January 2, 2009
Dear Zachary
Kurt Kuenne is a filmmaker and composer. His light hearted, modern fairy tales have a strange continuity to them. Validation is the story of how free parking can change your life. Rent-A-Person is a musical about restroom attendants and Slow is about the power of travel. But Kurt's work isn't just fairy tales. [more inside]
My Favourite Things
"When Mr. von Trapp finally returned to take over from his father, Johannes, he had had quite a decade: teaching skiing in Aspen, modeling for Ralph Lauren, surfing in Chile and even making People magazine’s America’s Top 50 Bachelors list in 2001. Recently, he sat in a dark office at the Trapp Family Lodge, the inn his grandmother started, trying to decide what to do with some old curtains..."
- the legacy of the Von Trapp family, made famous (but not rich) by The Sound of Music, now with less singing at the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont. [more inside]
My Day Yesterday
My Day Yesterday. A Flickr set of short (under 90 seconds) videos which describe... a person's day. The instructions, as outlined by Garrett Murray, who started the group with this video: "Shoot video throughout a day in your life, then put it together and upload it the next day. Don't add any music or sound effects, just use what the camera recorded." Some favourites: Delphine Gilbert in Cordoba, Dean Allen in France, and Piotr/presentday in Florence.
The Press: Making Bloggers Look Good Since Before Blogging Was Invented
Of all the offshoots of the "Stuff White People Like" meme, my favorite is Stuff Journalists Like. From Free Food to Press Passes to Exclusives, this blog is covering everything in the ink-stained-wretch's lifestyle, including some things they really just barely tolerate. For a more serious look at the Journalistic Profession during this time of Transition/Crisis/Insanity, there's always Jay Rosen, whose PressThink blog has been previously seen here and is getting more attention than ever via (shudder) Twitter. Or, for something more in-between... 10,000 Words uses a bright, shiny bunch of tag clouds, maps and other visual aids (plus fun with typography) to tell the journos how it should be done while doing it.
All podcasts lead to Rome.
The History of Rome A breezily-told, yet surprisingly thorough podcast covering the entire history of Rome from Aeneas onward. 15 minute episodes, updated weekly, he's currently up to the Catiline Conspiracy of 62BC.
Barn Find of the Decade
"When Harold Carr's nephews and nieces inherited a dusty old lock-up garage from their eccentric uncle their expectations were low. But when they opened the doors of the car collector's Tyneside [England] garage they discovered what may prove to be a life-changing inheritance."* Inside they found a rare 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante. Having sat hidden, gathering dust for over 50 years, the classic car -- of which only 17 were built -- goes up for auction by Bonhams at the Retromobile auto show in Paris on February 7, 2009. [more inside]
Somebody finally has the right idea.
Offbeat Guides create personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts. [more inside]
written on terrestrial things
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky (re)posted Thomas Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush" to Slate. Discussion ensued, and became very lively when National Book Award winner Mark Doty observed that the poem contains an overt homage to an earlier poem by Keats. Guggenheim fellow Mark Halliday, MacArthur fellow Jim Powell and Annie Finch chime in. An opportunistic Billy Collins (also a former Poet Laureate & Guggenheim fellow) even showed up, attracted by the discussion of a "bird poem." A fascinating look at some of the finest American poets geeking out over poems that were hits before your mother was born.
3d context free
Structure Synth is an application for creating 3D structures from a set of user specified rules. It is an attempt to make a 3D version of Context Free.
The Price Of Breakfast Is Eternal Vigilance!
The Top 10 Rightblogger Stories of 2008. Can it really have been almost two months since the U.S. presidential election? It seems like a long time ago that bloggers on the right were claiming Obama killed his grandmother and denouncing WALL-E, but this list does a pretty good job of summarizing what got them all riled up in 2008.
History of War and Peace Collection
Peace and War in the 20th Century is an ambitious, in progress, massive assemblage of posters, photographs, propaganda, ephemera, letters, diaries, paintings, sketches, stories, letters, music and related items, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The collection is international in scope. Some of the nodes lack content, and the navigation is a little confusing, so the jump I list some of my favourite case studies from their site. [more inside]
The Widest Avenue on Earth
At 18 lanes and 110 metres wide, Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is not only a beautiful example of urban design but is also apparently the widest major road on the planet. [more inside]
Team Hoyt on the Today Show
Peruvian toasted root beer and with persimmon!
2009 will be a whole new year for flavor. Expect toasted sesame and root beer, Peruvian food, beer, and persimmon.
The aXXo files
"If you already know his name, chances are you've been doing something illegal." The Independent on aXXo, the movie pirate king.
JPG magazine folds
JPG magazine is going out of business. An experiment in crowdsourcing, and the home of some excellent photos, the magazine and Web site are finished as of Monday, Jan. 5. [more inside]
STOOPID %*@&ING COMPUTER!
Shouting in the datacenter - increased disk latency caused by shouting: Yelling at your computer* may cause an increase in disk latency and a decrease in performance.
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