Put a few representative color scribbles on a b/w image and the software will colorize it accordingly. The quality of the result is truly impressive.

After looking at the photo results, I was blown away by the video results. Looks like Ted Turner has a new toy...

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After seeing at least four videos like this, I think it's safe to call it a genre, but if any piece is a front-runner in this genre is's this guy (sound required (or he'll look really dumb)). [via kottke. go patronize him]

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Those of you who've taken a look at Randompixel can tell that PostSecret is a project so cool I wish I made it. The only downside is that anyone can submit a secret, so the liklihood of made-up secrets from the attention-getter set skyrockets, but at least the attention-getters tend to be artistic. The premise is simple. Write your secret on an index card and mail it in. Fair warning though, there are a few disturbing pieces in there.

What's your secret?

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98% of the teenage population does or has tried smoking pot. If you're one of the 2% who hasn't, copy & paste this into your journal.

I call bullshit. In a room full of 50 18-year-olds, only one of them hasn't experimented with marijuana? If the assertion itself weren't absurd, it would seem extremely unlikely that such a meme could actually spread if each person who reads it only has a 2% chance of being qualified to propogate it.

Best evidence shows that the actual number of teen pot experimenters is closer to 42.5%. While one way of looking at it is that they were only off by half, it's just as easy to say that this meme under-reports the number of teens who don't try pot by a factor of twenty-six times.

I'm happy that my membership in this 'elite' club isn't as significant as the meme would imply.

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I love it when news sites publish scientific articles. They try to get people excited about the ephemeral or intangible, and they usually do a pretty good job. Then there's the exception to the rule. Today's CNN story about tomorrow's blue moon is one of the worst-written articles I've ever seen on CNN, barring when they accidentally insert the same paragraph twice in a row.

First, there's an image of a reddish moon with a caption explaining how soot from recent volcanos or fires can make the moon appear blue. Then the first paragraph talks about how tomorrow will be a 'blue moon' because it's the second full moon in a month. Next they explain how a 'blue moon' has nothing to do with a color change, but is purely a coincidental conjunction of the moon's orbit with the Gregorian calendar, and it happens every 32 months or so, except last year, when it happened twice in three months, thanks to a February without any full moon.

Then we go in to a long first-person (?!) discussion of where the term 'blue moon' came from, culminating by a reminiscence of that time that the author put forth a theory that it was a derivation of 'belewe' from Old English, which means 'to betray.' Allusions to Billy Crystal's rendition of Miracle Max in the Princess Bride ("He clearly said 'to blathe' which, as we all know means 'to bluff'!"), the author proposes that the 'belewe moon' is so named because it 'betrays the usual perception of one full moon per month.'

Then follow another few paragraphs explaining how the author's offhand hypothesis later proved to be false, and that the original term came from the Farmers Almanac in the 1920s, to refer to the one extra full moon in a season, and then was bastardized in the 1940s by a writer at rival publication Sky & Telescope (the author writes for space.com).

In closing, the author brings the subject back to this blue moon, or more exactly, to the first full moon of the month, four weeks past, and how it occurs when the moon coincidentally is at perogee with the Earth, making tides higher than usual, and warning, all in the present tense, that if there are any cosatal storms on the 4th of July weekend, it could mean big flooding in those areas. This is because the story originally appeared on Space.com on July 2nd, and someone decided to push it up to the CNN home page today, after changing a few words in the first paragraph while ignoring the context of the latter part of the article.

Don't mind me. I'm just having a bitter day and am taking it out on one less-than-perfect story...

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After such divine inspiration, I couldn't help but come up with a few of my own sequels to one-hit wonders:

I get to third base with myself

Love Plus Two

Fuck Happy, Time to Worry Again

Pump Up the Bitrate

Me So Pregnant (me hate you long time)

(we partied) Like Y2K was actually a threat

176 lines about 88 women

Actually somethings don't count (hanging chad remix)

How to be a Billionaire (dotcom remix)

Awkward Love Rhombus

Girls just want some quiet and three Advil

Facing that you need too much love (Step 1 of 12)

Cruel Fall/Cruel Winter Medly

Oh that's who that girl is (Nevermind mix)

After Rosh Hashanah, I find that my feet harbor less guilt and have regained a modicum of rhythm

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What if traffic lights disappeared? What if bikes, pedestrians and cars had equal rights on the road? It turns out, at least in one case study in China, that there are less accidents[*].

What's the catch? The drivers have to think. Oh well.

* Sorry for the Salon Magazine link. They'll want you to watch an ad for a day of 'premium access' to read the article. Actually, I went ahead and bought the 1 year subscription last month and I really enjoy it. I can't think of another news site I pay to access, aside from the occasional Slashdot donation.

