The Size Of Our World
A nice comparison of the sizes of various celestial bodies to scale.
- posted by frank crist @ 7:49 PM 0 comments

 
Texas Holdem Poker - “Official” Texas Hold ‘Em Rules
-The- rules.
- posted by frank crist @ 3:31 PM 0 comments

 
Kazaa pulls the plug on P2P piracy
Pussy cowards like Kazaa sell us all out. Instead of fighting for the freedom to distribute files over the net, they bend over and take a donky punch to the tune of $100 million paid out to the corporate fucktards of the RIAA. Furthermore, they have vowed to go 'legit', which currently has no clear definition, but I interprit to mean, "Sell the names of anyone who has downloaded a 'restricted' song to the RIAA-mafia for future lawsuits." If that's you, I'd be pretty goddamned pissed right now. Fuck Kazaa, now and forever.

On a related note, might I suggest some personal investigation into Onion 2 Routing, AKA TOR. TOR is a system by which a higher degree of anonymity is allowed on the internet by masking the path of incoming and outgoing packets through the use of volunteers like you--yes you! Anyway, go read the overview for more information about the technical aspects of why you should help the internet remain anonymous! And read Geek Activism to learn why you should care.
- posted by frank crist @ 11:59 AM 0 comments

 
Why does Firefox suck so bad?
I'm required to use Java for an internal application at work, and I will not touch IE under any circumstances, so I'm stuck with the terrible combination of Firefox and Java.

Do you already know what I'm talking about? Have you seen the problem over and over again?

Something is leaky in the combination of the two. After about an hour of usage, Firefox suddenly begins experiencing massive performance losses, and my Java app stops responding altogether. I close Firefox, but when I go to restart it, I get a message box saying, "You already have an instance of Firefox running." WTF. So I give the three-finger salute and sure enough there is an instance of Firefox, occupying anywhere between 50-90 MB of memory, sitting on its thumb and doing nothing.

I have tried searching for other reports of the problem, but googling for "Firefox sucks", "Firefox leaks memory like a bitch", or "Firefox + Jav = teh crap0rz" has yielded nothing. I can find no documentation about this issue--either reports or solutions--whatsoever, even though I know it must happen quite a bit out in the real world since it happens consistantly on my three very VERY different platforms.

WTF! Firefox, I love you. Do not force me into the arms of fat, bloated Netscape. Do not make me attempt to love the ivory tower of Opera. Do your job, do it well, and learn to get along with the other kids in the neighborhood! You are moments away from being sat down for a time-out. I'm begging you.
- posted by frank crist @ 10:49 AM 2 comments

 
A big fucking hole
The world's biggest, in fact! It's a diamond mind in Russia. There are no statistical dimensions on the site about how big the hole actually is, but on a pic halfway down the screen you can see a vortext coming out if it from the suction the hole makes due to its size. BIG.
- posted by frank crist @ 2:34 PM 1 comments

 
Games
A cool Hot-Wheels branded pipes game.
- posted by frank crist @ 7:29 PM 0 comments

 
From A to craZy.
This word association game will drive you nuts. Wheeeeeee.
- posted by frank crist @ 11:36 AM 0 comments

 
Biomedical Image Awards 2006
My love of photography on both the micro and macro level is well-known. Therefore, may I present the Biomedical Image Awards of 2006. Pictures of very tiny things, colored and stained for presentation. This is my favorite for the clarity of image. This one scares the hell out of me.
- posted by frank crist @ 11:28 AM 0 comments

 
Grassroots blog spam
Some fucktard thought it would be OK to up and email Daily Traversal the following big of political solicitation:

Simple add a link to Carl Sheeler (D-RI) US Senate web site. As an added bonus the top personal blog page referring the most active hits to Carl’s site by November 1st will receive a five hundred dollar contribution to support your personal page or blog. (This contribution will come directly from myself and is in no way connected with the campaign). Email myself william172@cox.net if you would like to help and for further details.

Spam is spam, even if you think that your candidate's nuts are made of pure platinum. Furthermore, this senatorial candidate is from Rhode Island--a place that I may be lucky enough to visit perhaps once in my entire life. GO AWAY.
- posted by frank crist @ 5:00 PM 1 comments

 
Such as these
It's nights like these that I miss you most
Drunken
A full tank of gas
Hot summer night into morning
and all of Chicago at our disposal.
- posted by frank crist @ 1:51 AM 0 comments

 
Webfroot Shoutbox
This, I believe, is what I need for a top-secret web project I'm working on.
- posted by frank crist @ 3:17 PM 0 comments

 
Four Second Fury
20 minigames that you have to win in 4 seconds or less!!!!!!!!!
- posted by frank crist @ 7:49 PM 0 comments

 
The 9
I intend no sarcasm whatsoever as I say that when I first watched this clip, a bolt of lightning hit my third eye and activated a vision of the future of the internet.

The 9 (9.yahoo.com) is a web-video program where an attractive American female (Maria Sandstone was her name I think--if not, it should be) gives commentary of 9 submitted links, the kind you find on any of the blogs on the right pane of this page.

This will be, without a doubt, one of the most emergant trends in web entertainment. It is short enough to be easily digestable (maybe 6-8 minutes), with interactive content (you can click on each of the links to view the 9 presented by Ms. Sandstone), and promises a revenue source through advertising on the page (this one is "Refreshed Daily By Pepsi").

The 9 is hosted by Yahoo, as evident from its URL, and I find it no surprise that 3 of 9 links go to video.yahoo.com. 2 of them go to flickr. Even clicking back a few days to investigate, I could find no links to either YouTube or video.google. I'm guessing I won't see any eBay either.

