers help
terrorists. When will we learn?"
security history laundromat ira terrorism bomb 2008 Oct 13, 2:35"The robotics community outdid itself once again at DARPA's 2007 Urban Challenge. This contest featured all the challenges of the original Grand Challenge, along with a few new ones: the vehicles
navigated a simulated urban environment and were required to interact with human-driven vehicles while obeying all traffic laws. Six teams successfully completed the course, with Boss, a car
developed at Carnegie Mellon, claiming the prize." Sure, sure but when will they fly?
article robot car science technology transportation ai 2008 Oct 10, 3:35Apparently thanks to the Open House Project, US legislation can now have real and permanent links. I'm kind of surprised that legislation would exist so freely on the Internet without real links. The
Open House Project is "a collaborative effort by government and legislative information experts, congressional staff, non-profit organizers and bloggers to study how the House of Representatives
currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."
internet url link uri politics 2008 Oct 10, 1:43A blog comment included the phrase 'hard-core conlangers' which at first glance sounds dirty, then based on the context I thought it was made up, but of course Wikipedia has the actual answer: "A
conlanger ... is person who invents conlangs (constructed languages)."
language klingon nerd wikipedia conlang 2008 Oct 3, 5:29I thought the disemvowelment of trolls was a pretty funny punishment -- much better than simply removing the comment: "Disemvowelment is - obviously enough - the act of removing the vowels from a
passage of text, as well as a pun on the word 'disembowelling'. A number of blogs and websites do this to offensive text which has been placed in their 'comments' section. ... This site exists
because I couldn't resists the challenge of trying to re-emvowel disemvowelled text. This is a challenging task, as the disemvowelled word 'dg' may well have been 'dog', but also 'dig', 'dug',
'doge', diego' and so on. I have a first cut of this functionality at the re-emvowel link at the side of the page. A more advanced version is in progress."
tool disemvowelment web comment forum troll language 2008 Oct 1, 1:49One of the values in this enum is named 'STGC_DANGEROUSLYCOMMITMERELYTODISKCACHE'. After reading (and re-reading to make sure I word broke correctly) I'm left with the lingering impression that I've
had an extensive conversation with whoever named this variable. Anyway, I thought it was a fun name.
humor software msdn microsoft reference 2008 Sep 30, 12:11"Before he was on The Daily Show, before he was the PC in the Mac commercials, John Hodgman wondered, just like you, about the very special world of famous people. Now he explains why being one of
America's best-known minor celebrities is even better than you imagined"
john-hodgman humor article apple tv fame 2008 Sep 30, 11:05Article on the team that owns the Office spell-checker: 'But, the team asked itself, should "calender" be flagged, or squiggled - have the red squiggly underline that indicates a misspelling? Yes,
because letting it go through as correct "more often masks the really common spelling error that people make for calendar."' I didn't even realize they had written calender rather than calendar in
the article
microsoft office spell-check language 2008 Sep 29, 2:33A short post on the topic of those irritating high fructose corn syrup commericals: 'Really, there's no way that you could make something called "high fructose corn syrup" sound good for you. Which
is why, instead of irritating the public with defensive commercials featuring gross, brightly colored "juice," the Corn Refiners Association should just call "high fructose corn syrup" something more
appealing: like "Deliciosity," or "Yummy Tummy Syrup," or "So You Think You Can Sweeten?" or "Fun Sugar"'
humor onion video corn-syrup corn propaganda tv commercial 2008 Sep 18, 10:31
Netflix has recommended three party movies over my time with Netflix and if you're OK with movies featuring sex, drugs, rock&roll (or techno) as almost the main character then I can recommend
at least The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down.
24 Hour Party People is based on the true story of Tony Wilson, journalist, band manager, and club owner (not all at once)
around the rise of punk and new wave in England. Like many true-story based movies it starts off strong and very interesting but gets very slow at the end like the writers got bored and just
started copying the actual events. Unless you have some interest in the history of music in the 80s in Manchester I don't recommend this movie.
Human Traffic is fun and funny following a group of friends going out for a night of clubbing and partying. I had to get over
seeing John Simm as not The Master from Doctor Who but rather as a partying youth. It felt like it was geared towards viewers who were on
something like the totally odd techno musical interludes with the characters dancing for no apparent reason. Otherwise the movie was good.
