Monday, November 30, 2009

Crowdsourcing Comedy on Amazon Reviews - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

Crowdsourcing Comedy on Amazon Reviews

A screen shot of the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk, as sold on Amazon.com. A screen shot of the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk, as sold on Amazon.com.

Every now and then, something for sale on Amazon.com seems so monumentally stupid that it inspires a spontaneous community comedy festival. One person after another leaves phony reviews, each more heartfelt and over-the-top than last, sardonically praising the Amazon item for its astonishing, life-changing abilities. Perfect strangers, entertaining each other in the comments, laughing their heads off—until Amazon gets wind of the stunt and shuts it down.

top of my list for xmas

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Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense: Scientific American

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Macs Take the Top Three Spots for "Most Wished For" on Amazon | Mac|Life

Macs Take the Top Three Spots for "Most Wished For" on Amazon
Posted 11/30/2009 at 11:32:53am | by Andrew Villa

ain't it the truth

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I don't look so Mini...

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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Fall has fell

At my house the leaves drop all at once, just like the whomping tree in Harry Potter.

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Michael A Clasen
Filemaker/Lasso
FBA Associate
http://www.mclasen.com
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muppets are queen of the world

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Thursday, November 26, 2009

Beautiful transparent sea-cucumber from the ocean depths - Boing Boing

Beautiful transparent sea-cucumber from the ocean depths


Have a gander at this magnificent transparent sea cucumber, found in the sunless ocean depths by the Census of Marine Life and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

mmmmm cucumbers...wait

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Friday, November 20, 2009

Comic on the joy of online reading - Boing Boing

Comic on the joy of online reading


Lucy Knisley's comic "Downloading Optimism: Pessimism Detected" is a thoughtful response to a panel where great indie comix creators (Linda Barry, Jules Feiffer, Matt Groening, Chris Ware) decried online comics and online reading. Click through for the whole thing.

Downloading Optimism

i say amen to the iphone bookreader

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

AT&T killed my Internet

Hopefully back up soon
I feel... So alone

Sent from my iPhone by mac

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Google Wave with me

Download now or preview on posterous
PastedGraphic-1.pdf (10 KB)

Anyone else out there on Google wave who'd like to test it with me?
Bleeding edge baby, bleeding edge.

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Friday, November 13, 2009

Lovecraft sculptures - Boing Boing

Lovecraft sculptures

200911101556

200911101557

Joe Broers makes Cthulhu Mythos sculptures, which come with "fictitious 'documentation' that helps provide a feeling of verisimilitude to the project."

yog sotgoth

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Goldwag: Books that inspire me - Boing Boing

Goldwag: Books that inspire me

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Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.

Pesco requested that I write about some of the books that inspired me as I was writing CULTS, CONSPIRACIES AND SECRET SOCIETIES. I'll need to ask for your indulgence, because I'm going to flash back to my boyhood. When I was in the sixth grade, I came across a mass market paperback called IMPOSSIBLE: YET IT HAPPENED, which, I just learned from the magic of the Internet, was written by R. Dewitt Miller in 1947. It was a prime exemplar of what is sometimes called Forteana, after Charles Fort (1874-1932), a failed novelist, close friend of Theodore Dreiser, and avid collector of news clippings about the eerie and the unexplained--he also gave his name to the magazine The Fortean Times (its cover story this month is about Masonic symbols in Washington, DC). Miller's yarns about spontaneous human combustion, ghosts, premonitory dreams, ESP, apparitions of air-born crucifixes in the smoke-filled skies over World War I battlefields, a fortyeight hour-long midnight that enveloped Colonial New England and I don't know what else, scared the living daylights out of me--but at the same time, I couldn't stop reading it, especially at night, by flashlight. It was an addiction and I eventually had the wisdom to go cold turkey, by giving the book away.

