December 2007
73 posts
Marco says: “’Vacation’, to me, is like sleep: it’s nice when my body needs it, but I like to finish it in a reasonable amount of time so I can get back into my world”. I’m exactly the same; I’ve always thought my desperation to get back to work was some sort of personality disorder (!), but this little quote explains it much better.
“New Years Eve is generally rubbish I find. It’s pretty much a night like...”
– The Tiny Dancing music blog
“I’m not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why...”
– I love Bash.org
My ceaseless optimism will be the death of me.
“The biggest story [of 2008] will be the way in which the winner of the US...”
– Justin Webb, BBC’s North America Editor
"The coolest animated GIF background you'll ever... →
With some great accompanying discussion on Reddit. Better than all those horrendous Web 1.0 animated backgrounds!
Google’s new Reader features →
Scoble’s got a great post about the new features in Google Reader, and further improvements that could be made. Just to add my tuppence worth with a silly idea: how about a feature to automatically create a blogroll based on the feeds I subscribe to? If Reader could give me some code so that I could add a widget to a sidebar, either here or on my Wordpress blog, and share a list of whole...
New York Times: buzzwords of 2007 →
“Tumblelog” makes it! Other highlights include: Gorno - I’ve only previously heard it called “torture porn”, but a portmanteau of gore/porn makes sense too. Bacn - not a new one for those of us who live online, but a good word nonetheless. Although I’m able to reduce a lot of the bacn I receive by signing up to RSS feeds instead for the same updates. ...
Jonathan is surprised at the indie-cred of Shrek... →
How should men wear a scarf? →
Richard and Vasta: take the advice of a seasoned scarf-wearer - the Chelsea-knot, as sported by David Beckham in the article’s accompanying picture, is the only way to go.
365 Chiat Days →
Great video of how a designer has arranged his desktop icons throughout the year. He either has too much time on his hands, or is an organisational ninja; are those circles just to make it look pretty, or are they actually Venn-diagrams? (via Anarchaia)
“I’m not much of a blogger, but I do like having a little catch-all for stuff.”
– suitep This is a great succinct summary of what drew me to tumblelogging in the first place: it’s a little catch-all for stuff I can’t be bothered to write proper blog posts on.
“Tumblelogs are the punk rock of blogging.”
– The Daily Telegraph via suitep Fred Wilson wants to be Johnny Rotten. I’d rather be Joey Ramone - much less angry, much more fun. And I think The Ramones’ brief 90-second-shout-alongs are much more analagous to tumble-posts than the Pistols’ stuff. /music-nerdiness
Spock →
Interesting “people search” facility that sets out to answer the question “what does the web know about you?” As recommended in Wired’s Startups To Watch In 2008.
“A woman who spent 72 hours shopping, eating, and sleeping in a 24-hour Walmart...”
– (from Boing Boing) Who likes Walmart *that* much?! It’s not even as if she was homeless - the police escorted the woman back to her house. And I bet she had a hell of a trolley-full of shopping after spending that much time there…
List of blogging terms (Wikipedia) →
Blogstipation, PENUS and blooger are all real terms, apparently.
(Ignore this bit, I’ve added it in 2010 for some SEO messing about.)
“Moby has revealed that a hotel receptionist once thought that his request for a...”
– All he wanted was to cool down a bit… (from Gigwise)
“A ten year old boy who was raised by wolves has escaped from a Moscow clinic. He...”
– Soviet “wolfboy on the loose” would make a great pitch for a film.
Reddit: Fixing America, Step 1 →
“Make election day a national holiday, so more people can vote”. Not sure I completely agree, but it’s an interesting debate nonetheless.
Tumblelogs of the year
There’s a good little post over at The Deplorable Word about personal top tumblelogs of the year. Of the 20 or so that I follow, my faves, in no particular order, are: Something Creative Will Go Here - the slightly-longer-form posts (well, long by tumblelog standards) are what make this stand out from those that just posts reams of the same links one can find everywhere. Not been going...
Marco says: “Many people post the same content in multiple places. For example, people frequently use Tumblr’s feed-import feature to copy Flickr photos, Delicious links, and Twitter messages to Tumblr […] it’s incredibly wasteful. What happens to responses? Where does Google point?” Interesting. I initially intended to use Tumblr like this - as a way of compiling my various...
eBay: Drive Someone Insane with Postcards →
I wish I had thought of this…not only is it dead funny, but it seems like a bit of a money-making scheme too, with the bid currently at $305 :-) (via david)
The Deplorable Word says: “Consider a regular Macbook, now strip away the keyboard and you’ve got a single tablet like display. Now imagine that’s screen is a touchscreen and you have an screen iPhone-style keyboard. That’s what some of the rumor sites are reporting that Apple is working on”. Sounds interesting, but who needs *that* much portability? Surely, the...
“Disneyland announces plans to close the “It’s a Small World” attraction to...”
– Only in America. Yahoo News (via The Deplorable Word)
Pass It On - The Facebook Blog →
Official word from Facebook: no, they’re not closing down and no, they’re not going to start charging a fee for using the site. I hope everyone reads this and stops sending me stupid “chain letter” messages or trying to get me to join “Save Facebook” groups.
iLiKETRAiNS – “Elegies to Lessons Learnt” →
Review from my blog of the slightly disappointing recent debut of a potentially great band.
“A friend got into college last week. The university gave her a list of the kids...”
– Seth Godin on the good and bad of Facebook
Coming in 2008: iPhone battery rot? →
This is why I’m waiting for iPhone v2.0. Plus the AT&T/O2 lock-in. Plus the fact that I’m skint.
“Why does the Apple store make it so hard to schedule a reservation at the Genius...”
– (via Lindsey Chen) My guess would be that they ultimately want to lure people into the store to make a booking, in the hope that they’ll impulse-buy at least a couple of CD-Rs or an iPod accessory while they’re there.
“The best Internet technologies are like super powers. IM / Email / Twitter are a...”
– Aaron White (via Jakob Lodwick)
Guide to Being a Stand Up Comedian →
Everyone loves stereotypes, right? (via ideas)