Waxy.org: Links Archives: July 2008

Get Your War On, the first animated episode (via Rex, who's been tearing it up lately) [via]

NYT Magazine on Internet trolls and lulz culture (journalist spends a few days getting to know Jason Fortuny, weev, ED, and the /b/tards; and yes, I'm part of the problem)

Michael Wesch's Anthropological Introduction to YouTube (highly recommended viewing from the creator of The Machine Is Us/ing Us) [via]

Del.icio.us 2.0 goes live as Delicious.com (tag combos still work perfectly, so I'm happy)

YouTube introduces text search for political videos (their speech-to-text transcription gets a public trial in limited fashion on their You Choose section) [via]

Librarian responds to complaint about "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" (incredibly thoughtful and well-reasoned defense of a mildly controversial children's book) [via]

Deerhoof releases new single as sheet music, asks people to record their versions (Matthew Walker's cover is fantastic; Lucas Gonze contributed a MIDI score and guitar tab to work with) [via]

Caterina Fake joins Hunch.com as CPO (stealthy startup I'd keep a close eye on)

Speed Racer Video Mosaic (every frame of the video is composed of hundreds of individual thumbnails)

Judge Judy taping interrupted by L.A. earthquake (also: the set of Big Brother, KNBC News, KABC, L.A. City Hall, and Judge Jenny)

Diesel Sweeties leaves unprofitable print syndication, back to web-only (Lore Sjoberg interviews R. Stevens about the switch) [via]

12 Glowing Men (also: the 1957 version of 12 Angry Men is on YouTube in its entirety ) [via]

Don Hodges explains how to control the barrels in Donkey Kong (I've linked to his kill screen work before; someone get this guy an RSS feed!) [via]

Bowser's Minions (those College Humor guys are on a roll)

Candid Camera-style show sends "Ugly Americans" to Parisian cafes, records results (the locals were extremely tolerant and were only chastised by other Americans) [via]

Amazon redesigns Mechanical Turk with web-based creation tools (creating HITs now requires no programming; just pick a template and upload a CSV with the values)

OSCON in 37 minutes (45 presenters summarize their talks in 30 seconds; I'd love to see this before every conference)

fl0wer gameplay from E3 2008 (my other E3 picks: Ibb and Obb, Mirror's Edge, Rhythm Heaven, Fat Princess, and LittleBigPlanet) [via]

Waiter Rant reveals his identity on eve of book tour (NY Mag identified the restaurant, saying he worked there for six years) [via]

So Open It Hurts (SF Mag's long profile piece on Tara Hunt and Chris Messina's public breakup; Tara's take)

Derek Powazek's 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments (solid suggestions that would lead to a massive short-term decrease in comments, for the better)

Metafilter on the end of Wired Magazine's Found column (almost uniformly goofy, I'll still miss it)

Phillip Toledano's Days with My Father (a 98-year-old widower with no short-term memory, but a great sense of humor) [via]

LA Times on Sean Tevis' XKCD-inspired fundraising comic (he hit his goal in 24 hours and raised a staggering $95k in two weeks, 8 times his old-guard opponent)

Innocent People Should Never Talk to the Police (funny, even the cop agrees with this one)

Waverly Flams and the Magic Pants ("I'm a God! I have breathed life into my pants!")

GOOD Magazine on "vampire energy," power consumed in standby mode (not surprisingly, plasma TVs, computers, and game consoles are the worst) [via]

Internal Apple video from 1987 predicts the year 1997, with tongue in cheek (cameos from Woz and Scully; don't miss the "Vista Mac" at 2:20 and the stock chart at 6:02) [via]

Recursive Motivational Poster (update: bandwidth exceeded, so I'm mirroring it) [via]

Vimeo decides to ban and delete gaming videos (reminds me of Flickr's screenshot battle, but they never deleted photos)

NYT's roundup of home electricity monitoring tech (isn't it against the utilities' best interest to provide tools to monitor and reduce usage?)

StupidFilter goes beta, releases code (the classifier for identifying stupid comments; try the demo on random Digg comments) [via]

College Humor's montage of top 10 eye-gouging scenes (from King Lear to Blade Runner) [via]

It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future (selections from a vintage IBM sales presentation; I want a t-shirt of several of these slides) [via]

Charles & Ray Eames' "A Computer Glossary" from 1968 (charming animated primer on computers for IBM, music by Elmer Bernstein) [via]

Mondo 2000's RU Sirius banned from Facebook for using a pseudonym (shouldn't they make an exception for people known primarily by their aliases, like Frank Black or Jello Biafra?)