Or maybe I should go back even further, to when I was in the third grade, and we all trooped down to the school gym to look at the slides of ruins that a local character--a magician named James Randi--had snapped on his recent trip to the mountains of Peru. I can't remember exactly what I found so interesting about his lecture, but it made a huge impression on me. Maybe he did some sleight of hand tricks. A couple of decades later, Randi embarked on a second career as a Houdini-caliber debunker of psychic frauds. His take-down of Uri Geller on the Tonight Show is still devastating to watch.

conspiracies are still a kind of hobby with me

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The original 40-button mouse - Boing Boing

yeah baby har har

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Apple's Soaring Pile Of Cash - chart of the day - Gizmodo

Apple's Soaring Pile Of Cash

Apple brought Steve Jobs back to the company in December 1996. Since then, he's been building a massive pile of cash, rolling out new product after new product.

mmmm tasty piles of cash

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Ichat Theatre - You are playing now!

Just had my first 3 way chat - what a great Apple tool.

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Michael Clasen
mclasen@mclasen.com
925.285.5224
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Pigeon Impossible - Boing Boing

Pigeon Impossible

Lucas Martell's new animated film, Pigeon Impossible: "A rookie secret agent is faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase." (Thanks, Joaquin Baldwin)

my favorite clip of the week

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Color film of 1927 London - Boing Boing

Color film of 1927 London

This early (1927) color film shows 10 minutes of remarkable vintage London -- especially the Petticoat Lane market scenes around 6:00, which are a rare glimpse into the life of everyday people (it's even cooler if you were actually down on Petticoat Lane yesterday, as I was!).

Daughter unit is in London the next few days - looks just like this i suppose

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Convert Pantone Colours to RGB

Check out this website I found at ow.ly

for them that needs conversion

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Sunday, November 8, 2009

Insane Gadgets or Genius: You Be The Judge: iGadget Life

Body Laptop Interface

Body Laptop Interface

Body Laptop Interface – Be one with your environment.  Be one with your computer.  Now you can do exactly that with the amazing Body Laptop Interface.  Designed to give you privacy and intimacy with your computer (at least until the fumes overcome you and you pass out), the interface provides a near-womb like experience with which you can surf to your hearts content without the fear that someone is looking over your shoulder.  However, we are pretty sure that they will instead be looking AT you.

now there's an eye-dee-jah

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Saturday, November 7, 2009

Freemasonry, Dan Brown, and the New New Age - Boing Boing

Freemasonry, Dan Brown, and the New New Age

Freemasonry and the New Age Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.

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On September 15, 2009, THE LOST SYMBOL came off press. Fans of THE DA VINCI CODE, with more than 80 million copies in print perhaps the bestselling novel of all time, were thrilled--they had been waiting for Dan Brown to write another book for six years. Random House, B&N, and Amazon were delighted; they moved more than a million copies in twenty four hours and another million copies by the end of the week; two months later, it still sits high atop the bestseller lists.

interesting take on the Dan Brown Phenomena

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BBC NEWS | Health | Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'

Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'

Victor Meldrew sitcom character
An attack of the grumps can make you communicate better, it is suggested

In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

oh why don't you shut up

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

HOME

I liked this retro steampunked website

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MacHeist nanoBundle Offers 6 Mac Apps For... Free - Mac Rumors

MacHeist nanoBundle Offers 6 Mac Apps For... Free

Thursday November 05, 2009 09:25 PM EST
Written by Arnold Kim

A few times a year, MacRumors partners with MacHeist to promote their Mac application bundle deal. Their app bundles typically deliver a dozen Mac applications at a significant discount. The latest bundle is a bit of a departure for MacHeist by delivering 6 Mac applications ($154 value) for Free.

- ShoveBox ($25) - easily capture important bits of information
- WriteRoom ($25) - a distraction free writing environment
- Twitterific ($15) - popular Twitter client
- TinyGrab ($14) - quickly share screenshots
- Hordes of Orcs ($25) - tower defense game
- Mariner Write* ($50) - fast, streamlined word processor

Mariner Write requires 500,000 total bundle participants to be "unlocked". This free bundle ends in 7 days and each application represents the full licenses. Enjoy.

go for it

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10.6: View debug info about current desktop picture - Mac OS X Hints

10.6: View debug info about current desktop picture System 10.6
Snow Leopard only hintWithin the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane, pressing Command-Option-D (Show/Hide Dock shortcut) will add two new buttons to the panel: TEST and DEBUG WINDOW. Press Command-Option-D again to remove the buttons.

