Links (Phil Gyford)

Links for Wednesday 3 September 2008

Ukelele - Mac OS X Keyboard Layout Editor: Could be your solution if you're trying to use a UK Windows keyboard (or something else non-Apple) with a Mac.
Foresight Education Project: A new wiki about teaching foresight / futures / etc. Includes course outlines etc. Promising.
Opentape: Host-your-own version of Muxtape. What happens when a centralised system is squashed by lawyers: thousands of individual versions flower around the edges. (via Infovore)
David Rumsey Collection: Oodles of old maps, vieweable at satisfyingly high resolutions. Mostly 18th/19th century, mostly North/South America but a few others too.
Classic-Space LEGO: content / greebling: a closer look: "Greebling" is my new favourite word. (via Infovore)
Playlists and Archives for Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture: New favourite podcast. Completely corking. I think it's what characters in William Gibson novels listen to.

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Links for Wednesday 20 August 2008

Twitter / novelsin3lines: I'm very much enjoying the 1906 French news summaries by Félix Fénéon (and not just because I wrote it up as an idea myself a while back). Lovely writing.
Income Gap and Marginal Tax Rate 1917-2006 at Visualizing Economics: Ouch. Difference in income for rich and poor in the US over the past century, compared to the tax rate.
Newspapers and magazines - Digital National library of Serbia: Scanned and browsable issues, from the avant-garde 'Zenit' to 'Advanced Beekeeping'. Awesome (especially if you read Serbian).
BBC News | England | London | Smithfield market plans refused: A couple of weeks old. Phew. I'm not against redevelopment if it's not going to be more glass offices and same-old shops.
JPMorgan plans Europe HQ in Canary Wharf - International Herald Tribune: Yay, they've ditched plans for their massive HQ on London Wall, which would have destroyed some of the public highwalks. (Three weeks old.)
Scarytree Films - Here Comes Funky Kazoo: My friend Mark's rather nice short film, in which I make a very brief and silent appearance.
What to do now to improve the human race in the long term? | Ask Metafilter: After reading 'Last and First Men' I've been wondering this, so I asked Metafilter.
You're not helping | MetaTalk: Oh, apparently I shouldn't have posted that (to me) fascinating question because it's too hypothetical. Shame. Seems more interesting than "How do I fix my Mac", etc.
Foundation for the Future: "Was established with the mission to increase and diffuse knowledge concerning the long-term future of humanity." Less long-term than Long Now is, but perhaps more focused?

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Links for Friday 15 August 2008

TheWashCycle: The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist: I think decriminalising cyclists jumping red lights could, possibly, work. But until that happens: don't. That simple. Enough of the moaning and self-justification. (via Blech)
LRB · letters page from Vol. 30 No. 14: The '10' on 10 Downing Street's front door is Trajan, with an upper case 'O' instead of a zero.
Stone Cold Pimpin': NASA's Forgotten Ambient Albums: "Space music" from 1992: "raw, uncatalogued space sounds data … we selected random information from the raw data and processed it to produce 'Symphonies of the Planets'". Ambient "music".
My Collection of Recorded 78 RPM Records - Free MP3 Downloads: Currently 3,739 free MP3s ripped from one guy's 78rpm records. That's a lot of listening. (via Boing Boing)
The Online 78 rpm Discographical Project: Detailed information about thousands of 78 RPM recordings. I love the Internet.
The Question of Global Warming - The New York Review of Books: I found this Freeman Dyson article interesting because it isn't written from one of the two usual polar extremes of the global warming arguments.
Hulu - Metropolitan: Whit Stillman has put his first film, 'Metropolitan', up on Hulu for free viewing. But, like the rest of Hulu, it only works in the US.

