January 2010
18 posts
World's 'most expensive' ham →
Nope, not an overpaid actor but an actual piece of dead pig for £1800 that, once the acorn-fed pigs die, takes three years to cure and is described as “amazing value”. I’ll take two.
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Next stop Barking? →
But beggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor’s names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.
Realism in UI Design →
Graphical user interfaces are typically full of symbols. Most graphical elements you see on your screen are meant to stand for ideas or concepts. The little house on your desktop isn’t a little house, it’s «home». The eye isn’t an actual eye, it means «look at the selected element». The cog isn’t a cog, it means «click me to see available commands».
Details and realism can distract from these...
So, in your mind, what makes a good monster? →
I don’t understand any of the references, but the pictures are pretty, and the insight into monster-creating is a little bit interesting.
The Quietus Reductive & Subjective Albums Of The... →
The Quietus doesn’t review as much as Pitchfork or Drownedinsound, and as such it’s a bit easier to identify with the tastes of the writers, and that means that when they say things are worth listening to, I normally take their advice and do so. This is the 2nd half of their top-albums list for 2009 and (along with the first half) has plenty of new bands for me to listen to....
WatchA new MIA video? People seem to think so, and it’s pretty cool regardless.
Walking Through Walls →
Die Hard asks naive but powerful questions: If you have to get from A to B—that is, from the 31st floor to the lobby, or from the 26th floor to the roof—why not blast, carve, shoot, lockpick, and climb your way there, hitchhiking rides atop elevator cars and meandering through the labyrinthine, previously unexposed back-corridors of the built environment?
BLDG BLOG takes a meandering, but all...
Lastgraph for 2009 →
Lastgraph lets you create posters showing your listening trends for a period of time. I’ve generated one for me based on the whole of 2009, and it’s pretty bumpy. Spot the week where my hard-drive died and I was computer-less!
Antagonistic Books →
A book that sets itself on fire when you open it (instructions on how to make your own), and one that is impossible to shut once opened.
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Beautiful in the living room... →
… glorious in the street? Some pretty sad pictures of what happens to Christmas trees come the beginning of January.
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kottke.org's best links of 2009 →
There’s plenty of stuff here that’s worth a 2nd look, even if you think you’ve seen it all before. I haven’t made it all the way through yet, but the post on Beep Baseball is particularly interesting. Also, Pete Campbell dancing.
Crime is a way to use the city →
Someday I’d like to write a cheap book about the architectural side of burglary—bank heists, home invasions, jewelry thefts, wall-scaling girl gangs of the Global South, trans-metropolitan tunnels dug vault-to-vault through crypts by men with names like Terry Leather, smoke & mirrors, props and decoys, CCTV control rooms, lock-pickers’ guides, hourly updated routes of gold trucks...