December 2010
1 post
4 tags
Nazis Everywhere, including in spreadsheets
After reading “Nazis Everywhere,” a blog post by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Monthly, I did a few Google searches to see how many results the names in his article would have when paired with a Nazi-related term. I got a bit carried away and ended up putting the results in a Google spreadsheet (suitably enough). I thought I’d throw together a quick spreadsheet showing the search result...
November 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Thanks, Abe.
By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and...
6 tags
TSA thugs don't know their own rules; detain man...
I highly recommend reading this whole post (originally linked by @daringfireball on Twitter). Enough with these thugs. Let’s disband the #TSA and outsource airport security to Israel already.Amplify’d from erratasec.blogspot.comToday, I was detained by the TSA for about 30 minutes for taking pictures while going through security. Taking pictures is perfectly legal.TSA: You can’t take...
3 tags
Who formats their CSS this way?
Amplify’d from skitch.com
I know some people prefer single-line CSS formatting. It’s horribly unreadable in my opinion, but okay, to each their own. Throwing tabs into the mix, and a varying number of tabs at that, makes it pretty clear there’s a masochist at the keyboard. As if single-line wasn’t bad enough, look at the wrapping nightmare this creates. How much time is wasted...
7 tags
“The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead...
My fascination with the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald goes back as far as I can remember. It sank just a month after I was born. Like most people who know about the disaster, it was Gordon Lightfoot’s song that first made me aware of it, probably playing on a bad AM radio in my parents’ car in the early ’80s. Trips to Duluth — still one of my favorite cities after traveling...
5 tags
Was I disenfranchised? Or does it just feel like...
I take voting very seriously. It’s the sacred right of every citizen living in a democratic society. As an American living abroad, I made sure to request a ballot well in advance of the election and sent it in with plenty of time before the deadline. So imagine my surprise when I found out I could have voted in more races if I had put it off until the last minute. Since moving to Latvia 2.5...
October 2010
4 posts
2 tags
True story: This procrastination article was so...
This is one of the best articles on #procrastination I’ve ever read. Read the whole thing… unless you’re one of those mutants who doesn’t procrastinate.Amplify’d from youarenotsosmart.comYou keep promising yourself this will be the year you do all these things. You know your life would improve if you would just buckle down and put forth the effort.You can try to fight it back....
2 tags
Coming to a SkyMall near you… GoateeSaver.
The fact that this exists made my bearded (but not goateed) jaw drop. Then I read the copy and watched the video. And that mouthpiece… Wow.Amplify’d from www.goateesaver.comIt reflects your personality. It declares your individuality. Your goatee is much more than just facial hair, your goatee style helps fashion your identity. We understand its importance to you. That’s why we created the...
2 tags
Facebook apps are sharing personal info, but is...
After reading yet another article about privacy issues with Facebook apps, I was planning to eliminate unused apps from my account and check the privacy settings and policies of others. After 5 minutes of searching for my applications, I checked the Facebook help pages — which weren’t much help, as you can see here. Would Facebook intentionally make apps more difficult to remove or did...
2 tags
Bower birds, optical illusions, and the joy of...
Every once in a while, interesting subjects coincide in such a way that brings me back to the early days of the Web as we know it. BoingBoing’s post today about the male Bower bird got me started. The order of the images at BoingBoing emphasized the optical illusion, and at first I followed the Ames Room link to read more about that at Wikipedia. Fascinating stuff. When I went back to...
September 2010
1 post
“Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can...”
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
August 2010
1 post
“If you drive an old car, you can’t put unleaded fuel in it, there is...”
– ‘ornette,’ from websites do NOT have to look the same! - SitePoint Forums
March 2010
1 post
May 2009
1 post
2 tags
Did Twitter ignore user feedback?
[This won’t make much sense to people who don’t use Twitter. If you do, you probably know that Twitter made a significant change to their service on Tuesday (May 12) by removing a setting that allowed users to choose which “@ replies” appeared in their stream. This is a response to that change. @chrismessina posted screenshots showing the change (see his first comment, too). Also, this response to...
September 2008
9 posts
“And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from...”
– Muxtape Another sad story of innovation being quashed by a music industry stuck in the stone LP-age. Good luck with the new incarnation, Justin, but it just won’t be the same.
“The MP3 fools the ear by eliminating the least essential parts of a music...”
– Suzanne Vega, mother of the MP3
Converting an MP3 to audiobook format
You have an audiobook in MP3 format, perhaps of the public domain variety. Notice how your player doesn’t remember where you left off? So annoying. Here’s a quick and easy way to convert such MP3s into an audiobook format that won’t drive you batty. Assumptions: You know your way around iTunes and your computer’s file system.
Import the MP3 file into iTunes.
Find the...
“Can we just NOT fight with Pakistan? They have nuclear weapons & Islamic...”
– Lorna Li on Twitter Not that we should declare war on Pakistan itself, but all of the above look like reasons for taking on the militants there. Or is better to just let them keep doing their blow-people-up-in-the-name-of-Allah thing? To each their own, right?
“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of...”
– John McCain, May 25, 2006 (via hotair.com) Note the date!
“I’m also given to understand that the rules of science begin to bend and even...”
– P.J. O’Rourke, On God — Search Magazine
“If he values his life, Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel,” [Omar]...”
– Muslim leader threatens to kill Paul McCartney over Israel gig — Haaretz.com And, Sir Paul’s classy response
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and...”
– David Foster Wallace — Commencement Speech at Kenyon University
“I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let...”
– Good and Bad Procrastination
August 2008
1 post
“Brand-building is not about spam and not about exchanging links. (It’s about)...”
– Merlin Mann via Merlin Mann
July 2008
4 posts
Twitter: An improved Replies view
After reading Tantek Çelik’s article on filtering trolls from Twitter searches, I was playing around with his test searches and stumbled on a much-improved replies view for Twitter. It’s quite simple:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=toddprouty+-from%3Atoddprouty
Just replace my username with yours and it’s ready for a prominent place on your bookmarks bar.
This simply...
1 tag
“Kuntar, who had been a member of the Palestine Liberation Front, led a group of...”
– Hezbollah hands over remains to Israel in prisoner swap - CNN.com
Spam poetry - 1
Likely, therefore, that he should withdraw the but codfish salted by british heretics for the liked it. O sanjaya, nor do i like it, nor vasudeva the snakesacrifice that was to come, there occurred dash of mental and moral training in the development honored by banquets, processions, and royal gatherings. Son began to consume his foes, quickly careering upon the building of his castle the luxury...
April 2008
1 post
