Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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The weblog of Seth Johnson -------------- INKSLINGER.ORG -------------- OD ARCHIVES -------------- FEEDS Posts:  Shared Items:
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Friday, May 16, 2003
Three links, and then I'm off to lie down and hope I feel better tomorrow:
- Make your own (daytime) infrared goggles
- Hacker reaction to The Matrix Reloaded
- After hearing it mentioned all over the place, I've finally poked at the Friendster beta--only discover that according to the program I apparently have no friends until I recruit them to join the program...which is a little too MLM/cult/astroturf marketing for me...
(Updated to correct my apparently common spelling error.)
Perhaps you saw the Star Wars Kid videos floating around the Net in the last couple weeks. Perhaps you laughed (like most of us.) Perhaps (like some of us) you then thought "man, it's kind of sad to be getting amusement from some kid's public humiliation".
Well, the Kid has been found and interviewed, and a fund started to buy him an iPod in return for our amusement. I've donated--and I'm in such august company as Matt Haughley, Anil Dash, Matthew Baldwin, and Greg Rucka.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Wow. Tonight's Late Night with Conan O'Brien is completely in claymation. I wish my TV card was hooked up so I could grab some stills.
UPDATE: Found an AP pic.
I am a Medical photographer by trade.
This site will eventually be filled with a combination of medical, police action and fire in progress pictures. ... I live in NYC . There is a photo opportunity on every street corner.
Via boingboing, Fire...Cuffs and Guts, a collection of amazing photos. Please note however, that they are not for the faint of heart--though not on the calibre of the photos of a horrible bus crash I once stumbled across, there are at least a couple in the gallery that had me squirming* in my seat*.
* I'm serious. Don't click those links if you flip past the Surgery Channel as quickly as possible.
So you have this Ring, right? And they want you to take it to somewhere called Mount Dune, or something like that. They give you a nifty new shirt, a trail chef, and send you on your way...without directions, leaving you to wander all over hill and Dale. But Jon comes to the rescue, passing along directions that you too can use to get there and back again.Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Iraq's future is on a firmer footing as it is revealed that the National Library in Baghdad was not burned and looted wholesale, but instead mostly evacuated in an impromptu rescue operation by Iraqi civilians in the days before the building was burned by looters who were less successful than perhaps even they believed.
Part of my faith in the future stems from the continued existence of Iraq's cultural heritage. But most comes from knowing that there are enough people who value that heritage to successfully move and hide the contents of an entire major library.
If you have ninety minutes to spare, a fast Net connection, and (here's where we're going to lose a lot of you) RealPlayer installed, The Day Britain Stopped is a terrific fictional documentary by the BBC set on a day in December 2003 when the London traffic system goes horribly wrong. Fantastically well done; I hope I get a chance to see it in non-pixilated form at some point. (via Metafilter)Chris Gulker is tracking Cyveillance, a company whose army of spiders and bots is scouring the web on behalf of the RIAA.
Update: If you have access to your .htaccess file, Gulker has instructions on how to block the bots from coming onto your website (short of installing a full-coverage robots.txt file, which is a workable but scorched earth solution.)
so we are in the computer lab at school & I kept making the bonzi buddy say fornicate...
The banquet was this weekend with after party at Christine's. Lots of fun! Lighting things on fire with Jennifer was quite entertaining (you can make fireballs out of gum, it's amazing). I especially enjoyed when there was like 20 people on the trampoline all jumping, running into each other and talking about people we don't like.
Every time I start to worry that OD might be dropping below some unspoken mandatory level of content quality, I just go surf random blogs for a few minutes. Though I do have to admit that I enjoy looking over the list of recently updated blogs--the names people give their blogs are often better than the blogs themselves.
Rumor has it that my Sov Stone sourcebook is "still on schedule for a late June release". Add that book to Sword and Sorcery Studios' Warcraft Roleplaying Game and the Redhurst Academy of Magic (PDF link) coming from Human Head, and I can't wait to go to Gencon this summer and see so much of my work finally hitting shelves.
[/selfpromotion]
(Note: Art clipped from the Sov Stone section of Larry Elmore's website; I haven't seen the cover art for my book yet.)
Gamers With Jobs has posted some thoughts on the Planetside beta. I might say that I agree, but that would mean that I was in the beta. And I'm not. No, sir. I was up late last night writing. Yeah, writing. (Actually, I was writing. Most of the time.)
