Jump to August 2006 archive page: 1 2 3
  • What I watched

    I've been a regular viewer of Lost from the start, so I'm a little embarrassed to say I wasn't aware that there were random clips of video around the Internet that could be assembled to give more clues and background into the story.  Luckily, this guy was aware of it.

    This is as close to a one-liner as a 911 operator gets.  I'd be interested to know the full story since obviously the caller knows his name and he knows not to take her very seriously.  NOTE:  Page has some ads on it with a girl in a thong.  Potentially unsafe.

    New engine combusts old ideas - The Scuderi engine is a split cycle engine.  The article includes a very helpful 4 minute video of what that means.  The claims are exciting, but I'm still having trouble imagining what kind of power comes from a cylinder that fires with the piston already on the way down.

    Show more
  • The other other

    I did a double take when I heard an advertisement for Kurdistan during today's Hardball.  I guess they're looking for investors.  I wonder if they ever saw the ad for pork, however.

    The Best Word Book Ever,1963 and 1991 - Highlights changes in the book between the two editions.  Strangely, most of them seem to be gender related.

    Washington hit by curse of the kid bloggers - As a culture we don't really hold parents accountable for their kids' actions, so I'm not sure these stories are as scandalizing as some would like.

    It probably behooves Americans to pay attention to news events in Pakistan.  I'm not sure if this blogger is actually in Pakistan or just relaying events there but his perspective is certainly insightful.

    New York to L.A. in two hours - They're working on a 12-seat passenger jet that would travel at 1,200 mph without making a sonic boom.  Oh, and it'll be invisible. (jk)

    Create your own panorama planet (Photoshop trick)

    Lumalive textiles remind me of the kinds of costumes they wear in low budget sci fi movies set in the future.  Could wearing clothes like a Times Square billboard really catch on?  (Having said that, if they made an adult sized sneaker with those motion triggered blinking lights in the sole, I'd buy a pair in a second.)

  • Must see...

    CNN anchor's mic broadcast live while she's in the bathroom engaging in a bit of girl talk.  She doesn't say anything really controversial but does bash her brother's wife as being a control freak.  That should make for a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner.

  • Who is the secret holder?

    "Senators Tom Coburn and Barak Obama have proposed S.2590, legislation that would create a single website with access to information on nearly all recipients of federal funding. The bill cannot proceed, however, because one or more Senators placed a "secret hold" on it."

    Bloggers and blog readers are calling their respective senators to find out who has secretly put a hold on the bill.  The list of possible suspects is rapidly narrowing.

    UPDATE:  No sooner have I written the explanation than I see Wonkette pointing the finger at Senator Stevens.  If true it would hardly be a shocker that Mr. Bridge to Nowhere doesn't want American citizens to easily find out where federal money is going.

    Seconded.

     

  • English Russia

    For the past few days I've been keeping an eye on English Russia.  "English Russia  is a daily entertaiment blog devoted to the events happening in Russian speaking countries, such as Russia (Russian Federation), Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc."

    Check out this series of photos from the Moscow subway.

  • 360 video

    Wow, check it out, the media team has published 360 degree video tours of parts of the Mississippi coast.  Note that's not a 360 photo, it's video that plays and you can look around and point the camera where you want.

    It can be a bit of a drain on the computer's resources, but it's really cool to play with.

  • A couple notes about comments

    The way the comments works is that I have to approve them before they show up.  Right now that means going through them only once or twice a day.  the good thing about it is that it forces me to read them all, the bad thing is that there ends up being some redundancy in some of them because people can't see when they're making a comment similar to one that's already been submitted.  We're just going to have to forgive each other for overlapping comments in those cases.

    If you don't want to leave a public comment you can do two things, either tell me when you post the comment that you don't want it to be public and I won't approve it.  Or else send me a mail.  I'm still reading everything that comes in to Spotter@MSNBC.com (and yes, I'm now aware that the new blog doesn't a link to that address, I'll get that fixed too).

    The other good thing about having to approve all the comments is that it gives me a chance to reply to them.  I'm not sure there's a good way to know when it happens, but I am trying to participate in the threads as well as doing the posts.