That said, it would be pretty revolutionary if I could, as part of my subscription, link to an article and get a quota of registration-free clickthroughs, so the first 500 people could read the article via my special URL without having to watch an ad.

Hmmm... I'll have to think about that one some more...

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A photologue of a Japanese student's 1996 visit to North Korea.

Cherry blossoms were so beautiful,
but they only doubled our confusion.

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Wired has an interesting article on lack of attribution in weblogs, and how many large blogs 'steal' ideas from smaller blogs without giving them attribution.

This certainly happens, and with the rising popularity of RSS feeds, it's easier and easier to read a few hundred blogs a day and pass along the interesting content, without attribution. For many sites, like Metafilter and BoingBoing, this is exactly the point, though Cory (Boingboing) does an exemplary job at citing sources. Since I'm currently working on building out my own 'meta-site' this is a subject of particular interest to me.

The argument's failing, and I freely admit that I need to dive deeper to determine whether it's a weak point of the article or of the underlying research, is that it assumes webloggers predominantly get their content from other weblogs. While that's often true, it's certainly not always the case.

Take for example the 'furry germs' example given in the Wired article: The author claims this is an example of a blog meme with a point blog source and dozens of copycaters blogging it on their own site, without attribution to the original blogger. This is absolutely not the case.

Having blogged about the "plushie microbes" four weeks ago myself, I know exactly where it came from: A monthly advertisement sent out to Think Geek customers. The Wired article's argument is that the specific term "furry germs" is a unique identifier, proving that any two bloggers using the words have the same blog source. In fact, the term "furry germs" is a fabricated example for the article that, at the time of this writing, doesn't exist anywhere on the web except for in the Wired article and in this one (so far as Google can see). More likely the actual example is the term "plush microbes", the term that is used in the marketing email, and on ThinkGeek's site itself.

It's small wonder that bloggers would use the same term when writing about the product, and isn't any evidence of 'blogstealing'. On the contrary, this example raises awareness that we, as bloggers, use the whole world as our source, and that often the same part of the world is shown to many of us at the same time (e.g. through advertisements, the news, terrorist acts).

It's only natural that advertising would raise awareness of a new product, and the far more accurate implication that bloggers don't feel compelled to cite a source when the source is an advertisement that shows up in their inbox is much less insidious than saying we all read each other's weblogs to pilfer content and self-aggrandize.

Just for fun, it might be interesting to have 'attribution week' in the blogosphere, where we carefully document the source of every idea we blog, in as detailed a form as possible.

I propose the week of April 18th, when we're all done with taxes.

[thanks to Amit Asaravala at Wired News, a member of the Terra-Lycos Network]

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The new Wired has a 20-page spread on Google. Interesting reading, whether you're in the company or not.

To forestall folks asking me questions they know I can't answer, I'm nixing comments on this post. Sorry!

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Kuro5hin has a great article detailing excerpts of comments from the recently-leaked Windows source code.

What they don't mention in the article is that it's unclear what stage of development the code was in, so just because there are comments detailing how evil hacks are doesn't mean that those hacks weren't fixed before a product release.

Still, it's a nice little window into the humanity of Windows engineers.

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But no, for those who scour the paper, I didn't get married yesterday.

Like I told Ali, "Wow, I got a haircut, a husband, and a secret life, all in one day!"

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It's funny that most of the unsung (or at least unposted) content I have is in the form of memes and links, the things that weblogs were 'supposed' to be, before the term matured into much more.

As part of the trifurcation of Fury, I'm going to split off the Meme-o-matic into its own, entirely separate site. I'll probably keep the sidebar here, driven by an RSS (or maybe Atom?) feed, but will have another site, updated several times a day, for slightly more robust pointing.

I'm looking to BoingBoing and Gizmodo as examples of this genre of blog. It's really more of an aggregator than a community, and probably won't have comments.

So now, while I've learned the hardships of desgning by committee, I'd like input on which domain to use for this new site. The candidates are designfoo.com, outgeek.com, memeomatic.com(/net/org) or voxen.net.

Ready? Set... Opine!

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Gods, I felt bad when fractal sites got unexpectedly pummeled with traffic yesterday after the Google logo honoring the birthday of Gaston Julia linked to an image search for "Julia Fractals".

One of the site owners received four times his monthly bandwidth allottment in just one day, costing him $225 in overage fees, but he was quick enough to put up a donations plea on the self-same site that raised him $250, so it all turned out okay.

Now, adding insult to injury, Slashdot has posted a story about the pummeling, incidentally linking directly to a few of the sites that were hammered.

