Back when the future looked unbelievably bright, this is what it looked like!
I especially like his "On the Shoulders of Giants" series.
While I'm here, let me point you over for more Tikitastic Stuff from Konakai.com. See where watching Tiki Bar TV gets you?
This site is too much fun and has the potential to become a fabulous tour guide when you travel. Carrboro has a bunch of stuff listed (but I added much of it!). Way fun...
Tiki Bar TV follows the adventures of Dr. Tiki, La La and Johnny Johnny as they hang about their in-home tiki bar. Episodes 9 and 10 are my personal faves. I think you could make a great party theme centered around this vodcast.
Must be 21 to enter. Not suitable for prudes, homophobes, people with an underdeveloped sense of humor, Republicans, or those whose sexuality may be threatened by androids. Irreverent to the point that I might just have to buy a bottle to support their complete disregard for how many people that they are likely to TICK OFF!
I normally don't put two sites in my "Cool Site of the Day" category on the same day since that would seem to defeat the idea that some site could be THE cool site of the day. Then again, it's my blog, and I'll break the rules if I want to...
Check out the Museum of Hoaxes and their favorite 100 April Fool's Day pranks.
Every rag on the planet from the National Enquirer to the Grey Lady herself seems to have to do retrospectives of one sort or another this time of year, and most cover the "Top 10" or "Top 100" film stars of the year. It seems that generally these listings are created by having three of four staff members gather around the table and argue back and forth about their faves: not exactly a way to produce a meaningful list.
But is there a better way to produce data on a topic as elusive as the "Top X" film personalities? Box office receipts? Oscar nominations? Income?
The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is taking a different approach: track the number of searches done on actors and build your list from that. That won't produce a list of richest, most-acclaimed, or best actors, but it will produce a pretty good list of those that most caught the attention of the public. It's a rather interesting take since it tells us where our interests were in 2005 rather than those of a few journalists around the water cooler. Anyway, check it out:
For those of you that don't know, Wikipedia is an open source / community-written encyclopedia. I have found it to be an incredible resource, but many people have questioned just how accurate it is.
The respect journal Nature set out to look at how accurate Wikipedia actually is by searching 42 science articles in both Wikipedia and the esteemed Britannica for errors. The Nature study found:
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
That would tend to give an edge to Britannica, but not by much. However, a few folks who are a part of Wikipedia noted that the articles in Wikipedia tend to be significantly longer than those in Britannica, so the error rate per article is misleading. They conclude that when article size is considered Wikipedia is actually more accurate than Britannica.
So there you have it! I can therefore give an enthusiastic recommendation for Wikipedia. Go learn something!!!
If you take pictures and share them with others on the web or by email, you need to know about Flickr.
Flickr is a photo-sharing site that lets you upload up to 20MB of photos per month free. If you want to do some heavy-duty sharing go to the Pro account for $25/year. This will also let you share photos without overstuffing the email accounts of your friends and family. You can even mark photos as accessible only to selected friends and family.
You can also browse the zillions of photos posted by others. I find this (a) entertaining and (b) educational. Entertaining because there are lots of daring people "putting themselves out there" for the sake of their photography: pictures that show them at their worst, or show their fears, or are rather sensual in nature. Pictures that take a bit of bravery to post. These portraits (and especially self-portraits) are my favorites.
Educational: because you can learn a LOT about taking good photographs by looking at the photos that others take and asking yourself why one picture works or dazzles while another falls flat. Things I've learned: watch your light sources, don't let everyone stare into the camera, get action shots, and MOVE CLOSER (fill the frame).
I've tossed a few pics up on Flickr here. You can also "tag" photos with descriptive notes. Flickr will then let you search on the tags to find pictures of interest to you. For example, pictures of flowers (most recent first or most interesting first) are found with a search on the "flowers" tag. The tags end up being pretty intelligent as well by "clustering" tags into groups.
Fun site. Educational site. Useful site. Free site. Works for me!!!
Another cool site today: Space Penguin!
Back in college I had to write a computer program to graphically demonstrate the gravitational interactions between any number of given masses (planets, stars, whatever). It was one of the most fun projects I was ever assigned. Well, the good folks over at Big Idea FUN have written a similar program demonstrating gravitational dynamics, but made it even more fun by throwing in a spaceship and a PENGUIN IN A SLINGSHOT. You have to slingshot the penguin back to his ship through a gravitational maze of stars or planets. The LONGER the path you take, the better your score. Easy to play, hard to master! Very fun and totally free!
Good news for weather geeks! While the National Hurricane Center has called it quits and gone home for the winter, Dr. Jeff Masters is continuing to track tropical developments on his Tropical Weather Blog over at Weather Underground.
Looks like Tropical Storm Zeta may form later this week!
With President Bush revealing his poor science understanding by championing "Intelligent Design" as a valid "alternative theory" to evolution, I though I should mention a great site that clears up a lot of misconceptions about evolution and natural selection and which does a great job of explaining what the theory of evolution actually is, the evidence supporting it, and just what the word "theory" means in science as opposed to everyday speech. Check it out!
Whoa. I think Chris Anderson is onto something over at The Long Tail.
This resonates with me. It also concerns me a little. Our digital world may give us more ideas and entertainment that tightly intersects with our particular interests and desires, but it seems to me this could also have the downside of fragmenting us into thousands upon thousands of microcultures trying to coexist in the same geographic space while becoming more and more culturally isolated from one another.
My office has no window. However, I would like to help my suffering aloe plant out with a little extra light. I thought about a grow lamp, but I hate to run something that hot and energy-inefficient. A quick look on the web shows me that chlorophyll absorbs mostly between 650 and 680 or so nanometers. NOW I'm on to something! All I need to do is make a high-efficiency light source for my plant concentrated along near the peak absorbtion of chlorophyll.
Over at Radio Shack I found some nice bright LED's that emit at 660nm. Not perfect, but close enough. Now, how to hook them up correctly...
Which brings me to Discover Circuits, my pick for Cool Site of the Day. If they don't tell you how to wire it, they probably point you to someone that can. From there I found the wiring diagram I want over at web-ee.com. It's for LED brake lights, but the idea is the same.
I guess it's about time for a run to Radio Shack for some LED's. Of course, with the number I want I may need to order online...
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Busted Tees. What statement does your t-shirt make? My favorite may have to be the one that says "Greece" under a Union Jack. Of course "Your Retarded" works pretty well, too. |
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