No Mod Required

I'm actually clearing out a lot of links I've wanted to share and just haven't. A lot of these aren't big enough for a post of their own, so it's link post day around here.

Classic Photographs Remade in Lego

Classics in Lego - a photoset on Flickr

Pretty straightforward link. My favorite is the recreation of Robert Capa's Death of a Loyalist Soldier

Du rififi chez les hommes

Filmmaker Jules Dassin, 96, Dies

Have I mentioned how much I love Rififi? I love it to pieces. Dassin had an excellent career, with several excellent entries (Topkapi, Night and the City, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway, etc.) spanning a career lasting nearly four decades. He was a real talent.

Libertines Musical?

Five Reasons a Libertines Musical Isn't a Terrible Idea

I have nothing to say on the matter. I just wanted you all to know there was the possibility of a Libertines musical.

Now you know.

Neutral Milk Hotel

Have you seen Jeff Mangum?

Neutral Milk Hotel's bandleader built a faith on the transcendent power of music. Then, when he needed it most, he gave up on it.

A pretty definitive look at the story of NMH front man Jeff Mangum.

As long as you're happy with 5 being the definition of an explosion

Craftsmanship

Markup & Style Society Talk - Bokardo

"For my talk, I picked something I’ve never talked about before: web craftsmanship. I chose this topic because I’ve been thinking a lot more about it since going out on my own last August. I also consider both Dan and Ethan craftsmen, obsessed with doing quality work vs. gaining notoriety or getting rich. So I thought it would be a good fit for the audience as well."

Not the greatest slideshare, but the very thought of it speaks to me as I'm trying to improve quality across the presentation layer at work and getting people to think in those terms is a key to getting the work I want to see produced on a consistent basis.

Wayback machine

jwz - Happy Run Some Old Web Browsers Day!

jwz has resurrected a ton of old Netscape/Mosaic history, including the old Mosaic Communications Corporation web site and some ancient versions of their software (with which to browse it.)

SEO

Free Firefox Rank Checker - Check Your Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Search Engine Rankings : SEO Book.com

Pretty self-explanatory, no? I took it for a test drive this morning and it's a fine tool.

A New Blog I Love

The Leila Texts

When you send a text message on the Verizon network, you can address your text by choosing a name out of your contact list, or you can address it by typing in a phone number. You can also type in a name. And if you type in L-E-I-L-A, then– bizarrely– your text will come to me.
This is a blog about the texts I have received. All of them are from strangers, intended for other Leilas, but obviously they missed their marks.

Just read it. It's not a big time investment and it's interesting/funny/weird/cool.

Creative Wins at PR

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

Description cribbed from metafilter:

"A geek named daniel_k wanted to help his fellow Vista users. He created a set of drivers that would get their Creative sound cards working under Vista — something beyond the ken and expertise of Creative's engineering team. Creative VP Phil O'Shaughnessy, however, took umbrage. The results? A PR disaster with hundreds of users pledging to boycott. "

It made slashdot, digg, reddit, etc. Nice work Creative!

The weirdest thing about it is that it's Hammer (yes even weirder than the fact that his mom is knitting in the background.) I'm not even sure this guy was alive when Hammer was doing his thing.

And yeah, Wordpress is upgraded to 2.5. As I mentioned on twitter, it might take five minutes (and the core upgrade will.) The problem is, the "extra" stuff might break and cause me nothing but problems for hours or even days on end. I'm especially curious about the Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress since I post so many images to the site and want to continue to host them @ Amazon S3. Since so much of the admin interface is changed, I fear that will just break.

This won't be fully comprehensive as, well, I'm tired. But, I'm sitting here, drinking some tea and feel the need to drops a few comments about the day.

I started my night with a drink (Hendrick's gin and tonic) at Rocca. I like that place. The service is good, even for what feels like an "after work" place, and Hendrick's is always good.

After that we went to meet Tak at the Weekly Dig office, which, it being "last Friday," was doubling as Space 242. As promised the opening was a fun, fun time. Some interesting art was up and there were plenty of people. Here's a camera phone photo:

It was nice seeing the full crew. There are still plenty of people involved from way back when so it's always nice to catch up.

Following that fun little interlude, we headed over to O Ya, the main event for the evening. I'll have to save the full review for later, but I'll just say it was everything it was cracked up to be. I had the omakase and it was incredible. One of the best meals I've had in the city. Ranging from very good to absolutely sublime, the 15 separate plates kept my chop sticks busy and my palate entertained for nearly two and a half hours.

Wow, I really am tired.

That'll have to do for now.

More tomorrow?

