links for 2006-01-29

• OpenQRM - Open Resource Manager - Home

BOOM!

Ever wondered what happens when a fireworks factory explodes?

links for 2006-01-22

• FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server

You in Reverse

It’s about freaking time for a new Built to Spill album. Album comes out April 11th and it’s called “You in Reverse”. They’ve posted the first song Goin’ Against Your Mind on myspace and I really enjoy it. It sounds more like something from “Perfect From Now On” than “Ancient Melodies of the Future”.

Here’s the tracklist:1. Goin’ Against Your Mind1. Traces1. Liar1. Saturday1. Wherever You Go1. Conventional Wisdom1. Gone1. Mess With Time1. Just A Habit1. The Wait

A pox on bad typefaces

I’m frustrated that an overpriced school book for a computer class is written using a crappy monospaced font for the programming examples. The lowercase L looks the same as the number 1.

I’m no designer but I do like it when things actually work. I’ve found Andale Mono on Windows or Monaco on OS X seem to be good monospace alternatives. Sometimes I wish I lived in the Netherlands or Sweden where good design seems to be a national point of pride. We Americans waste a lot of time on poorly designed crap.

You are standing in an open field west of a white house...

Bush Presidency: the interactive text adventure. [via Amanda]

The Masses Change the World

A few years ago I read Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson and this reorganized some of my thinking. I came to appreciate the bottom up nature of the universe. It eloquently demonstrates how signal can come from noise.

Later I read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and he reorganized my thinking about history. I’d been taught the Great Men/Great Moment theory of history. Zinn challenges this by saying it’s massive groups of people that change history. His history focuses on large swaths of people and what motivated them and what changed.

Bar Camp Dallas

I’m very much looking forward to Bar Camp Dallas. I’ve been playing around with ideas for a presentation.

Go read Ex Machina if you haven’t. Well read the first page, if that doesn’t grab you then the rest probably won’t.

I had lost interest in Grant Morrison’s recent work and finally jumped into Brian K. Vaughan’s Y the Last Man. While I enjoy Y I’ve really gotten into Ex Machina. Basically the series revolves around the mayor of New York who has the power to talk to machines. There is a potent story arc that involves him stopping one of the planes on 9/11 and saving the second tower. It also has a Vaughan trademark, little tidbits of historical details sprinkled throughout. These give the series a certain heft because it anchors it in the real world.

links for 2006-01-14

• Developer | Slider | Measure Map

Recent tidbits

Back in Dallas after spending a week in Huntspatch with the folks, my sister and Emily. It was also nice to see old friends. Sorry for the ones I missed. I am impressed by Emily’s creativity. She will go much further than I ever did.

After I got back to Dallas I caught a midnight screening of Robocop and was surprised to see my parking garage served as the parking garage for Old Detroit’s police. That movie was even funnier than I remembered.