Links | All the Billion Other Moments

Links of Interest (June 5th 2007 Through June 7th 2007)

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

Video: RSS in Plain English: Brilliant explanation of what RSS is all about. Afraid to use those little orange icons you see everywhere? You won’t be.
Hire someone to run your errands: Hiring a personal assistant to got to free up your time for other things. Hmmmm.
The Power of Nuts: CBS renewed “Jherico” for seven more episodes due to fan protest involving sending nuts to the network (apparently 21,000+ lbs of them).
Global Variables and the WordPress Loop: Very detailed description of the WordPress Loop, and the globals available within.
Lecture: Joe Haldeman on “The Craft of Science Fiction”: SFFAudio points out a number of Science Fiction/Fantasy related lectures available at iTunes U (along with non-iTunes sources).
Icron offers USB 2.0 over power line solution: USB over powerlines. It sounds good. Why do I have the feeling that even if it does work, it won’t work for me?
GNU Emacs 22 finally released: Whoo hoo! I’m a fairly devout Emacs user, even on windows.

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Links of Interest (June 1st 2007)

Friday, June 1st, 2007

DVR viewers push ad ratings up: This whole thing seems like a no-brainer to me, but it’s news to the suits.
Closing the book on Apple’s Mac mini: AppleInsider believes that the Mac mini is dead. Sounds like Apple will be pulling out of the sub-$800 market. It’s to bad if it’s true, because I have had money set aside waiting for the next-gen of the mini to be released. Guess I’ll upgrade my PC.
Lumosity – Brain Fitness and Memory Improvement: Online “brain fitness” program.
European robots assist children in forming relationships: Using robots to help autistic children form relationships.
Under stairs storage: brilliant: I never would have thought of doing this, but now that I see it I’m amazed at how obvious an idea it is.

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Links of Interest (May 24th 2007 Through May 31st 2007)

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Feed Your Television: Google Reader has added support for the Nintendo Wii (yeah, I’m bit behind on noticing this one).
Potter buffs may soon be able to visit Hogwarts: J.K. Rowling OKs a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, FL. That could be fun. Unfortunately most of the article is about the upcoming book 7, but it sounds like it would be part of Universal.
Sci-fi writers join war on terror: Homeland Security calls on Sigma, a group of Science Fiction writers (including Jerry Pournelle, Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Larry Niven and Sage Walker) put together to advise government officials.
squirrels with lightsabers: as adviertized
Programming: How to build a Firefox extension: Occasionally I go looking for an extension to do something, fail to find it and start thinking I should write it myself. Maybe next time I will.
How To: Maintain threaded view in Thunderbird: I’ve been looking for this for years and I didn’t even know it.
Interface elements for jQuery: “Interface is a collection of rich interface components which utilizes the lightweight JavaScript library jQuery. With this components you can build rich client web applications and interfaces with the same simplicity as writing JavaScript with jQuery.”

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Links of Interest (May 11th 2007 Through May 16th 2007)

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Stop! Hammer Time! Firefox Extension: Firefox Extension to MC Hammer-ize the stop button. Why? Not really sure.
Four H.P. Lovecraft Lectures in podcast form: Four lectures on H.P. Lovecraft by Dr. Justin Woodman
Ticketmaster: This family gives their kids TV watching tickets to help limit their TV input per week and keep mom and dad from being the “bad guys”.
Nudists Seek Younger Following, Graying Nudist Groups Reach Out To 20- And 30-Somethings: “Here’s the naked truth about nude recreation: The people who practice it aren’t getting any younger.”
Congress gets earful on net neutrality, CableCARD, YouTube from video execs: Ars Techica’s coverage of “The Future of Video” discussion from the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet hearing on May 10, 2007

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

Thursday, 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.

