In an anomaly that we would eventually recognize as commonplace on the internet, Touching the Void, a book that had gone out of print, remaindered before it hit paperback, was all but forgotten, started selling again in 1998. Chris Anderson wondered why, and found that user reviews in Amazon’s listing of publishing sensation Into Thin […] » about 1200 words
The Huffington Post pointed out how the White House is doctoring video of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech from May 2003. Visitors to whitehouse.gov now get a video that crops out the mission accomplished sign.
How Orwellian will this president get? “The future of evil is in manipulating information.”
Okay, even if this Diesel Sweeties cartoon is a little disheartening, please vote. The fact is, vote suppression is probably more likely than vote fraud. A tip of the hat to Lichen for alerting me to this, and for making the point that our users’ notions of “authority” are among the fastest changing features of […] » about 100 words
The above photo and some others were forwarded to me by a friend. The body of the email included: A few friends of mine participated in this event on Saturday. There wasn’t a lot of media coverage, but NPR and the CCT. The photos show 2700 markers representing American dead in the Iraq war, and […] » about 200 words
Cliff took a picture of his absentee ballot because the new parties were just too good: Dennis Morriseau is the Impeach Bush Now candidate for Congress and Peter Moss is the Anti-Bushist Candidate for Senate. Anti-Bushist Candidate, Dennis Morriseau, Impeach Bush Now, Peter Moss, VT, Vermont, ballot, election, elections, political parties, vote » about 100 words
Mentioned earlier, but worth mentioning again: TrueMajorityACTION’s Take It Back campaign. Among the videos and political graffiti of the moment, don’t miss Freedom, Beat Box Bush, and Hijacking Catastrophe. And as funny as the Brazillion Joke is, we need a government that doesn’t lie, a government that’s smart, a government that cares for its people, […] » about 100 words
We’ve got OCR. We’ve got cameraphones. We’ve got web-based license plate lookup services. Amazon Japan has a fancy cameraphone-based product search feature. What’s more naive, imagining that somewhere somebody has a SMS/MMS-based license plate snooping and facial recognition services and fingerprint scanners, or imagining that they don’t? cameraphone, civil liberties, facial recognition, license plate recognition, […] » about 100 words
found by lorelei in Copenhagen. discovered by Kieran’sPhoto’s’ in Cork. bush, election, george bush, george w bush, iraq, midterm, midterms, politics, vote, voting, w, war » about 100 words
Karen forwarded mgarthoff‘s Freedom, tagged: bush war election midterm iraq katrina on YouTube.
MAIUG 2006 Philadelphia: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0 (interactive QuickTime with links or static PDF) Web 2.0 and other “2.0” monikers have become loaded terms. But as we look back at the world wide web of 1996, there can be little doubt that today’s web is better and more useful. Indeed, that seems to […] » about 400 words
On writing: First figure out your story, then tell it. Anything else is masturbatory. writing, advice » about 100 words
currugated_film‘s photo of graffitti in Oaxaca. The caption at Flickr notes that the text to the right says “the solution is in your hands, the rocks are on the ground.” graffiti, movement, populist, rocks, solution » about 100 words
Tony Day is June 28th, but today is the day I received my copy of Joe Monninger’s latest work, Two Ton: One Night, One Fight — Tony Galento v. Joe Louis. I learned a lot about the characters and times during the two years of research Joe invested in the book, but other than sneaking […] » about 400 words
In classic Wikipedia-voice, an atlatl is… An atlatl (from Nahuatl ahtlatl [?ah.t?at?]; in English pronounced [???t?l??t??][1] or [??t?l??t??][2]) or spear-thrower is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in spear-throwing, and includes a bearing surface which allows the user to temporarily store energy during the throw. […] A well-made atlatl can readily achieve […] » about 300 words
The Switzerland‘s Verzasca Dam is now added to the list of places I’d like to visit.
I certainly don’t mean this to be as snarky as it’s about to come out, but I love the fact that Isaak questions my claim that linkability is essential to online discussions (and thus, communities) with a link: Linkability Fertilizes Online Communities I really don’t know how linkability will build communities. But we really need […] » about 300 words
At a time when people are still wowing over the Google-YouTube deal (and wondering why their 2.0 company didn’t get bought for $1.6 billion), it’s good to know that Marc Cantor is dead down on it. Not because of the copyright issues or “limited” advertising potential of YouTube that others cite, but apparently because he […] » about 300 words
Above, one of Sandge‘s contributions to the The Toy Cameras Pool reminds us that good photography is something that often happens despite the equipment, not because of it. Of course, no sweeping generalization can go without argument, and in this case I think the toy camera enthusiasts would be joined by the glitch art aficionados, […] » about 100 words
I love this flipbook animation on YouTube (jump ahead to about 3:05 for it), even if the live-action preface is somewhat tiresome. And even with that, it still doesn’t rate as bad as some viewers think it is.
This is the “making of” / behind-the-scenes sneak peak at my upcoming movie “Annihilation”.
I had hoped to finish Annihilation in time to turn it in for my Cinema class, but I didn’t… so I had to make a movie about my failure to complete the movie, and turn that in instead.
The full flipbook animation movie will be up soon. Checkout http://www.zacksmovies.com for other movies.
I’m looking forward to the complete movie.
A bibliographic instruction quiz we used to use asked students how many of Dan Brown’s books could be found in our catalog. The idea was that attentive students would dutifully search by author for “brown, dan,” get redirected to “Brown, Dan 1964-,” and find three books. Indeed, the expected answer was “three.”
As it turns out, my library has all four of Dan Brown’s published books, including the missing Digital Fortress. The problem is that three books are cataloged under the more common Brown, Dan 1964-, but Fortress was cataloged under Brown, Danielle.
The problem is that cataloging is imperfect.
Yeah, it takes some marbles to say that, but the fact is that cataloging is a human endeavor. Humans make mistakes. The challenge we face is to build systems that tolerate error, and then make it easy to fix those errors when discovered.
From AskMeFi: “You know, like gaggle of geese, murder of crows, school of fish, all that. Does a group of ninjas have some sort of descriptor? We’re talking many people in halloween costumes, how to address them together. The { blank }.”
Aside from the inevitable brush to Ask a Ninja, answers included:
Updated 2018: the original Wikipedia article was titled Stormtrooper Effect, then it was merged into an article titled Principle of Evil Marksmanship, before finally being deleted in 2015. Thankfully we have the Internet Archive to preserve back these lost treasures. ↩︎
Eleta explained it this way, and credited it to R. David Lankes: Your data: Your metadata: CANDY BAR, data, metadata, metaphor » about 100 words
Mt. Moriah, this time better than last time. 4000 footer, backpacking, camp stove, gorham, hike, hiking, mount moriah, mt moriah, new hampshire, primus stove, summit » about 100 words
Some time ago in St Louis, I stumbled upon Eat-Rite Diner. Aparently I wasn’t the first to be taken in by its charms. Yelp notes: This is a MUST in St. Louis. However don’t go here for the friendly staff, good food, or fun atmosphere. This place is a joke! They will need to buzz […] » about 200 words
From Associate Press: CONCORD, N.H. — A teddy bear dropped into a pool at a hatchery in Milford, N.H., killed all 2,500 rainbow trout living in the pool. Fish and Game Department hatcheries supervisor Robert Fawcett said the teddy — dressed in a yellow raincoat and hat — clogged a drain earlier this month, blocking […] » about 200 words