• Convert M4B, AA, M4P, + M4V to non-DRM versions with Tunebite: Now that there’s a way around the iTunes 6 DRM scheme, I’ll go and see what this whole iTMS thing is about. As I refuse to be told what I can and can’t do with something I paid for, I’ve hadn’t yet sent any money Apple’s way.
  » copyfight drm itunes

• Desktop Earth: Semi real-time images of Earth for your desktop in two flavors: a windows app and a web version. Byootiful.
  » desktop software wallpaper

Daily Links

• FlickrBlog: Changes Afoot: “The pink balloon? Popped! Now you can mouse over buddy icons [to] jump directly to photos, profile, favorites and more.” Yaaay! I think these and the other changes will obviate most of my greasemonkey scripts. Have to look for something else to fix…
  » flickr greasemonkey

Daily Links

• More Spore Porn: Gameplay video from E3 2006. I still want to have this game’s babies. And I will probably have to buy a new computer to do it.
  » games glee video willwright

Daily Links

• Mule Design Feed Store | Colbert Has Stones: “Everyone in the American press is a pussy.”
  » avarice humor news politics

Daily Links

• Yay! EOD is back!: And with the same design. That spatula haunts my dreams.
  » blog gknauss humor

• Seed: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens: “They just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to […] release dopamine, which feels… ever so good.”
  » funny games life philosophy

Daily Links

• Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006!: This is the coolest shit ever. I am not kidding. Go watch the video. Now.
  » cool games humor oldschool pixelicious video
• The Nintendo Revolution has a new name: Are all of the marketing people taking the decade off or something? I really thought this was a joke for a moment, it’s just that awful.
  » funny games

Daily Links

• Javascript: How to properly handle tab key presses within a textarea: Someone convert this into a wordpress plugin, please.
  » holygrails javascript via:mathowie web webdev

Recently Consumed

• Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays
  Wow. I came in on ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’, so I have previously been exposed only to a more refined version of his trademark mixture, that of loopy hilarity and anger so old it’s become a treasured heirloom. Here, that mix is still slightly unfused, somehow making it that much purer, and making me more uncomfortable than I have ever been about how much I identify with the author. It speaks more of me than the book that I didn’t love it, but I didn’t, and the best I can think to say is that he has become a better writer with each collection
  

Daily Links

• Google Calendar is more or less perfect.: Among the ‘less’ is the inability to create events that recur (for instance) on the 2nd Tues of the 11th month, & the inability to set recurrence from ‘quick add’. “Birthday 8/17 annually” surely can’t be that much harder to parse than “birthday 17 aug”.
  » goog services tools
• Flickr: Photos tagged with hdr: Attention, Flickr community at large: the HDR shit is old. Quit it. That is all.
  » flickr memes tiresome

Daily Links

• The Devil’s Dictionary X: Updating the satirical classic for our oh-so-ripe age. (via Greg Knauss who is guesting for Kottke but who really, really needs to have his own blog again)
  » cool humor satire

My Flickr Photos

Recently Consumed

• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
  This collection is not my favorite of his, nor is it my second favorite, nor my third or fourth, but it’s still a pretty decent book. His stories have always put me in mind of a childhood spent hinding from yourself and great potential wasted. So, basically, I have his complete works and will continue to buy anything he puts out. I’m going to try to get him to autograph all of them when I see him on the 11th af April. Glee!
  
• Midnighters #3: Blue Noon (Midnighters)
  Not the best of the series, this one feels a bit like an afterhought. The characters and the surreal world they live in are the primary reason to read these books, but in this final one, there doesn’t seem a lot left for them to do.
  

My Favorites

Edit: Yes, this was a joke. Ponies, rainbows, sunsets, babies, and kittens? It’s a Flickr thing. I only regret that I couldn’t find a photo of a pony in a bathtub.

My Favorites

Recently Consumed

• A Signal Shattered
  Jack has been contacted by advanced alien life. An interstaller shark known as Wheeler, who has set himself up as a sort of cargo-cult god, has given Jack technologies that are indistiguishable from magic. Wheeler’s goal is for Jack to either destroy himself or become like Wheeler. Wheeler’s mistake: Jack is a hacker.
  

Daily Links

• Up With Grups - The Ascendant Breed of Grown-Ups Who Are Redefining Adulthood [New York Magazine]: Those insipid Ponce de Leon’s who bust generation gaps and give their toddlers mohawks… may actually be on to something. And somebody at New York Magazine needs a serious lesson in readability. Save your eyes, read in a very narrow browser window.
  » culture humour str
• How to be depressed: A quick guide to getting less out of life: “Unless [this article] is so brilliant that I am spontaneously contacted by Penguin publishing, who beg me to convert the article into [a] self-help book that goes on to sell six million copies, then I have failed. I really suck. I do.”
  » funny geek health satire

My Favorites

Recently Consumed

• Signal to Noise
  Quite good. Nylund takes a first contact situation and twists it slightly, his setting a too-believable dystopian Earth whose decayed morals seem to be writ large in the universe. There are many well-written players, a great deal of intrigue, and few survivors.
  
• Gridlinked (Tor Science Fiction)
  This one kind of sucked. The premise was okay, but the plot was a tad muddled and the writing itself was just not good. The first Amazon recommendation I’ve ever had disappoint me.