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Links for Monday 11 August 2008

YouVersion | A Revolutionary Online Bible Reader: All signed-up readers can contribute notes about passages from many different versions of the Bible. Quite complex but usable interface. (via TUAW)
Facebook | I Know Hans Montanana: A group for the music teacher at my old school. Reading the many enthusiastic posts… it's like he's the lead in a Hollywood movie about a teacher inspiring kids or something. Lovely.
Hong Kong’s Most Disturbing CG Illustrations « WITMOT?: Hong Kong's 'Apple Daily' makes computer images for news stories when there are no photos. Hilarious, especially if you scroll down to Morgan Freeman. (via Ted Mills)
BuddyPress » About BuddyPress: "The idea of BuddyPress is to take a standard vanilla installation of WordPress MU and turn it into something that represents more of a community building tool, or niche social network." (via Oblomovka)
About The DiSo Project : DiSo Project: Building social networking tools using open tools and standards, starting with WordPress. Not enough there for me to quite "get" it yet. (via Oblomovka)
The Orwell Prize: George Orwell's diaries daily, Pepys style. Lacking the year on each entry — too much '2008' very little '1938' around. Quite a random linking strategy in entries, but it's early days.
Summary of China Rights Developments | Human Rights Watch: Just in case you're enjoying the Olympics so much you've forgotten all this stuff.
Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle): Guy Debord's film in full on Google Video, with English subtitles.

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Links for Tuesday 5 August 2008

Kevin Kelly — The Technium - Neo-Amish Drop Outs: People who stopped using email etc.
Site statistics (Pepys' Diary): Five and a half years in, 50,000 comments so far, 25,000 absolute unique visitors per month, etc.
Myliblog: Uncle Bobby's Wedding: Imagine if every complaint about anything received a reply this thoughtful. (via Kottke)
YouTube - Orangina Naturally Juicy French version: I've seen this ad at the cinema in Paris and it doesn't make me want to drink Orangina. It makes me want to never go to the countryside again.
Amazon.co.uk: An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned But Probably Didn't: Judy Jones, William Wilson: Books: I'm interested in attempts to summarise everything one needs to know and this sounds vaguely promising.
Synium - MacFamilyTree: Very whizzy-looking Mac software for managing one's family tree and outputting it in many different ways, including weird 3D grids and a globe.
New College, Oxford - College Oaks: That story from 'How Buildings Learn' about the oak trees being grown to replace the dining hall's beams? The important part is apparently not true.

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Links for Wednesday 30 July 2008

Economics of POW Camp: Fascinating description of the bartering network in World War II Prisoner of War camps. (via Kottke)
Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known - Good Experience: Nice clear description of having a book published. Even if you have a publisher, you're on your own. (via Kottke)
Seth's Blog: Advice for authors: More advice for when you're having a book published.
The American Scholar - The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - By William Deresiewicz: Great measured rant about what Ivy League educated kids are missing out on. (via Kottke)
Times Higher Education - All the privileged must have prizes: About teaching at Harvard and the sense of entitlement the kids there have. (via Kottke)
Cool Tool: Best home chemistry lab book: Sounds like fun! In theory. In reality I never used the chemistry set I had as a kid much, so maybe not.
Dotcode's bookmarks tagged with "scrolling" on del.icio.us: A handy collection. For some reason (some) clients and (some) designers are the only people in the world who can't work scrollbars.

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Links for Monday 28 July 2008

Google LatLong: Pound the pavement: Google Maps can now give you walking directions. A quick couple of comparisons in London showed it doesn't know about as many pedestrian-only alleys etc as WalkIt.com. Yet. (via City of Sound)
iSquint - iPod Video Made Easy.: Free converter for making video into iPod/iPhone-friendly video. (via Haddock)
Ten Books on Investing Recommended by Warren Buffett | Business Pundit: I love lists of books recommended by people who know what they're talking about. (via Kottke)
Chris Gilmour: Wonderful lifesize (I assume) sculptures of everyday objects (bikes, cars, dentist's chair, etc.) made entirely out of cardboard. (via Kottke)
Last Call, Bohemia: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com: Christopher Hitchens on gentrification, New York's West Village, London's Soho, etc. (via Kottke, yes I'm catching up on a lot of Kottke)
Survival tips for the Middle Ages: Completely awesome stuff. I've thought about this kind of thing loads since I was a kid - how would you cope if you travelled back in time? Lots of conflicting ideas there.
Marginal Revolution: Time travel back to 1000 A.D.: Survival tips: The post that resulted in Jason's post. Yet more conflicting but interesting ideas about how you'd survive. (via Kottke)
Amazon.co.uk: "Travellers Back in Time": I collected all the fiction mentioned in the Kottke and Marginal Revolution posts about "How would you survive if you travelled back to 1000AD?" and made them into an Amazon Listmania list.

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