RockMelt

From First Look at RockMelt, a Browser Built For Facebook Freaks | Webmonkey | Wired.com:

We’ve seen browsers custom-built for the social web before, most notably Flock, which launched as a MySpaced-up version of Firefox. Mozilla experimented with Ubiquity, an in-browser tool for posting to different social sites and interacting with web services. There are a number of add-ons that can embed social networking dashboards into the browser for you. These tools have grown in popularity as we’ve struggled to manage the ever-increasing flow of links, media and bits shared by our online friends.

So, the idea isn’t original. And RockMelt doesn’t sport a complete re-invention of the browser interface, either. But it is very streamlined, and there are some key elements that people who live and breathe the social web will find intriguing.

(via Wired)

Interesting. I’ve signed up to get a look at it, since I’m pretty constantly on both Facebook and Twitter. I’m not entirely sure how often I’ll use it (do I really need a specialized social media browser?), but I’m at least interested in the idea.

Geek and Other Holidays

I’ve just resurrected an old project, using Wikipedia’s list of unofficial observances to create a calendar file (in .ics format) suitable for download and direct import or subscription in iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, or (as far as I know) any other reputable calendar program. Here’s the link — drop that into your calendar, and never miss another Pi Day, Yellow Pig’s Day, or Day of the Ninja again (here’s an HTML version if you just want to look at it online)!

Dear Abby and Utilikilts

Last December, Dear Abby heard from a gent who’s found he’s far more comfortable in skirts than pants, and was looking for advice on how to deal with his unsupportive family. In yesterday’s column, she passes on lots of words of encouragement from others who’ve escaped the tyranny of trousers, and specifically mentions a certain local menswear company

I heard from men and women across the United States and beyond who wrote supporting Joe in his decision to wear skirts. Many of them suggested he contact Utilikilts, a company based in Seattle, which manufactures a line of kilts for the modern man. Read on…

It should come as no surprise that I wholeheartedly support her in this.

Two Phrases

Nothing terribly new here, I’ll admit, but I just stumbled across this, and I’ve had this rant (or variations upon the theme) many times over the past few years: Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture:

The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture. It gave an entire generation of people the green light to be as impolite, unreasonable, and demanding as their little hearts desired because they were always going to be considered right. It destroyed the entire concept of courtesy and rendered manners obsolete. People began to treat their peers in the service industry like incompetent morons, lacking in feelings or human dignity, who deserved to be browbeaten and abused for no other reason than they had the audacity to run out of a particular brand of coffee. Furthermore, instead of suffering negative repercussions for their appallingly disrespectful behavior, they are awarded with free coupons and plenty of ass kissing. In reality, they should be shunned and humiliated for behaving like such self absorbed little children.

Speaking of respect, another idea that has ruined American culture is the one that states, ‘I don’t give respect freely. You have to earn my respect.’ This one is most often uttered by punk kids with bad attitudes and black fingernail polish.

Fucking gag me.

I mean, how egotistical does one have to be to automatically assume that their respect is so fucking important that one must jump through multiples hoops in order to earn it? How about we give people respect because they are humans with lives and feelings just as important as our own? Why not give people a default level of respect and more or less can either be won or lost based on the behavior of the individual? The loss of respect is something that should be based on actions. The idea that that one must win basic respect in the first place is incredibly belittling. How narcissistic can you be to embrace that ideology?

Struck by Lightning




lightning through my camera

Originally uploaded by SLOWLORIS

Flickr user SLOWLORIS was hanging out on her balcony taking video of a thunderstorm, when she was hit by lightning. She’s fine, and apparently so is the camera — ’cause she’s got the video to prove it!

From what i understand, it went through my left hand holding the camera, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand holding onto the metal railing. No entry or exit wounds, just a really good zap!

Just amazing.

Fire Tornadoes

While I’ve never been around one (something I’m not at all disappointed about), I’ve certainly heard of tornadoes, waterspouts, and I’ve seen many of their smaller cousin, the dust devil.

However, I’d never thought about what the wind patterns around a wildfire might do.

From Wikipedia:

A fire whirl, colloquially fire devil or fire tornado, is a phenomenon in which a fire, under certain conditions (depending on air temperature and currents), acquires a vertical vorticity and forms a whirl, or a tornado-like effect of a vertically oriented rotating column of air. Fire whirls may be whirlwinds separated from the flames, either within the burn area or outside it, or a vortex of flame, itself.

A fire whirl can make fires more dangerous. An extreme example is the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake in Japan which ignited a large city-sized firestorm and produced a gigantic fire whirl that killed 38,000 in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of Tokyo. Another example is the numerous large fire whirls (some tornadic) that developed after lightning struck an oil storage facility near San Luis Obispo, California on April 7, 1926, several of which produced significant structural damage well away from the fire, killing two. Thousands of whirlwinds were produced by the four-day-long firestorm coincident with conditions that produced severe thunderstorms, in which the larger fire whirls carried debris 5 kilometers (3 mi) away.

Most of the largest fire whirls are spawned from wildfires. They form when a warm updraft and convergence from the wildfire are present. They are usually 10-50 meters (30-200 ft) tall, a few meters (~10 ft) wide, and last only a few minutes. However, some can be more than a kilometer (0.6 mile) tall, contain winds over 160 km/h (100 mph), and persist for more than 20 minutes.

Just…wow. Cool, beautiful, and frightening, all at the same time.

In other tornado goodness, a bank security camera in Iowa was running when the bank was hit by a huge tornado a few weeks ago.

Freaky cool.

Where to Find Me in the Digital World

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts, so I figured it was worth doing it again. With the number of online sites I’m part of, sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of all the ways to find me. So here’s a current rundown as of today.

Update: Thanks to Ontario Emperor’s suggestion, I now have a FriendFeed where you can see (almost) everything I do in one swell foop. Aggregators FTW!

Read more

Britannica Webshare

Here’s a fascinating program: the Encyclopedia Britannica is introducing Britannica Webshare:

Britannica WebShare is a program that makes it easy for Web publishers to use the information in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for their own research and to share it by providing their readers easy access to individual articles.

Anyone who publishes regularly on the Internet—bloggers, webmaster, and writers who publish on the Web—is eligible for a free subscription to Britannica Online, which includes the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica as well as other encyclopedias, an atlas, a dictionary, thesaurus, links to valuable Web sites selected by our editors, and more.

What’s more, anyone with a Web site can link to a Britannica article—or multiple articles—and readers who click on the links will see the articles in their entirety, even if the article is normally available only to paying subscribers.

Sounds nice, and a welcome companion/competitor to Wikipedia. I’ve applied, now it’s just a question of whether I’ve been regular enough as of late to get accepted. ;)

Everything New is Old Again

A short quote from the end of an article about the Seattle Monorail: “Like so many inventions, lack of financial backing prevented further development.” What’s interesting about this (at least to Seattleites…er, well, at least to me…) is that it’s talking not about the recent monorail debacle, nor the existing monorail built for the 1962 Worlds Fair, but the 1911 William H. Boyes Monorail.

Boyes MonorailThis test track was built and demonstrated in 1911 in the tideflats of Seattle, Washington. The rails were made of wood and track cost was estimated to be around $3,000 per mile. A bargain! The Seattle Times commented at the time that “the time may come when these wooden monorail lines, like high fences, will go straggling across country, carrying their burden of cars that will develop a speed of about 20 miles per hour.” Like so many inventions, lack of financial backing prevented further development.

Neat!

(via Paleo-Future, quoted paragraph from Monorails in History)