Sydney posed for me over the weekend. I call it "the beehive":

As of this week, my brother Brian is able to walk for the first time in 2 years without the aid of a wheelchair, walker, or crutches. What a great week!

On June 21st, 2005, Brian was in a motorcycle accident, suffering broken bones, severed ligaments, nerves, and arteries in both legs. Thanks to a number of surgeries, a lot of rehab, and a lot of prayer, Brian was miraculously able to keep both legs.

Here is a link to all of the articles posted to Jayber about Brian's recovery.

Since the accident, Brian has gone through a roller coaster of physical therapy and recovery -- too many ups and downs to list here. However, due to one more surgery a few weeks ago, he's now able to put all of his weight on both legs, and walk without aids.

Although this is by no means the end of the healing process, it is a major testament to God's healing hand, and a significant milestone in Brian's recovery. Congratulations bro!

Here's a picture of Brian and I from Brian and Jill's wedding in 2004:

Niles Wallace Benson was born on December 28th at 2:17 am and we couldn't be more glad. He was 7 lbs 10 oz, and was 20 3/4 inches long. Mandy has some pictures on her blog -- here's one of my favorites:

This year, we had a family Christmas at the Schumann's. Unfortunately, Mom, Dad, and Karen couldn't make it due to illness. Here's a quick video that Mandy put together of the festivities:

Building management just posted a note disallowing the "extended use" of bathrooms on floors other than the one we work on. Discrimination! Exhibit A:

Sydney loves to chew rawhide on her back, and it cracks me up every time.

Here's something I didn't plan on finding today: a senior adult church hip-hop choir called Funky Fresh Seniors. They don't seem too engaged at the beginning with Eminem's lyrical work, but they definitely warm up nicely to Nelly at the end.

• 0:20 - "Loose Yourself", Eminem.
• 1:15 - "Ridin' Dirty", Chamillionaire.
• 1:45 - "Hey Ya", Outkast.
• 3:10 - "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me", Pussycat Dolls.
• 3:40 - "Can't Touch This", MC Hammer.
• 4:05 - "It's getting hot in here", Nelly.

Bonus: they're available for weddings, private parties, and bar mitzvahs! I only have one question: what church approves of their elders singing "It's getting hot in here, let's take off all our robes"? This is highly disturbing on multiple levels.

My favorite photo of the day: Eddie Murphy's giant head, traveling down the interstate.

Interesting article from Edward Champion on Michael Hyatt's recent Book Review Blogger Program, which gives people free books from Thomas Nelson Publishing in exchange for writing a 200+ word review: There's no such thing as a free book. Champion argues that the program is inherently flawed:

While Hyatt's marketing strategy appears to have yielded results, there remains the more troubling question of what this means for the blogosphere. Will Thomas Nelson stop sending books to those who write negative reviews? Will the publisher demand 400-word reviews a few months from now? Will other publishers begin setting more extraordinary terms for hotter titles? And, most importantly, will the blogosphere ever understand that surrendering to marketing forces simply isn't a substitute for journalistic integrity?

Personally, I'm confused about why this is a big deal. Hyatt doesn't require that reviews are positive. Instead, he says that reviews can be "positive, negative, or somewhere in between." Don't journalists get free books all the time for writing reviews? Why is this any different?

This weekend, we had a great trip to Chicago for a baby shower with Mandy's family and friends. I'm still working through the pictures we took, but here's a nice one of Wendy and Shelly:

In response to my friend Jenny, here are 6 "random things" about me. To give it a twist, I'll choose one from each year in grade school:

• 1st grade. I learned what it felt like to covet as I desperately desired my friend's remote-controlled A-Team van.
• 2nd grade. While trying to beat a girl to the water fountain, I chipped my front tooth on a set of concrete stairs. I got it fixed 20 years later.
• 3rd grade. I got my tongue stuck to a frosty pole at the top of a slide. My taste buds were subsequently ripped off as the person behind me impatiently forced me down the slide.
• 4th grade. I stole a spot on the swing set from a friend. Her punishment for me: severe whiplash and 6-weeks in a neck brace.
• 5th grade. I was transferred to advanced English. After failing to wrap my mind around the definition of a paragraph, I was transferred back the following day.
• 6th grade. I stopped wetting the bed.

Another gem from McSweeney's: In the Likely Event of My Posthumous Fame

My birth, death, and high-school graduation should be celebrated with a feast, a day of mourning, and a Sadie Hawkins dance, respectively.

At the Sadie Hawkins dance, the women ought to feel a subtle, needling pressure to pick older brothers. Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" should be played at least twice. All kisses will be French.

I just read a portion of When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris ¹ on the bus. I came across this section, and couldn't help but smile.

I was at my desk one afternoon, writing a letter, when I heard a faint buzzing sound, like a tiny car switching into a higher gear. Curious, I went to the window, and there, in a web, I saw what looked like an angry raisin. It was a trapped fly, and as I bent forward to get a closer look, a spider rushed forth and carried it screaming to a little woven encampment situated between the wall and the window casing. It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hard-core violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.

The last days of David Foster Wallace.

