links.lmorchard.com

July 2009

90 bookmarks saved in July 2009

Bleeding purple blood? - Yahoo! Answers

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081219092720AAgOK1e
Injury, or a normal condition of working at Yahoo!? "I got a piece of glass out of my foot this morning and it started bleeding but the blood was purple! Not dark red, it was actually purple! After I cleaned it and put pressure on it it marblized into a bluish colour then went back to red. What just happened?"
#bleedingpurple #boohoo #health #yahoo
archive.org #12469

Why markets can’t cure healthcare - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare
"This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers’ point of view — they actually refer to it as “medical costs.” This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there’s a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need — not everyone agrees, but most do — this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities."
#corruption #economics #health #healthcare #insurance #markets #medicine #politics
archive.org #12466

Aral Balkan - My Sys-Con Nightmare

http://aralbalkan.com/2284
"Fast-forward to July 14th, 2009, when I got a Google Alert on a new Sys-Con article, penned by a certain Yeshim Deniz from Sys-Con, titled "Social Media Marketing Turkish Style" (http://internetvideo.sys-con.com/node/1017038). That article matter-of-factly stated that Sys-Con had been attacked several months ago by "a Turkish blogger … who declared 'cihad'[sic] against SYS-CON". It went on to state (about me): "this man's religious, ethnic, cultural, and national background fits into FBI's profile definition of the modern day terrorist". "
#bloggers #bullying #crime #evil #identity #slander #spammers #syscon
archive.org #12464

moleskinerie: The Beauty of it All...

http://www.moleskinerie.com/2009/07/the-beauty-of-it-all.html
"I am not the only one to suspect or confirm the Moleskine® and Phi association! I had noticed long ago that the proportions to my pocket Mole were extremely conducive to not only sketches, but the formatting of my writing just takes on a life of it's own. One day, out of sheer curiosity, I did the measurements, and lo and behold, the Moleskine® is almost a perfect Golden Rectangle. "
#goldenrectangle #moleskine #phi
archive.org #12459

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: I'm really thinking maybe I shouldn't have yelled at that Chinese guy so much

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-shouldnt.html
"We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. ... everything you own, it's all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can't even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives."
#china #economics #economy #gadgets #politics #standardofliving #technology
archive.org #12458

BrianOberkirch.com – Anil Dash Wears the Yellow Jersey

http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2009/07/24/anil-dash-wears-the-yellow-jersey
"You should be reading Anil Dash. First, the man still blogs. He has for ten years, and some of his best stuff is happening right now, when you and I have kind of punted on the actual work of reading, synthesizing and writing something durable. Twittering this, tumbling, favoriting. Bah. Dash’s rip roaring run reminds me that what matters are bold, thorough ruminations chocka with links and living at my domain. The rest is a temporary party. A funferall not building to much."
#anildash #blogging #dashes #fullofwin #writing
archive.org #12457

chewing pixels » Gaming as Performance

http://www.chewingpixels.com/gaming-as-performance
"Arcades are videogaming’s’ public installations, a shared focal point for performance, drama and wonder in front of an impromptu assembled audience. The best arcade games encourage crowds to gather and watch a player perform the game. Sometimes the crowd watches because, like seeing a beginner play Chopsticks at a publicly-stationed piano, so the man butchering Dance Dance Revolution counters his hopelessness with endearing committal and a winning smile. "
#arcades #art #gaming #performance
archive.org #12455

See you there, ninja. | MetaFilter

http://www.metafilter.com/83540/See-you-there-ninja#2666361
"Think about it. A key hallmark in this culture is the kind of soda that grocery stores sell to people who can't afford Coke or Pepsi. These guys, and their fans, are barely above the safety stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Forget love. Love is a fantasy. For a lot of these people, food and shelter without a psychopathic parent beating the shit out of you or neglecting you entirely is itself a pipe dream."
#culture #icp #juggalos #music #subcultures
archive.org #12453

The Ann Arbor Chronicle » Transitioning Ann Arbor to Self-Reliance

http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/07/23/transitioning-ann-arbor-to-self-reliance
"The assumption behind Transition Towns is that we’re reaching a convergence of three crises: 1) a moment when oil production can’t meet demand, forcing us to confront a future of dramatically lower energy use; 2) climate change, which requires a drastic reduction in carbon emissions; and 3) worldwide economic instability. The Transition Towns movement is all about preparing communities to retool for this future, and the 12-step program is an outline of how to do that."
#annarbor #crafts #energy #makers #michigan #selfreliance
archive.org #12450

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
"When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it."
#business #collaboration #makers #managers #paulgraham #productivity #scheduling
archive.org #12449

