Image-Space has a new Lightroom 2 eBook available for DL on the DL, if ya know what I mean. If not, it means click the link and get a nice eBook on how to make Lightroom 2 faster quicker and with less calories.
Remember a few years ago when Ruby on Rails first made itself known and the canonical example video was the one where a weblog was written in 15 minutes? Ahh.... memories. Good to know that there is a New 15-minute blog video on Rails 2.2 to do the same thing with all the new shiny stuff in 2.2.
Ssd: Micron Demos Super-Fast Solid-State Drives Running At 1GB Per Second
Via Daring Fireball's commentary comes a brutal BlackBerry Storm review over at the NYTimes.
Cracked.com has a great "how to write your own version of House" in their Every Episode of 'House' Ever page. Awesome cause it's true of course :)
In case anyone is wondering what happened to the server around 1pm today:
# uptime
14:00:30 up 118 days, 2:48, 5 users, load average: 235.87, 218.42, 206.62
Still investigating what happened, but the box is back and responding now.
New Battlestar Galactica Promo: The Epic Journey. Not much to say but f-n-a. Can't wait. Woo!
Update: I'm told that the one on http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ is bigger.
Open Source Sci-fi: New Movie Let Fans Choose Their Own Adventure
Clips: Iron Man Children's Costume Modded to Be Deadly-Cute
Canceled Cartoons: Skin Cream Has Killed The Mutant Ninja Turtles
Another awesome MythBusters YouTube Live paintball event. Super-cool, they do have the best job in the world don't they?
Darren pointed me to Doom 1, playable in a browser (with flash 10 of course). Sadly completely fails for me under Linux, but other systems might have better luck. Probably good as I don't have time for such silly distractions! :)
I Was Trapped In A Movie Theater With Teenage Twilight Fans is a great look at Twighlight from someone who is not a teenage girl. Speaking as a geek and Harry Potter fan, I just don't get it (and haven't seen the movie yet either).
Civic Literacy Report - Civics Quiz
Check out the second clip for the eep....
Space Porn: Watch a Fiery Meteorite Burn Up the Sky
Doctor Who: And The New Doctor Might Be...
Not much to say here, Rails 2.2 has escaped from the developers.
Rails 2.2 is finally done after we cleared the last issues from the release candidate program. This release contains an long list of fixes, improvements, and additions that’ll make everything Rails smoother and better, but we also have a number of star player features to parade this time.
Course, I'm still in chapter 1 of my Rails 1.1 book, so this is way too much for me to process on how good or bad it is :)
There's a new Ozzy Osbourne World of Warcraft TV Commercial as well as one from Pauly from the Sopranos. Not nearly as good as the original Shatner / mIni-Me ones IMHO.
BetaNews | Novell and Microsoft sanction Silverlight work-alike for Linux
In the next stage of what has turned out to be a more successful project than even its creators envisioned, the public beta of Moonlight -- a runtime library for Linux supporting sites that expect Silverlight -- is expected within days.
I've seen the Daily WTF story of DOLLARS and SENSE all over the social news sites and it is epically awesomely bad, especially if you know anything about programming or assembler code. It occurs to me that this is the opposite of The Story of Mel, a classic story from Usenet from '83 and a task of Herculean awesome programming, about the opposite of the WTF story.
Triviagasm: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
Doctor Who: The BBC Tried To Ruin Doctor Who – Before It Even Began
Wow, not only has Apple released iPhone 2.2 firmware, but it's available to me right away! Anyone tried it yet? Any fail? Awh, who am I kidding, I'm downloading it and installing it right now!
According to the release notes no cut and paste, but the expected bug fixes, performance fixes, over the air podcast updating, street view (and some other) map improvements, as well as toggling for spelling. So pretty much what people were expecting.
I'll let you know if it explodes my phone :)
Update: No issues, heck, even a fast download speed. Since I just updated all my podcasts I'll have to wait to use it in practice, but in theory the 'get more episodes' just pops you into the itunes store and allows you to download episodes from the listing there (I never use the itunes store on the iphone so no idea if that was there before). It also does the right thing when it syncs to iTunes as well, loading any new podcasts you weren't subscribed to in. Looks very slick.
The street view is sexy, and probably the new "must show" app for iphone/touch owners. You need an address in a city with street view of course, and if you have it click on the orange icon on the left of the label (try searching for "1 microsoft way seattle" as an example). The transition to street view is done with the usual care and attention so the user knows what's going on (ie: is swoops in). Pinch and drag are all there and work as expected, the only niggle I have (and not sure what could be done about it) is that I almost want to pinch or double tap to move down the street, but I need to tap on the street "arrows" just like in the actual google maps street view. I'm not sure how you'd distinguish between a "move forward" doubletap or pinch and a "zoom in" double tap or pinch. Still, a very minor thing.
