2009 Jul 6, 2:06"Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pate or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst... Although 72%
of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste... subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food."
humor science statistics food culture research study paper 2009 Jun 1, 3:26Some unbelievable stuff in this video for future Xbox features. And I write 'unbelievable' as in, I find it difficult to believe the 3d motion sensing 'you are the controller' stuff would work as
well as it does in the demo video. The rest of the described features seem practical and sound neat.
blog microsoft video videogames xbox e3 2009 May 31, 8:29"When on a hot summer's day you buy a carbonated beverage to quench your thirst, how do you order it? Do you ask for a soda, a pop or something else? That question lay at the basis of an article in
the Journal of English Linguistics (Soda or Pop?, #24, 1996) and of a map, showing the regional variation in American English of the names given to that type of drink."
map language visualization statistics english culture soda coke for:hellosarah 2009 May 31, 7:52"jeffgrako: HOLLA IF YOUR AT THE #FIRE"
humor video satire culture internet fire college phone 2009 May 29, 2:50
I like the idea of QR codes, encoding URLs and placing them
on real world objects, but the QR codes themselves are kind of ugly. To make them less obvious I thought I could spray QR codes on to an object with an infrared reflective paint and shine infrared
light on the QR codes, since most cameras, for instance the camera in my G1 phone, pick up infrared that our eyes do not.
In my search for infrared paint I've found a seller of IR ink (via programming forum) and an Infrared Paint Recipe (via IR FAQ).
In looking for this paint I've found that it comes up a lot in relation to the military for things like paint markers that are visible at
night with proper equipment, and paint that absorbs IR light to make vehicles less obvious to night vision goggles. Even though the first
reflects infrared light and the second absorbs it websites end up refering to both as infrared paint which made it difficult to search.
Additionally I found links to some other geeky infrared projects:
ir paint technical ir infrared qr qr code 2009 May 13, 11:21Lots of interesting notes on the company culture of Zappos. "Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit Zappos and get a tour and talk with some of their executives, including Tony Hsieh, CEO."
twitter marketing business culture zappos shoes ecommerce 2009 Apr 23, 4:46Some lovely data visualizations. Is their Crimespotting visualization supposed to look like the map interface from GTA3SA? "Since 2001, Stamen has developed a reputation for beautiful and
technologically sophisticated projects in a diverse range of commercial and cultural settings."
blog web art visualization information interactive interface portfolio mashup 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 25, 4:03"...we can look at the contemporary screen virus as a transitional phase - a growing pain, if you will, of the information age. Tiling our environment with screens is an extremely literal, and on top
of that rather unimaginative, way to introduce virtuality into the physical world: simply piling it on where seamless integration was what was wanted."
via:infosthetics visualization information architecture culture design art 2009 Mar 16, 4:23The underwhelming answer to the question of "What are the commonest five-word sequences on the Web?"
languagelog culture internet web research language english 2009 Mar 10, 9:22Justin Frankel (Previously Winamp/Nullsoft guy) makes a designated graffiti box on his garage with the note: "All are welcome to express themselves in the box below. Printing within the above box is
hereby expressly permitted and shall not be considered 'graffiti' in accordance with article #23 of the San Francico Municipal Code." Before graffiti: , And with graffiti:
graffiti cultural-disobediance legal san-francisco nullsoft justin-frankel blog 2009 Jan 20, 2:04"Early this morning in San Francisco, Bush Street was changed to Obama Street along its entire length, from Presidio to Battery."
via:boingboing flickr obama cultural-disobediance streetart street sign photo 2009 Jan 19, 3:18"Perth street art production group Ololo approached the construction manager of an inner-city skyscraper when they heard he hated the grey walls of the recently built Condor Tower five-storey car
park. The three creative friends - Hurben, Shensing and Griv proposed a far more whimsical and creative solution to the bare walls, by allowing the group and their friends to embellish the interior
with street art-inspired murals."
graffiti streetart art cultural-disobediance 2009 Jan 15, 6:02Projecting giant images onto buildings that appear to interact with their surface. Lovely video. "We have posted quite a few times now about using projectors in the city to beam images onto
Architecture and the screengrab above is one from one the best examples we have seen so far."
video graffiti cultural-disobediance art technology projector light 2009 Jan 13, 1:29"A crew of artists (Mr. Tailon, Baveux Prod., Kone & Epoxy) have done up a slick pop music advertisement with a Photoshop makeover. Typical Photoshop windows have been wheatpasted over the faces
of three ubiquitous top 40 music stars."
humor ad advertising streetart street art cultural-disobediance graffiti photoshop 2008 Dec 29, 2:42Some funny stuff in here although I don't think anything's actually for sale.
art design via:thefangmonster humor clothing subversion cultural-disobediance 2008 Nov 24, 8:12Graffiti done with moss.
graffiti ecology art cultural-disobediance moss 2008 Nov 21, 3:52I like the melted ice cream truck. "Our Australian friends 'The Glue Society', a group of artists, designers and projecteers, have created these amazing series of sculptures and films where they've
created chair rainbows on the frozen tundra, a curb-side wrap party, gratuitous nudie pictures for airplanes passing by, a house of crates, and a blow-up doll's vacation paradise."
streetart art prank culture nature photo sculpture ice-cream-truck via:boingboing
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