Category: Cool

Every-three-month(ish) Link Dump

OK, so I know I’m totally neglecting things here. My new job at a local outsourced IT company is going well, but keeping me busy. And yes, I did just try to give them some SEO linkage there because they need it. But after dealing with computers and people’s issues with their computers all day long, sometimes I just don’t feel like turning mine on in the evening. But otherwise, it’s going well, the people are cool, and I have health insurance for the first time in 11 years (which would have came in handy nine years ago).

That being said, I’m still collecting a link pile, and have some to share, so enjoy!

November 29, 2012

Mass Link Dump

Something old, something new, all in one big pile. Enjoy!

September 11, 2012

Stupidly Massive Link Dump

So obviously my life is far too chaotic at the moment to post here much, but that doesn’t mean I’m not collecting links to share. To keep everybody occupied for a bit, enjoy;

July 12, 2012

For the Hitchcock Fans

A great Rear Window Timelapse:

April 22, 2012

Reading Material

Few oldies but goodies here (new for me, at least…)

The Transparency Grenade makes the process of leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin.
Teller gives “his bastard son” a few tips on saving his career.
How Web browsers work behind the scenes.
escapes.js allows you to relive your BBS days. Its a small JavaScript library for rendering ANSI art.
Boss breaks cover during “Undercover Boss” episode, shuts down restaurant.
Great montage of Flash preloader graphics.
Everyone’s trying to track what you do on the web. Here’s how to stop them.
A hack you can perform (at your own risk) on Western Digital Green Drives to make them a bit less green but more server friendly.
Kickstumbler allows you discover Kickstarter projects you’d never see.
Will Slovaks walk all over Chuck Norris to Austria?
Entypo is a set of 100+ carefully crafted pictograms available as an OpenType font, vector EPS and web font. All released for free.
Tumblr Architecture: 15 Billion Page Views a Month and Harder to Scale than Twitter.
If I didn’t like the bullet-proof nature of MovableType’s static-page-building model, some of the plugins for WordPress are pretty dang cool. Latest example is WP Remote which is free and provides easy ways to monitor and backup your WordPress site.
Download 128 pre-made Windows 7 shortcuts (finally getting a full-time Windows 7 PC for my self here soon — more details soon).
Clever ways to secure your home from intruders.
Five great tricks to get the most out of Wireshark.
Nearly a year later, and the before and after pictures of the Japan Earthquake are amazing.
Think you’re a good hacker? Play a bit of capture the flag.

February 23, 2012

Reading Material

Ladies: Having a hard time figuring out your clothing size? This little web app will help.
Fun with math: Dividing one by 998001 yields surprising result.
Fun Android toy: Wreak havoc on (and RickRoll) unsuspecting Wi-Fi users with the click of a button using Network Spoofer. Might as well just install Linux on your phone while you’re at it.
Redbox puts the kibosh on WB’s 56-day waiting period.
Monty Python troupe to reunite for film Absolutely Anything.
Tom Green (not that one) vs Tom Green (that one) and who has the rights to @tomgreen (Tom Green the comedian and his fans are idiots, basically).
How can a free conference call be free? Here’s how.
Using Wireshark to capture, filter, and inspect packets.
In 24-hours, Reddit saves an orphanage (read more).
SOPA Protest Day: the largest digital protest ever. Now we just need to get rid of ACTA.
HTML5: Use the new and shiny responsibly. Look up HTML5, CSS3, etc features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them.
Looking for a car on craigslist? Carsabi will make that process a lot easier.
Ever wanted to grab the dominant color or palette from an image? This tool will help (get the code from github).
You knew the day had to come: A Fleshlight-holding iPad case (link safe for work, can’t guarantee that anything past that is).
One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second — and YouTube is helping you visualize that.
45 Incredibly useful web design checklists and questionnaires.
Getting e-mail notification overload from all the social networks you’re a part of? Use this site to tame things.
Bellbot is a simple little bit of code you can put on your site that will play a noise (bell, applause, etc…) whenever somebody buys something or does something on your site that triggers the code.
ThemeSquirrel is a great collection of WordPress themes.
Google Public Alerts is Google’s new platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and everyday alerts such as storm warnings.

February 1, 2012

I Need To Go To Germany

For two reasons: One, so I can see my wife’s birthplace, and two, so I can see this amazing model railway:

Model railroads have always fascinated me, especially well-done ones. The East Cascades Railroad HO-Scale is impressive and is the largest and most detailed that I’ve seen in person (that I can remember), but they have nothing on this thing.

January 31, 2012

Have A Couple Hours To Kill? Rewatch Star Wars, Episode IV

But this time, things are going to look a bit…

This is the completed project from Star Wars Uncut (which I know I’ve linked to before, but can’t seem to find). Star Wars Uncut was a crowd-sourced project where thousands of folks out there on the Interwebs remade “Star Wars: A New Hope” (aka Episode IV) 15 seconds at a time. It’s hilariously brilliant. I haven’t watched the whole thing, but did download it (YousableTubeFix is awesome) for future watching.

January 24, 2012

Web Archive, Reddit, Wikipedia, Mozilla, WordPress, etc… to Go Black Tomorrow in SOPA/PIPA Protest

In an anti-SOPA protest, Reddit, the Web Archive, WordPress, Wikipedia and many, many others are going to go black tomorrow. Google is going to protest on their home page and OpenDNS is going to censor some results. I’ve considering blacking out my site, but am stupid busy at the moment (and have been for weeks) and would need to do some tweaks for things to not break. But you can easily black out your site by putting some JavaScript on your site from SOPA Strike or use the index.html file here or this WordPress plugin.

If you’re wondering what the fight is all about, from a technical standpoint, this is a great write-up that I’m hoping stays up tomorrow. If you need a simple explanation of why SOPA/PIPA is bad, here’s a good one:

Sopa is all encompassing enough to include almost any site capable of hosting user content, from Reddit to Dropbox. This means that the government can and will enforce the law very selectively, which is the entire danger of the bill: it’s a blank check.
They could remove wikileaks because some article they link to has copyrighted material, or take down the site of some political watchdog group because one of their videos has music playing in the background.
The lack of due process also allows the possibility that if a site hosts something the government doesn’t agree with, all it would take is an intern uploading a random mp3 to said site to shut it down.
Very dangerous s**t here.

January 17, 2012

This Game Needs To Come To A Home Console. Now.

I linked to Super Mario Crossover a long while back, and it looks like version 2.0 is going to be awesome:

When it’s released, you’ll be able to play it here. But since I can’t stand playing games like this with a keyboard, I’d love to play it on my Wii with my classic controller.

January 17, 2012