From the category archives:
I should probably add this:
(This isn’t breaking news so we may have covered it earlier, but I don’t recall seeing it here.)
In honour of “International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day”:http://papersky.livejournal.com/320114.html, Charlie Stross is giving away his novella(??? I – never figured out the difference between novellas, novelettes etc myself) “Missile Gap”:http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring2007/fiction-missile-gap-by-charles-stross/ for thems that wants to download it. I’ve put it on my iRex Iliad (which I promise to write a proper review of after the end of semester crunch) for consumption on an upcoming plane trip. Other good stuff is available for free on the technopeasant page from Jo Walton (the main instigator), Sarah Monette etc.
As noted elsewhere this week, the eminent American essayist George Scialabba has recently taken his work online with GeorgeScialabba.net.
But that’s just the beginning. He’s on a roll. [click to continue…]
Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, the USPS is coming out with Star Wars stamps in May. Woohoo! Limited edition express mail envelopes will also be available and this fact has me contemplating what I should send to myself in express mail. Yes, it’s a great marketing ploy, I am sold.
The site is collecting votes for the stamp that will “reign above all others”.
And now, for only the second time in its 256-year-history, the U.S. Postal Service invites you to vote for your favorite stamp. The winning stamp will become its own stamp sheet.
Cast your vote today. C-3PO seems to be ahead, which is not a horrible choice, but personally I’d rather see either Yoda or Darth Vader win.
More on my dedication to Star Wars in another post.
Thanks to Scott Feldstein for the above photo. Apparently there’s such a mailbox in Palo Alto as well, I’ll have to look for it.
Charlie Cray forwarded me a link to this forthcoming “documentary”:http://www.indiesunderfire.com/index.html on the demise of independent bookstores and the rise of chains. This is something that I have more ambiguous feelings about than many lefty academics. On the one hand, there are independent bookstores in DC and elsewhere that I love, cherish, and try to shop in whenever I get a chance. But on the other, I grew up in a small town without a bookshop of any description whatsoever, a place which was a little like Penelope Fitzgerald’s “Hardborough”:http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/07/reviews/970907.07cunning.html?_r=1&oref=slogin before Ms Green arrives. A couple of times a year I would go to Fred Hanna’s when we visited relatives in Dublin, but the rest of the time I relied on what I could get from the local library or the small rack of paperbacks at the local newsagent. I’d have killed for a chain bookstore somewhere close by, and I find it hard to imagine that my teenage equivalent somewhere out there in the heartland today wouldn’t feel the same way.
There is something being lost as independent bookstores close; a lot of valuable, local knowledge possessed by smart, book-obsessed employees who could give good leads on other books that you ought to read if you liked or were interested in _x_. But the increase in choice provided by the spread of chains (and the Internet) to places that were badly served in the past isn’t to be discounted either. What is a more unalloyed tragedy in my eyes (and not only mine; I think I’m stealing this claim from Teresa Nielsen Hayden) is the demise of the kind of variegated paperbook rack in the newsagent/drugstore that got me reading in the first place. These mixed together bestsellers, unabashed junk, and all sorts of other obscure, semi-obscure and eccentric books. They got me hooked on reading. My impression is that these racks aren’t out there any more, in either Ireland or the US – the places that had them have either gotten rid of them altogether, or only use them to sell the same five or six bestsellers that everyone else is selling.
Since people seemed to enjoy this site, I thought the following might be of interest as well: Visual Acoustics.
Careful, the site resizes your browser, which has always been annoying, but is especially annoying in the age of browser tabs. You can get your window back in its original size, the site still works just fine.
[thanks]
In the spirit of supporting the long tail, I thought I’d link to a few nifty items you likely won’t find in stores, but that are just as worthy as many of the items that are backed by big marketing budgets.
I found the booklet “Why Mommy is a Democrat” one day by clicking on a sponsored link in GMail (the line just above the message area). I liked the idea of communicating a message of this sort to little kids so I ordered a copy. I like the way the author and illustrator approached the topic. The idea of self-publishing something of this sort is also interesting. I purposefully use the word booklet instead of book despite the information on the site. The “book” feels more like a booklet. That doesn’t detract from its value. I mention it in the interest of realistic expectations. Cost: $10 including shipping in North America (with some possible savings for bulk orders).
On a different note, I highly recommend the California Soups and Salads 2006-07 Academic Calendar by Susan Beach. It covers September, 2006-December, 2007. Each month comes with a very inviting photo of a wonderful soup or salad dish plus its recipe on the side. Susan is our resident chef here at the Center and is an amazing cook. This could be a great gift for a myriad of people. Cost: $10 including shipping.
Moving on, I found the jams and jellies maker McKenzie’s Own at a summer fair last year and thought their products were divine. I bought two spreads: Mom’s Horseradish Spread and the White Chocolate Raspberry Spread. Both were great. Cost: $6.50 each plus $6.00 shipping.
I only have experience with online ordering regarding the first product, the others I bought in person. Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in promoting these products, I bought them and liked them, that’s all there is to it. I do know Susan personally though.
The site Etsy hosts lots of independent sellers although some of the products there tend to be on the expensive side. Lulu lets people self-publish books, calendar, etc. Of course, one can also find independents on ebay and on various corners of the Web. But what are those corners? Do share your favorites, I’m always curious to find the hidden gems.
This is second in the Gift guide series. Next week: giving through donations.
‘Tis the season for buying gifts (lots of us have December birthdays*, you know). So I’m starting a discussion of various gift ideas. My plan is to post about items that I have bought myself and so can recommend with confidence. Alternatively, I may suggest some do-it-yourself projects on occasion.