The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down is done in the style of an old educational movie on the topic
of clubbing and partying. It sounds like a premise that would get old but they do a good job. While demonstrating drinking and driving they have scientists push a mouse around in a toy convertible.
Enough said. It was funny and I recommend it.
party movie netflix 2008 Sep 18, 10:05Sarah Palin's Yahoo email addresses were hacked. I agree with the commenter: "I was just about to post how I feel bad for her despite disagreeing with most of her politics. There are plenty of
legitimate reasons to attack her (or any politician), but this is clearly personal, not politics. From what I've read, this wasn't even the account she used for those communications she wanted to
hide from subpoena, so the vigilante justice angle is BS. This is just plain mean." Although the last sentence of the following made me laugh: "A good samaritan in the /b/ thread reset the password
account with the intention of handing it over to Palin, a process known on /b/ as "white knighting". This locked everyone else out of the account. The "white knight" posted a screenshot to /b/ of his
pending message to one of Palin's contacts about how to recover the account, but made the critical mistake of not blanking out the new password he set."
security politics hack privacy government legal email yahoo 2008 Sep 16, 4:30Wikimedia Commons' list of 'Valued images'
wiki wikimedia creativecommons copyright photos 2008 Sep 16, 3:57Interview with Ben Adida on RDFa: "...RDFa is ready. It has just been approved by the W3C as a Candidate Recommendation, with the specific text of the specification and a brand new Primer published
on June 20th. Y!: What can I do with RDFa? BA: You can tell the world what various components on your web page mean by marking up things like: The title of a photo Your name and contact information
The license under which you're distributing your latest MP3 The ingredients of a cooking recipe The price of an item A gene on which you recently wrote a paper ... Anything that you want to make more
machine-readable"
rdf microformats yahoo semantic interview ben-adida semanticweb via:felix42 2008 Sep 5, 2:15"Do a commercial, there's a price on your head, everything you say is suspect..." Bill Hicks quotes about actors who do commercials mixed with music laid on top of video of famous actors in cheesy
commericials makes for a surprisingly catchy video. (Lyrics NSFW)
music video humor commercial advertising bill-hicks 2008 Aug 28, 11:15I can't say why this is funny: "First, the really big picture of what Ubiquity is supposed to be all about: It's a step towards a Web where verbs (i.e. functionality, i.e. commands, i.e. services)
are first-class citizens. And that's why I'm thinking it should be renamed from Ubiquity to something like "Mozilla Verbs", maybe."
mozilla firefox ubiquity ui via:ethan_t_hein 2008 Aug 25, 10:13
As noted previously, my page consists of the
aggregation of my various feeds and in working on that code recently it was again brought to my attention that everyone has different ways of representing tag metadata in feeds. I made up a
list of how my various feed sources represent tags and list that data here so that it might help others in the future.
Tag markup from various sources
|
Source
|
Feed Type
|
Tag Markup Scheme
|
One Tag Per Element
|
Tag Scheme URI
|
Human / Machine Names
|
Example Markup
|
|
LiveJournal
|
Atom
|
atom:category
|
yes
|
no
|
no
|
, (source)
|
|
LiveJournal
|
RSS 2.0
|
rss2:category
|
yes
|
no
|
no
|
technical
(soure)
|
|
WordPress
|
RSS 2.0
|
rss2:category
|
yes
|
no
|
no
|
, (source)
|
|
Delicious
|
RSS 1.0
|
dc:subject
|
no
|
no
|
no
|
photosynth photos 3d tool
(source)
|
|
Delicious
|
RSS 2.0
|
rss2:category
|
yes
|
yes
|
no
|
domain="http://delicious.com/SequelGuy/">
hulu
(source)
|
|
Flickr
|
Atom
|
atom:category
|
yes
|
yes
|
no
|
term="seattle"
scheme="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/" />
(source)
|
|
Flickr
|
RSS 2.0
|
media:category
|
no
|
yes
|
no
|
scheme="urn:flickr:tags">
seattle washington baseball mariners
(source)
|
|
YouTube
|
RSS 2.0
|
media:category
|
no
|
no
|
no
|
label="Tags">
bunny rabbit yawn cadbury
(source)
|
|
LibraryThing
|
RSS 2.0
|
No explicit tag metadata.
|
no
|
no
|
no
|
n/a, (source)
|
Tag markup scheme
|
Tag Markup Scheme
|
Notes
|
Example
|
Atom Category
atom:category
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
|
-
category/@term
-
Required category name.