Maybe. I've got the whole menu to go through so that might take a little time to put together properly. 15 dishes is a lot of flavors to sort through

From VeloNews:

Rumors are flying in Spain that Giro d’Italia organizers are reconsidering their decision and might welcome Astana to the season’s first major stage race. Vuelta a España officials reiterated Wednesday that Astana will be welcome, but warned that any hint of scandal could see the team lose its spot.

I'd obviously be excited to see Astana in the Giro, if just to see them win both the Giro and the Vuelta (are you betting against Contador in his home race? Me? I've already got his name engraved on the trophy.) as part of their "revenge against Le Tour tour."

Speaking of Castilla y Leon- a snowy, mountaintop finish? Contador vs. Colombian climber Mauricio Soler? Sounds like a fun stage. I would love to have seen it.

I ran across the paintings of artist Chow Chun Fai on David Bordwell's blog Observations on film art and FILM ART and I immediately consulted Google to learn more. Recreating stills from Hong Kong films in a raw, but faithful style, the paintings speak to me in a big way. I'd love to own one. The following, stills from King Hu's classic Dragon Inn and Andrew Lau's more recent masterpiece Infernal Affairs, are prime examples of the style:

For more visit the artist's site:

CHOW Chun Fai Artworks

(vulcan photo courtesy flickr user otherthings. check out his phenomenal site graffiti archeology.)

VULCAN is, obviously, a major inspiration to me, so I'm basically 100% obliged to share this interview:

Thirty years ago, when graffiti was withheld the respect of the subtitle "Art Form," a twelve year-old Vulcan hit the subway cars of New York with his collection of wildly colored paintcans. Over thirty years — and countless walls, trains, and buses — later, the now San Francisco-based graffiti legend has made a smooth transition from street to START SOMA, where the artist-in-residence uses his decades of experience to continue doing what he's done all along — create some of the most significant works of art, both street and otherwise, this side of 1973.

We chatted with Vulcan about his graffiti past and his gallery present, and came out the other side in agreement with the artist: Corporate or communal, gallery or ‘getting up'; art is art, and making it is what truly matters.

Read more: SpearTalks: Vulcan - Josh Spear

Muxtape / robreact

"Unknown: Untitled" is SLF's Alternative Ulster, by the way.

Two questions spring to mind.

1. How long will Muxtape last?
2. Once they are knocked off the net, will it be because of:
   • Capacity? Meaning they had no clue it would blow up so fast. Or…
   • An RIAA-style legal smackdown?

Regardless of how they come to their inevitable end, it's a fun little service that's easy to use. I'm going to play around with it as long as I can.

For the technically inclined, it uses mootools under the hood.

Look, more muxtapes (I'll post them as they cross my path):

Muxtape / mezzoblue
Muxtape / mario
adjustafresh.muxtape.com
ryanobrooks.muxtape.com
colinpod.muxtape.com
zenstudent57.muxtape.com
Another Girl, Another Muxtape
http://clampants.muxtape.com/
http://devosuperfly.muxtape.com/
http://caseymckinnon.muxtape.com/

SaveTheDevelopers.org :: Making The Web A Better Place

Say no to IE 6! Our current campaign focuses on assisting users in upgrading their Internet Explorer 6 web browser. This campaign will result in former IE 6 users having a more enjoyable experience on the web while (hopefully) creating a less stressful and complicated environment for web developers by hastening the retirement of an outdated browser.

Say it loud!

I've been writing about the slow adoption rate for a while now and it's still a source of frustration. Over the past month this site has seen 9,078 visitors using IE6.* Which is precisely 9,078 too many.

Honestly? In some sense it's a positive number, as the overall percentage of users on IE6 is shrinking. It's still not shrinking fast enough, however, so sentiments like the above speak to me like a call from up on high.

Sure, my site (and really all of my sites) looks fine in IE6, but it's still a pain to have to support it, even if it's just the extra bytes I have to serve other browsers (in the form of conditional comments.) And really, being the stickler for good experiences that I am, I still have to test and bug-fix for IE6 whenever I add new features or styles. Supporting two version of IE is awful, especially when one is so much better than the other.

I won't even get started on the issues at work.

Okay, maybe a little.

While I've got a hip, upgrading crowd that visits this site, the people we build for at work are generally running old, locked down machines running whatever browser their IT department wants to support. Care to guess what browser that might be?

Yeah.

IE6.

*sob*

*compared to 32,372 using Firefox and 15,385 using Internet Explorer 7.

Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction An excellent, truly nontechnical introduction to game theory. While there is some math, it's basic. The vast majority of the book is prose based, focusing on the underlying logic of game theory and using real world analogs to expand on specific points. If you've ever heard the phrases "Prisoner's Dilemma" or "zero sum game" and wondered what they were all about, this book might be just what you're looking for…