When David was 5, his mother recalls, he decided that he had two careers to look forward to. He would be a professional football player, for one. In the off-season, while the other players were recuperating or doing whatever it is that pro football players do when they're not running or passing or slamming their bodies into each other, he would be a neurosurgeon. His mother has no idea how, at 5, her son might have heard about neurosurgeons or what they were or did, but he had. The first day of his medical career, he promised his mom, he would take out all of her frayed nerves and fix them. "Somehow he knew about neurosurgeons," she says, "and he knew that my nerves needed fixing."

By the way, McSweeney's is collecting memories and tributes from readers and friends. I'm still in disbelief.

In light of the fact that it's National Punctuation Day, please join with me in fighting the nefarious overuse of exclamation marks. (From the archives.) Bang!

Piece 24/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Piece 23/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

New Texting Acronyms for the Elderly:

• BIMD: Back in my day
• ROFLACGU: Rolling on the floor laughing and can't get up
• ML2N?: Matlock tonight?

Piece 22/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Piece 21/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. An essay about tennis, tornadoes, and a coming of age, by David Foster Wallace. (Via Heavy.)

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Terrible terrible news. David Foster Wallace hanged himself tonight. Gawker has an excerpt from a 2005 speech he gave, in which he addressed suicide. (Via Daring Fireball.)

Piece 16/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

One of the better subtitles I've come across recently:

I am not a nerd. I am a Level 9 Warlord.

Love this image of getting down and dirty for a good shot: Rainy Shoot.

Piece 15/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Who knew what musical treasures would be our reward when we agreed to a new roof and siding? Unfortunately, I had to experience this one second-hand. Mandy has more: My heart will go on.

Another fine piece of journalism from The Onion: I Was Under The Impression That Everyone Loved My Headlocks.

My entire life, I've always loved some good old-fashioned horseplay, and I assumed everyone else felt the same. So you can imagine my surprise when, out of nowhere, right in the middle of my youngest son's baptism, my wife asks me to please stop putting everybody in headlocks because, as she claims, "No one enjoys it and no one ever did."

Piece 14/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Radiohead gave permission to NPR to record their live show at the Santa Barbara Bowl on August 28th, 2008. NPR now has it available for download through their All Songs Considered podcast.

Umbrella Today? A service where you can sign up to receive a daily text message telling you just one thing: do you need an umbrella today or not?

It's like totally the simplest weather report ever, Julie.

In case you need a refresher, you might also brush up your Umbrella Etiquette.

Piece 13/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Piece 12/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Todd Holmberg, a college friend of mine, is doing stand-up comedy and pottery in the Twin Cities. (With audio and video samples! For instance, Re-Possessed.)

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Dennis Benson, Piano Service, Web Design, and Photography Services. Dad just finished a fancy new website design. Nice!

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Due to popular request (read: Chloe), I'm enabling comments for recent entries.

Footnotes, Endnotes, and Parentheticals That Cost Me Marks on My Thesis:

• 3 Who, although a gifted academic, is still a douche.
• 8 Right? No, he did. I think. No, I'm pretty sure he did.
• 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

(Via Kottke.)

Piece 6/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

My friend Dan just shared with me a stupendous and inspirational resource: Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century. From the introduction:

Dear Gentle Reader,
Many of the following pages have graphic and clear images of the masculine mustache in all its forms, both sublime and grotesque. My intent is not to shock or titillate, but merely to inform on the subject. The Nineteenth Century gave us many things, but above all it was a hotbed of facial hair experimentation and this is but a poor sampling of those many lost forms.

I can assure you that the Monsters with Mustaches series will derive significant guidance from these classic styles.

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Piece 1/24 in an illustrated series of mustachioed monsters.

Brand Name Pencils -- an introduction to the broad and diverse world of pencils produced in the US and abroad. BNP has been featured in Coudal's Museum of Online Museums (MoOM). I love the Lovely 447's from Empire Pencil Co. What a gold mine.

The US Open starts today at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY. All eyes are on Rafa.

Design Observer on the dry wit and extensive use of double entendre in the port-a-potty branding biz. Examples: Drop Zone, LepreCAN, Loader-Up, Royal Throne, Tee Pee, Oui Oui Enterprises, Doodie Calls, and Yesterday's Meals-on-Wheels.

Sydney, on her tie-dye blanket, waiting to be chauffeured to the park.

The Guardian is reporting that a gloomy autumn is on the way for French writing.

Avid readers across France are gearing up for "la rentrée littéraire", the deluge of new novels that hits the country every August in anticipation of France's autumn swarm of literary prizes. But this year's rentrée strikes a sombre tone, and brings a halt to a seemingly unstoppable trend with a marked fall in the number of this year's new titles.

Here are a few examples of what's to come (from the article):

• Régis Jauffret's recounting of a suicide in Lacrimosa.
• Valentine Goby's novel about abortion Qui touche a mon corps je le tue (Touch Me and I'll Kill You).
• Emmanuelle Pagano's Les mains gamines (Innocent Hands) tackles the story of girl abused by her classmates.
• Mathieu Riboulet's L'amant des morts (Lover of the Dead) confronts the Aids epidemic of the 1990s with the story of a man who sleeps with his own father.
• Tristan Garcia's La meilleure part des hommes (The best of man), a novel which the author describes as a "faithful record" of the "betrayals of human existence, a portrait of the worst of mankind and - in negative - the best".