This has caused nearly as much traffic from the 'slashdot effect' as the original Google links delivered.

Luckily, everyone on Slashdot is tripping overthemselves to be the first to notice the irony...

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What were they thinking?

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What if IKEA were a first-person shooter?

This is a screamingly funny piece from The Morning News: IKEA Walkthrough 2.3.1

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The original Penguin Baseball site couldn't handle success and has gone down. You can find a permanent mirror (at least until, if ever, the other site comes up) here.

Spread the word!

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Note the two new bits in the Meme-o-matic: Penguin Baseball and Website Mixmaster. Cool stuff!

Mostly this post exists as a placeholder for folks to comment on them. Some day I'll support comments for individual memes.

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Dispophobia, the fear of throwing things away, can kill.

Read the tragic story of the Collier Brothers, dead when one of them was trapped under his own junk, and the other died of starvation. That was in 1947.

Today, thankfully for Patrice Moore, his neighbor heard his muffled screams after being buried in paper for two days, and the NYFD got him out.

Actually, to be fair Moore isn't strictly a dispophobic, since he made his living selling the papers he'd been hoarding for the past decade. He's just a man in need of a storage unit.

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I try not to post what everyone else posts, but when there's such a confluence of memes, it's hard to resist.

According to Edward Tufte, PowerPoint is evil. It helps speakers present and audiences tune out (in PowerPoint form). PowerPoint is responsible for the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and its principles can be seen in the destruction of the Challenger as well (in powerpoint format, ironically). In short, PowerPoint makes you dumb.

What if Lincoln had access to PowerPoint at Gettysburg? (by Peter Norvig who, in addition to co-authoring my undergrad artificial intelligence textbook, is also a fellow Googler)

David Byrne, however, has found a saving grace in demonstrating that PowerPoint can be an artistic medium. If anyone has a link to the actual content, I'd love to see it.

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One of the best-written, informative fluff pieces I've read in ages, is this article about the necessity and tribulations of bathroom breaks during movies (especially Return of the King) in today's SF Gate (nee Chronicle).

excerpt: "While it may be no big tragedy to take a few minutes off from "The Green Mile," a bathroom break during "Return of the King" becomes a pisser of the highest order -- not unlike having to take out the trash in the middle of losing one's virginity."

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...pation!

"Bated breath" vs. "baited breath"? Find out which, and find out why. As a former lingusitics student, I see this as a perfect example of how an incorrect spelling can overtake the original spelling. It's almost at the balance point.

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Sam, I read your open memo at the Proteron site today, and it left me with questions.

I've been an avid Mac user since I got my 128K Mac in 1984. As a former helpline staffer at the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, writer for MacWEEK Magazine, marketing assistant for Dantz Development, and software developer for Casady & Greene, I completely understand the plight of "the little guy", but in this particular example I feel that your venom is unwarranted.

Your open memo is based on the claim, reiterated on the LiteSwitch X home page, that "LiteSwitch X was the original application switcher for the Mac OS". This is both 'disappointing' and 'dishonest'. The first application switcher for the Mac OS was "Switcher" written by Andy Hertzfeld (with special thanks given to John Markoff and Bud Tribble) while under the employ of Apple Computer in 1985. Apple pioneered the technology you're claiming they pilfered, and they did it when the Mac OS was barely one year old. Over the intervening 18 years countless "little guys," Proteron among them, have come out with application switchers building on Apple's foundation. Surprisingly, very few gave any credit to Andy, John, Bud or Apple for the original innovation.

While I agree that Sherlock likely crossed the line in replicating Watson functionality, I don't feel the same sympathy for Proteron. On the aforementioned LiteSwitchX page you scream in 48-point letters (using Apple's corporate font, no less), "Dear Apple: You forgot some important features" in OS X 10.2. Beneath this accusation you simultaneously berate Apple for remembering them in OS X 10.3. I'd suggest not using the 'gloat' and 'sympathy' cards at the same time. They tend to cancel each other out.

LiteSwitch X is a very elegant product, but it has clearly borrowed more core functionality from those applications that came before it than it adds to the table. As long as LiteSwitch doesn't violate patents and look-and-feel copyrights that's fine, but it's poor form to cry foul when someone does the same to you. If, on the other hand, you feel that Apple has impinged on your intellectual property rights then I would suggest pursuing legal action against them. Writing an 'open memo to Steve' that you know will go unanswered seems to me to be little more than a 'mouse who roared' ploy for attention.

I noticed that you've recently released LiteSwitch X 2.1 with support for Panther. I wish you the utmost success with it.

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Three principles of sex that, even if you don't agree with them, will probably make you think.

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How to write a thank you note. I like it.

