I fixed my Camera that has been broken for several months ..

It was a very sophisticated method I read about online that involved smacking the camera repeatedly against a hard surface. I was not immediately convinced it would work, and it took repeated efforts but now I am taking pictures like before, and I can't think of many more satisfying technological fix. We'll see how long it holds up. :)

Funny Farm

Not sure whether the title is a reference to the opening topic or the ultimate location of those who tackle this puzzle. But what's the point of an online knowledge/trivia puzzle if you can't share it with friends? So, go ahead and give it a try. Once you've made some progress we put our pieces together and see whether our combined intellects are up to the challenge.

Funny Farm

Tetris, Revisited.

Wow. Play a bit.

Scanwiches

"Scans of sandwiches for education and delight."

Robot Lols

Settling

In honor of my birthday, I reread my favorite depressing, get-married-while-you-still-can advice column at The Atlantic.

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

Also, this read through I realized that men and women probably settle for different reasons. Although I am still a fan of settling, I think that my hand only gets stronger as time passes while my opponent's (i.e., future wife's) hand probably has a half-life of 5-7 years. I should just wait 'em out. Also, I am not giving up my requirement to review 5 years of audited tax records and running a credit check.

What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

...

This doesn’t undermine my case for settling. Instead, it supports my argument to do it young, when settling involves constructing a family environment with a perfectly acceptable man who may not trip your romantic trigger—as opposed to doing it older, when settling involves selling your very soul in exchange for damaged goods.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Rocks my Socks

I just downloaded the latest beta of Live Photo Gallery and the LiveUpload plugin for Facebook. It is sweet. I can tag people in Live (there even appears to some facial recognition ala iPhoto 09) and they send the pictures tags and all straight to facebook. I used something something in iPhoto last year, but this is much better. I don't have to confirm anything on the facebook side, I can add to existing albums, I can set what groups of people can access the photos. I can even load pictures to multiple account. I don't say this often about software, but I have a crush.

There is also a YouTube plugin from the same folks. Seems to work equally well.

Mirror's Edge Flash Demo

I love the fluid control in this 2D version of Mirror's Edge. We ought to be keeping a pretty comprehensive list of flash games here, so don't forget to post your favorites.

Voting

Cool lecture on voting. No, really. Have you ever thought of all the get-out-the-vote as a massive propaganda effort to convince us to waste energy when the marginal impact of voting on hour happiness is close to zero? That's this idea and I am sure that it has a more academic form somewhere.

TiddlyUniverse

Looking through the examples for TiddlyWiki below, I came across this site:

http://deferentialgeometry.org/

This is being put together by Garrett Lisi, the mad surfer theoretical physicist who is trying to demonstrate how all of the Standard Model and Gravity can be unified via E8. I won't try to explain what that is, mostly because I don't get it. Anyways, if you're feeling brave and happen to have a decent grounding in Lie Algebra, check it out. There are fun pictures too for those of us who thought that algebra could never lie...

Organizing the Detritus of Life

I am on a quest to find the optimal to-do list and the perfect organizer for my pack-rat nest of quotes, figures, writing conventions I like, vocab to learn, McSweeny's lists to plagiarize, etc. To-do list be damned, but I feel that I have finally worked out a good work-flow for an organizer. It finally gelled tonight!

I found TiddlyWiki while searching for wiki software that I could host locally. Throw in a better skin here. Then get a Firefox add-on that basically makes this notebook your clipboard.

I am stoked that:

• TiddlyWiki is not a wiki at all--no configuring SQL databases, managing Php installation, etc. Everything required to run the little bugger is included in a ~300k html file.
• My crap will be consolidated into one place, searchable, taggable, linked back to its internet source, easily backed up, and easily brought online should I chose to do so later.

I feel like I finally found something where I can easily build my own internal reference desk--quotes from books and articles I have actually read, rather than a flood of info off the net. The marginal effort to organize it all seems only slightly above writing it down by hand (eg tagging quotes) but makes the resulting info ten times more useful.

Japan in 15 Min Intervals

So as part of the latest census in Japan, people wrote what they were doing every 15 min for a week. Of course the data is available online and of course there are cool graphs. So now you can figure out that on Wednesdays at 4:55 AM about 980k people are consuming mass media in Japan, while approximately 94 MM are sleeping. Just saying...

Warning! This game is fun and addictive.

I'm falling asleep at work because of this.

When Did Architects Stop Designing Buildings?

I was looking forward to the results of the White House Redux competition for quite some time. Basically, the competition asked architects to redesign a presidential home / symbol of national power. The guy that won threw together what looks to be the CAD equivalent of animated gifs. Check out his crappy video.

I am fine with whacko art. I really am. I just thought that architects, even crazy ones, would actually design a structure. As far as I can tell, the grand prize is part 1990s webpage, part anime, part malformed and misinformed politcal commentary, and completely useless self-indulgent computer doodles. Where do architects get off thinking they are 1) artists and 2) legitimate critics of anything?

iTunes Genius Mode

So you may be the type that doesn't like your data floating around cyberspace, but I just downloaded iTunes 8.0 and already love the Genius function, which automatically generates playlists based on any song you chose. It can also provide recommendations from the iTunes store. I haven't really used pandora before but it sounds like the same concept. What I like is I can match a mood with songs with zero effort, and results at initial testing seem solid. You know they can't go too wrong because they are using all of your music, but a lot of good stuff I wouldn't have thought up came to the surface as well. Creating your own playlists is so August 2008.

