In a fascinating bit of amateur lexical analysis, Stephen Von Worley created this color strata image, using data collected from XKCD‘s Color Survey:
Sadly, pistachio, a hue that’s notoriously difficult to pin down, is nowhere to be found. Spencer Finch will be disappointed.
If anyone’s interested in the actual linguistics behind color names, Berlin & Kay’s Basic Color Terms
This infographic of one person’s sleep patterns over nine years is fascinating:
When normal people find something left behind, in a place of business (like a bar), that someone will likely want to have back (like an iPhone), they leave it with someone who works there (like the bartender). Then, the person who left it behind has a way to check if anyone has returned it. Taking it is stealing.
Gizmodo probably suspected that the prototype iPhone they bought was stolen. By now, they’ve made back the purchase price in page views, with a healthy return on top to help cover legal fees.
And if you think any of this will hurt the new iPhone’s sales, I have a bridg^H^H^H^H^Hphone to sell you.
I’m not sure how much I buy it, but this scathing critique of Farmville is a must read.
Finally received prints of my two new rapid-prototyped 3-d sculptures: a revised version of Trapped Outside:
And a three-dimensional, assemble-it-yourself version of the Union Jack Cube:
The periodic table fad has gone meta, not only with The Periodic Table Table at (Wake Forest University, in North Carolina):
But also with this periodic table of periodic tables by keaggy.com:
Before the Periodic Table of the Elements, elements were a chaotic collection of substances with seemingly random and unpredictable masses, melting and boiling points, electrical, chemical, and material properties, and so on. Not only did the periodic table organize the known elements in a way that explained these properties, but it correctly predicted the existence and the properties of undiscovered elements.
All these parodies of periodic tables are only funny because this tendency towards scientific organization has totally permeated popular culture. And that’s pretty encouraging.
For the last few months, Ross and I have been working on FlakeNot.
FlakeNot keeps track of all your invitations in a single place. To sign up, forward pretty much any email with a date and a time in it to new-event@flakenot.com. FlakeNot will create an account for you and remember all the events you send it.
Once you’ve forwarded some events, send email to calendar@flakenot.com and you’ll get an email with your upcoming events. And visit flakenot.com to see your calendar on the web.
That’s it. No fancy logo. No social network, no profile photo. No Flash applet. No Google Maps mash-up. No video chatting with random strangers. Just a quick, simple way to keep track of all your invitations, so you can get out there in the real world and spend time with your real friends.
Yes, it works with Evites and Facebook invites. Yes, there’s a version of the site optimized for your Android/iPhone/Palm Pre. Yes, we plan to support Google calendar, write a Facebook application, and integrate with iCal. Yes, yes, yes.
Very clever parody of web browsers as transportation technology:
But Safari as a fixed-gear? Really? At least make it a 24-speed with a carbon-fiber frame or something.
Following his hilarious Ten Ways to Wreck Your Database, Josh Berkus outlines ten ways to destroy your open-source community. When I started at BitTorrent back in 2005, it had long been guilty of 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10, and it never recovered.
After years of work and months of polishing, I’m happy to announce that five of my fonts are now available for purchase at MyFonts.com! Between now and March 10th, you can get any of these fonts for 30% by entering the promotion / gift certificate code BLOGMAR10 at checkout.
If anyone has any problems whatsoever ordering these fonts or getting the promotional discount, email me.
