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, 12:45"First, you started up the application and picked a video clip. The video clip just sat there. As you started clapping, the video clip started playing. If you clapped at about 80 beats per minute,
the video clip played at its normal speed. If you clapped faster, the video clip ran faster. If you clapped slower, the video clip ran slower. If you stopped clapping, the video clip stopped. It was
freaky cool. Totally useless, but freaky cool."
humor clap video raymond-chen filter-graph reference-clock 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 Apr 3, 11:38Har har
humor free paper photo flickr 2009 Apr 1, 12:32Spped Rabbit Pizza's "IE8 Explorer" pizza: 8 slices, 8 ingredients, 8 Euros.
humor pizza ie8 ie france 2009 Apr 1, 10:42Lol at actual Facebook app that does IPv6 over Facebook. "...most network users are not aware of what IPv6 is or are even afraid by IPv6 because it is unknown. On the other hand, Social Networks
(like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) are well-known by users and the usage of those networks is huge... With IPv6 over Social Network (IPoSN): * Every user is a router with at least one loopback
interface; * Every friend or connection between users will be used as a point-to-point link... A working prototype has been developed by the author and is freely available: IPv6 over Facebook Social
Network [IPv6overFacebook]."
humor social network ipv6 ip iposn facebook ietf rfc 2009 Apr 1, 9:54Lol at end of final sentence: "Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality
ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest."
humor google gmail ai email 2009 Apr 1, 9:48"For our latest mission, 30 Improv Everywhere agents found a random funeral in the obituary section of the newspaper and turned it into the best funeral ever... The family, especially the older
couple in the middle, were seriously mourning. They seemed to be focusing on the priest and mostly ignoring us. Still, we had to be as serious as we possibly could. If anyone cracked a smile or
giggled we would completely ruin the funeral for the family."
humor parody video improv-everywhere 2009 Apr 1, 9:32'To help stem the downward spiral of the United States economy Congress has proposed a new dollar symbol. "Updating fonts on the world's computers and devices would be a huge economic stimulus" said
one representative after a late night session of the newly formed House Subcommittee - Font Economic Stimulus Technology Relief (FESTR). "The dollar is a shadow of its former self and the new design
reflects this."'
art design humor font dollar-sign typography government economics 2009 Apr 1, 9:26"Open source code will contain text ads in comments and variable names, and Google and other text ad companies will scan the open source code repositories and fund the projects based on what they
find in the code"
humor opensource advertising code 2009 Apr 1, 9:20"Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter"
humor news twitter journalism newspaper 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 22, 11:40"We're going short and sweet today, with this brilliant interpretation of The Little Red Riding Hood, inspired by Royksopp's Remind Me."
humor visualization animation video graphic design royksopp 2009 Mar 20, 10:10Its IE8 advertising that doesn't make me cringe. On the contrary it has Ask a Ninja, Janeane Garofalo, and several comedians I recall collectively from either 'I Love the [decade]' or 'Best Week
Ever'.
humor video ie8 advertising via:louis 2009 Mar 20, 6:18
IE8, the software I've been working on for some time now, has finally been released at MIX09.
As I mentioned previously, I worked on
accelerators (previously named
Activities) in IE8. Looking at the
kinds of things I blog about on the IE Blog, you might also
correctly guess that I work on the networking stack. Ask me about what else I worked on during IE8 development. The past few months were very busy for me and I'm happy this is finally out.
technical internet explorer ie8 2009 Mar 11, 1:24Penn & Teller's unreleased videogame included a minigame 'Desert Bus': 'The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of
45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.'
desert-bus penn-and-teller videogame humor wikipedia 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 Mar 7, 12:43Photos of printed all-caps hilarious signs attached to posts. Can't ignore the time travel. Or the darning!
via:swannman time-travel humor sign photo 2009 Mar 6, 5:36"The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer
evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch."
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