Journey's new album released on a pre-loaded, branded MP3 player (with 11 songs re-recorded with their new singer discovered on YouTube) [via]

Embracing the backchannel at the Start conference (they've hired Flickr's George Oates to act as an ombudsman)

Google hits one trillion URLs indexed (bigger than a breadbox)

Flowing Data redesigns a bar chart (I like Nathan and Tyler's the best)

Randy Pausch, R.I.P. (now would be a good time to watch the Last Lecture again)

New Yorker digs into California's medical marijuana industry (from growers to brokers to dispensaries to clients) [via]

Tarantino's Mind (short film explores a unified theory of Tarantino films) [via]

Rush plays "Tom Sawyer" on Rock Band (they failed the Expert level one-third through the song) [via]

The Onion interviews Mike Patton on videogames (he discusses Rock Band, Portal, Bionic Commando, and voicing the monsters in I Am Legend)

Amir's Super Mega Burn (anonymity can turn anyone, even superfans, into superjerks in no time flat) [via]

The Balcony Is Closed (Roger Ebert on Gene Siskel and the end of "At the Movies")

The Onion's Random Roles with Teri Garr (like Random Rules, this format teases out insights and anecdotes from interview subjects)

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' (remarkably prescient article from January 2001)

Jeffrey McManus runs the numbers on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon himself confirmed the estimates were close) [via]

QA Deathmatch (bug reporting as a multiplayer game) [via]

Fox News affiliate tries product placement with fake McDonald's iced coffees (even if it's a morning show, this is a huge credibility hit and creates new conflicts of interest) [via]

GameBridge, Jabber/XMPP bot for Z-Machine, MUSH, and other text games (nice list of text adventures on the Jabber bot)

I-Fluid, PC game pilots a water droplet through a kitchen (with a nice be-bop soundtrack)

43 Folders on iPhone security (is the time saved for convenience worth the potential hassles of identity theft?)

Baby's First Internet ("It doesn't matter what you say, just publish it twelve times per day.") [via]

Something Awful tries the 5-minute microwave chocolate cake recipe (don't miss the handy microwaved huevos rancheros recipe) [via]

Multiplayer Minesweeper (brilliant collaborative game, but only takes one jackass to ruin everyone's fun) [via]

Cliche Watch: Pushing over the Leaning Tower of Pisa (many more in Pisa Pushers on Flickr)

The Quirkbook (Rands polls Twitter for everyone's odd quirks and mildly OCD mannerisms)

Jane McGonigal on Werewolf at Foo Camp 2008 (ideal strategies, a sneaky all-villager variation, and the impact of the werewolf metaphor)

Google interviews the creators of WarGames (great trivia about the making of the film and its impact on tech culture)

Logan Aube's Hockey Night theme (Something Awful goons tweak an online contest with funny results) [via]

Sean Tevis is running for Kansas State Representative, XKCD-style (help a computer geek defeat the incumbent, a hard-right, anti-privacy Creationist; he's trying to get 3,000 to donate $9 each)

How to Fake Being a Wine Snob (there might be supertasters out there, but most people are just faking it)

The Economist responds to Freakonomics co-author's pasty/pastry mixup (tasty response to this original post) [via]

Mike Arrington interviews Evan Williams at Foo Camp (great interview; thoughtful questions and brimming with information, without the sensationalism)

Rick Trooper (The Empire rolls you.)

Mocha VNC Lite, free VNC client for the iPhone (link opens in iTunes; like others, I'm hoping an SSH client is next)

Annalee Newitz on Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (exceeds the hype; the site's been down all day, so I just bought the season in iTunes for $3.99)

The Sound of Young America Live interviews Ze Frank (strange interview, but talks about the end of The Show and current projects; see also: Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine) [via]

Defender of the favicon (staggering hack puts a playable Defender clone in your browser's 16x16 favicon; Firefox and Opera only)

Twitter officially acquires Summize (search.twitter.com is now live)

Deep Note, the Guitar Hero bot (it got 820k points and 98% playing Through the Fire and Flames; amazingly, some humans can still beat it, for now) [via]

Unofficial RSS feed of newly-added App Store applications (until Apple adds their own, I've been keeping tabs using this)

Daily Mail tries to unmask Banksy's secret identity (unconfirmed, but definitely seems likely)

Trailer for August, indie drama about the dot-com bubble (the fictional dot-com is called Land Shark, but they never explain what they do) [via]

Lee Byron maps walkability in San Francisco (built using Walkscore, Google Maps, and Processing)

Radiohead releases dataset for House of Cards video (370MB of CSV point data, Processing code, and a 3D viewer of Thom Yorke's face) [via]

Preview video of Last.fm's iPhone app (no scrobbling from your iPod, but an outstanding streaming player) [via]

Wall-E Down to Earth (fan film takes a Wall-E toy on a tour of real life)

Ask the Pilot covers his recent experiences with the TSA (they wouldn't allow a pilot to carry a butter knife used for in-flight meals)

Techcrunch runs the numbers on App Store's first day pre-sales (sadly, Apple removed the download counts this evening)

Patton Oswalt's commencement speech at his old high school ("There Is No Them.") [via]

I Eat Beats (drum sequencer built with webcam, Processing, and a bag of Skittles)

Journalist examines America's rail system on an 85-hour trip from NYC to Oakland (nobody cares about the railroads anymore) [via]

Bush jokes about America's pollution record to G8 world leaders ("Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!")

iPhone 3G or Millionaire (the choice is easy)

Flickr user hit by lightning while recording a rainstorm ("because you insisted, here's the unedited screaming version.")

