Tasteless

Kurt Cobain mini flask keychain. And it’s on clearance.

New Yorker cover drawn on iPhone

From Slashdot:

"The cover of the June 1, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, entitled 'Finger Painting,' was drawn by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone — a first for the magazine. Colombo, a New York-based artist and illustrator, uses the iPhone's Brushes application to vibrantly depict New York street scenes."

The video of the image being created is pretty fascinating.

Mock Game Boy Camera image

Jeremy Parish at the Retronauts blog has posted a tutorial that explains how to fake a Game Boy Camera image.

The GBC is, without question, one of the finest digital cameras ever -- not despite the fact that it's has 2-bit color depth and a whopping 0.02 megapixel resolution but rather because of it. The limitations of Nintendo's camera add-on make it one of the most iconic and beloved peripherals ever made, and images shot with the Game Boy Camera remain retro-spectacular even a decade later. The DSi really missed the mark by not offering a GBC filter in its camera software, if you ask me.

Expect to see mock-GB Camera photos proliferate throughout the web now. It’ll be pretty cool!

Extraterrestrial Carrion Bird!

Another one from Slashdot:

In 1953 John Myers brought his friend Gary Wolf a book he had just read, Space Hawk by Anthony Gilmore. The two were already avid readers but this would be their introduction to an entire genre, Science Fiction. They both say that it was Space Hawk that sparked a life long love of all things Sci-Fi. According to both of them, they had an opportunity to re-read it as adults and found that it had not weathered the years well. They decided they would write their own science fiction adventure in the same style, but do a better job. The result is their book Space Vulture.

I keep seeing this book at the supermarket; up to now, I’d been tempted.

Haselton: “Bloggers: Relax”

From Slashdot:

"Although a court has ruled that the police can subpoena the identities of users who posted comments in a newspaper's blog, I think this is not as big of a threat to journalistic integrity as it might seem. And in any case when the judge ruled against the privacy rights of 'bloggers,' he didn't actually mean 'bloggers.'"

You may want to read the whole thing.

Hateful Words

From the Visual Thesaurus:

Sometimes our perspective on language isn't exactly rational: we love some words and absolutely despise other ones. What inspires such deep feelings, and why does word hate often seem to run hotter than word love? In the case of words like impactful, discussed in yesterday's Red Pen Diaries, the bad vibes may arise because of an association with vacuous management-speak or other institutional jargon. But other times a word is disliked because it just sounds, well, icky. A look at some of the favorite and least favorite words selected by Visual Thesaurus subscribers offers some insight on verbal attractions and aversions.

It’s all kind of interesting, if not especially deep; but it’s worth a look all the same. Also: Don’t click on any of the links for individual words, unless you want a try/buy Visual Thesaurus window to pop up, which then forces your original browser window to go to a “Thanks for trying…!” page when you close it.

Link via Bookninja

It’s more of a spiritual classification

From iTWire: The Hard Drive is Inside the Computer:

Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HDD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything "the hard drive."

As one of the cranky old men of IT (I’m in my thirties), I sympathize with the author, here.

Link via Slashdot.

Donald the huckster

From CJR:

The Wall Street Journal has a hilarious story today using Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times editor Timothy O’Brien to get a damaging look inside Trumpville.

O’Brien wrote a book four years ago saying Trump was worth just a couple hundred million dollars rather than the billions Trump claims, and the Donald sued for “defamation.”

What follows this quoted section are excerpts from Donald Trump’s deposition in the case. And, wow.

Much ado about ramen

A guy found enlightenment (or something) in a way that involves ramen noodles. From the SF Bay Guardian:

Before his noodle breakthrough, Raskin writes of being in and out of love affairs, usually at the same time. He cheated on everyone and he dumped everyone and, after a few chapters, it's hard to remember which failed sweetheart is which. He was a serial online dater, the kind who makes people wary of online dating.

Yes, it’s all there in his book.

I do my best work while eating McNuggets

From Slashdot:

"McDonalds has earmarked potential changes to seating plans in some restaurants to prevent free Wi-Fi users from monopolizing seating, particularly in peak periods. The availability of Wi-Fi means people are now spending 35 minutes in McDonalds — rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there.[…]”

The average ten minutes patrons spend eating there? At our local McD’s, it takes ten minutes just to get to the register to order. Still and all, at least now when some one claims to have written their novel at Starbucks, we are now secretly allowed to wonder if they really did it in a McDonalds.

