• Visitors can check out the Forum FAQ by clicking this link. You have to register before you can post: click the REGISTER link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. View our Forum Privacy Policy.
  • Want to receive the latest contracting news and advice straight to your inbox? Sign up to the ContractorUK newsletter here. Every sign up will also be entered into a draw to WIN £100 Amazon vouchers!

Monday Links from the Bench vol. CXLVII

Collapse
X
  •  
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CXLVII

    Went for my annual checkup today. The nurse stuck the needle in my right arm but, despite prolonged waggling, no blood was forthcoming; so she then got to do it all over again in the left arm. I was wondering where she was going to go if that hadn't worked
    • The Forgotten Mapmaker: Nokia Has Better Maps Than Apple and Maybe Even Google - A look inside Nokia's mapping project, which is of similar or even greater extent to Google's: "The Volkswagen is stocked with $200,000 worth of equipment including six cameras for capturing street signs, a panoramic camera for doing Bing Street View imagery, two GPS antennae (one on the wheel, the other on the roof), three laptops, and the crown jewel -- a LIDAR system that shoots 64 lasers 360 degrees around the car to create 3D images of the landscape the car passes through."

    • The White House in the Movies & TV - "How accurate are portrayals of the White House by Hollywood? Some are good; some not so good." And a load of them are subjected to detailed examination here, from D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) to The Simpsons Movie (2007).

    • How a Videogame God Inspired a Twitter Doppelgänger — and Resurrected His Career - "In the summer of 2011, Microsoft’s PR department alerted [Peter] Molyneux to @PeterMolydeux, a satirical Twitter feed that parodied his public persona. At first Molyneux found the feed annoying; @PeterMolydeux was a pathetic character. His shtick was to spout overheated, ridiculous game ideas that could never get made. One tweet described a Kinect game that required players to cry before they could pass through a gate. Another posited a racing game in which you controlled the road instead of the cars. But over time Molyneux found himself drawn to his online impersonator. The ideas were silly, yes, but they were also oddly compelling." Great profile of Peter Molyneux and his Twitter alter ego.

    • 'Shakespeare's Local' and the Austrian Tyrant - Noted beer writer Pete Brown has a book coming out about the George Inn in Borough High Street; here's the full-length version of a story that had to be trimmed down in the book. "At one point, the crowd was addressed by Friedrich ‘Citizen’ Engels, a man delightfully described in the report of the meeting as ‘one who has fought for freedom in many lands, and wore a long beard’."

    • Diary Of A Breast Cancer Patient #1: The Perils Of Google Before Surgery - "I decided to pay attention to the foreboding warnings from Google and fellow patient "Lady Doom". Cue sweaty palms, incessant worry and countless what-ifs...." Renowned (and very sweary) Twitterer @Lolly_Knickers was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, so she's blogging about it. Bonus linky to her second post on the subject: 9 Well Meaning But F**king Annoying Things People Say To A Cancer Patient.

    • Anatomy of a Hoax - "I faked the Sony Nexus X. Truly sorry. But I did come away from the experience with a few observations. I will share these musings, along with how and why I created these fakes." How to demonstrate that "technology journalism" is often a pile of crap cut-and-pasted from another pile of crap

    • What it's like to be on Jeopardy - "After my first (and only?) stint on the show, a friend of mine pointed out that while Jeopardy appears to be a quiz show, it's really a very particular form of a reality show... Instead of competing Survivor-like in physically intense challenges with deprivations and also trying to manage the social calculus of not being voted off, Jeopardy reduces us mostly to brains and reflexes." Glenn Fleishman on his (winning) appearance on the famous game show (which we've never actually seen over here, except in other shows like Cheers or The Simpsons).

    • The City Abandoned at the World's End - "Three days by car to Oslo, three hours by plane to Svalbard, Norway, five hours by an Arctic ship with a romantic name “Polar Girl” and you find yourself in the northernmost abandoned city: you are in Pyramiden." Great photos of the city that contains such delights as the northernmost swimming pool (empty), the northernmost concert grand piano (sadly not pictured, though they do show an upright), and the northernmost bust of Lenin.

    • How cork is made - "An illustrated guide to the cork production process." There's not much to add to that description

    • 99 Life Hacks to make your life easier! - Brilliant collection by Victoria. I've been doing this one for years:


      but most of the rest are new to me, and awesome.


    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    These corks will be really expensive: over a Euro each.
    Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

    Comment


      #3
      As a fan of some of his games and teenager when he was most famous, I loved the Molydeux one. Amazed I'd never heard of that before.

      Was it Lionhead that made the weird rag-doll fighting game, and planned an office with glass walls full of goldfish?
      Originally posted by MaryPoppins
      I'd still not breastfeed a nazi
      Originally posted by vetran
      Urine is quite nourishing

      Comment

      Working...
      X