Beautipedia is an extension to make Wikipedia a better environment for reading articles.
Reminiscent, in some ways, of Instapaper Greystyled translated to Wikipedia. It uses jGaramond which—while not as attractive as some other Garamonds out there—has broad Unicode character support. It doesn’t indicate which words and phrases are links until you hover the mouse over them, which may be a blessing or a curse depending on how you use Wikipedia.
Looks great for an afternoon of reading, but as Jonas mentions, the lack of distinguishing features for links could be a deal breaker.
Looks useful. Watch the video to get an idea of how it works.
Stay can store a set of windows for every combination of displays that you use with your computer. For example, if you have a laptop that is sometimes connected to an external monitor, you can store two sets of windows in Stay; one with the external monitor connected and one without. This done, you’ll be able to ensure that your windows are always where you want them to be by having Stay restore windows whenever you connect or disconnect the external monitor. Stay can even be configured to automatically restore windows as displays are connected and disconnected.
Sea Water Bow
The bow below the horizon does not match the one in the sky.
The upper bow is an ordinary bow made by falling rain.
The lower bow was formed by sea spray.
The sea water bow has a slightly smaller (by ~0.8°) radius because salty water refracts light more strongly than rainwater.
Materials that refract light even more strongly produce smaller bows still.Glass makes bows about half the size of rainwater bows.
Photographed in the Pacific Ocean by J Dijkema.
“Country music is nothing but three chords and the truth.”
—Harlan Howard“Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second.”
—Jean-Luc Godard
Last question. I have to know, because I love this story and want it to be true. There have been stories about you sneaking up behind people in New York City, covering their eyes with your hands, and saying: Guess who. And when they turn around, they see Bill Murray and hear the words “No one will ever believe you.”
[long pause] I know. I know, I know, I know. I’ve heard about that from a lot of people. A lot of people. I don’t know what to say. There’s probably a really appropriate thing to say. Something exactly and just perfectly right.[long beat, and then he breaks into a huge grin] But by God, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Just so crazy and unlikely and unusual?
::grin::
If you’re a politician, admitting you’re wrong is a weakness, but if you’re an engineer, you essentially want to be wrong half the time. If you do experiments and you’re always right, then you aren’t getting enough information out of those experiments. You want your experiment to be like the flip of a coin: You have no idea if it is going to come up heads or tails. You want to not know what the results are going to be.
(via Metafilter)
Although I agree that engineers should experiment and risk being wrong, I don’t think this should extend to product launches by large public corporations. The experimentation should be relegated to the R&D division, not to product marketing.
Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret. “I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you. “First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well. “You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools. “Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn. “In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself. “You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.” ….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet.