I’ll start things off with the latter. Consider giving someone a personalized memory game made up of photos that would be of interest either because they portray people/places of interest to the person, or because they are simply great photos. More details on this here. Note, however, that creating multiple wallet-sized photos can get expensive quickly. If you’re short on cash, but have time, you may consider editing images that contain a pair of two images each and then simply getting the regular size photos of these. That way, you can get two pairs for 5-10c each instead of 99c each with a leftover pair.
Another idea is to use one of the many amusing tools from fd’s Flickr toys. You can create a funny motivation poster, a magazine cover, a movie poster, or lots of other things and get these printed out. Regular size photo print-outs are only about 10-20c so definitely on the cheap side. And note that despite the site’s name, these don’t require a Flickr account, you can upload a photo directly from your computer.
Photojojo has additional ideas. I am intrigued by their Fotoclips selling for $15 (including shipping), but I haven’t bought any of those nor have I ever tried them out so this is just a pointer, not a recommendation.
Of course, nowadays, you can get a photo printed on just about anything, but the above items are mainly do-it-yourself so fairly cheap and have that extra personal touch.
[*] No worries, I’m well aware of the comment “There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.” Nonetheless, if you care to contribute to my upcoming celebrations, I’m collecting photos of the number 3 from around the world. So email me one (or three for that matter) if you can. You could also post these on Flickr and just send me the link. (Yes, I know I can find tons of 3s on Flickr, but these would be from you to me.:)
I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and as a result got to add several geeky license plates to my photo collection. I wasn’t even trying hard to look for these, I was just glancing at the plates I passed walking to and from my car.
In unrelated geekiness, if you prefer to unleash your inner geek with the help of a bit more text then I recommend the quotes on this page. A couple of my favorites:
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn’t have written it! (Mark Andreessen)
If none of that made sense then you could go watch some Jay Leno Headlines where it is by design that many of the featured items don’t make sense.
Vivian’s recent comment wondering whether my work would interfere with my ability to post Friday time-sink amusements reminded me that I should not abandon my important role in keeping you from doing whatever it is that you had planned to do when you sat down at your computer.
This weekend’s amusement is brought to you by Jeux Chiants (yeah, I know, you’ll have to excuse my French).
Of the large selection, my highest recommendation goes to Double Jeu. You won’t miss much by not speaking French, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Just don’t let either ball drop. Hah, and doesn’t that sound easy? The one thing you’ll miss out on by not speaking French is the derogatory comments after you mess up. I managed to get up to 24.5 32.8 seconds. If anyone does it longer and understands the resulting comment, I’d be curious to hear if you ever get a true heartfelt congratulations.
I thought Labyflou was reasonably amusing and you can get it the first time around. It’s also not addictive, once is about enough.
Le jeu du ver is not bad. It’s one of those games that starts out almost too easy, but then gets significantly harder with each level.
Finally, La souris est invisible is a good reminder of how dependent we may or may not be on visual cues when using the mouse.
Click here for something cool.
in three minutes, the largest dot will travel around the circle once, the next largest dot will travel around the circle twice, the next largest dot three times, and so on.
the dots are arranged to trigger notes on a chromatic scale when they pass the line
[thanks]
Over the weekend, Political Theory Daily Review linked to a recent essay on the Gang of Four. (The band, that is. Not the group in power in China thirty years ago this month, and in jail thirty years ago next month.) The title indicated it would treat the band’s work as Marxist cultural theory. Not in terms of, mind you, but as. Good call: The Gang’s lyrics were always very explicit about reification, class consciousness, and whatnot. No ex post facto Zizekian-epigone hijinks necessary, thank you very much. Makes its own gravy! A critic who understood that from the start might go far.
In addition to taking pictures of restroom signs, I also enjoy looking around for interesting license plates. There are plenty of these in Illinois, apparently one in five drivers has one. I find this somewhat surprising given their cost: $76 extra for personalized plates and $123 for vanity plates (and who knew there was a difference between those two categories?).
I used to take a lot of pictures of them, but given the volume I have decided to focus mostly on ones that I can decipher and find at least somewhat interesting. Some of my favorites: EUROPA, KODALY, MAKE ART, GENEVE 4 (although that would be cleaner without the number), GOOGLE and MR PHOTO. For that last one I reversed course and went back to park on the street and capture it. I am serious about my collection.:) Among others’ photos, I’ve especially appreciated finds that have some Internet-related meaning (FLICKR‘s the best), but some others are fun as well (e.g. GRUETZI) plus the ones that are not obvious to decipher (although if they are too cryptic I’m likely to miss the meaning). Others are just outright curious, for example, who knew emotional expressions about one’s Mom is a popular theme (I LOV MUM, ILUVMA).
The issue of vanity plates can get tricky quickly as certain expressions are not always allowed. One has to wonder how closely suggested plates get scrutinized. Or would the reverse of a plate be checked (say, you want to send a message to those viewing your plate in their rear-view mirror, do state official consider the reverse reading of submitted requests)? Then there is the issue of specialty plates that support certain causes. The environmental ones don’t cause much contraversy, but the pro-life ones do.
Illinois has a search program available so you can check whether your preference is available. It turns out that mine is, but I’m not ready to spend the $123. I guess I could always just get a bumper sticker.
I see that there are plenty of vanity plates in Calfornia so I look forward to capturing those when I move there in a couple of weeks.
This is pretty cute although it would’ve worked at least as well with a less violent theme. It would be interesting to see something like this with some of the more recent popular programs like Firefox. Not too hard to guess who would win. Anyone know of such a creation?