July 2010
56 posts
DuckDuckGo Search Bar (Official) →
Although I dislike the site design, the search engine alternative is strangely compelling.
safariextensions:
Search with the new upstart Google and Bing competitor. I’m not sure about the toolbar, but I’m definitely planning on giving DuckDuckGo a try—they had me at “we do not track you”.
(Hey, I’ll admit I like the top result for “Safari Extensions” too.)
If the enemy is in range, so are you.
(via rulesformyunbornson)
The Dangerous Art of the Right Question →
Here are some terrible questions from the world of business: Who is our customer? What is our market? What is our goal? What problem does our product solve for the customer? They are terrible not because they are unimportant. Quite the contrary. They are crucially important in a pro forma sense. A sign that you’ve succeeded is that you will be able to fill out a form that asks these questions....
In praise of tardiness →
bobulate:
A short story on the value of tardiness:
One day in 1939, Berkeley doctoral candidate George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class taught by Jerzy Neyman. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later, apologizing for the delay — he’d found them unusually difficult. Distracted, Neyman told him to leave his homework on the desk. On a Sunday...
gleeBox by Ankit Ahuja and Sameer Ahuja →
safariextensions:
gleeBox takes a keyboard-centric approach to navigating the web. It provides alternatives to actions that are traditionally performed via the mouse such as clicking, scrolling, selecting text fields, etc.
Ascender Releases New OpenType Font Pack for... →
Unfortunately, this is real:
The Ascender 2010 Font Pack contains the following fonts: Comic Sans 2010 (including new italic and bold italic fonts), Trebuchet 2010 (including new black & black italic fonts), Impact™ 2010, Pokerface™ 2010, Rebekah™ 2010 and Rebus Script™ 2010. This diverse selection of font styles and weights are great for home and business projects, expanding the...
“My dream set-up is full of contradictions. I don’t believe it’s...”
– Michael Lopp : The Setup
“No one likes to be interviewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for interviewers...”
– Mark Twain, ‘Concerning the Interview’
Ytterby Mine →
Army lieutenant and part-time chemist Carl Axel Arrhenius was excited when, in 1787, he came across a strange heavy black rock in an old quarry near the Swedish village of Ytterby.
Arrhenius named the newly discovered “earth” (the idea of elements had not yet been discovered) Yttrium after the town. As it would turn out the mine in which Arrhenius discovered Yttrium would go on to...
EE versus CS →
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. “What do you think this is?”
Answers here
The Value of Ideas →
jingc:
Scott Adams, author of Dilbert:
I’ve long been fascinated by the common human illusion that ideas can be sorted into good and bad, when all experience shows this not to be the case. We could play the game all day long where I describe a simply terrible idea and then tell you about the people who got rich implementing it just right. How about a comic strip that is literally a bunch...
WatchJohn Underkoffler: Minority Report interface, realized.
Study: C-Section Babies Skip The Bacterial Slide :... →
willw2:
A new study shows that bacteria found on babies delivered via cesarean section just minutes after birth are drastically different from the bacteria found on babies who are delivered vaginally. The findings are piquing interest in light of previous research suggesting that babies delivered via C-section may be more prone to potential health implications, such as asthma and allergies.
...
Pig and Cats →
Pig-in-a-poke is an idiom that refers to a confidence trick originating in the Late Middle Ages, when meat was scarce but cats were not. The scheme entailed the sale of a suckling pig in a poke (bag). The wriggling bag would actually contain a cat (not particularly prized as a source of meat) that was sold to the victim in an unopened bag.
This trick also appears to be the origin of the...
The Process of Design →
A look into the considerations for the new Moscow Metro map.
Trying different looks for crossing lines: simple white gaps, simple overlap, simple shadows.
Chinese masons used sticky rice as mortar →
“Analytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material,” Zhang said. “The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar.”
via kottke
The 101 Best Sandwiches in New York →
There are some delicious looking sandwiches in the gallery.