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Here's an interesting article which, if true, has amazing implications for the recall. According to the author. Arnold was involved in hotel-room meetings with Enron execs two years ago, planning steps necessary to vanquish an $8 billion lawsuit filed by Bustamente against Enron for unfair business practices.

Read, comment, and pass on, if you please.

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I added a couple new memes to the meme-o-matic, and removed 'Amburgers an Wootbear' 'cause it was just too annoying and not quite entertaining enough. Hope you enjoy!

I'd've added the Lego Treasure Hunt weeks ago, but I was pissed at getting almost all the way done before dying stupidly. May you have better luck, and plenty of time on your hands.

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[from the 'it-never-hurts-to-ask' department]

For two months HP has been selling 17" flat panel displays for $199, a little over half off their usual price.

Now they want them back.

It's one thing to not honor an order when they catch it before shipping, another when they've already charged your credit card, but when the item's already shipped and paid for, and the customer's been using it for a month, I'd say it's too late for the company to cry foul. Nevertheless, the voicemail is a nice example of killing with kindness.

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Okay, browsing through the list of gubernatorial candidates is not the most efficient use of one's time, but it can be funny following a random link to a random candidate's web site.

Task for this evening: Create a 'random California governor's web site' redirector link.

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For Friday Fun, don't miss the java-equipped Zombie Infection Simulation. For extra fun, go see 28 Days Later before or after.

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Britney Spears gets front page billing for a stage-kiss with Madonna. For all the attention you'd think she was having her baby. Apparently though, Papa don't preach.

Johnny Depp speaks against the US, saying it's a "dumb puppy with big teeth"* and, after backlash, has to recant.

Meanwhile, girlkissy Britney swears she wouldn't kiss a girl again, unless it was Madonna. Then she goes on to wax political, saying, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."

Heaven forbid we should think twice about politi-media fabrications like the Jessica Lynch story.

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Amazing predictions of what the next 50 years will bring! I meant to post this 53 years ago.. Oops.

Seriously, it's amazing the things that are right on the nose, funny the things that were totally off, and interesting to see what they thought we'd have yet to accomplish, and what they assume would be child's play by now.

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About 90% of my web reading nowadays spawns from the 45 RSS feeds that I follow, the articles they point to, and the sites linked from within those articles. Now when I finish reading them, I'm almost at a loss as to where to surf next.

I've forgotten how to surf. I remember when it wasn't about finding a particular piece of information, but just about seeing what's out there. So much of how I surf finds me the latest memes, what everyone else is talking about, that I've lost most of my ability to just go out and hunt for interesting things... How do you surf? Why? What are your daily habits?

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Look! I'm a Young Adult! I should savor this moment. After all, it's only two weeks before my 30th birthday, when I get my 'establishment' membership pin.

The other funny part is that the guy on the left, the example of "High School" is George Chen, known in some circles as "The Internet Guy," a former co-worker of mine and, while younger than me, pretty far past the high school phase...

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I love today's Google logo. It's my favorite yet. [archived copy]

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Explodingdog finally has a 3-D contender to the throne: Boring3D.

Warning: A good hour might be spent reading the beautiful and odd archives.

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I was talking with a friend a couple days ago about how horrible (or nice, depending) it would be to be Martha Stewart's cellmate. How would she go about redecorating the cell? Making it hers?

Thankfully, as always, people with more time on their hands had the same idea.

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Boy for a series that never received widespread acclaim there sure are a lot of Buffy farewell stories in the press today.

I know where I'll be at 8pm Eastern (5 Pacific. Nyah, nyah!). Sniff.

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I'm a sucker for hard luck cases. Here you go, Mandy.

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'Nuff said.

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(from NSlog())

If you had to die in one of history's disasters, which would you pick?

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Bored at your job, checking returned USB floppy drive? Make a Floppy Disk Drive RAID. This one really puts the 'I' in redundant array of inexpensive disks.

He made a 'stripe' array, which increases speed (but not too much, sunce he's still running it over USB. I'd like to see someone make a 'mirror' array, where you could, at any time, pop out one of the floppies and still have all the data intact, then pop a blank disk in, wait a few seconds, and pop another disk out at random, until all the original disks were gone. It'd make a great classroom demonstration.

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If the real-life me were a character in dungeons and Dragons, I would be:

Str: 9
Int: 12
Wis: 13
Dex: 17
Con: 10
Chr: 15

I don't know what it takes to have an 18 intelligence, but I know they're not using the Stanford-Binet test as their scale. In D&D land, IQs go up to 250+...

Numeralize yourself

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It's meme time, and today's meme is 'the alphabet of you.'