Wall Street Journal on 4chan and YTMND (coming soon: The Financial Times on Something Awful and Encyclopedia Dramatica) [via]

Snarkmarket on John Culberson, the Twittering Congressman (agreed, it's inspiring; don't miss the Qik videos)

iTunes 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 software released with App Store update (browse the App Store after installing iTunes with this link, and download the iPhone 2.0 firmware manually to use them)

Tapulous' Mike Lee on launching three of App Store's biggest releases (Jobs told the NYT 500 apps will launch tomorrow; 25% are free and one-third are games)

Schrödinger's Cat Was Probably Nicer Than Mine (comic with five random endings)

All You Need Is epMotion (biotech equipment manufacturer tries viral video; amazingly, they're not the first) [via]

Google Image Search in real life (SafeSearch is off) [via]

Fractal Robots, robots building robots (recursive fun built with Processing; see also: Screamy Guy's other sketches)

Western Spaghetti, new stop-motion short by PES (deliciously weird) [via]

Warren Ellis on the post-curation years ("The world does not need another linkblog.") [via]

Thsrs, the shorter thesaurus (enter a long word to get a shorter synonym)

Square Enix's Song Summoner turns your iPod tracks into playable characters (it's like Audiosurf as an RPG) [via]

Handwritten Typographers (comparing type designers' handwriting to the typefaces they created)

Improv Everywhere's Human Mirror (Cam Barrett, a participant, mentioned an aborted four-hour prank at Starbucks) [via]

Google launches Lively, their Second Life-ish virtual world (XP-only for now; more on the launch including an interview with Niniane Wang)

12:01 PM, time-travel short film from 1990 (Kurtwood Smith lives a grim version of Groundhog Day where time repeats every hour)

The Quiet Earth (apocalyptic "last man on Earth" film from 1985, in its entirety on YouTube)

Wil Shipley's Greatest Bug of All (I love a good bug-slaying yarn) [via]

Exposure, third-party Flickr app announced for App Store (with two versions, free ad-supported or $10 with no ads)

The iPhone's Gaming Mettle (DS and PSP comparison from Touch Arcade, a new weblog devoted to iPhone gaming) [via]

How It Turned Out, the fate of the Peanuts gang (pulled from this collection of Peanuts futurism, with more in the comments)

Google ASCII Art (hmm, no results) [via]

Totem Destroyer (like a stripped-down, Flash version of Boom Blox)

Wii-style controls for the Commodore 64 (also, the first C64 LAN party was held last weekend)

R. Lee Ermey on VB.NET (it's like boot camp that never ends) [via]

Thumber, OS X app for making one-second movie mosaics (in the style of Brendan Dawes' Cinema Redux; see also: a similar technique using averaging) [via]

Rabble on the gentrification of geek news communities (I hadn't thought of it in those terms before)

Lee Byron's bubbly infographic in the New York Times (bubbles try to push themselves out when clicked; the first infographic with physics?)

I Met the Walrus, Oscar-nominated animated short (1969 conversation with John Lennon; be sure to switch to high quality) [via]

Zoomii, bookstore-like interface for browsing Amazon (Google Maps-like controls for zooming and panning the shelves) [via]

Adrian Holovaty duets with himself on gypsy-jazz Super Mario Bros. 2 theme (the most talented guitarist-programmer-journalist I know)

Segagaga, the Sega game about Sega from 2001 (very meta, the endgame pits you against retro consoles; see also: Home Computer Wars) [via]

"I'm not here to make friends." (a reality TV supercut)

Pixar and Courtney, the girl who cried at Wall-E (wonderful first-person anecdote about Pixar in a long politicized thread) [via]

BlockOn, procedural freeware game by Cactus (like Crayon Physics in a chiptune platformer)

Showbiz Pizza's Robot Band in MGMT's Electric Feel video (this $1200 winning bid by the band was money well spent)

John McCain on user interface design (made me laugh) [via]

Oh No My Money (use the savings to pay off the credit card debt, Eric)

Trailer for The Rock-afire Explosion (documentary about animatronics nuts keeping Showbiz Pizza nostalgia alive)

Better Than the Van (open up your couches for bands on tour) [via]

Cabel's roundup of fireworks packaging design (I love the Web 2.0-ified "frwrx")

TED releases the top 10 most-viewed talks (the usual suspects, but a great primer)

Features are a one-way street (once your userbase is big enough, you can't pull features without backlash) [via]

Amazon EC2 used to distribute spam, malware (inevitable, but it'll be very hard to stop) [via]

Rolando, Loco Roco clone for App Store (looks promising)

Fox News alters photos of NYT reporter in critical segment (watching the clip reminded me of high school) [via]

Flowing Data's infographic history of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (barring another breakthrough, my money's on Chestnut)

The Last Days of Dr. Wily (don't miss the screenshots at the end) [via]

Boing Boing responds to "that Violet Blue thing" (Xeni and David respond in the comments)