November 2014
Jurassic World is open
The trailer for the new Jurassic Park movie came out yesterday. It looks like a promising summer blockbuster. While there is little chance it will live up to magic of the original, the previous sequels left a low enough bar for this one to easily surpass.
Even without a Michael Crichton novel to draw from, the writers of the movie came up with a great premise: despite the previous disasters on the island, the park is completed and opened to the public. It features various dinosaur attractions that follow the familiar motifs of Disney Land and Sea World. However, things go wrong when a genetic hybrid dinosaur escapes. Tim Siedell has high hopes for the genetically modified monster.
Wedding attire
I’m feeling sharp today in my new argyle Batman dress socks.
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Late night excavations in the front yard</div>
</div>"Out of the corner of your eye, you spot him...Shia LaBeauf...He's following you."
This is the most incredible music video. I don’t know how I managed to go so long without watching it. It was all over the web a couple of weeks ago, and I had saved it to watch later, not knowing that I should have been watching it on repeat from that moment forward.
I especially liked the nod to Citizen Kane at the end.
The United States of Thanksgiving
If you’re struggling to come up with something new to serve this Thanksgiving, the New York Times has you covered with recipes for dishes from every State. I’m interested in trying Florida’s Mojo Turkey.
Florida’s cuisine ranges from the deep Southern cooking of the humid, citrus-scented central and northern parts of the state to the more Caribbean-inflected cuisine of the marshy lowlands of Miami and the Keys. Here, the turkey nods to what happened when Cuban culture drifted onto the Thanksgiving tables of South Florida, with a bird dressed in a marinade of sour oranges (a mixture of orange and lime juice works as well) mixed with a lot of garlic and oregano. Serve the bird with black beans and white rice on the side — and a Key lime pie for dessert.</blockquote>
Car shaped bike rack
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You can fit a lot of bikes in a single parking spot built for cars. This bike rack by Peter Murray conveys a clear message about inner city parking. (via Swissmiss)
Three giraffes at the lunch counter
The boys waiting their turn
Clouds arranged in a nearly perfect grid
There was a very strange cloud formation in the sky earlier this morning. It was a evenly spaced, 17x6 grid of small wispy clouds. It dissipated about 5 minuets after I noticed it. There were no planes in the sky at the time. I have no idea what could have caused it. Any ideas?
Joining the IndieWeb
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been working on moving my personal site (this site) over to WordPress on a VPS. The move was inspired by a desire to adopt the principles of the IndieWeb movement for my personal home on the web.
Owning my data is important to me. Liberating the things I post online from the corporate silos like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr means I can own my data and control how it appears. Mozilla expressed the sentiment well with their Choose Independent video.
Museum of selfies
Olivia Muus created the Tumblr Museum of Selfies. It is a collection of famous museum portraits who’s subjects look like they are in the process of taking a selfie. Muus describes the project like this:
This is a project that started when my friend aka. right hand and I went to the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. I took a picture for fun and liked how this simple thing could change their character and give their facial expression a whole new meaning.
Creative routines
The daily routines and rituals of creative people is largely irrelevant to anything I will do or make, but it is still interesting to see how they decided to slice up their days. Click the image for the big version.
Photos of photos
My wife texted me a picture of our DSLR’s viewfinder.
It think it’s pretty obvious we need a better way to share the photos from our good camera. I love the quality of the photos that come from that camera, but it is such a pain to transfer them to the computer.
Trailer for the new Monument Valley levels
The extra levels for Monument Valley were an instabuy for me. Now I just need to find the time to properly enjoy them.
It was sad to see the game get so many one-star reviews from people upset at a $1.99 in-app purchase, but it looks like word got out and the real fans pushed the average rating back up to where it belongs.
First drafts of Wikipedia entries
First Drafts of History is a Tumblr that collects screen shots of the first versions of various Wikipedia entries.
Some of them are humorously incomplete and surprisingly accurate.
How it feels to walk in the city
IndieWeb online
IndieWeb Camp Online looks awesome. I’ll do my best to be there.
Happy Veteran's Day
My Mom shared a few photos from my Dad’s 22 years of military service. He was in the Navy and Wisconsin National Guard. He has retired from the military now after serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq.
Launchnik
Coming up with an idea for a successful startup used to be difficult. But then Uber came along. That made coming up with a startup ideas as simple as saying “Uber for [fill in the blank].” But you still had to come up with a clever name and flashy website before you could launch your dream startup.
Launchnik fixes that. It is like Uber for startup ideas. All you have to do is click ‘Go!’ and the site comes up with an Uber-based startup idea, a Web 2.0 company name, and a splash page.
Web standards for the future
W3C released a short animated video celebrating the benefits of web standards and the open web.
Earth and Moon
(via Reddit)
Weekend visit to the Naples Zoo
We made a trip to the Naples Zoo this weekend. The photos suggest we spent more time at the playgrounds than looking at the animals.
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XOXO 2014 videos
I’ve been watching (listening really) to the videos from this year’s XOXO. There were some some excellent speakers and talks at the festival.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCbA9r6ecYWUhf2EuEs9eoLT2Dc1yjiGh
Too Many Cooks
I can’t, in good conscience, recommend anyone watch Too Many Cooks, the 1980s sitcom intro parody. And not just because it’s an 11-minute YouTube video (who has time for that?).
The video has its own brand of weird. I watched it with my wife the other day, and now she’s understandably trying to keep me away from the Internet. But the song and idea of it has been stuck in my head for days now.
Thank you Andy for unleashing it on my corner of the Internet.
AI is coming
Nick Bilton is worried about the threat of artificial intelligence.
Right now these artificially intelligent machines are pretty cute and innocent, but as they are given more power in society, these machines may not take long to spiral out of control.
In the beginning, the glitches will be small but eventful. Maybe a rogue computer momentarily derails the stock market, causing billions in damage. Or a driverless car freezes on the highway because a software update goes awry.
Emergency compliment
Just in case you’re feeling down, here’s an emergency compliment.
My baby girl's laugh
I could listen to this again and again.
New Monument Valley levels
There are new levels for Monument Valley coming on Thursday. I can’t wait. I play very few iOS games, but Monument Valley has been, by far, my favorite. The game is simple, yet fun, and the soundtrack is beautiful.
See the music
Jason Kottke posted images of vinyl records magnified 1,000x so you can actually see the music.
EFF secure messaging score card
The EFF published a scorecard that shows which messaging apps keep messages most secure.
In the face of widespread Internet surveillance, we need a secure and practical means of talking to each other from our phones and computers. Many companies offer “secure messaging” products—but are these systems actually secure? We decided to find out, in the first phase of a new EFF Campaign for Secure & Usable Crypto.</blockquote>
Kid toss
(Via Gabi’s Instagram)
Muhammad Ali in pictures
The Guardian published a collection of 25 famous photos of the legendary boxer, Muhammad Ali.
Aurora over Norway
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day site has an amazing picture of an Aurora over Norway taken by Max Rive. I especially like the climber standing with hands raised at the summit of the mountain.
You snuck your way right into my heart
This is my favorite song by my favorite fictional 80s rock band, Love Handle.
This line always gets me: “Like a ninja of love, repelling down from above, you snuck your way right into my heart.”
The kids spent 45 minutes this morning sitting still on the couch, listening to this and other Phineas and Ferb songs.
Daylight savings time
This is the one day of the year when I understand the value of daylight savings time. I haven’t had this high of sleep quality in months.
Me and my girl
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