-
category/@scheme
-
Optional IRI id'ing the categorization scheme.
-
category/@label
-
Optional human readable category name.
|
term="catName"
scheme="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme"
label="category name in human readable format"/>
|
RSS 2.0 category
rss2:category
empty namespace
|
-
category/@domain
-
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
-
category/text()
-
Required category name. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions
for the interpretation of categories.
|
domain="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme">
MSFT
|
Yahoo Media RSS Module category
media:category
xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
|
-
category/text()
-
Required category name.
-
category/@domain
-
Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.
|
scheme="http://dmoz.org"
label="Ace Ventura - Pet Detective">
Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ace_Ventura_Series/Ace_Ventura_-_Pet_Detective
|
Dublin Core subject
dc:subject
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
|
-
subject/text()
-
Required category name. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
|
humor
|
Update 2009-9-14: Added WordPress to the Tag Markup table and namespaces to the Tag Markup Scheme table.
feed media delicious technical atom youtube yahoo rss tag 2008 Aug 14, 9:38
I recently finished Braid, the Xbox Live game, and a comparison with Portal is helpful. From a screen shot Braid
looks like a normal 2D platformer, but that's like looking at a screen shot of Portal and saying its a first person shooter. While the scaffolding of the game-play may sort of fall into that
category, the games are actually about exploring the character's ability and solving puzzles. In Portal the ability is bending space and in Braid its bending time. However, whereas in Portal there
is one space bending mechanism, the portal gun, Braid's protagonist explores several different time bending techniques including, most prominently, reversing time, but also time dilation, multiple
time-lines, and other odd things.
Similar to the difference in game-play, while Portal has a strict simplicity to its visual style, Braid is much more ornate, like you're playing in an oil painting. Without seeing video of the game, or playing the demo (which is available for free on Xbox Live) its difficult to convey, but it is quite lovely and the
animation adds quite a bit. Both games too are rather short leaving you just a bit hungry for more and have an interesting plot and an ending that I'd hate to spoil although Braid replaces Portal's
humor with melancholy. If you enjoyed Portal and Twelve Monkeys then I'd recommend Braid.
braid game videogame portal nontechnical 2008 Aug 14, 2:23Lawrence Lessig's video presentation on history of Creative Commons.
lawrence-lessig lessig video legal law cc history copyright 2008 Aug 10, 3:33
Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog is an Internet only show you may have already watched and heard everything about. If you missed this
somehow, its a musical by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) staring Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring super villian who can't get up the courage to talk to his laundromat crush. Its
very funny, fairly geeky, and on the Internet so of course I've enjoyed it thoroughly and have some links to share. It surprised me how many blogs that I don't usually see posting the same things
telling me about it: first on Eric's blog, then The Old New Thing,
and even Penny-Arcade.
Dr. Horrible's again available online via Hulu with commercial interruption.
Check out the official fan site. They link to such things as the owner of Dr. Horrible's house.
He had appeared on Monster House, a reality show about remaking people's homes like Monster Car or Pimp My Ride is about remaking folk's cars, and had his house turned into a evil scientist's lab.
Consequently its a perfect fit for Dr. Horrible and in return the owner appears in one of the final scenes and in the credits as the 'Purple Pimp'. Apparently the purple suit is his. Also on his
blog you can find out what's happened on that big chair that appears in the show. All I'll say about that is, good thing Neil Patrick
Harris wears a lab coat while sitting on it.
At the recent Comic Con some attendees took video of the Dr. Horrible
Comic Con panel (video clips contain spoilers) some of which I've grouped together. Besides the videos containing the creators and stars of the musical who are all hilarious (see Felicia Day's comment on twittering) there's also some excellent bits about a possible second installment and information on the impending DVD. To
finish off this series of Dr. Horrible links check out this Venn Diagram of Felicia Day's work.
dr. horrible doctor horrible humor link roundup
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