Category Archives: Uncategorized

• Cool swarm visualization video of Eclipse IDE commit history
  During software development, programmers post (or commit) their changes to a centralized repository. This video brings the history of those commits to life. (Credit: Ryan)
  (tags: software development visualization)

• “The road was closed while the Hartford Police Department’s bomb squad came and blew up the chicken.”
  (tags: funny news)
• “The discreet, sanitary solution for your urgent relief.”
  (tags: funny wtf)

• Roman numerals FTW (thanks, Chris)
  (tags: funny math)
• Incredible photos of Earth, from above.
  AMAZING set of photos of Earth taken from orbit. When can I check in to the orbiting hotel?!?
  (tags: space photography)

• VERY bad for business.
  “In 2001, Nicholas smoked so much marijuana during a flight on a private jet between Orange County and Las Vegas that the pilot had to put on an oxygen mask, the indictment states…”
  (tags: tech business crime)
• “I’m innocent. But I’ll show you where the body is if you reduce my sentence.”
  Very interesting story mentioned in this week’s TWiT about famous Linux programmer and convicted murderer Hans Reiser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser
  (tags: tech crime)
• More new Wall-E promo videos. Are we overdosing on them yet?
  /Film is making two new Wall-E clips available. The 3-minute long clip is from the movie. The other clip is a vignette of Wall-E interacting with a fire hydrant.
  (tags: movies animation)
• You have failed me with bad sectors FOR THE LAST TIME.
  This is similar to the remix of Radiohead’s song “Nude” using old computer hardware: http://xrl.us/bmn39 (which gets going around 1:09)
  (tags: music tech)
• Test your web design in different browsers
  Makes screenshots of your site using many different browsers, so you can see what they look like to different clients. Very handy. I saw this a few years back but it didn’t work for me. It is working better now.
  (tags: web design tools)
• There’s no way these can be real.
  Anyone know what the trick is? (Thanks, Christina, for the link)
  (tags: funny)

• Elephant beetles live up to their name.
  (tags: bugs)
• Um… really?
  “Services Overview: We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the ‘Rapture’ of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period.”
  (tags: religion bizarre)

• Epsilon – Very cool Portal-like puzzle game (in Flash)
  Thanks, Ryan S, for finding this addicting puzzle game.
  (tags: games puzzles)
• This is only funny if you do web development.
  (tags: web funny)
• Wow. It really *IS* possible to make TV commercials MORE annoying.
  (tags: tv)
• Cardboard Tron
  A scene from Tron done in cardboard. VERY creative!
  (tags: movies funny)
• Novel method of finding out if a site is up.
  When you put in a bogus domain, it says “Huh? doesn’t look like a site on the interwho.”
  (tags: web tools)

• Microsoft’s Live Maps – Bird’s Eye view of the Mill Mountain Star in Roanoke
  I’m surprised by how useful Microsoft’s mapping tool is. The bird’s eye view is an extremely handy way to visualize maps. Check out Vegas: http://xrl.us/bmjr6
  (tags: maps web)
• Some new Wall*E tidbits
  A new character teaser video, and some extremely gushing early reviews. JOHNNY FIVE IS ALIVE! Wait, wrong robot.
  (tags: movies animation)
• Spinny Venutian vortex animation made by Venus Express orbiter
  Nifty movie of part of the dynamic, toxic atmosphere on Venus.
  (tags: space venus)
• Nine Inch Nails: Lights in the Sky: Free 2008 tour sampler download
  Trent Reznor continues his noteworthy quest of offering free, high-quality digital music downloads.
  (tags: music mp3)
• Best missing cat flyer ever.
  (tags: funny)
• This is the cost of sudden and rapid growth of social networking web sites.
  (tags: web)
• Incredible Apophysis fractals.
  Apophysis (http://www.apophysis.org/) is the incredible software front end for the fractal flame generator used by the Electric Sheep (http://www.electricsheep.org/) evolutionary art project.
  (tags: graphics eyecandy evolutionaryart)
• Even the current Shuttle mission is Twittering.
  Joins other noteworthy space-related microblogs such as http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix, http://twitter.com/LRO_NASA, and http://twitter.com/NASA.
  (tags: space)

• Plurk, a new Twitter-like service.
  It is a microblogging tool similar to Twitter. If Twitter had a headless elephant. Example usage: http://www.plurk.com/user/leolaporte
  (tags: blog web)
• Cool picture recently taken by the Opportunity rover on Mars
  Phoenix is stealing the rovers’ thunder, but they are still chugging along. I like the visible tracks and strangely semi-organized pile of rocks in this photo. I’m still in awe of this scientific achievement!
  (tags: mars space)
• aTV Flash – Ver. 3.0: A way to escape from Apple TV jail
  This product is making the Apple TV more interesting. Gets you out of iTunes prison, supports more video formats, and makes that cheap little Apple TV accessible via ssh/ftp. And, you can order pizza with it!
  (tags: mac video)

• David Pogue reviewing Delicious Library, a very shiny personal inventory management program for the Mac.
  You scan UPC codes of books, CDs, DVDs, etc, with your webcam / iSight camera, and the software pulls all of the item’s info into its database. Perfect for provoking your obsessive compulsive tendencies.
  (tags: mac software mentalillness)
• InstaPaper – A very simple and nice way to mark pages for later reading.
  Especially useful if you are reading stuff from different computers at different times. You get a browser button; when you click it, the link gets saved on InstaPaper. All your links appear on your InstaPaper page, and go away when you open them.
  (tags: browsing webservices bookmarking)
• New band discovery: Elbow. Digging this song a lot.
  (tags: music video)
• New high-resolution photos from WallE.
  Iris and I are very excited about this movie!
  (tags: movie animation)

Wow; I haven’t posted in a long time. I think this is because of the holidays, and because I’ve been spending a lot of time organizing and posting photos on Flickr. To see them, click here. If you haven’t already, click here to sign up for a free Flickr account (it’s even easier to do if you already have a Yahoo account). If I know you, let me know you’ve signed up for a Flickr account, and then I can add you to my Flickr contact list. This way, you’ll be able to see the additional non-public photos that are reserved for friends and family.