I understand that good novels are not necessarily happy -- in fact, I'd prefer otherwise -- but I have to admit these don't seem like ones you'd want to read when you're alone on your Birthday.

"These books are fairly dark, very depressing - a bit like France," said Vincy Thomas of Livres Hebdo. "There is a 'grande malaise', a sort of depression, in France at the moment. This is not a joyful country; when you think of France, you don't think of a party country. The social reality in France is a real concern about the future and this is reflected in the books." Aurélie Delfly, of one of France's largest publishers Gallimard, agreed. "We aren't very happy in France, and that is being felt in the subjects of the literature produced."

Here's an eclectic brew of The Delano Orchestra, Coldplay, a Salsa Orchestra at the Buena Vista Social Club in Havana, Radiohead, and Louis Armstrong from Streetkiss Music. What an unexpectedly pleasing mix.

Money Magazine just ranked Plymouth, MN the best place to live in America.

Logic is having a 6-story egg drop contest next month. Last night, I spent some time scheming about a potential design. I don't know if it's possible for me to not win. Bwa ha ha haaa.

Make - Volume 11 describes how to unpimp a Bianchi Milano and turn it into something that looks like a piece of crap, to deter thievery.

Typical Bo Jackson Run on Tecmo Super Bowl. Ahh, the memories.

The Minneathlon is this Friday. Our team profile (Lefty and Skinny) was recently posted, and there seems to be some decent banter in the trash-talk section. Also, since the race coordinators are running the prize give-away like a horse-race, they're posting revised odds as people make their bets.

Minneathlon v2.0: Brains vs. Brawn. This is Logic's version of the Amazing Race in and around downtown Minneapolis, to be held on June 27th, 2008. This year, Jason and I were granted entry as team Lefty & Skinny. More updates to come.

Welcome to Haley Jo, born on Tues, May 27, 2008, 6lb 10oz and 20".

What a cutie. Congratulations Brian and Jill!

Jon Henley on the fate of the semicolon. The debate on the value of the semicolon goes on. Some authors love it, some hate it. Why is this discussion so divisive? The semicolon is just a misunderstood grammatical outsider with a split personality -- sometimes a comma and sometimes a period -- that wants to be left alone.

Here are some quotes from the article. First, Guillemette Faure:

It's true that computer programmers use an awful lot of them, mainly as separators. And that's surely the last step on the line before it's reduced to a mere email emoticon.

Obviously Mr. Faure has not heard of ML. Next, George Bernard Shaw to TE Lawrence, on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

Err, childish? Next, Kurt Vonnegut:

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Yikes! I haven't finished thinking about that one. Finally, George Orwell:

I had decided about this time that the semicolon is an unnecessary stop and that I would write my next book without one.

Hm, hard to argue with G.O. on style.

A Cooks.com user-submitted recipe for Wiener Water Soup. (Via Serious Eats, Kottke.)

Wiener Water Soup

1 pkg. wieners
3 c. water

Combine wieners and water in a two quart saucepan. Bring to a boil until wieners are cooked. Throw the wieners in the garbage. Serve soup. Serves 3.

Patrick Power's Night Harvest from the excellent FILE Magazine.

Saw Prince Caspian last night with Mandy and was pleasantly surprised by the closing song, sung by Regina Spektor, called The Call. The style differs markedly from the full majestic orchestral phrases that were common throughout most of the movie, but the lyrics and the modern folk melody seemed to correspond well with the closing geo-time-travel from Narnia to England.

Digable Planets - Rebirth Of Slick. I still love these guys (Butterfly, Doodlebug, Ladybug Mecca, Silkworm).

We be to rap what key be to lock.

I was going through some old jayber.org designs of mine, came across a few that caught my eye, and realized that they all have a common theme in that they are: (1) urban, and (2) green. Here are some samples:

Here's a video of my friend Bryan Jones jumping off a 15-foot balcony onto concrete with his roller blades, only to break his ankle.

Pimped-out van on Flickr. Dang, wouldn't want to take that thing off road. Nice wings though! By the way, is that a chihuahua in the front window? This definitely one-ups the Popemobile. (Via Matt H.)

'skine.art. is a site dedicated to Moleskine lovers and their art.

[...] we encourage anyone and everyone to [...] submit their artwork. There is no "good" or "bad" art, just Art.

There's some good stuff on there. Like this. (Via Dan O.)

A Peek Inside the Popemobile - Newsweek

The popemobile isn't its official name, because it doesn't have one. In fact, Pope John Paul II pleaded with journalists to stop using the term in 2002 because he thought it sounded "undignified." So it's not surprising that a Vatican spokesman couldn't say whether popemobile (small p) describes every car in the pontiff's fleet or whether only the car in use by the pope is the Popemobile with a big p [...]

I just like the name Popemobile for some reason. I can't get it out of my head. I just keep saying it silently. Popemobile, Popemobile, Popemobile.

My professor continues to keep the compiler-theory zingers coming. Today, he rattled off another set that had me laughing quietly.

Fortran is structurally deficient. It's really a shame that people use it.

Zing!

Algol is the father of all sensible languages we have today. And then, there's C...

