Scott Underwood and Merlin Mann talk about productivity stuff. I’m not really a huge fan of instant messaging in the workplace, so I enjoyed this brief exchange:
Scott: IM to me combines the worst aspects of the telephone and e-mail—
Merlin:—and being a teenager.
Something I learned today: I was reading this NYT article about fashion, and I discovered that if you double-click a word in an NYT article, it will make a pop-up with a little dictionary/ reference search for you. Doesn’t look like it works on the home page, but that’s pretty cool. Am I the last person to learn about this?
Wikimindmap maps out the subtopics and links in Wikipedia articles. A little slow, but very cool. [via idw]
I would very much like to own a Monome 256. It looks like just the kind of wonderful toy I need* these days. They mentioned the beautiful woodwork was from Atlanta—I wonder if that’s Matt Soorikian‘s craftmanship?
*i.e., want
In the Year 2000 is a photo collection about “past visions of the future,” like picnicking with your hover station wagon.
Those mechanical models of the solar system are called orreries.
Doing a little housekeeping around here. If this were 1996, I’d be displaying one of those “under construction” gifs.
My employer has a new blog, BrainStuff. Time will tell.
A brief little comedy routine about how not to use Powerpoint.
A very cool bit of wisdom from Hugh MacLeod.
I remember Robert Hughes, the great art critic saying in his wonderful book, “The Shock Of The New” that the Conceptual Art scene that emerged in the 1960s-1970s was actually good for “Painting”.
Why? Because with everybody else scattering bits of string around gallery floors and calling it ÄúArtÄù, or covering themselves with butter, rolling themselves in the grass and calling it “Art”, the only people left painting were those, as Hughes put it, “who still actually wanted to paint”.
And paint they did. Hence the big painting revival in the early 1980s. Artists like Julian Schnabel, Francisco Clemente, Basquiat, Keith Haring etc.
I feel similarly about blogs. With new tools like Facebook and Twitter springing up, there’s no need to have a blog unless you really want to, unless you really want to devote that kind of time and effort to it.
[via blankenship]
Octavo publishes old, significant books in digital form. I love me some rare books.
The Dvorak Zine is a 24-page web comic about the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard. Pretty cool. [via comics pundit]
This is one of the better monitor calibration images I’ve found.
A photo collection of handmade, miniaturized synthesizers from yesteryear. Those are some incredibly detailed models.
The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Man, I’d love to make some gigantic wallpaper. Where to begin… [via not martha]
Here’s an analysis of the economy of Second Life. Rapid, artificial inflation of the Linden dollar means a recession is due at some point. It’s hard to predict when they’ll reach it, but it seems pretty much unavoidable.
Anil Dash noticed the recent popularity of pixel graphs, citing an awful example in the New York Times and a not-as-bad one in Wired Magazine. I also recall this one from Business Week a while back, and another commenter mentioned one at Curbed today. It’ll take some time and trial & error to figure out what kind of data sets works best with the technique. I can appreciate the trend, but the only example I really like is the one from Business Week. Looks like a happy marriage of table and graph.
Your spreadsheet has been attacked. Modern office life can be a little like The Oregon Trail.
Mark Larson 