Before cross-overs?

A very special guest-star appears in the comic strip B.C. (Am I losing it, or has B.C. improved somewhat?)

I’m gonna kick (caffeine) tomorrow

… well, not me personally, but I could! If I wanted to! From Lifehacker:

Good news for those who get jitters, headaches, and really bad social graces when deprived of their caffeine fix—beating the habit and switching to a placebo can leave you feeling just as energized.

After dividing up 16 "regular caffeine users" (sounds so clinical!) into two groups, researchers gave half of them the equivalent of 20 ounces of strong coffee per day, while the other half thought they were getting the same fix. The big reveal is that everyone, getting real caffeine or fake, saw their brain getting more blood flow and activity, and the placebo crew felt just as awake or tired throughout the day as their temporarily lucky counterparts.

This is great news! Now all I have to do is get someone to secretly switch my morning coffee with decaf, who will also claim that this is exactly what they’re not doing, and before I know it, I’ll be free of caffeine forever!

Foodies starting to crack

How else to explain this passage from a Salon article on taste-testing fast food value menus?

I added a $1.09 hamburger onto the pile for curiosity's sake. I hadn't tasted one in decades. And though it arrived pale and pathetic -- a thin, grayish patty of spongy meat, which appeared to have been gnawed on one corner, tossed carelessly between a bun -- I was surprised to find that, contrary to appearances, it was not completely terrible, with its familiar tang of onion and pickle. That's the thing, right? Odious as it might be, most fast food is not completely terrible. [Emphasis ours]

Shocking! I’m amazed that she’s willing to say such things in print – foodies are not forgiving when it comes to such matters. She might as well have written, “You know, poop isn’t all that bad. Not completely terrible.”

You might think I’m exaggerating. Gentle reader, I am not.

[Link via Chaos Theory]

Memeish

UPDATE: After noticing that a few books on this list are very old, I thought it might be fun to link some of the books to the freely available Project Gutenberg electronic copies. No big deal, I did it during the commercials on 30 Rock.

Absolutely swamped, today. So: From the blog Foul Papers, a meme originating at SF Signal. Bold items are books that I’ve read:

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
15. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
32. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
48. Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004) [I’m working on it]
96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
104. Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- )
113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Again, there are some shocking gaps in my reading history. But I’m just one person! I’m not a book-reading machine! Curse my non-bionic eyes!

And the winner(?) is…

The Consumerist has announced this year’s winner of the Worst Company In America competition. We won’t spoil the surprise, you’ll just have to click the link. (We like to help out less fortunate websites. [Kidding! We’re only kidding!])

Dammit: RIP Dom DeLuise

This also from the A.V. Club:

The skilled and affable character actor Dom DeLuise, familiar to most for his frequent appearances in Mel Brooks films and Burt Reynolds vehicles, has died at the age 75. He also had a passion for cooking, and wrote a pair of books: Eat This… It’ll Make You Feel Better: Mama’s Italian Home Cooking And Other Favorites Of Family And Friends and a follow-up called Eat This Too!. Though DeLuise showed some talent early in his career for dramatic actor—and later in 1980’s bizarre, seriocomic Fatso—he will be remembered for his larger-than-life turns in comedies.

Bad news for The Onion – for real this time

From the A.V. Club:

This is not the sort of news we like to report, but we’d be remiss to ignore it. The Onion has shut down its print editions—which also included the print content of The A.V. Club and Decider—in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The reason? Pretty simple: an absence of ad revenue. It’s a tough time for print publications of all stripes, and we found that our West Coast operations were not immune to the problem.

Ouch. This nearly made me cry. (But I read the post while it was under running tap water, so I’m okay.)

Book-eating avoided

From the Guardian:

Would he really have done it? Fortunately for the digestive tract of David Kipen, the residents of Kelleys Island in Ohio proved to be a literary-minded lot and he wasn't forced to make good on his promise to eat a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird if the entire population of the island failed to read the book.

I’m sure Harper Lee would be flattered.

Happy May Day

… whichever version you’re into.