I got this one from Karen, who probably got it from Rachel. Anyhow, here's me, from A to Z:

A - Act your age? How old would I be if I didn't know how old I was? I act older at work, and younger at play.
B - Born on what day of the week? Wednesday. Wednesday's child is full of woe.
C - Chore you hate? I actually like laundry when I get to it, and cleaning makes me feel accoomplished. It must be paying bills, because when I'm done I feel poorer than when I started.
D - Dad's name? David
E - Essential makeup item? Umm. Contacts?
E - Essential item of luggage when travelling? My Yahoo backpack. Plenty of room for a weekend's clothes, and a snug padded slip pocket for my powerbook.
F - Favorite actor? Val Kilmer tends to stay high on my list. I completely forgot until reminded last week that I'd met him in person. Go figure.
G - Gold or silver? Silver
H - Hometown? Hometown: Encino. Home base: East Bay
I - Instruments you play? A little piano, a little recorder, and my bowed psaltery.
J - Job title? Grad student. Probably an interaction designer again in a few months.
K - Kids? Just me.
L - Living arrangements? By myself in a one bedroom renovated attic across the street from a beautiful cemetery. Will soon be moving to a one or two bedroom in the SF Bay area, either Alameda or maybe Mountain View or Palo Alto.
M - Mum's name? Carolyn
N - Number of people you've slept with? 9
O - Overnight hospital stays? None!
P - Phobia? Failure
P - Paracetamol, Ibuprofen or Aspirin? Excedrin: Acetaminophen, Asprin and Caffeine. I often get dehydration headaches because I don't have much of a sense of thirst. Excedrin works like a charm at getting rid of the headache while several glasses of water fix the problem by the time it wears off.
Q - Quote you like? I'm not going to teach you how to vandalize a car. You're not even old enough to drive one!
R - Religious affiliation? Religion? No thanks, I'm full already.
S - Siblings? One older sistah
T - Time you wake up? Various. I usually sleep at 2am and get up between 6 and 10am.
U - Unique habit? I think of ideas all the time. I actually start work on at least 3 cool ideas a week, but almost never finish. Last night I took a dozen pictures of wristwatches, convinced that all our advances in miniaturization and technology let us build more elegant digital watches, but instead we just make more complex ones. I don't know if I'll ever write up my ideas on that or not. Oh wait, I just did! NEXT!
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat? Eggplant. It's not an egg. It's purple and squishy in the bad way.
W - Worst habit? Thinking I know everything about a topic. I need to respect other's opinions more, as well as their criticisms.
X - X-rays you've had? Plenty of dental x-rays. Not as many others. I can't even think of any. I've only broken two bones, my little toe (twice) and a rib (probably). Since the treatment is the same if it's broken or badly bruised (tape it and wait), there wasn't really any point.
Y - Yummy food you make? I make really good tollhouse cookies. Add 50% more salt and double vanilla and they're really, really good. I also learned how to make surprisingly good lemon chicken quesadillias from my dad.
Z - Zodiac Sign? Cancer

Got your own alphabet of you? Leave a comment and link us up!

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(with apologies to Neil Gaiman)

When Sports Writers Snap. (Guardian UK)

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Okay, you're a puppy.

God doesn't give you paper-training, but he does grant you a little logic, so your guardian watches you carefully, and picks you up and places you on newspaper whenever you have that 'gonna make' look on your face.

After a while, you get the hang of it: Whiz anywhere, get scolded. Get placed somewhere and whiz: Get praised. This puppy existence ain't so tough: You pee where your master tells you to pee.

A few weeks later this silly geekus erectus thinks about his cute puppy, and glaces at his cute Sony Vaio. He grins and grabs his cute digital camera, deciding that a little cuteness is in order.

Oblivious to being cute, puppy thinks, 'Mmm.. I should start looking for that newspaper thing...'

With digicam in hand, master grabs puppy, opens Vaio, and places one atop the other. As master says "Stay" and takes aim, the puppy recalls the only trick he's learned so far, and does the same.

So you see, the puppy really isn't to blame.

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Camposites, collages created from webcam pictures emailed to the artist, are some of the most surreal images I've ever seen.

I love how distortion of the images can cause a corresponding distortion of the emotion. For a quick overview, check out the gallery page [nsfw, contains nudity].

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The Dialect Survey Project has been the subject of a lot of conversation among my friends recently.

In a nutshell, you fill out a multiple-choice survey, asking how you pronounce certain words (coupon: 'coo-pahn' or 'cue-pahn'?), or which word you use (shopping cart vs basket vs buggy) and then you can see the results mapped visually across the United States.