Take 18 Minutes to Keep Your Days on Track - Time management - Lifehacker

http://lifehacker.com/5321204/take-18-minutes-to-keep-your-days-on-track
"Basically, you'll start the day off right by grabbing a sheet of paper and writing down the goals which you can realistically accomplish that day. The important part is to immediately assign time slots to those tasks by order of importance and difficulty because these designated times make you more likely to accomplish your goals and give you a way of tracking your progress once every hour. At the end of the work day, you'll take a few minutes to review not just the last hour, but the entire day."
#focus #goals #gtd #lifehacks #productivity #tips #work
archive.org #12448

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm
"It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."
#bbc #culture #funny #gadgets #history #music #nostalgia #retro #sony #walkman
archive.org #12444

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About | GeekDad | Wired.com

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about
"There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week’s 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore’s Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks."
#culture #geek #generations #genx #history #parenting #technology
archive.org #12443

Hallvord R. M. Steen - Most expensive javascript ever?

http://my.opera.com/hallvors/blog/2009/07/20/most-expensive-javascript-ever
"However, one of the world's biggest hardware vendors - whose name every single reader will be familiar with, and whose hardware a good share of you will be using right now - apparently didn't do their homework. When Opera's sysadmin booted up the server to test its web-based administration interface, they came across a single JavaScript statement that managed to piss off everyone up to and including the CTO."
#business #fail #funny #hardware #javascript #opera #web #webdev
archive.org #12438

Op-Ed Columnist - They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19rich.html?_r=1
"It’s the American way that we judge people as individuals, not as groups. And by that standard we can say unequivocally that this particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past. "
#congress #politics #republicans #sotomayor #supremecourt
archive.org #12435

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others
"This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final. "
#1984 #amazon #drm #ebooks #gadgets #kindle #orwell
archive.org #12426

Evil Avatar - Harmonix to Launch Music Creation Service, Allows for Sale of Songs

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90424
"Back when Guitar Hero World Tour was announced, we found out that one of the features would be a music creation studio. Harmonix and MTV Games were asked about including a similar feature and responded that they were interested, but wouldn't release it till they could do it correctly. Looks like that time is approaching as Billboard has word that they will be releasing "Rock Band Network" which will allow users to create, upload, and even sell their own songs. When's it coming? Apparently later this year."
#awesome #gaming #harmonix #music #rb2 #rockband
archive.org #12424

Orz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orz
My Go playing tonight = Orz "Orz, an emoticon representing a kneeling, bowing, or comically fallen over person (Mainly used in eastern Asian countries & regions: Japan, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan). Particularly, representing depression, and despair. "orz" looks like a person kneeling down. o:head, r:upper body (arms), and z:lower body."
#emoticons #orz
archive.org #12421

EidoGo - Source Code

http://eidogo.com/source
"The EidoGo Player (SGF viewer and editor) is an independent piece and can be embedded into any webpage. The basic Player is entirely client-side (browser-based) and does not include the joseki tutor, pattern searching, GNU Go, or saving features. To use these features, you must set up code server-side (see site source code below)."
#gaming #go #sgf
archive.org #12410

Palm Pre Mojo SDK experiments at updates @ m.blog

http://mroth.info/blog/2009/07/08/palm-pre-mojo-sdk-experiments
"As a new Pre owner, I was curious to learn to code for the Palm WebOS SDK (Mojo). Whenever I try to learn a new technology, I try to build a functional test project. So… what to build for WebOS? Since the Pre’s web browser doesn’t currently support the W3C Geolocation spec used by Flickr Nearby, I figured a good “Hello World” might be an application to get the GPS coordinates from the Pre, and then load the appropriate Flickr page for that location."
#api #flickr #geo #javascript #mobile #palm #pre #webdev #webos
archive.org #12406

101 Robot T-Shirts [Lists] by Hide Your Arms

http://hideyourarms.com/2009/06/19/list-of-101-robot-t-shirts
"With the release of what is almost certain to be the greatest movie of all time today in the UK and across the world over the next week, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for me to hunt down some robot t-shirts, especially as the previous robot-themed lists have are two of Hide Your Arm’s most popular articles to date."
#clothing #robots #tshirts
archive.org #12404

Ragdoll Metaphysics: Could The Xbox 360 Be The Last Console You Buy? (or, The Actual Most Important News of E3) | Offworld

http://www.offworld.com/2009/06/ragdoll-metaphysics-could-the.html
When was the last time the resources of a console actually got completely exploited? "The 360 evolves back towards its PC heritage: a machine that is awesome not simply because of its processing power, but because of the things you can adapt it to do, and the modularity that it demonstrates. A device you can bend to your interests, rather than its stated purpose."
#consoles #gaming #microsoft #xbox360
archive.org #12402

