Author: Tim's Bookmarks

Bondholders as "loan to own" players.

A thoroughly thought out strategy guide to Othello from a master of the game.

I like the concept of an RT API, and I think the user experience sketches illustrated here are spot on. I also think that this is a great example of crowdsourced features–Twitter is slowly evolving from a generic messaging system to a highly evolved conversation system with the help of its users, who pioneer new features with social conventions and 140 characters.

Astonishing set of photos of the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s collection. I particularly liked Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly collection, and the collection of tanagers which looks for all the world like Joseph Cornell put them together.

Clinton sounds a note of caution to net progressives: “Trying to hold the president’s feet to the fire is fine, but first we have to win the big argument. It’s ok with me if you want to keep everybody honest. But try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass a bill.”

Another good reason to get an iPhone 3GS — the camera is just faster.

#blogpostfriday is a great idea. For me, the rest of the week is linkblogging. I try to actually write on Friday. The good news is, sometimes it spills over to the rest of the week.

Nasty nasty nasty. Using base64 encoded tweets, that translate to tinyURLs, that download as zipped archives, that unpack with malicious payloads.

Detailed shootout of five Mac OS X page layout apps from smaller ISVs. I had to go through this exercise recently, and found I didn’t like the options that were out there. Will have to go back and look at iCalamus again.

Thoughts about having VCs in board meetings are not that different from having anybody in any meeting. Do you want to add value or just “give good body temperature”?

I think there’s an implicit “for now” on the end of that sentence, but I applaud the return of the single.

How proper fertilizing helped to reduce lead levels in the White House garden.

This is what photoblogs should be like – indelible and just what they say. This is impossibly cool.

Shorter Gingrich: I was in favor of end of life care before I was calling it a “death panel.”

Leonard Bernstein’s FBI files reveal that he was perpetually under suspicion of being Communist and that Nixon called him a “son of a bitch.” Which, I suppose, is par for the course for a musician in the 1950s through the 1970s.

Excellent summary of UI design issues.

The question is: Would you like your care rationed by the government or by private industry?

Real time search on Facebook. Actually, ANY search on posts on Facebook is good news; real time is just icing.

Wow, that’s different–and this is maybe how Facebook gets out of being a walled garden–by bringing the rest of the Internet into its profiles. Hopefully that’s not all it does.

A way forward out of the disintegration of discourse–just do it like Jon Stewart does it.

Fallows on the shift in public discourse on healthcare to virulent misinformation.

Ancestral cemetary for a few generations of the Jarrett family.

Incredible untold story from the Big Dig–and it’s only halfway presented this week. Two dead in a tunnel under Boston Harbor…

The real danger of this full court press against health care reform is that it poisons every single legitimate tool of representative government.

To read.

The success of FAIL.

Key to building anything–take notes as you go.

Useful runthrough and disemboweling of various talking points against the administration’s healthcare proposals.

On the current healthcare riots vs. the Social Security discussions: “Indeed, activists made trouble in 2005 by asking Congressmen tough questions about policy. Activists are making trouble now by shouting Congressmen down so they can’t be heard.”

It’s always nice to see going after the truth in a more confrontational way than “he said, she said” journalism usually does, but this is great.

I would be irresponsible if I didn’t post the mildest example of this phenomenon, as spotted on Twitter: “If Bill Clinton wants to bring two girls home, not even North Korea can stop him.” I’m very impressed with the rescue operation, seriously, but there’s no way the jokes won’t come, “derangement syndrome” or no.

Julie Powell’s reflection on the water under the bridge.

The comments section sums up the attack on Julie Powell nicely. The attacks are childish, mean-spirited, and more than a little sour-grapes. I remember reading the original blog avidly back in the day, and can’t wait to see the movie.

Using unsupported formats in iTunes. Looks good until you try to sync to an iPod.

An optimistic view of the likelihood of IE6 going away. To which I say: yes, but if the corporate intranet applications all break under IE7 (not unlikely), it’ll be a cold day in hell before the poor users ever see a real browser.

Harry Patch was 109.

An interesting modern food blog regarding the legendary beef bourguignon recipe from Julia Child. Mouthwatering reading. Makes me want to cook with beef cheeks.

Probably won’t ever get to the point where oyster shells will again be a common paving material instead of gravel for rural roads, but any rebound of the population is promising.

Proof there are still arrows in the ex-President’s quiver.

I read Cooks Illustrated religiously until I got the sense they were returning to the same ground over and over again. Seems like there’s a reason for that.

Easy to use hex editor for the Mac. Design goal: “This app is about exploring the implementation of standard desktop UI features in the realm of files too large to fully read into main memory. Is it possible to do copy and paste, find and replace, undo and redo, on a document that may top a hundred gigabytes, and make it feel natural?”

Awesome shot of Julie & Julia author Julie Powell with the mother of all whisks.

LoJack is the sort of software that should be absolutely above reproach, because it’s used in a hostile attacker scenario and lives at a very very low level of the operating system. That it is easily hackable is, um, troubling.

Brent, as usual, does a thorough job of documenting why even small features take time and effort to do properly.

Our momentum release, or what I was working on when I wasn’t blogging this year.

A new children’s album about SCIENCE!!!!11!

Cory Doctorow points to an Ed Felten article that uncovers the reality of the AP “anti-copying” magic beans–it’s just the hNews microformat, which includes explicit rights definition (using ccREL, which only extends free use and the rights granted by copyright, not restricts them). Someone’s having an Emily Litella moment right now

Happy birthday to Doc!

Leave it to Cudlin to not bury the lede: “What does the world need? More videos of cats playing avant-garde 20th century music.”

Money quote in this article about the rising respectability of “food styling” in movies: “Mr. Flynn had to debone 60 ducks over the course of ‘Julie & Julia.'”

RIP George Russell. I still like to go back and dust off his Ezz-thetics album.

This is what we mean by “can do.” Hope JPL finds a way to get the Rover moving again.

IBM acquires one of the standalone pure play static analysis source vendors.

Well done, guys. Makes me proud to be a Wahoo.

A passing review of the Reqiuem where the reviewer apparently attended a different performance than the one I performed.

Comprehensive and educated review of Saturday’s Brahms Requiem performance. Will have to go back and listen to that Schütz now.

Nicholson Baker writes a marvelous essay on the hatchet job the Kindle does for the reading experience–but in the end, with a novel, he’s hooked. Illustrated and technical books don’t fare as well in the user experience department. Moving from reading eBooks on the iPod Touch to the Kindle, he writes: “Then, out of a sense of duty, I forced myself to read the book on the physical Kindle 2. It was like going from a Mini Cooper to a white 1982 Impala with blown shocks.”