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November 30, 2005
AVIs worth downloading
I've enjoyed a bunch of movies/shows in the past couple weeks and figured I might as well share. I like to watch a lot of documentaries and I like small films that never play where I live that I have to remember to catch up with later.
I love watching behind-the-scenes movies on the craft of comedy (I loved Comedian a few years ago). The Comedians of Comedy (only available as a rental from Netflix but it's also on Showtime now) and The Aristocrats were both great glimpses into the mind of comedians.
Murderball, Mad Hot Ballroom, and Rize followed the classic documentary formula of showing a world the viewer never knew, and following the subjects of the story through a competition. All had their strong points but if I had to choose one, I'd say Murderball was my favorite.
On the TV front, I have to eat my words and agree with Michael that The Office has reached a level the original series did. The last couple episodes have been fantastic and Steve Carrell is as unwatchable as David Brent was in season two of the BBC series. My other favorite TV show right now is My Name Is Earl. I love anything Jason Lee does, but I really think he's hit a groove on this one. The stories aren't always tight but every week but there's always one moment that reaches the genius of something you might see on Arrested Development. And finally, Drawn Together on Comedy Central is really pushing the censorship limits. Every episode this season leaves me dying with laughter while at the same time horrified that they got the jokes onto TV.
Posted by 09:23 PM
links for 2005-11-30
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Innovative online musician lets fans optionally pay for free music
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cool winter themed snowflake screensaver for tiger
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OSX expose-like view of all your tabs in firefox (for FF1.5+). Very handy.
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 29, 2005
links for 2005-11-29
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all fantastic ideas for Amazon to make the wishlist feature more useful for customers
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weird
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 28, 2005
links for 2005-11-28
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all-girl roller derby in Portland
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 26, 2005
matt and fiona
(matt and fiona, originally uploaded by Alaina B.)
This is my favorite picture of Fiona to date.
Posted by 10:30 AM
links for 2005-11-26
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Brilliant.
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 25, 2005
links for 2005-11-25
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Sounds badass. Virtual Metallica power chords!
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I'd work at a startup like that.
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Neuroscience notes in iPod format. Cool.
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 23, 2005
links for 2005-11-23
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a full year of CC licensed music, one song at a time
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wow, free hosted QA software from folks at 6A
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 22, 2005
GoogleVerse
I'll admit upfront I still don't quite get what Google Base is useful for. It's not a Craigslist killer to me because I'm a browser, not a searcher when I'm at Craigslist. I don't see any compelling demo apps built on it and so far it seems like an odd, loose version of the Google index with more of a products and services focus.
Still, as much as I love Naill Kennedy's hacks, his Google Base blog import instructions remind me of Snowcrash, and the Gargoyles to be more specific.
Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them.
In Snowcrash, the Gargoyles pollute the databases with thousands and thousands of hours of nonsense. I tend to think my entire six years of blogging would be akin to that.
Posted by 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
links for 2005-11-22
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floated form elements never seem to work in Mac/IE 5.2 -- turns out you need to define a width for the floated block to make it work.
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Wow, a google maps hack showing local Best Buy inventory on the new xbox 360.
Posted by 12:08 AM
November 20, 2005
links for 2005-11-20
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omg, here's what those Canadian bags of milk look like in use
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Invest the money you'd waste on cigarettes with this index fund - an economic way to quit smoking?
Posted by 12:06 AM
November 19, 2005
links for 2005-11-19
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oh, if I only had $600k to blow on a vacation home
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 17, 2005
links for 2005-11-17
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webcast thursday night, 7pm EST
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 16, 2005
It's new to you
I keep stumbling onto my old archives in Google searches and each time I end up spending 30 minutes or more reading everything. Sometimes it feels like I'm reading someone else's journal. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I was writing what I did. But for every insightful, introspective journey through my head that I shared here, I find the flip side of living life in public. I found not one, but two consecutive old posts keeping readers updated on my food poisoning and state of my colon.
Sometimes I wonder why I don't write like that anymore, but more often I'm glad I grew out of it. That all said, I love what Meg and Jason are doing right now, it's very year 2000 webloggy goodness to be a spectator in their lives.
Also, for no apparent reason, three images from my April 2001 archives:
Vinod the king of all VCs as a desktop wallpaper
Me goofing around with a magazine cover
Posted by 10:48 AM
November 15, 2005
How to find good food in a town like Toronto
After a few minutes of Googling, I found a pretty good method of finding not only specific food I wanted to eat in a new town I've never visited before, but the best of the lot.
Canada has some good resources. Foodpages lets you search for restaurants within a radius that meet criteria (Is there a US equivalent of this? There should be). Toronto.com is a good spot to find reviews and works just like any Citysearch.com directory. Lastly, Google Maps comes in handy for walking/driving directions to get there. It'd be cool if someone could mash all three up, so that the "reviews" listing at foodpages.ca was populated/linked with toronto.com's data. Google Maps already integrates with Foodpages.ca, which is probably how I found it in the first place.
So there I was in Toronto for a few days, knowing that I wanted to eat some good Indian, good Ethiopian, and some damn fine doughnuts, but I knew hardly anyone that could point me in the right direction. All I had to do was put in my hotel's zip code, search for "indian" cuisine within 1km, then hit toronto.com to pick out the best one based on reviews, and finally get directions from Google Maps. This allowed me to find Trimurti among the "little India" section of Queen St that featured several Indian places side-by-side. I found Ethiopian House via this method, which was also was great. My favorite food of the trip I found by accident, while walking past Cafe Crepe.