Bwa!

Hong Kong Handshake. White & Gold foil stamping on White Shiro 80, 1400gsm.

Oliver Munday business card and resume, printed on quarter roll paper. Very nice.

I remember driving by this sign every day for a few years on the corner of North Penn and West Broadway in North Minneapolis: Love Thy Bro (cf. Mark 12:28-31).

A Sign of the Times?.

Martial Arts Knockout. Nice tornado.

Created as a high-school class project with some friends, my cousin Alex Benson (the floppy-haired head-banger in red pantaloons), rips a stadium-worthy solo at 2:23 in their Paramore Music Video (Misery Business). How can you not love this?

I've been listening to Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for "good winter" and spelled wrong on purpose) recently (thanks EA). This album is deeply contemplative, which I deeply appreciate. Justin Vernon:

It wasn't planned. The goal was to hibernate.

Nearly without fail, each time my compiler theory class meets, our professor comes up with some linguistic boner that a language (not based on Lambda Calculus) commits that further validates the righteousness of ML. Here's the compiler-theory insult of the day.

The only time I could conceive of this type of approach for resolving shift-reduce conflicts is in C++, which I would consider more of an ad-hoc language--not a real language.

Zing!

I've waffled for a few days on whether to post this or not, but the font that Obama's campaign uses for their "Change We Can Believe In" marketing material, uses Gotham, which was originally designed for GQ by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, inspired by a sign for the NY Port Authority.

H&FJ say of Gotham's original aesthetic intent:

GQ had a dual agenda of wanting something that would look very fresh, yet very established, to have a credible voice to it. It also needed to look very masculine and 'of-the-moment.'

Seems to go well with Obama's message. Perhaps we should add Typography to the list of our country's important political issues.

lowercase L.

[A website dedicated to] hand-written signs with letters in all-caps, except for the letter L.

Find out more about what the L this is all about. (Via DF.)

From Ironic Sans, a new typography term: Keming. Bwa!

Awry. Great photo and orientation of a catawampus shed by Charlie Clark.

Nick Fraser on the American novelist, Richard Yates, quoting a character from Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, on the topic of Revolutionary Road:

I wouldn't recommend finishing it on Christmas Day, in a cold-water bedsit, [...] It probably didn't help my general sense of well-being, if you know what I mean, because the ending is a real downer.

Ellen Barkin, producer of an upcoming film based on Easter Parade:

Brits immediately get Yates - maybe because they have never bought into anything as dumb as the American dream. There's no "glad morning" in his books.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones on the unpredictability of late 19th century typography.

I just added Jayber Mobile, formatted for cell phones. So far, I've only viewed it on a forgiving Moto Q9c, running at 320x240.

Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters, just won album of the year. Still, one of my favorite albums of all time is H.H.'s tribute to Gershwin.

The National MS Society is having a series of 150-mile bike rides this summer to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis research and treatment. One of the races goes from Duluth to Blaine. Mandy and I are thinking of riding, so if anyone else wants to join in, let us know.

Tinley Park cheerleaders are state champs.

While it's only two-and-a half minutes, their exerting all their total energy while yelling as loud as they can and have to look happy about it at the same time.

Andrew H.S. is Mandy's Alma Mater.

Super Bowl Ads. A roundup.

Great news from East London:

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on Last.fm.

Also, independent artists can upload their own music and, depending on a song's popularity, share in the profits.

MC Hammer's social networking side project, Dance Jam, will be debuted later this month. From a Washington Post interview on the topic:

At the right time, I will introduce several styles of the Hammer Dance -- including tips on executing some of the classic moves [...]

Hammer Time!

From BibliOdyssey, here are some Dutch advertising graphics from the 150 years of advertising in the Netherlands collection at the ReclameArsenaal foundation in Amsterdam.

Using passive amplification alone, designer Tristan Zimmermann came up with the Phonofone II, which transforms a personal music player into a sort of mini victrola.

From Science & Sons:

[...] Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone [...] exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibels* (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers)

This would fit nicely on top of my full-size victrola at home. (Via Veer.)

John Maeda gave a talk at the TED conference this last year entitled "Simplicity Patterns". In the talk, he argues that we, as humans, want to reduce complexity in areas that we deem mundane, but desire complexity in areas that excite us. Also, check out his related book: The Laws of Simplicity, available for free from the MIT Media Lab. (via Jim Hoar.)

Hello readers of Jayber Residuals. The residual links have now been combined with the main blog, which means that there is now only one RSS feed for Jayber. The main feed (http://jayber.org/index.xml) contains both regular posts, as well as residual links. The old feed (http://jayber.org/residuals/index.xml) has been... terminated.

Bobby Fischer dies in Iceland.

Bobby Fischer, America's first and only world chess champion, who beat the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in a blaze of Cold War publicity in Reykjavik in 1972, has died in Iceland at the age of 64.

ESV Bible Online: Chronological Reading Guide. Daily readings are structured in the order they occurred chronologically. For example, the book of Job is integrated with Genesis because Job lived before Abraham. (More on the ESV and its philosophy of word-for-word translation.)

Thanks to EA, Jayber is being hosted on a new server, and I'm exploiting the opportunity to realign the design. Things are a bit broken at the moment, but if you have any input, let me know.