Safari does indeed now have the google search as a primary element in the nav bar. Not sure if this is a needed thing or not, but I guess it saves a tap...
Haven't looked at the rest of the stuff, but it feels a bit faster overall, though that might be the reality distortion field :)
Fanboys, The Ultimate Quest For Star Wars Episode I trailer. Looks totally awesome, especially with the cast that they have in there. Sadly not out till February :(
Darren passed me a great video of the Kids in The Hall's Scott Thompson as he passes a Portal challenge. Barely. Much hilarity ensues.
Truth: Harsh Reality Behind the Gizmodo/Reader Symbiosis Revealed by Dilbert
I read I can haz cheeseburger, failblog, hot dogs, etc and enjoy the heck out of them, but I had to share this Security Fail. My first LOL moment of the morning :)
Engadget has a BlackBerry Storm review. For obvious reasons there are a lot of comparisons to the iPhone... better battery life (though no hard numbers), beautiful design (with some niggles), some issues with the touchscreen, some plusses and minuses with the onscreen "touch" keyboard, etc. The one place where it seems to fail is the software, where they see the OS having had the touch part grafted on instead of being there from the start like the iPhone. Also things like scrolling through lists it sounds like hasn't had the care and attention that Apple gave it on the iPhone. It does sound like a simple thing, but anyone who has used an iPhone or iPod Touch knows just how "good" using the interface and scrolling "feels", and how integral that is to why the iPhone is so popular.
That said my last BB was one of the blue plastic chunks of lead, so I'd be open to playing with one of these for sure if anyone was interested in sending me a review version :)
The Apple Blog has it's own perspective on the whole thing, including the same sort of "it's $200 yes, but what about the $xx per month plus $xx for this and $xx for that" snarkyness that came from the non-apple fanboys when the iPhone 3G came out with it's "reduced" price.
Found a link on reddit with examples and code for 33 String Matching Algorithms. Even if you're not into deep coding, it's very cool to see just what goes into something which seems fairly simple and is so common in computers.
Twilight: Now That He Owns The Souls Of Our Tweens, Pattinson Wants To Be The Doctor
Terminator Salvation: New Terminator 4 Footage Shows John Connor Out Of His Depth
Via Daring Fireball comes Deconstructing Google Mobile's Voice Search on the iPhone on waxy.org.
According to the GMail blog, you can now Spice up your inbox with colors and themes. Sadly it's a rolling release, and it's not available everywhere (ie: to me), but the screenshots look pretty sexy. Looking forward to being able to play with this.
Rebates: RebateStatus.com Files For Chapter 11, Your Rebate May Be Affected
Ha! Via fozbaca on the Twitter comes a great article on how Tables are The Next Evolution in CSS Layout. Very similar to the 'just give up and use tables' link I posted last week :)
Finally Official: Gossip Girl Creator To Reboot X-Men
Finally Official: Gossip Girl Creator To Reboot X-Men
Apple: Aluminum MacBook X-Ray Makes Perfect Desktop Background
Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Which Phones Deliver The Real Web
My buddy Len threw over a link to a youtube video of a "Real Transformer". Pretty cool.
Mars Phoenix: 30 Mars Phoenix Discoveries NASA Will Never Show the World
Star Trek: Trailer Reveals Who’s Hooking Up With Kirk and Why Scotty’s All Wet
Trailer Reveals Who’s Hooking Up With Kirk and Why Scotty’s All Wet
It was such a nice movie, now... I weep for thee... Race To Witch Mountain: Disney Slams SUVs into Children's Faces
Ok, this has got to be the coolest video of a Walrus breakdancing you will see all week. When was the last time you heard that challenge?
Ow. Star Wars Holiday Special: Best Unsung Filk Ever, in Honor of Star Wars Holiday Special
Adobe has announced over at Penguin.SWF is it now Supporting 16 Exabytes, that is, runs on 64bit CPUs. This will hopefully bring less pain to Linux people on 64bit systems, where flash is currently flakey at best :)
Anyone had any success with this?
I found some good instructions for Ubuntu (intrepid, the latest) on this thread. Basically apt-get remove the libflash-nonfree package and put the downloaded .so file into your ~/.mozilla/plugins directory.
JJ Abrams Star Trek finally has a full trailer online. This was the trailer that was supposedly attached to the new James Bond movie this weekend, but sadly it wasn't in the showing I saw (maybe only in the US?). I gave in and watched the cam version that's been floating around since Friday, but this one, being official and real and all, is soooo much better (especially in HD :)
Last paragraph sums up my feelings nicely... Star Trek: Star Trek Trailer Goes Online, Just In Time For The Inevitable Backlash
It's long been held that the old jokes are the best jokes... Dead Parrot sketch is 1,600 years old - Telegraph
It takes a bit to get to it, but this Dance Fail over at fail blog is epic.... you just gotta wait for it....
