Mostly Yes

"It is not down in any map; true places never are."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:55:12 +0530

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Give Me Something To Read

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:59:59 +0530

Tumblr blog populated by the most frequently bookmarked articles on Instapaper. I’m starting to source my lunch reading from here.

Staying Alive

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:56:10 +0530

Staying Alive:

A three question quiz to determine if you have a coherent philosophy of continuity. Via the comments here: What’s Really Wrong With Cryonics.

Apple's Mistake

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:01:00 +0530

Paul Graham:

They get away with maltreating developers, in the short term, because they make such great hardware. I just bought a new 27” iMac a couple days ago. It’s fabulous. The screen’s too shiny, and the disk is surprisingly loud, but it’s so beautiful that you can’t make yourself care.

So I bought it, but I bought it, for the first time, with misgivings. I felt the way I’d feel buying something made in a country with a bad human rights record. That was new. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Oh boy! They make such great stuff. This time it felt like a Faustian bargain. They make such great stuff, but they’re such assholes. Do I really want to support this company?

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:37:45 +0530

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex.:

(ZALGO!)

Jackson Pollock pictures.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:05:00 +0530

Jackson Pollock pictures.

Passage

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:02:17 +0530

Passage :

Poignant little mini-game. Play it, and then read the creator’s statement.

“The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu”. Cute Overload.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:57:18 +0530

“The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu”. Cute Overload.

"All electronics products are hybrids of radiation and matter."

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:40:04 +0530

“All electronics products are hybrids of radiation and matter.”

- Hertzian Tales by Anthony Dunne

I wonder if this reelly works.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:25:05 +0530

I wonder if this reelly works.

Sir Ian Mckellen on Shakespeare’s King Richard III,...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:41:55 +0530

Sir Ian Mckellen on Shakespeare’s King Richard III, reciting and explaining the opening scene. Brilliant stuff.

Warren Ellis » Where My Ideas Come From

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:45:38 +0530

Old but great:

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 3 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

link.

Relationship Hacks

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:23:16 +0530

Relationship Hacks:

Brilliant Ask MeFi thread. Absolutely essential material.

Why do we have an IMG element?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:21:28 +0530

Why do we have an IMG element?:

Mark Pilgrim on the origins of the HTML IMG element. I love web history.

Glass Microbiology. That’s E. coli.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:29:00 +0530

Glass Microbiology. That’s E. coli.

A comic about “perspective, misunderstanding, and...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:28:06 +0530

A comic about “perspective, misunderstanding, and people”.

(Via. More by the same artist.)

Why is e^(pi*i) = -1?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:53:33 +0530

Why is e^(pi*i) = -1?:

Quick refresher.

By loveallthis. See also.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:03:56 +0530

By loveallthis. See also.

Criticality Accidents

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:59:57 +0530

..that’s what Louis Slotin was doing, slowly lowering the top half of a neutron-reflecting shell over a sphere of fissile plutonium. Today, nobody would attempt that experiment except from a safe distance. Slotin, however, was using his bare hands to hold the shell, and had a screwdriver propped in there to keep the two halves from touching. A crowd of seven colleagues was watching him work when the screwdriver slipped out, sealing the shell and launching a reaction. I call Slotin brave and quick-thinking because, instead of freaking and running, he pulled the shell apart, probably saving his coworkers’ lives. He, however, died nine days later.

BoingBoing

A 11-language quine!

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:26:42 +0530

A 11-language quine!