Good People by David Foster Wallace.

Guitar Hero 3 Through the Fire and Flames.

13 Photographs That Changed the World. Good collection and descriptions.

Yeti's Christmas.

Hingis given two-year ban for failed dope test. Now, her November retirement announcement is making more sense.

Health Efects of Clutter.

Too often [hoarders] approach clutter and disorganization as a space problem that can be solved by acquiring bins and organizers.

Frost Bot. A co-worker brought this dandy to our holiday potluck.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated (slideshow of preceding moments).

Google Zeitgeist 2007

Mountain Wingsuit. Sick.

Hugs and Leashes; a dog-loving website by a friend of mine: Ryan Van Slooten.

OttoBib. Useful for finding BibTex refs.

Video from my Dad's recent trip to Drabiv, Ukraine. Fast forward to 1:31 to see him doing the Hawaiian War Chant in a hula skirt and coconut bra.

LinuxBootArgs for uboot. Why oh why didn't I know this before?

Bike Messenger Race. Check out the sweet move at 4:10.

Fixed Gear Bike Gallery. I hope to pimp my Peugeot in like fashion.

Imogen Heap Hide And Seek. Love it.

Breakdancing Street Fighter Baby Kick. Gee, I hope that kid is alright.

Optimizing applications for multicore. (Via EA.)

Banksy Was Here. Slideshow. Flickr.

Creature Comforts. The first scene of the first episode had me hooked.

Armstrong Food Fight. A friend's brother was an "instrumental" organizer.

Other Options Available on the New Poetry SUV.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Georgina Bush. A fine portrait indeed.

Hilary Hahn on Chaconne.

Joshua Bell poses as street performer. Audio. (Via Dan Olson.)

Protect the Boys at all costs.

Recoupin'. One out of one Dr. T's recommended. Absoludicrous.

Grammy Award Winning Album Colors - 2007. I love "Modern Times".

Restroom Renascence. A poem in iambic tetrameter about boundaries, freedom, and porcelain.

Simon Peyton Jones, and Tim Harris interview about their STM work at Microsoft Research Cambridge.

3041. Destruction and sadness.

Salon interview with David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster).

Lock-free data structures in C.

Ira Glass (of This American Life) on storytelling: 1, 2, 3, and 4. (Via EA.)

George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing. See the original essay.

Language Workbenches for Domain Specific Languages.

Happy Birthday Dear Albert.

Asian Landscape from my good friend Paul Olson.

PlotKit. Javascript chart plotting.

Logo Design Trends 2007.

Bible Reading Checklist. From Good Shepherd Lowell. (Via Kenosing.)

Personas: intro, tips, benefits, and relationship to goal-directed design.

Whatever you do, don't click on this. You'll never be the same again.

Tony Danz[ig]. I can't stop laughing.

TextPad 5.0 released. (Via Hilden.)

Incomprehensible Intersections. See if you can figure out how to make a left off Rosanov Street in Moscow. (Via J.B.C.)

Design update: I increased the width to take advantage of 1024x768 resolutions.

Sir Ken Robinson. On creating an education system that values creativity as much as literacy.

Beatboxing Flute Player: Inspector Gadget Remix. This is totally def.

A Guide to Writing Well. Joshua Sowin works for Desiring God.

Purple and Brown Bubble Gum, Growl, Balloon, and Sneeze. (Via Josh L..)

Old Piano. (More Brandon Beecroft.)

Chinese Public Health Posters.

Finetune - music recommendation.

Mog: Save the world from bad music.

Conan O'Brian vs. Serena Williams on Wii Tennis.

Rodney White Art. Acrylic on wood.

12 Stone Art. Online art gallery specializing in museum-quality fine art prints of Christian artwork.

Superbowl Commercials. (The Fedex Moon Office had me cracking up.)

Police to Reunite at Upcoming Grammy Awards. (Feb 11th, 2007.)

Why did you add this button to the user interface?

The Knack. "Utter social ineptitude."

Linux Kernel in a Nutshell. Free download.

Digital Bibliography and Library Project. For Computer Science Journals and Proceedings. This is incredibly useful. XML available for download.

Task-Centered User Interface Design

The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software.

Java Concurrency Utilities.

Modern Concurrency Abstractions for C#. Touches on the reasons for adding concurrency abstractions as language extensions as opposed to libraries--the point of Cω.

Strange Faces and Noises I Can Make. Third in a series. See also one and two. Disturbing.

Cheerleader and Marching Band Bloopers. Dad sent this to me and it had me cracking up. The last scene is worth it.

User experience design resources.

100 Best Fonts. The top 5 are Helvetica, Garamond, Frutiger, Bodoni, and Futura.

Paper Prototyping. Along the same lines as the Hipster PDA and the DIY Planner.

The Purloined Sirloin. Why Americans love to shoplift meat.

Multithreading invites string of nasty bugs. Precisely why I'm studying this for my Master's thesis. (Via John Collins.)

Oh, the Huge Manatee!.

Over the weekend, Erik Freed made some French Flambe' for us with vanilla ice cream, mangos, grain alchohol, and a touch of pyrotechnics. (Video on YouTube.)

