August Bank Holiday - IIRC, that means permies have no more time off until Christmas. Worst of all, they don't even get to invoice for reading this lot:
Happy invoicing!
- Vodka Nation - "How the flavorless, colorless, odorless spirit became a billion-dollar business" A history of the peculiar manifestation of consumerism that is vodka marketing.
- Steve Jobs Steps Down the First Time: The 1985 Press Coverage - A compilation of the insights offered by the Press last time around: "The computer industry is littered with the corpses of promising companies that were managed into oblivion by marketing 'experts' who had no particular feel for silicon and software."
- Angry people in local newspapers - "I feel sorry for local news photographers. They are hugely skilled and poorly paid, and sent out to photograph miserable people pointing at dog turds. Here, we celebrate their work" - great collection of local sadface imagery illustrating such stories as the Wolverhampton Express and Star's Anger at wasteland 'jungle':
- Somewhere Over The Crayon-Bow - "Back in January, as the story goes, my pseudonymous buddy Velociraptor rolled Wikipedia’s list of Crayola colors into a visual crayon chronology... So, yesterday evening, after finishing off the last bits of Velo’s divinely-grilled pterodactyl, we embarked upon a redesign. Our goal was to maintain the clean geometric aesthetic, while dialing down the 'indictment of overzealous product management' and cranking up the 'celebration of diversity!'" Nice visualisation of the history of crayon colours
- Privacy and social media investigation: how I tracked down an entire family from one tweet - Journalist Joanna Geary shows how easy it is to follow our online trails: "The 'About Us' section has an entry about the tweeter. They are a member of staff. There is a profile picture (the same one used on Twitter), job title and some friendly information about them confirming: that they are married to the person mentioned in the tweet, how long they have been married, the names of their children, their email address and the organisations that they volunteer with in their spare time."
- Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham - Classic 70s cinematic feature, possibly the very film that inspired AtW to make his home there. (N.B. Despite the claims made in the commentary, Mr Savalas never actually went to Birmingham.)
- Why Software Is Eating The World - "This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market. In short, software is eating the world." Netscape founder Marc Andreessen offers his thoughts on the future of technology.
- Al Qaeda In Azeroth? Terrorism Recruiting and Training in Virtual Worlds - "Hundreds of millions of people flock to massively multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft, and revel in online virtual worlds like Second Life. …and somewhere in those millions are terrorists looking to plot the next big attack against Western civilization. That’s right, terrorism has been chased into using virtual reality as its staging grounds. The future is a strange, comical, and scary place to live when that Level 40 Night Elf looking for a group may be Al Qaeda in disguise." Aaron Saenz on another avenue for the War on Terror to explore.
- Real Sound Cookery – Make a contact mic with baking soda and cream of tartar - "I recently stumbled on a great video tutorial by Collin’s Lab entitled 'Homebrew Piezo' in it he shows how to make Potassium sodium tartrate crystals also known as 'Rochelle Salt'. These crystals are fairly amazing in that they are made from ingredients available cheaply from your local grocery store or supermarket. I suggest you watch it as it shows the process really clearly. Later in this post I’ll show my experience of following Collin’s method and do something Collin didn’t – Made some sound with it!" Leafcutter John also describes a load of other interesting projects on his site, including Leafcutter’s DIY Steel Can Hydrophone & Preamp
- Teddy Bears that have been Turned Inside Out and Restuffed - "Bears by Kent Rogowski, is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed." Indeed...
Happy invoicing!
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