This will be a cool thing for the iPhone / Touch (second gen only) users.... Voice Search Coming to the iPhone via the google mobile app. There's a nice little video demonstrating it in true Google fashion. Basically speak your google search into the microphone and it gives it to you.... how much simpler could it be?
Take it from a mall security guard, it's TRUE. Mad Science: Does the Full Moon Really Make People Crazy?
Pretty sound advice (from my experience anyway) regarding CSS and Table layouts..... Give Up and Use Tables
We've scientifically determined the maximum amount of time that you should need to make a layout work in CSS[...]
I'm not exactly sure what the download they have is (I'm on a linux box here and it doesn't seem to run under WINE, but it maybe a local copy of the flash timer they have).
Ha! Check out this flickr post: I'm actually Knuth's homeboy. Kinda jelous...
Warning, Tons of spoilers Movie Review: Quantum of Solace Is the Perfect Bond Movie
From my friend Rob comes this little tutorial on How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You. I'm not sure about you, but I see all these in my cats, and am now fearful for my life. Please protect me. My results from the accompanying quiz are below:
So I just had to post this link for a couple of reasons. First, the story of a guy with a wolf as a pet is pretty cool, as I used to know a guy like that and played with wolves when I was a lad and they are awesome. Secondly, the comments to the reddit story are awesome, from the internet rule comment by floydiannyc and then the narwals comments, down to a conversation about owning cats and how they are good at hiding evidence of their killings.... and then it gets interesting :)
Another trek gizmodo link from Brian: Star Trek Plate Covers Won't Make Your Lights Turn On Any Faster. Is it wrong for me to really want a few of these?
Gizmodo has a First Look At the New USS Enterprise. Not sure how I feel about it.... it's got an 'old-new' look which is cool, but being that it's supposed to be pre-TOS, it's got a little bit too much 'new' in the mix.
That said, can't wait for the movie :) The trailer is supposed to be attached to the new Bond movie coming out this Friday which I'm going to see.... woo!
Brian found this on gizmodo: Photoshop Contest: 23 Personal HUDs That Would Make All of Our Lives Easier. Ones like this one make me agree that we all need a personal HUD (and gig-eee direct to the brain, but that's another thing).
I did also just LOL at the message in the bottom right of this entry.
MacRumors asks the very leading question of iPhone 2.2 Firmware 10 Days Away? If so, very cool, as there are a bunch of new stuff (no copy and paste yet!!?!?!?!?) that's rumored to be in it, coolest for me being updating of podcasts over the air (well, over 3G for <10mb and wifi for >10mb) which will mean I don't have to worry about running out of stuff to listen to if I'm away from my main syncing computer. Street view is nifty, the Japanese emoji icons get a "well whatever" and the rumored new look for safari with the google bar on the title bar (anyone have screenshots of this?) sounds interesting.
Course, apple being apple, we'll see what happens in 10 days :)
Well, check out this guy: Ubuntero Gets Inked - Ubuntu Style. Nice tattoo, and if/when Ubuntu goes out of style, is found to eat babies, gets replaced with something else, it's a nice generic shape. Looks pretty cool actually. Not to draw comparisons or anything, but Zune Tattoo Guy doesn't hold up :)
Laughing Squid has an ad described as: Giant Kitten Headed Humanoid Cat Fight In Toyota Corolla Ad. Bet you didn't think you'd ever see those words all together did you?
Neat article by H3RALD on 10 Reasons to Learn Ruby. Nice and non-judgmental of other languages (for the most part) and a well written little ditty on some of the high points of Ruby.
Geeks of doom point out that you can now Read ‘Ender’s Game: Battle School #1′ Online For Free Right Now! Of course, as with all things on the world wide web, there is a delineation of what country you live in and you're asked twice if you live in the US or not, but I (stating truthfully I'm not in the US) still got the comic (you have to click the 'open' button to the right of the text on the marvel page). The artwork is great and it follows closely to what I remember from reading the first in the Ender's Game series a bunch of years ago.
Rumors are that apple will Activate Podcast Downloads in 2.2 Firmware at MacRumors. This and street view would make the 2.2 a very nice upgrade... Course, cut and paste and background notifications would make it even better!
Sad news from my buddy Brian... Best-Selling Author Michael Crichton Died of cancer.
Via /film I found a post called The Land of the Free which is a set of pictures of dressed up Star Wars fanboys at home. Very odd/interesting/bizarre :)
I've seen some pretty interesting halloween costumes this year, but this army man has a great mix of f-n cool, f-n original, and just awesome.
Now these are impressive: The 7 Most Impressive (And Depressing) Geek Collections. Pikachu lady scares the f@ck out of me.