Chicago Uncommon. Urban photography by Dawn Mikulich.

Bears make it to the Super Bowl.

Web Design References from UMD.

iJigg. Submit, converse, and rate new music. For example, Unravel.

Olfactory Church.

Acceptable Written Forms for the Bullwhip Sound Effect. Make sure to mouth the words for each one.

Japanese Foliage. More great brushes from Jason Gaylor.

Free Banksy (UK grafitti artist) Art.

Pearl Crescent Page Saver. Firefox extension for below-the-fold screenshots. (Example. Via Cameron Moll.)

Wendell Berry Interview from NPR (1998) where he reads from his "Window" series of poems.

Eldar Djangirov, Jazz Pianist from Kyrgyzstan. (Thanks Erik.)

A Night In The Studio. Offering.

Creating grunge brushes from Veerle.

Sufjan Stevens - Lo! How A Rose E'er Blooming.

TrueCrypt. Open-source on-the-fly encryption.

Penguin Books. Mmm... Book cover design.

Fimoculous 2006 Lists. A compilation of "best-of" lists for 2006.

SourceMonitor for static complexity analysis.

LocMetrics. Source code line-counting tool.

Flickr: Camera Finder. Interesting that the D50 is now more popular than the D70.

Furnish for designing living spaces. (Some more options.)

BuzzFeed. I'm unusually unskeptical.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Episodes.

kuler. Adobe's color theme generator.

BarCamp / MinneDemo. "[...] where we showcase [...] kick-ass software [...] and have [...] beers [...]".

John Piper is Bad. The video.

2006 World Broomball Championships. Gaddy-up Brojac!

What 147 elk taught me about prayer.

ACM SIGSOFT 2006 / FSE 14. I'll be attending this year thanks to a National Science Foundation fellowship.

2-Channel Infrared Picco Z Mini Helicopter. I guess I just started my Christmas list.

David Kupferman. Boston artist specializing in abstract images using acrylic on canvas or paper. David is a nice guy; I got to chat with him on a plane from LAX to Pheonix.

Spin Master. Wicked!

Google Code Search. Example: GPL Quicksort.

Tesla Motors. The first 100 were sold each for $100,000.

Creating grunge brushes.

RadioShack lays off employees via e-mail. "Employees were invited to ask questions on the company's intranet site."

Kakuro. A number-based crossword puzzle. This site was engineered by an old friend of mine: Aaron Kardell.

Aussies on lookout for ugly sheep. "So far only 10 [...] have been found [...]"

How to Survive a Freestyle Rap Battle. I could have used this last Friday. (Via T3sk3y.)

Choral Evensong--a BBC Radio programme of Anglican choral music--has been broadcast weekly since 1926. (Listen to the latest.)

Layout Grid Bookmarklet. A useful tool to change the background image of the page, to a grid, to aid in layout and wireframing. Inspired by Khoi Vinh and Smiley Cat.

Common Enemies of the Paperboy, According to the Nintendo Game of the Same Name.

LogoPond identity inspiration. (Via Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain.)

Fresh Foliage Photoshop Brushes for High Resolution [Part II]. More fantastic brushes from the generous Jason Gaylor.

Aquafest 2006.

Cats that look like Hitler. My fav.

activeCollab open source project management and collaboration tool.

Wiring VoIP to home phone jacks. I’ll be doing this shortly.

The Lovers. Poptrical Sophistifunk!

CSS World Awards Winners 2006. Two of my favorites are UX Mag and The City Church.

Brave wife 'fends off' big tiger. "A woman in Bangladesh armed only with an oar from her rowing boat fended off a Royal Bengal tiger which was attacking her husband, police say."

Jamestown Village.

Three Rivers Park District. Regional parks in and around the Mississippi, Minnesota and Crow rivers.

Welcome to Zombo.com. This is Zombo.com. (Via Patrick Haney.)

Interactive Urbanisation Map from the BBC for visualizing urban growth as a function of time.

Slashdot Redesigned. The result of the recent contest.

Flash Frogger.

Wiki + Maps == WikiMapia.

Picasa for Linux, just released. It uses Wine, and the Gecko engine, which makes me wonder what the performance will be like.

Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards) has become the fastest-growing name for baby girls in more than a century. Check popularity history with NameVoyager. (Via Kottke.)

Doug Bowman is going to Google to be their new Visual Design Lead.

Web Developer's Handbook. Lot's of good material here.

List of Trend Aggregators. Popurls should really be in this list.

Bikebox. Trailors for bicycles. Ideal for ghetto blaster transport.

Non-Software Examples of Software Design Patterns.

BBC is requesting submissions for a home-page redesign. A new Apple laptop is the prize.

Apple launches 'Get a Mac' TV Ad Campaign. Funny stuff. (Via Daring Fireball.)

ABC.com: Full Episode Streaming. Hopefully other networks will follow.

Agile programming has fallen short, says Steve McConnell.

On this day in history (April 30th, 1993), Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a quarter-final match in Hamburg by Gunter Parche.

Color Box. A color-theory game based on the additive color system.

Tank Chair. Off-road and custom.

"Software Engineer" tops Money Magazine's list of 10 best jobs.

Bush impersonator reads speeches written by little kids. (Via Waxy.)