One link goes to a careerbuilder.com gimmick whereby you purportedly are building an email with a monkey in it that says something funny; in reality you are being subtly advertised to by careerbuilder. This should immediately alert the savvy browser as to the bias towards advertising.

The stuff on The 9, as a whole, is pretty interesting, and can make for an interesting way to being a hard day of fucking off on the web, and the production model--combining commentary and interactive media--will be certain to catch on with any halfway intellegent staff of 5 and a hot chick.

Director/Video Editor
Dude who runs the camera
Dude who writes the flash
Sysadmin/Fashion Magazine Connoseur (for wardrobe)
LAMP guy
Chick with tits who can crack jokes and looks good on video

There you go. A gift from me. Now run out and patent the process so no one else can do it.
- posted by frank crist @ 7:49 PM 1 comments

 
The ultimate Pac-Man guide
For that budding yet lazy Pac-Man virtuoso in all of us, KiLLerCloWn, some guy at mameworld.net, has created what can only be the definitive guide to Pac-Man. It really is quite spectacular to comprehend the sheer quantity of hours spent studying and documenting Pac-Man patters as a reproducable phenomenon, but the question begs: why?

Meh... why not!
- posted by frank crist @ 11:33 AM 0 comments

 
The Art Department: In response to the old question, "What do I put in my Portfolio?"
Irene Gallo, Art Director for Tor/Forge for the last dozen years or so, has written an interesting piece for would-be cover illustrators about what to put into your portfolio when looking for work. A lot of this is exactly what I tell my students: be consistant, know your client, and leave out the half-finished sketches.
- posted by frank crist @ 11:14 AM 0 comments

 
Instant Sex
A classic cartoon from one of the early masters of animation, Bob Godfrey. It does, of course, play on the whole "too much of a good thing" thing, which can go hang, but it's fucking funny anyway.
- posted by frank crist @ 11:10 AM 0 comments

 
Incunabula Collection
Old books. Drool.

Incunabula or incunables are the very first examples of books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed with moveable type in Western Europe. They range from the very first examples of the two-column Latin Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s to works printed through the end of the year 1500. The term 'incunable' derives from the Latin word cunabula for 'cradle' or 'origin', hinting at their status as the earliest of all books. Incunabula are also sometimes referred to as 'fifteeners' from their appearance in the fifteenth century.

- posted by frank crist @ 10:25 AM 0 comments

 
Weird publishing facts
Credible? Eh... entertaining! Here are four random samples of the (mostly un-annotated) factoids about the publishing industry and reading in general.

59% of the customers plan to purchase a specific book when entering a bookstore.
--Book industry Study Group. Publishing for Profit by Tom Woll, page 170.

The library market was $3-billion in 1993.

Of the top fifty books, fiction outsells nonfiction about 60% to 40%. Fiction peaks in July at 70% but nonfiction reaches almost 50% in December.
--USA Today, April 30, 1999.

A typical advance for a computer book is $10,000.
--Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1998.

- posted by frank crist @ 10:22 AM 0 comments

 
iTWire - Motorola spinoff Freescale delivers first MRAM
Magnetoresistive RAM--non-volatile memory. This is one of the holy grails of hardware, representing an order of magnitude shift in data transferral, and a replacement paradigm for the traditional CPU->memory->storage model of architecture.
- posted by frank crist @ 10:06 AM 0 comments

 
The nightmares have returned
Old, familiar dreams. Arguments walked away from unresolved. Friends turned into wronged lovers. Eyes open through all. Not sleeping.
- posted by frank crist @ 12:09 AM 1 comments

 
CBC News: China harvesting Falun Gong organs, report alleges
Now you can get a liver that already knows tai chi! Booyah!

Thanks Belial!
- posted by frank crist @ 11:37 AM 0 comments

 
20 Years Of PC Viruses
A neat history, for example:

n the first half of the 1980s, computer viruses -- programs that reproduce themselves by "infecting" other programs -- existed mostly in labs. A few had managed to find their way into the wild on the Apple II platform, but for the most part they were tightly controlled by computer researchers.

And then came Brain. Discovered in the first weeks of 1986, it was the first PC virus to widely circulate in the wild. Distributed via 5.25-inch floppy diskettes, Brain's spread was extremely slow by today's standards -- but it unleashed a tide of ever-more harmful viruses, worms, and other malware that we're still struggling with 20 years later.

- posted by frank crist @ 5:26 PM 0 comments

 
Italy's role in imam snatch probed
Best. Headline. Evar.
- posted by frank crist @ 5:09 PM 0 comments

 
The Telephone Rock
If you whippersnappers don't stop rocking on my telephone, I'm going to call the police!

Thanks Belial
- posted by frank crist @ 2:41 PM 0 comments

 
Kenneth L. Lay, Ex-Chairman of Enron, Dies - New York Times
"Ken, I know this is a hard time for you, but two drops of this and it'll all be over. You know it's the right thing to do. In the samurai days they called it 'falling on one's sword.' I know you won't let me down, Ken."

"Yes sir, Mr. President. I'll save a seat for you at the bar in hell."
- posted by frank crist @ 5:08 PM 0 comments

 
Villain Design Handbook
Looking for a way to spice up your campaign? Look no further than the KoK Villain Design Handbook! Yes, it is a nerdy D&D 3.5 supplement, but what fun to have laying around for a little light bathroom reading? If you've ever wanted to know new and interesting things about the world of fantasy villains, this is the book for you!
- posted by frank crist @ 12:33 PM 0 comments