GoatTracker - C64 SID music editor for Mac OS X

http://www.sidmusic.org/goattracker/mac
"GoatTracker is a cross-platform tracker written by Lasse Öörni, producing SID chiptune music for the Commodore 64, and released with source code under the GPL. It is notable for being possibly the only SID chiptune-composer NOT native to the C64, as many alternative composers (including JCH, and CyberTracker) only execute on the C64 or inside C64 emulators. Many SID tunes are available in various formats on the Internet, especially through the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC). GoatTracker is capable of directly exporting to the .sid (PSID/RSID) file format in addition to standard C64 PRG files."
#c64 #commodore #goattracker #music #osx #sid #trackers
archive.org #12400

Locus Online Perspectives: Cory Doctorow: Cheap Facts and the Plausible Premise

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/07/cory-doctorow-cheap-facts-and-plausible.html
"These facts were a currency in my social circle. We'd trade them like baseball cards. I'd show you my payphone trick and you'd show me your gag for turning the cellophane on a cigarette pack into a smoke-ring machine. Social capital accrued to everyone who could show or explain something that gave you power and insight into the mysterious workings of the world."
#culture #diy #hacking #ideas #invention #scifi #socialcurrency #technology #tricks
archive.org #12398

Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released! | ProgrammerFish - Everything that's programmed!

http://www.programmerfish.com/source-code-of-several-7800-games-released
"Remember the Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron? They used to be favorites wheimagen Atari’s 7800 series was still around. Now since the era of those consoles is over and a different world of interactive reality gaming has taken over, Atari Museum, a site run by Atari enthusiast, has got hold of has unofficially source code of over 15 games for the coders and enthusiasts to admire the state-of-the-art (because this is what it was back then) of game development."
#7800 #assembly #atari #code #gaming #oldschool #programming #retro #source
archive.org #12397

Nick Bradbury: HomeSite Discontinued

http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2009/06/homesite-discontinued.html
"It's been almost 15 years since I created HomeSite, and I stopped working on it in 1998 when I left Allaire Corporation. Several other developers took over after I left, but to the best of my knowledge nobody has touched it for several years, so the fact that it was still being sold until now is a nice testament to how useful people found it. Kudos to Macromedia and Adobe for keeping it around, despite the fact that it competed with some of their other products."
#adobe #homesite #macromedia #webdev
archive.org #12393

wayneandwax.com » Songs as Shared Things

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2106
"Songs have always been shareable and shared. People, young and old, share songs with each other – by singing or playing them - in a variety of ways and settings, through a variety of technologies and media or other manner of accompaniment (as well as a capella). Songs as recordings are not fundamentally different in this respect. Since the advent of recorded media, people have shared songs in this form as well: played for each other in private and public settings, on personally distributed mixes (mixed tapes / CDs), and, in the age of mp3s, as files sent via email, IM (instant message), torrent, third-party hosting site, or any manner of online sites and services. "
#capitalism #community #copyfight #culture #music #remix #sampling #social #songs
archive.org #12392

Pez Suing Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia

http://laughingsquid.com/pez-suing-burlingame-museum-of-pez-memorabilia
"Pez Candy Inc. is suing the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia over copyright infringement. The suit, filed last week, claims that the museum deceives the public into believing they are operating under the authority of Pez and asks that the museum’s 7 foot tall replica of Pez dispenser be destroyed. The lawsuit also takes issue with the museum’s sales of toy truck Pez dispensers which had been modified with Obama and McCain logos during last years elections. The museum has been opened since 1995 and is said to be the only place in the world were you can see every Pez dispenser ever made."
#assholes #burlingame #california #copyright #lawsuits #museums #pez
archive.org #12391

Study concludes Wikipedians are a bunch of grumpy introverts - Ars Technica

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/wikipedians-grumpy-introverts-best-not-to-generalize.ars
"A study making the rounds suggests that Wikipedians may feel at home online, in part because they're grumpy introverts. But the results need to be interpreted very cautiously, as they were based on only 69 contributors from a single nation, a tiny drop in the Wikipedian ocean."
#community #culture #grumpy #introverts #social #wikipedia
archive.org #12389

Impressive

http://impressive.sourceforge.net
"Impressive is a program that displays presentation slides. But unlike OpenOffice.org Impress or other similar applications, it does so with style. Smooth alpha-blended slide transitions are provided for the sake of eye candy, but in addition to this, Impressive offers some unique tools that are really useful for presentations. "
#impressive #pdf #powerpoint #presentations #python #slides #talks
archive.org #12388

A Place Geeks Can Call Home - Concentrate

http://www.concentratemedia.com/features/a2geeksandstartups0063.aspx
"Geeks can now find a home, build business success and form strong social bonds with others of their kind in the new private workspaces. Workantile Exchange, a co-working facility on Main Street, and Tech Brewery on the city's north side, have begun to offer workspace, peer support and networking to freelancers and start-ups, respectively. Neither is an incubator."
#annarbor #coworking #geeks #michigan #tech #techbrewery #workantile
archive.org #12387