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Links of Interest (May 3rd 2007 Through May 7th 2007)

Monday, May 7th, 2007

Lost’s end in sight.: “Lost” has three more seasons (but with only 16 episodes each), ending in 2010. It’s still one of my top five shows, and I’m glad they are planning a definitive ending (not because I want it to go, but because it can’t go on forever).
DryerFox – It’s like Firefox, but inside a dryer!: Just what it sounds like.
IE 8: Opt-in for standards compliance: Apparently there will be a way to tell IE8 “my site is standards compliant”. I imagine that means the default assumption is “my site works in IE”.
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion: Peter Cashmore’s take on the news that Microsoft is in talks to buy Yahoo! My immediate reaction is to wonder about Pipes and YUI.
Science Fiction and Politics University Course continues: “Professor Courtney Brown’s course at Emory University is a Political Science course entitled Science Fiction and Politics (Political Science 190).” The lectures are available free for download and as a podcast.
Can e-books hurt your eyes?: As someone whose vision is not at all good, this is near and dear to my eyes. Also this is one of the reasons I avoid DRM crippled e-books and PDF e-books. I want to view e-books on my preferred device, with my own font size choice.

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Links of Interest

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Reset Reasoning: Eric Myer’s explanation of why you would want to reset styles across browsers.
Reset Reloaded: Eric Myer’s reset CSS stylesheet. It levels the playing fields across (most) browsers. I’ll probably use this when I get back to redesigning my site.
Eric Talbot’s Blog: Eric Talbot (perhaps best know for his work involving turtles and/or skulls) has long been one of my favorite artists. His blog contains scans from his sketchbook.
Interactivities Ink Presents: Code Monkey: “Code Monkey is a cute short game based on the song of the same name by Jonathan Coulton. Be the first Code Monkey to win the heart of the Pretty Receptionist and complete two projects for Boring Manager Rob.”
MessageFaces: One of my favorite Thunderbird extensions. Adds support for X-Face and gravatar.com.
Totally Frakked: Dead Like Me Returns In Movie Form: Looks like “Dead Like Me”, which was a great show, is going to return in a direct to DVD movie.

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Links of Interest (April 30th 2007 Through May 1st 2007)

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

First of May – Joe Murphy Mix: A “Band-Aid” style version of Jonathan Coulton’s “First of May” recorded by a number of podcasters in support of The Joe Murphy Memorial Fund. Warning: Explicit Lyrics
Prototype JavaScript framework: Prototype 1.5.1 released: Release announcement for Prototype 1.5.1
Loupe.js: “[A]llows you to add a loupe (magnifier) to images on your webpages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean.” Interesting. I like the Xray example.
How A Small Press Author Stormed Amazon?s Charts (and beat Black Lab): Video interview with Scott Sigler about Ancestor’s performance on Amazon, and the reaction.
Mr Potato Head: Spider-Spud: When a radioactive spider bit Peter Parker Potato, he became SPIDER SPUD!
Mr Potato Head: Optimash Prime: Potatoes in Disguise!

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Links of Interest (April 27th 2007 Through April 28th 2007)

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

The Dragon Page » Contest: Crystal Rain Giveaway: In honor of the May 2007 paperback release of Crystal Rain, author Tobias Buckell has graciously consigned us 3 signed hardcover copies to give away to Dragon Page listeners
Ninjawords – a really fast dictionary: Finally a dictionary where you don’t have to know how to spell the word before looking up how to spell the word. Pulls from Wiktionary and Princeton WordNet. I especially like that you can lookup multiple words at once (use commas to separate). Oh and
MythShow 07: Interview with Mur Lafferty
Transcription of the Panel at Lunacon 2007: A transcription of the ‘Ask The Editors’ panel at the 2007 Lunacon, recorded by John Joseph Adams, and featuring Douglas Cohen, Marvin Kaye, Hildy Silverman, and Wendy S. Delmater. Contains link to mp3.
User-Generated Content Is Top Threat to Media and Entertainment Industry, Accenture Survey Finds: Media and entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats to their business, according to results of a survey released today by Accenture.
First look: Downey forges a bond with ‘Iron Man’ role – USATODAY.com: Look like this could be good (please let it be good).