Links of Interest (February 5th 2009 through February 24th 2009)

Plugin Authors, Are you making the best of Readme.txt?
A comprehensive guide to where the WordPress Plugin Directory pulls the data it displays. A must read for plugin developers. Especially important with the recent changes to the directory's search capabilities.

Cross-Browser Inline-Block
If you've ever tried to create a flexible gallery style layout of elements of varying heights, then this is for you.

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet
A compact reference for HTML5 canvas element.

Dalek War Boxset
This Doctor Who Restoration Team article detais the process of restoring color to "Planet of the Daleks" episode 3. It was theorized some years ago that interference on the surviving 16mm B&W telerecording (made by essentially pointing a film camera at a TV) might contain some valid PAL color subcarrier information. Unable to get funding to investigate the idea (which sounds a bit more far fetched than Dalek's to me), the informal Colour Recovery Working Group was started up online. The group succeeded in recovering color information from the telerecording. Meanwhile the Restoration Team commissioned Legend Films to colorize the episode (a process that's come a long way since Turner, but can still look a bit flat in the end). The finished version blends these two sources together, then processes them via VidFIRE (the process of restoring the original 50 field per second interlaced image from a telecline, another process developed during restoration of Doctor Who episodes).

Bacon Stupidity
For the month of February, Michael J. Nelson (MST3k, Rifftrax) has pledged to eat nothing but bacon. Yup, bacon. All month. Just bacon.

Links of Interest (October 27th 2008 through December 27th 2008)

Awesomeness is always looking for you. But are you looking for it?
Writer/Podcaster J.C. Hutchins may very well be the king of turning life's lemons into lemonade. Who else would see a 6am wrong number as an opportunity to grow audience not just for himself, but for the caller as well?
History of the town of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, from its first settlement
The Internet Archive has a complete scan of this 1866 book by Benjamin Hobart, detailing the early history of the town where I grew up. Just stumbled across it by accident.
*New* Google Reader (12/05/08) Tweaks
If your finding the newer/cleaner/simpler Google Reader look to be harsher/cluttered/annoying then give this userstyle a try. The changes are subtle, but really bring Google Reader back to usable for me.
Amazon Filler Item Finder
Have you ever realized your Amazon.com order would qualify for free shipping if only you could find something cheap to put you over the minimum? Amazon Filler Item Finder lets you search for qualifying items by price for just this purpose.

Links of Interest (May 9th 2008 through May 29th 2008)

IETester
IETester is a tool that runs the rendering and javascript engines from IE8b1, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5 in a single process so you can see how each one mangles your site in it’s own unique way (currently in beta).

POC : Implementing HTML 5 Video Element using JavaScript and Flash
A proof of concept allowing use of the ‘video’ tag from the HTML5 draft spec, and having it work, even though browsers don’t yet support it.

Audible.com and Blackstone Audio Royalties
SFFAudio shares some information from Robert J. Sawyer on the royalties he receives from audiobooks.

Characteristic Confusion
While investigating line-height Eric Meyer used font-family: Webdings to display “Oy!” (Webdings doesn’t contain ‘O’, ‘y’, or ‘!’). Firefox 3 unexpectedly displayed “Oy!”, which, it seems, is technically correct, leaving him asking “which is less correc

Growl for Windows – alpha now available
Growl is one of the three apps that excited me enough to buy a Mac, and it’s one I really miss when I’m on my Windows box.

Links of Interest (April 10th 2008 through April 22nd 2008)

Matthew Wayne Selznick Signs Book Deal
Author and Podcaster Matthew Wayne Selznick signed a deal with Swarm Press to re-issue his novel “Brave Men Run” in paperback. Congratulations Matt!
Take notes during phone calls with friends and family
One of those “that should have been obvious” suggestions. I’ve conditioned my brain to filter out most things that aren’t useful to me right now. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in people’s anecdotes, and schedules, it just means I’m unlikely to remember them without some reminder.
Ajaxian Featured Tutorial: Hacking transparent PNG support into IE6 with IE PNG Fix, CSS and jQuery
Ah, IE6. I’m pretty good at getting it to do what I want, but it’s very existence makes most of the things I have to do harder than they should be. This tutorial deals with one of the harder issues, PNG transparency in positioned background images.
YouTube – Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part2
In the second part of the video Scott covers such diverse topics as Sci-Fi Channel’s lack of foresight and how when it appears he has made a mistake it is actually sabotage by J.C. Hutchins.
Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part1
I’m not lucky enough to live near any of the book stores Scott Sigler was signing at, but luckily Natalie Metzger captured this video of one of the Q & A sessions.

Links of Interest (May 8th 2007 through May 10th 2007)

Top 5 Roomba Hacks
Videos of some interesting Roomba hacks. Seeing a family of Roombas sing “Frosty the Snowman” is a riot (and only a little bit creepy).
17 Web 2.0 Sites Optimized for Your Wii
A nice selection of sites to visit on your Wii.
Sun?s Take on OpenID
Sun is offering trusted OpenID’s for all employees.
Spoon-Bending ‘Paranormalist’ Illegally Twists Copyright Law
Uri Geller v. YouTube. Great headline.
Hi, I?m a Marvel?and I?m a DC
Parody of the “I’m a Mac.., and I’m a PC” ads with comic book action figures.
Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google
Interesting overview of search technologies.