Here is the playlist that came up when I selected Smashing Pumpkins "Landslide."

Landslide Smashing Pumpkins
Yellow Ledbetter Pearl Jam
About A Girl Nirvana
A Long December Counting Crows
Across the Universe Rufus Wainwright
The Freshmen The Verve Pipe
Don't Go Away Oasis
She Don't Use Jelly The Flaming Lips
The Scientist (Live) Aimee Mann
Gravity Rides Everything Modest Mouse
Tonight, Tonight Smashing Pumpkins
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town Pearl Jam
Time Is Running Out Muse
Round Here Counting Crows
Lover I Don't Have to Love Bright Eyes
Lucky Radiohead
All Apologies Nirvana
Babylon (iTunes Originals Version) David Gray
Better Man Pearl Jam
Don't Look Back in Anger Oasis
Where It's At Beck
Wonderwall Ryan Adams
6th Avenue Heartache The Wallflowers
Zero Smashing Pumpkins
Hash Pipe Weezer

Free Conference Calling -- What!?

So I was trying to figure out how to get my whole family on a conference call this evening (all 8 of us, mostly in different places) and I came across this sweet service PowWow Now. It's 100% free. There is no advertising, no signing up, nothing. You just call the number 1 641 715 3777, come up with a 6 to 9 digit pin, tell you friends and you all call in and enter the pin. Standard call rates apply (which on cells is free) and apparently they make money from some sort of reimbursement they get from telecoms. I'll let you know if it doesn't work or if there are some adverse affects, but trying it out once and cruising the site it seems 100% awesome.

Where are the terrorists?

Underrated Science Fiction?

The most underrated science fiction movies, according to Marginal Revolution:

1. Primer - Hmm, seems interesting, but super indie.
2. Aeon Flux - Underrated? Besides Theron in latex, seems like the rest is irredeemable.
3. Body Snatchers - 1990s goodness!
4. Tron - "Soon the ultimate tool will become the ultimate enemy!" -- there is hope for me yet.
5. Sleeper - WTF? I have never liked Woody Allen.
6. eXistenZ - Weak "science fiction" framework for Jennifer Jason Leigh to get naughty.
7. A Boy and His Dog - "A rather kinky tale of survival." O RLY?
8. Enemy Mine - "Brothers because they dared to be." I don't think it works that way.
9. Gattaca - I like it to, but I don't think it is underrated, and if it was, surely it beats Aeon Flux.
10. Silent Running - "Meet the almost human drones..." Errrr....

All in all, that list sucks. He tries to redeem himself with some additions:

"My picks would have been Mission to Mars and Titan A.E. Sunshine is also quite good and not so well known. At times I regard What Dreams May Come as science fiction."

Titan A.E. What a turd.

Batman III: Indecipherable

By now, I hope you've all seen and enjoyed The Dark Knight. If so, expect that you also found Christian Bale's Batman voice annoying and over-the-top. Did you also know that they used sound effects to make it more that way? In case you haven't seen it yet, I think this parody does a good job mocking the pointless bat-growl.

The Criticism Hamburger and Other Useful Hacks

Not that anyone who visits this site might occasionally have trouble interacting with dirty society, but here's maybe the first useful top-10 list I've ever seen on the internet. It's 10 conversation hacks. I'm standing up and folding my arms now, which is your cue to stop reading.

For Tom

This looks nice with it's 16x9 widescreenieness.

Amos Lee Street Corner Preacher

One of my new favorite songs.

Self-Driving Cars

A nice collection of all the benefits made possible by self-driving cars. Though to convince anybody besides me, this guy needs a website not made in 1997. http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

IE Tab Firefox Plugin

Where has this been all my life? (Answer is Taiwan.) Sites like Netflix and Windows Update which require Internet Explorer can be opened in a new tab in firefox using this plugin. You still need to have IE installed on your computer, but you don't have to actually open it. Adds an "open in IE tab" option to your right-click menu on links. You can edit that and other behavior in the settings, including a filter list of sites you want to always open using IE.

Sweet Video Converter

Problem: In my first attempts to use iMovie to edit the video I shot last night at the American Idols Live concert, I was frustrated by the fact that iMovie only accepts a couple of formats. (The music was pretty excellent, by the way, to all the doubters out there). Solution: After minimal searching I found this sweet application, Squared 5, that seems able to converter anything to MP4 or other iMovie friendly formats. It even has some basic editing image editing, cropping and an automatic volume control that took a lot of the excess noise out. The last piece was better than anything I could find in iMovie, although I'm no expert in the app. You can compare the iMovie clip to Squared 5 clip with what I've loaded to YouTube.

Point Counter Point with Feed

Me: That's what you get for using a camera.
Feed: That's what you get for using a camera outside.

A walk to remember

Mesmerizing stroll through Tokyo. Nobody seems to mind or notice the camera, which is yet another reason I must go there. Skip about a minute in for the good stuff.

Michael Bay's rejected Batman script

Classic.

Pyrotechnics erupt in the distance. Guitar solo.

Once Again the Guitar Proves Worthy

Just when I think there aren't any more good things you can do with a guitar:

Find more videos like this on w.a.s.t.e. central

I Am In Your Interwebs, Locating your Earthquakes.

Use IP addresses to locate epicenter of earthquakes. Love it.