There are a few very cool terms there I never knew (what do you call rain during sunshine?) and it's a great diversion. You're sure to find something new.

In the weeks since I first came across this site, I've been coming up with other regional lexical idiosyncrasies. for example, most of the country's kids say 'do-over' but growing up in Los Angeles, people at my schools called it a 'take-over' (not the hostile kind).

The survey is really long, but it lets you take it a little at a time, save and finish later.

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After extensive contextual inquiry into the needs of the typical computer user, a Japanese hardware company has come out with USB HOT, a USB-powered cup-warmer!

Yes, that's right. Plug it in to your computer's powered USB port and the cup warmer will help your already-hot drink cool off less slowly! (Well, okay, it's not very well named...)

That's right: Never again will you have to suffer with a beverage that cooled down 30 degrees after an hour on your desk, when you could have one that only cools 20 degrees! Astounding! And it comes in your chouce of four colors.

Just don't forget to unplug your coffee before taking your laptop to a meeting...

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Google loves me.

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I'm glad I'm not the only one who takes the tagline too far.

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A perfect instance of my unsettlement in the state of the world is when one of the RSS feeds I read comes up with a heading, "More War3 stuff" and I immediately assume it's from Daily Kos, a political commentary site I read, instead of Zhaneel, talking about Warcraft III and the new Frozen Throne beta test.

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An autobiographical story like the kinds I look forward to writing again when I can harvest the hours off trees, and days pass like clouds instead of kidney stones.

Read it out loud to a loved one...

Thanks Noire, for the link.

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and this is a really good story.

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In preparation for the inevitable '100 things about me' list, I got this from Liz today and filled it out when I should have been doing a writeup for my seminar class.

Welcome to the next edition of getting to know your friends. What you're supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire email and paste it onto a new email that you'll send. Change all of the answers so they apply to you. Then, send this to a whole bunch of people you know *INCLUDING* the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you'll learn a lot of little known facts about your friends.

1. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? Varies from 6:30am to 11am, and that's weekdays. More interesting, I usually don't go to sleep until 3am.

2. IF YOU COULD EAT LUNCH WITH ONE FAMOUS PERSON, WHO WOULD IT BE? Right now? I don't know. I want a 'get in to lunch free' card, so at that one moment when it's absolutely vital, I can take that person to lunch and change the course of the world.

3. GOLD OR SILVER? Silver.

4. WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT THE CINEMA THAT YOU LIKED? Chicago is the last film that I saw, and I liked it.

5. FAVORITE TV SHOWS? West Wing, Buffy, Stargate.

6. WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? Totally varies. Sometimes I go back to Chai and scone, or blueberry muffin. Sometimes two lean-pockets make a nice brunch on the way to the snow-laden bus stop.

7. WHAT WOULD YOU HATE TO BE LEFT IN A ROOM WITH? Someone psychotic who hates me. Again.

8. CAN YOU TOUCH YOUR NOSE WITH YOUR TONGUE - Not while they're both attached.

9. WHAT INSPIRES YOU? People thinking of really cool things and following through on them. I wish I had more of that second part.

10. WHAT'S YOUR MIDDLE NAME? David

11. BEACH , CITY, Or COUNTRY? Beach, near a city.

12. SUMMER, WINTER, SPRING, FALL? Spring. Such promise, not much of the heat. and I love the Spring rain and lengthening days.

13. FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Double-chocolate-malted-krunch. When I'm not in Los Angeles, it's Breyer's White Mint Chip.

14. BUTTERED, PLAIN, OR SALTED POPCORN? I hate popcorn, unless it's in front of me. I love it then, until it's gone, which is when I hate it, which is why I hate it. Get it away from me! Fine then, at least put on more butter and salt, please.

15. FAVORITE COLOR? Forest green, which is funny because it used to be my least favorite.

16. FAVORITE CAR? Oh dear. Too many to choose from. I really like my mutant.

17. FAVORITE SANDWICH FILLING? Veggie Hoagie from I.B.Hoagie.

18. TRUE LOVE? Yes, please. I've been waiting patiently...

19. WHAT CHARACTERISTICS DO YOU DESPISE? People with no drive. Err, characteristics? Um, loafing. I loathe me.

20. FAVORITE FLOWER? I like proto-dandelions and those colorful little ones that grow in clusters you pick and they fall apart... And honeysuckles.

21. YOU HAD A BIG WIN IN THE LOTTERY, HOW LONG WOULD YOU WAIT TO TELL PEOPLE? There might be people I'd never tell. They already think I'm lucky enough. I'd make life better for those around me in ways not directly attributable to me. It's time I gave back...

22. FIZZY OR STILL WATER AS A DRINK? Still.

23. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM? White, with a big red heart-shaped bathmat. I need a good shower curtain.

24. HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR KEY RING? 6, plus a camera for my sidekick and a doodad from the Cal Alumni Association.

25. WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE TO? The bedroom? Oh, um, someplace where all my friends are, where we could dance and be free from the more mundane cares of the world.

26. CAN YOU JUGGLE? Projects? Yes. Balls? Three.

27. FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK: I like the promise of Fridays. And this semester I don't have class then either.

28. RED OR WHITE WINE? Cider. Cranberry, please.

29. WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR LAST BIRTHDAY? What *did* I do? Went to a barbecue at Karen and Crystal's (4th of July and all) and hung out.

30. DO YOU CARRY A DONOR CARD? Nope. I haven't made peace with making myself into pieces yet. Maybe some day.

31. SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE PERSON THAT SENT THIS TO YOU: Liz glows and she's always in a fond part of my heart. I mean it. She won't leave.

32. WHO DO YOU LEAST EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?? Ghandi.

33. WHO IS THE PERSON YOU EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK FIRST? The evil 'Undeliverable mailer daemon.' I hate that guy.

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So I was passed (ooh, poor choice of words, as you'll see in retrospect) this article from the UK Guardian. It was published back in March 02, but is still definitely worth passing along.

No war, no politics, no internet security or freedoms. This article is all about your inner self; not the spiritual self, but the stomach, intestines, and colon, and about a remarkable place in Thailand that will help you perform a complete gastronomic overhaul, a 50,000 mile tune-up, if you will.

Not for the squeamish, but I found the article fascinating. I can't wait to read some of the comments from this one.

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When I worked tech support, it was all too easy to assume that the user's perceived problem and their actual problem were completely different, like the person who thinks the ISP is down when they actually left the phone off the hook, or when they're certain they've been victimized by hackers when they accidentally unplugged their mouse.

Sometimes, though, the user is spot-on in their declaration of what they think is wrong, even when it's something as incredibly unlikely as not being able to send emails to people more than 500 (or a little more, call it 520) miles away.

I don't usually point to sysadmin horror stories, because it's just too easy, but I had to share this one. (via Cory via Jef)

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Here's someone who did (local mirror) [quicktime, 7.8megs].

This is the best switch parody I've seen yet. Great.

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So the newest web toy on the block is Googlism.

The site takes the name of a person, place, thing, etc, and will throw back an impressively long list of definitions garnered from the web. Not definitive definitions mind you, but a list of phrases that begin (in my own egotistical example) 'Kevin Fox is a...'.

The output is really impressive, as you'll no doubt see. I'm still sifting through, but the one that caught my eye was "Kevin Fox is my soulmate."

Sadly I don't play the cello, and dimes'll give you dollars that she's lusting after my nomesis, musician and creator of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Fox".

Nevertheless, here's my complete list. I've put links on the ones that I recognize as referring to me:

kevin fox is a cellist and guitar player residing in toronto
kevin fox is understudy for the title role in the musical 'buddy
kevin fox is the bass player for the jimmy nations combo
kevin fox is his own registered trademark
kevin fox is currently an interaction designer
kevin fox is suitably perplexed as the antipholus who finds himself being given money
kevin fox is an avid team roper
kevin fox is sure to celebrated as this insanely talented songwriter / much sought after string
kevin fox is trying a
kevin fox is trying a neat experiment on qwer
kevin fox is technical director of the spa and has trained closely with alan over the past ten years
kevin fox is new to toronto
kevin fox is writing
kevin fox is an experienced wrestler with great technique
kevin fox is
kevin fox is all right once the spelling starts
kevin fox is sl 538
kevin fox is loaded with complexity and good dialog
kevin fox is someone i met in the sca
kevin fox is making me giggle
kevin fox is fueled largely by exposition that is taken to a whole new level by the engaging performances of
kevin fox is now based in indonesia and plays for the jakarta bintangs
kevin fox is my soulmate
kevin fox is opening
kevin fox is working with an outfitter in asheville
kevin fox is struggling
kevin fox is coordinator of the school
kevin fox is now operations manager at wfxa
kevin fox is refining pcl's program to pay for this equipment replacement through the use of a general obligation bond act
kevin fox is the most clever human being on the planet
kevin fox is a genius
kevin fox is purposely meant to be cynical
kevin fox is the new mayor of roxbury of the mayor’s committee
kevin fox is the one that had to go to the scene when these dogs were lose
kevin fox is fun to talk to

Of course, I don't know about a lot of the remaining items, but I'll be spending a little time on Google searching for the phrases to find out. It's like referrer-checking (aka backlinking) but on a linguistic, not a linky, level.