Visual Composer. Cute.

Pimp My Snack. (a.k.a. Snacks for Pimps. (Via del.icio.us popular.)

Fifty Ways to Take Notes. I admit it, I'm a sucka' for new ways.

Roger Ebert's list of 101 movies you must see that "everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat 'movie-literate'".

Cornell Notetaking Method Custom PDF Generator.

Robot Dance. Mad skillz.

Modo & Modo (makers of the Moleskine) have put themselves up for sale.

John Gruber has quit his job at Joyent to write for Daring Fireball full-time. John is the best MAC writer on the web right now, as far as I'm concerned.

Mowing the Lawn. A vibrant photo of expectation from File Magazine.

New Avis / XM Commercial. Funny video of a car full of white-collar business men, rap-sync'ing.

Monobrow.com. Celebrating the unity of your eyebrows.

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is an ensemble of 15 students, each seated on a pillow with a laptop, and a 6-channel speaker. (Listen; via Coudal.)

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. Results from the NN/g eyetracking study.

The New York Times Newsroom Navigator.

Wheee! Funny video of various browser icons, if they had personalities.

Office 2.0 Database.

The AIGA and the U.S. DOT have released a set of symbol signs, designed for transportation hubs and international events. (Via Veerle.)

Simpsons film confirmed for 2007.

Language Crimes: A Lesson in How Not to Write.

Flashbag. USB flash drive with micro pump that changes the size of the device depending on the amount of data it holds.

Google Calendar, now live.

Incredible Machines from Pistol Wimp. A 12-minute collection of rube goldberg inventions from the Japanese TV show.

Artnatomy. Anatomical basis of facial expression learning tool.

The Visual Work of Scott Hansen. Fantastic textures. (Via Cameron Moll.)

Jayber's Design Ripped Off (direct link), by some fool.

Arts & Letters Daily (Ideas, Criticism, and Debate.) A new favorite.

Coudal Partners, Verse By Voice is featuring a poem by Wendell Berry today: The Peace of Wild Things. (Audio, Text.)

Damn Small Linux plus pendrive equals portable paradise.

Type Navigator. Interactive visual font search.

Every Stock Photo. Stupendous and long-needed CC photo search.

View Rendered Source. A Firefox extension to display source in its altered state after the DOM has been manipulated by JavaScript.

Ace of Lace. Make it stop! © Coudal.

Pizza All Day. I love the first slide: "I sure love pizza! *gomp*, *gomp*."

Boot Camp. A public beta that will eventually ship with OS X Leopard to help install Windows on Intel-based Macs.

Edmund Hall Portfolio. Nice use of posterized, simplified, layered, and worn common objects.

Newspaper Mastheads from the Virginia Newspaper Project. Check out the detail on American Queen. (Via Cameron Moll.)

Cameron Moll Portfolio redesigned with worn leather and judicious use of Jason Gaylor's foliage brushes.

ATDT. "Go into Microsoft Frontpage and select Build > Community > Non-Designed > Ugly > Cash Cow and just wait for someone to offer hundreds-of-millions to buy you out."

NY Times Redesigns. (Via Waxy.)

How I Write by Bertrand Russell.

Church Beauty. Inspiring church websites.

Wookieepedia. Star Wars wiki.

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." -- Steve Jobs. (Via Airbag.)

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards. 300+ sites, 38 categories, 21 interviews.

Grups (AKA, yupsters, yindies, and alterna-yuppies). The ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood and killed off the generation gap.

Best bumper stickers. "Save the trees, wipe your butt with an owl."

Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content. "Design is that it is almost always about something else. The more things you're interested in, the better your work will be."

CNN Redesigns. (Via Dan Benjamin.)

2-inch art books. (Via Coudal.)

Never seen this before: a righteous 1950's megaphone helmet with a shoulder-mounted battery pack. (Via Boing Boing.)

B#. An OO language for small-footprint embedded systems.

To help organize notes for school (warning: highly-variable quality), I created a new Reference section that I like to call, "Konichiwa Buffet."

Sleeping Giants. Aviation afterlife in the desert.

UX. A new magazine about user experience.

A number of people have asked about the Scrambler script that's used on the navigation for Jayber, so I created a project page containing a demo, and a download.

Robert Sapolsky lectures on the physiology of stress. (iTunes direct.)

Iron-On Resistance. Lovely independent art products. Don't miss their Proletariat's Day sale.

How to destroy the Earth. Everything you've ever wanted to know about geocide.

Tronical. Automatic electric guitar tuning system with replacement tuning pegs (with servos), a knob that lets you change between tunings, and a controller.

del.icio.us adds private bookmarking feature.

The State of the News Media 2006. (Via Kottke.)

Crazy photos of overloaded vehicles. (Via Boing Boing.)

Illustrator Tutorials. (Via Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain.)

SimpleBits has been realigned. This "Arkanoid Edition" has embellished footers, muted colors, and maintains a nice balance between fixed and fluid layouts.

My Dad just got done directing the music (vocal and pit) for Chicago, which played at The Barn Theatre, in Willmar Minnesota over the last few weeks.

Selenium IDE. HTTP automated testing. Posh.