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
"While the movie "Shakespeare in Love" scored close to having the right combination of ingredients it could have done with more special effects, Clayton's research suggested."
In a story discovered via boingboing, a British academic is getting waaaay too much press (and linkage he says, holding up his hand to acknowledge his guilt) for claiming to discover the formula for the perfect box-office smash:
"According to Clayton the blueprint for the perfect film is for it to have: 30 percent action, 17 percent comedy, 13 percent good versus evil, 12 percent sex/romance, 10 percent special effects, 10 percent plot and eight percent music."
There. Between that and Friday's pop song formula post, I expect you all to be rich within the week. Then you can all start buying me stuff off my ever-bloated Amazon wish list.
(Updated to remove Amazon link, as Jon points out that it links to the list of some random stranger.)
Passed along by Flynn, a link to the amazing NASA Visible Earth collection of satellite images. While not as deep as some other online orbital photo collections Visible Earth has terrific breadth, including before and after photos of the area near my parents' cabin when it was hit by a tornado, a fantastic photo of thunderstorms over Brazil, phytoplankton blooms in the Atlantic, Space Radar imaging of Calcutta, thermal photography of California wildfires, a phenomenal picture of the Aurora Australias taken from the Space Shuttle and much, much more."Are 'Mini-Nukes' The New Big Thing?" (via WIReport)
That's right--kids across the nation are throwing out their Tickle Me Elmos and Tamagotchis and begging and pleading for the hottest gift of the holiday season--tac nukes!
I'm disturbed to see stories about massively powerful weapons systems given the same breathless sugar-spun headlines as entertainment-section fads. Especially backpack nukes. I highly recommend you all read The Curve of Binding Energy so that you can share my dread.
For those interested in more info on our latest project at work, the new issue of the official Xbox Magazine has a two-page spread on Dead Man's Hand. It's good to see the game getting some pre-release publicity courtesy of our friends at
Monday, May 12, 2003
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Old Glory Insurance, probably one of the best fake ads ever aired on Saturday Night Live:
Old Lady #1: When my ex-husband passed away, the insurance company said his policy didn't cover him.
Old Lady #2: They didn't have enough money for the funeral.
Old Lady #3: It's so hard nowadays, with all the gangs and rap music..
Old Lady #1: What about the robots?
Old Lady #4: Oh, they're everywhere!
Old Lady #1: I don't even know why the scientists make them.
Old Lady #2: Darren and I have a policy with Old Glory Insurance, in case we're attacked by robots.
Old Lady #1: An insurance policy with a robot plan? Certainly, I'm too old.
Old Lady #2: Old Glory covers anyone over the age of 50 against robot attack, regardless of current health.
The Curta handheld mechanical calculator may be the coolest thing I've stumbled across online in quite a while:
The Curtas were marvels of mechanical miniaturization which were introduced by Contina Ltd. in 1948. They were designed by Curt Herzstark while he was a prisoner in a concentration camp. Herzstark worked out the basic design in his head and polished it on paper when he was released in 1945. Herzstack's design was based on the stepped drum mechanism but with a brilliant adaptation that allowed a remarkably simple and compact design. The small hand held devices could be used to perform the four basic functions and the later manuals included algorithms for cubes and square roots. ... The machines were cylindrical with numbers input on sliding levers around the body. Above each lever was a window that showed the number entered in that position. Below the number levers was a base/grip used to hold the machine and on the top there was a crank called the "operating handle". Also found on the top were two more number registers (the revolution counter and the result dial), decimal markers and a clearing lever.
If it isn't clear how you operated the Curta from that description, here's an HTML version of the original Curta manual. Once you think you've got it all figured out, try it for yourself with a Flash-driven Curta simulator.
From another Curta fan with a steady hand, a brave soul, and a digital camera, a look inside a Curta. If you want an even more detailed view of the Curta's innards, here's a desktop ready exploded view (also available as a poster, courtesy of the creator's own Curta dissection.)
Further reading on the Curta: the history of the device and an interview with its creator, and an article from a 1976 issue of Rallye Magazine describing how Curtas were used by rally drivers.
I want one. There are a few Curtas for sale on eBay, but unfortunately I don't have multiple hundreds of dollars to spare. Sigh.
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