So what are you?

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I think I used to work for these guys...

(note to previous employers reading this blog: I don't mean you. I mean that company two jobs before I worked for you. You know, the one that, while it didn't get me the job with you, increased my résume-cred enough to warrant that phone screen interview...)

(note to everyone else: I can't believe a pap post like this is Fury's grand 1500th post. Ah well, happy cognitive reference point to me!)

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Okay, I know I put Strongbad's Email in the meme-o-matic over a month ago, but for some reason I just find today's weekly installment so, so funny, it's worth a mention. [flash]

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If any of you have never been to Exploding Dog, you really should. Readers email him captions and he draws the pictures. I love that site because content only comes every week or so, so I forget about it for months at a time, then visit and spend a half-hour rolling in laughter.

And I'm not the only one. The only thing better than Sam's juxtaposed cunning wit and crude drawing style is when people take that art and put it in the most (in)appropriate of places.

Yesterday I was walking down the hall from my office, surrounded by Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute in the subfloors of Newell-Simon Hall, when I came across this office placard:

Usability study, anyone? (click to enlarge)

In related (well, loosly) news, the CMU HCII t-shirts are in! During orientation week we split into groups to design our class shirt that we would wear to conferences, and to show our HCI pride. My group's design won out, and now we've got the threads to show for it!

(Okay, very loosly. In Kevin's head it went "Ooh. I should get one of thise nifty exploding dog t-shirts. Oh I should tell them about the HCII t-shirts that came in! Yeah, I'll just talk about it here, since it followed from the train of thought. Oh, but not their train of thought. Oh well. It's my site. Yeah. I can just explain it all in 100 words or less at the end. Then it'll all make sense. Do you really think they care about it making sense? Do you think they're still reading? Oh, nevermind.")

Anyhow, funny sign, new t-shirts. End of line.

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I consider myself very open-minded sexually. Even so, this referrer weirds me out a bit.

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It's always a good idea to ask the pros about things I don't know enough about: How to Glue Stuff to Other Stuff.

Useful surprisingly often.

(link kudos to filepile...)

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Thanks go to Forest for sending along this meme:

I don't even know what to call this.

Basically a little Zathras, some Father Guido Sarducci, and L337 geek all mixed up and wrapped in flash.

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According to CNN, South Korea plans to use the World Cup to "attrack tourists."

Since the story is a video segment and requires a paid subscription, one can only wonder what 'attracking' is, but I've got a hunch that it's using a high-profile spectator event to lure foreign nationals into your country, then holding them hostage, or at least taking their wallets. But hey, judge for yourself:

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Okay, I don't usually hop on the 'Which X Are You' bandwagon, but this one's close to my heart. So: Which IM are you?

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Watching this shockwave music video, with a tear welling up in my eye, I nevertheless kept secretly hoping for something really violent to happen...

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FilePile, one of the best sites ever for keeping up on cultural events, memes, kittens, and porn, has a thriving online community, but has closed new users accounts for about a year.

Today, a regular user put their spare account up for auction on eBay. This is one of the most relevant, ironic, and interesting cases of grassroots e-commerce I've seen all year.

It's a serious, valid auction, and there are regular filepile users I know who would pay $300 for the accounts they got for free, but the question remains, how much will someone bid for an account on a site they've never seen? FilePile has always been a word-of-mouth thing, and since it's free and the server's so overloaded, there's never been an incentive to publicize it.

This'll be fun to watch.

For the rest of us: I've been contemplating a 'best of FilePile' secion on Fury, where I'd share some of the gems that come through there...

(note: At posting time, the auction was at $31, starting from $0.01)

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Those who can't write, link.

Today on inpassing there's a great thread about readers' most embarassing injuries, started off in dedicated fashion when the site's author, Eve, broken her ankle on a trampoline this weekend.

This is a great site (for those of you who haven't visited before) and a particularly good thread. Be sure to add your own injuries to the pile. Not only did I write about my two accidents (breaking a rib in a theater and voluntarily forcing myself unconscious on a dare) but so did two friends who I, in the incidents mentioned, took to the emergency room!

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This thread on Slashdot, regarding Yoda's linguistics (which, fair warning, I partook in) really cracks me up.

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Check it out: You too can get a preview of what it takes to be at Carnegie Mellon in this nifty flash game!

Lots of things that are almost ready to post, so you might want to check back later...

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If you live in the San Francisco area, you laready know that Craigs List is one of the most important allies you can have when looking for employment, a place to live, or even love.

Anyone who claims the net is cold and impersonal should check out "The Best Moving Sale Ever In The History Of The World (pictures)"

I'm taking notes...

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