It may not sound like a big deal, but getting plopped into a strange town and wanting some good food is usually a pretty difficult problem to solve. In the old days you have yellow pages and word of mouth. These days, a little technology goes a long way towards finding what you're craving.
Posted by 08:31 PM | Comments (5)
links for 2005-11-15
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Lots of great stuff here
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 13, 2005
links for 2005-11-13
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just one 17Mb file contains all the media center apps. Sounds adventurous, but I might try it out.
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 12, 2005
JetBluePlus?
After reading an interesting Business Week piece about Eos Airlines, I couldn't help but notice while I love the concept, and their seating arrangement looks amazing, the price is still out of reach for anyone but Fortune 500 business travelers.
Why doesn't someone go after the normal everyday traveler that is willing to pay a bit more for a bit more comfort? I know JetBlue operates on razor thin margins, stuffing as many people into a plane as possible for the lowest possible price, and then keeping the planes up in the air as much as possible. I fly JetBlue when I can but the experience is just barely above a tolerable hell for several hours.
Given their prices are so low, I'd be willing to pay double their rates for half as many seats in the same plane offering twice as much room. Their prices are often 1/3 or more off other airlines, so in the end it wouldn't cost too much more than a United or American flight.
Posted by 07:37 PM | Comments (2)
links for 2005-11-12
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how to make black shirt designs for Cafepress in photoshop
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 11, 2005
Things I've learned in Canada
- chinese food takeout comes in standard styrofoam to-go containers. The little paper ones with wire handles we get in the US are only seen in TV shows and movies in Canada. Oh, and milk comes in plastic bags. WHAT THE HELL CANADA?!
- flavors are so tasty and colors are so bright they had to add an extra "u" to them
- either I look Canadian or tourists see people with a big stroller and baby and assume I live here. I've never been asked for directions so many times in a strange town.
- having only been in Vancouver a bunch of times, I thought the jokes about Canadians being obsessed about hockey were overblown. Then I went to a couple bars in Toronto. Those jokes are true.
- Canadians in Toronto fall on the British side of the great top sheet vs. duvet cover debate.
Posted by 08:12 PM
links for 2005-11-11
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slick, looks easier than standard PGP public key stuff
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best use of the alt tag ever
Posted by 12:07 AM
November 09, 2005
links for 2005-11-09
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sweet. someone should make a pair of pants out of tennis balls
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“No, really, dude, I mean it: vertical bar!” heh
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Sometimes software isn't designed for personal situations
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I have the same phone, and I still have no idea how he got such great, clear photos from it
Posted by 12:08 AM
November 08, 2005
Awesome, awesome, awesome
I linked to the Egg and Muffin toaster a while back and since I recently got an amazon gift certificate, I decided to pick one up.
I love egg mcmuffins -- egg mcmuffins without meat to be precise. While I spent much of my youth eating at McDonalds, when I went strict vegetarian after high school, I boycotted the place for almost a decade. But the egg mcmuffin brought me back. These days, about once a week I get one, toss the ham in the trash, and enjoy. So the idea of being able to have perfect egg mcmuffins (without meat) at home was enticing.
After making a couple, I'm hooked. The product does exactly what it's supposed to do, making sure both the egg and the muffins are perfectly done at the same time (it waits a while to toast). Now is the time to experiment. Different breads (it can fit bagels too), different cheeses (the extra sharp I have might be too much), and different additions (maybe smoked salmon?).
While I'm of the Alton Brown school of "never buy a uni-tasker" this one does it so perfectly well that I'm willing to sacrifice some counter space and keep this unit around. If you're a fan of egg mcmuffins, this is priced at around 8 egg mcmuffin combo meals, and once you've got it you can make as many as you want, as often as you want, and exactly as you want.
Posted by 10:51 AM | Comments (7)
links for 2005-11-08
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Most docs I found say you could only share airport express printers with a mac -- this how-to worked great with my winxp PC and airport express
Posted by 12:09 AM
November 06, 2005
links for 2005-11-06
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badass. This is what monster garage should be about, building stuff from random junk
Posted by 12:08 AM
November 05, 2005
Google KILLS CHILDREN
This is the most intellectually dishonest article title I've seen in quite some time: Google Print upsets children's hospital.
On the one hand you have a ridiculous story about how scanning public domain books to make the knowledge easier for everyone to share is somehow detremental to kids. But if you look at the facts, it falls apart even more.
1. Only 4% of books make any money at all, and we're talking about one story. Should laws be written to cover the very few?
2. The story Peter Pan isn't even in the Google Print index, according to friends working at Google.
3. Publishers can opt-out of the program, so the children could live another day if the hospital wanted out.
4. How exactly does searching for a book take money out of a publishers pocket again? Would people really not read a book and instead click through Google page by page by hundreds of pages to read it? Do people read search results instead of reading websites? Seems to me like it'd spur on sales, not steal from them.
Posted by 09:42 AM | Comments (2)
links for 2005-11-05
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the new imac g5 defaults to mirroring on additional monitors, this lets you have an extended desktop
Posted by 12:09 AM
November 04, 2005
links for 2005-11-04
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Pretty cool, this keeps track of average home prices and inventory over time. Click any city to see the past few months.
Posted by 12:08 AM
November 03, 2005
links for 2005-11-03
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Macromedia Flash in the new Jaguars. I wonder if you have to skip intro before you can set the climate control
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badass
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great new blog on all the tiny gadgets that won't break the bank
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A parody so good Cafepress banned it
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I keep forgetting these guys are still going. I'll paypal $20 to anyone that can create a RSS feed for it
Posted by 12:09 AM
November 02, 2005
links for 2005-11-02
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roe v. wade could live on another day if Alito gets in
Posted by 12:08 AM