TEST doesn't seem to do anything, but DEBUG WINDOW displays a window that gives you debug information about the current desktop picture.

hmmmm hidden buttons

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MacInTouch: timely news and tips about Apple Macintosh, iTunes, iPhone and more...

Updated Products

Parallels, Inc. released Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac Build 9220, a major update of the virtualization software. Highlights of this release include support for Snow Leopard as both host and guest, Snow Leopard 64-bit support, a Windows WDDM driver with DX and OpenGL support, multi-monitor support for Windows and Linux guests, improved performance of the virtualization engine, assignment of up to eight virtual CPUs to a single virtual machine, better performance for Boot Camp virtual machines, a revised interface, MacLook (to make Windows applications look more Mac-like), and much more. Parallels Desktop is $79.99 ($49.99 upgrade) for Mac OS X 10.4.11 and up (Intel Macs only).

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 9.3 is a feature and maintenance update for the popular all-around text, HTML, and programmer's editor. This feature and maintenance release offers enhancements to the Projects function, including support for Finder saved searches and more flexibility in handling non-text files, plus support for creating language-specific ctags for autocompletion, a button to create new files and folders in FTP/SFTP browsers, support for combining clipping sets when working in mixed-language files, a bbfind command-line tool, and other changes. BBEdit is $125 for Mac OS X 10.4 and up (Universal Binary) including Snow Leopard.

both of these are great tools

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Periodic Table Table - Boing Boing

Periodic Table Table

 Ptable
I dig this Periodic Table Table that appeared on MAKE. One commenter there says he thinks it's from the Wake Forest University campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Great idea for a... science park. (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

more more redundency redundency

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CORY DOCTOROW: RADICAL PRESENTISM – Tin House Books Blog

CORY DOCTOROW: RADICAL PRESENTISM

 

Tin House #41 should be hitting your mailboxes or newsstand any day now. The dual theme is Hope/Dread (our designer, the fabulous Janet Parker, created stunning covers for each). In the dread corner, look for Nick Cave, Ander Monson,  Alex Lemon, Matthea Harvey, and other doomsayers. Flying the colors of hope, we have Karen Russell, Abigail Thomas, Mahmoud Darwish, Matthea Harvey (she’s good enough to have her cake and eat it too), and, as you’ll see below, Cory Doctorow. The “Genre” label created something of a controversy on this site awhile back, but Doctorow’s take on what Science Fiction is capable of is pretty tough to argue with. 


CORY DOCTOROW: RADICAL PRESENTISM


Every writer has a FAQ—Frequently Awkward Question—or two, and for me, it’s this one: “How is it possible to work as a science fiction writer, predicting the future, when everything is changing so quickly? Aren’t you afraid that actual events will overtake the events you’ve described?”

It’s a fresh-scrubbed, earnest kind of question, and the asker pays the compliment of casting you as Wise Prognosticator in the bargain, but I think it’s junk. Science fiction writers don’t predict the future (except accidentally), but if they’re very good, they may manage to predict the present.

intelligent essay

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Bus-shelter made out of a bus - Boing Boing

Bus-shelter made out of a bus

Here's a sweet bus-shelter made out of a bus -- the irony is that the bus that stops here is made out of a bus-shelter.

Dumping auto waste or old auto parts is one of the major problems for most nations across the world. Resurrecting old school buses, sculptor and designer Christopher Fennell has devised a bus shelter that not only looks unique but also helps in reducing the huge piles of auto waste. Made of selective parts and pieces from three iconic school buses, from the years '62, '72 and '77, and old city line seats, the yellow bus shelter is a unique way to attract people toward recycling and adopting a green lifestyle. Check out the video after the jump.

redundant? I don't think so

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Praying mantis in my backyard - Boing Boing

Praying mantis in my backyard

Mantis2

I was doing a little work in the back yard yesterday when I cam across a praying mantis. I don't see too many, and this one was a handsome specimen so I took a couple of photos. I also shot a video, but he didn't do much other than lick his foreleg for a while. Maybe I'll upload it later on.

I'm getting a "Friend to Mantids" T-shirt, they are splendid creatures

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Marvel Horror comix from the 70's

Anyone else remember these? Color covers with B&W interiors.

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Michael A Clasen
Filemaker/Lasso
FBA Associate

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