     

     

  • Someone ought to invent a system...

    "Can We Set Up An Online Learning Class About Our Screwed Up Patent System?"  The specific example is of overbroad patents being granted, but there are a lot of fed up people in the comments section.  Seems like it'd be a smart idea to help the economy by making sure the patent system is well functional.

  • Geotagging on Flickr

    "Flickr's great for exploring photos by photographer, tag, time, text and group, and now it's also great for exploring photos by place."  The actual map to play with is here.

    The thing to note is that the photos are plotted based on your zoom level, so there might be 3 photos in your area at a far out zoom, but as you go in you see more photos in your area.  On the plus side, you can see who takes pictures in your area, great fun.  On the minus side I already found one person who put a photo of a restaurant in the wrong place in my neighborhood.  This could end up being a real mess.

  • Not so lonely girl

    Speaking of prominent arts blogs, remember the Lonelygirl15 story I mentioned last month?  Businessweek's Jon Fine has gone through considerble effort to find out what the real story is.  While there aren't many real answers, he at least figured out that it is, in fact, a performance.

  • Art bloggers

    Question 2 in Hugh Macleod's interview with Seth Godin asks why more prominent bloggers aren't in the arts.  I disagree with both the question and the answer.  The question's premise is flawed because in fact there are plenty of prominent arts bloggers.  It's more a question of measure because arts bloggers don't participate in the commerce of links that pundit bloggers use to evaluate success.  Photobloggers post photos, not links.  Poetry bloggers post poems, not search engine keywords.  And if the measure of prominence is traffic, prominent arts bloggers are already here.  Alexa puts Stereogum and Gaping Void in pretty close alignment traffic-wise, but who's more prominent?

    Note to self:  If you know so much about arts bloggers, why don't you link to more of them?
    Reply to self:  Good point.  I'll try.

  • Introduction to traditional wet shaving

    The advertising for shavers has become so ridiculous (not to mention the actual products) that I have half a mind to switch to wet shaving just to spite the industry.  Plus, the idea of having a "kit" full of tools and a shaving ritual has real appeal.

  • See where the Internet lives

    It's a video tour of a massive Web storage facility.  When they talk about "soft targets" for terrorism, this is the kind of place that comes to my mind first.  I know the point of a "net" is that it's distributed, but still, there are hubs in the system that would turn the country upside down if anything ever happened.  (Sounds like they're prepared though.)

  • Indy bloggers and naked locals

    Calling all Indianapolis bloggers...

    This site is focused on Indianapolis, but is drawing attention for its potential as a hub for bloggers in the region.

    Speaking of local blogging, did you see the story about the folks going naked in Vermont?  I happen to have met the fine folks who run the citizen powered iBrattleboro, so I was pleased to find a reason to visit that site for some local perspective.  (I didn't see any photos of naked people in any of this coverage, but obviously the potential is there.)

  • HBO music...

    Catching up on the HBO shows I missed over the weekend, I find myself again driven online to hunt down the songs.  The closing song on Entourage that sounded like it was from some great new 70s retro band?  That wasn't retro, that was actual 70s, Ted Nugent's Stranglehold.  (Here's the ten minute live version but NOTE some cursing.)

    And the funk song playing in the new promo for The Wire is Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today) from the Temptations.

    (You may have noticed that I like to link to Napster for songs.  I actually really like the service they provide.  I have the free account, which allows me to listen to a certain amount of music per month (or something) and that's enough for me to look up songs or check out bands I hear about.  It's not enough for music at work all day every day, but still very handy and the only service of its kind that I know of.)

  • Book porn

    Hot library smut is what this site is calling a collection of beautiful photos of libraries (totally safe for work, no actual smut, sorry).  This got me to thinking of which have been the most beautiful libraries I've visited.  Poking around, I had a remarkably hard time finding photos of them, which makes me that much more impressed with the presentation here.

    I think Seattle's relatively new central public library was the most photographed on on my list.

    ***Here's an interesting find with regard to this new software, it appears to have some words automatically censored.  The one above is $mut, which I wouldn't have thought was so bad on its own.  Also odd that I can say "porn" but not $mut in the body.

     

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