Category Archives: blurb
Comic Sans brings it
And speaking of tinfoil hats…
Magnetically Induced Hallucinations Explain Ball Lightning, Say Physicists. And if UFOs are actually ball lightning, then does the X-Files ultimately owe its popularity to lightning storms?
Fuchsia, baige [sic], puke, butter yellow, pistachio…
In a fascinating bit of amateur lexical analysis, Stephen Von Worley created this color strata image, using data collected from XKCD‘s Color Survey:
Sadly, pistachio, a hue that’s notoriously difficult to pin down, is nowhere to be found. Spencer Finch will be disappointed.
If anyone’s interested in the actual linguistics behind color names, Berlin & Kay’s Basic Color Terms
Nine years of sleep
This infographic of one person’s sleep patterns over nine years is fascinating:
Just because it’s lost doesn’t mean it can’t be stolen
When normal people find something left behind, in a place of business (like a bar), that someone will likely want to have back (like an iPhone), they leave it with someone who works there (like the bartender). Then, the person who left it behind has a way to check if anyone has returned it. Taking it is stealing.
Gizmodo probably suspected that the prototype iPhone they bought was stolen. By now, they’ve made back the purchase price in page views, with a healthy return on top to help cover legal fees.
And if you think any of this will hurt the new iPhone’s sales, I have a bridg^H^H^H^H^Hphone to sell you.
Cultivated play or cultivated players?
I’m not sure how much I buy it, but this scathing critique of Farmville is a must read.
Union Jack Cube and Trapped Outside
Finally received prints of my two new rapid-prototyped 3-d sculptures: a revised version of Trapped Outside:
And a three-dimensional, assemble-it-yourself version of the Union Jack Cube:
Safari ain’t a fixie
Very clever parody of web browsers as transportation technology:
But Safari as a fixed-gear? Really? At least make it a 24-speed with a carbon-fiber frame or something.
Ten more ways
Following his hilarious Ten Ways to Wreck Your Database, Josh Berkus outlines ten ways to destroy your open-source community. When I started at BitTorrent back in 2005, it had long been guilty of 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10, and it never recovered.