Ma.gnolia.com's domain has expired. Such short life spans, these Web 2.0 companies have. Update: account restored; I wonder what happened?

Maximizing your ROI at Pizza Hut. How to straight milk them, with only one trip to the salad bar.

The Web Standards Project has been redesigned by Malarky. It's nice, to be sure, but I don't know about "grassroots"; it feels more like "bumblebee."

Inbox Zero; Merlin on the current productivity pandemic.

History of Programming Languages from O'Reilly.

isolatr beta.

People always used to approach me to try and talk about this or that. I wanted to punch them in the throat. Now they leave me the hell alone. Thanks isolatr!

Also, see the upcoming alpha of the IMolatr where you are:

[...] always listed as away, and if people try to contact you, IMolatr will actually set their hands on fire!

Google announces Google Mars, in honor of Percival Lowell, and in collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University.

Things I Might Be Convinced to Give My Left Arm For.

Google just bought Writely.

American divers off the coast of Easter Island have found a new species of crustacean (Kiwa hirsuta) that resembles a furry lobster with silky, blond fur. Peachy.

popurls.com. A collection of pop-buzz urls (digg, del.icio.us, newsvine, flickr, reddit, tailrank, slashdot, youtube, google news, topix, and comagz) all on one page.

Flickr Leech. View Flickr "Interestingness", without paging.

Goodbye, Kirby.

Logic featured in The Columbian (Vancouver print.)

AJAX Press. Dude.

Design Education. Thousands of design resources. Thanks Gustavo.

Un-Pimp My Ride. New commercials from VW that had me laughing pretty good.

StepUI. A Microsoft Research project that lets you sort your mail and organize your photos using a dance pad. Think Dance Dance Revolution meets David Allen. So, who's going to hack this into an MMORPG?

Newsvine Launches. Check out the article-specific live chats.

Veerle's blog, redesigned with smart and crafty flair.

Mark Bixby Reveals a Sample of Airbaggian Business Cards. Good choice, Greg.

Fresh Foliage Photoshop Brushes from Jason Gaylor. Also, he's got some great "worn" brushes as well (I, II and III.)

South Dakota passes abortion ban.

South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.

All that's left, is for Republican Gov. Michael Rounds to sign it, which he probably will.

Andy digs up Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors.

[The game has a part called] "Desert Bus," a "VeriSimulator" in which you drive a bus across the straight Nevada desert for eight hours in real-time. Then you drive it home. Also, [...] the bus veers to the right, so you can't just leave the joypad propped up.

There are reports of two guys playing this game for like 4 days straight. Their high score? 12 points.

Fl.ower. Greg Story talks about the making of Ma.gnolia.

What if Microsoft designed iPod packaging? Brilliant.

Man sentenced for ride-by bottom slap.

A Colombian man has been sentenced to four years' house arrest for slapping a woman's bottom as he rode by her on his bicycle, sparking debate on whether the punishment fit the crime.

I wouldn't advocate this type of barbaric behavior (even though it's somewhat humorous), but doesn't the punishment seem excessive?

Make PCB's with a laser printer using the EAGLE Layout Editor, semi-glossy photo paper, a laser-jet printer, soapy water, etchant, and an iron.

Top Cameras Used on Flickr.

[...] top camera makes and models used to create photos uploaded to Flickr [...] generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads.

The Nikon D70, and the Canon EOS 20D are fighting for #1.

A sampling of avant-garde composer George Crumb's art. Crumb arranges his scores in forms of circles, peace symbols, and crucifixes, and are playable. (Via Coudal.)

Don Knotts, 1924-2006.

Official Google Blog: History deserves the best. Pilot program to digitize video content from the National Archives.

Last night, I installed Shaun Inman's Mint to track stats on Jayber and found myself giggling at how fun it was to see for the first time. Mint meets a simple need well, and is designed with extraordinary attention paid to detail.

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink, and writer for the New Yorker) is blogging.

Google Pages. Free hosting with 100MB of storage. It was only a matter of time.

NBA 2006 Dunk Contest. A highlight video, in case you missed it, like me.

A few weeks ago, I added a TTS (Text to Speech) feature to Jayber. All posts are now voice-enabled which means that if you click the link titled "audio version of this article", Susan, Cheryl, Jackie, or whatever the sam hill her name is, will read the post to you.

Kottke ends the micropatron experiment.

Do-it-yourself remotely-managed music player using a discontinued netgear router running Linux, a $12 Japenese LCD kit, and an $8 USB audio adapter.

Zillow. Models home valuations and comparable sales using hard-to-find county tax data. Sweet Moses!

Man in Vietnam hasn’t slept in 33 years.

[...] Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.

Wha?

Firefox extensions for web developers. I'm a sucker for a good list.

Sorting Algorithms, along with complexity analysis and source.

Minneapolis Traffic Map. A Google Maps mashup of Twin Cities traffic data, including accidents, congestion, construction and cameras. (Via Erik Mitchell.)

The most promising Web 2.0 software of 2006.

Microsoft says so-long to FrontPage. Good riddance, far as I'm concerned. (Via Kottke.)

Podbop. Get podcasts of bands coming to your town. Here's the link for Minneapolis.

The Web Design Times has assembled a collection of free grunge fonts.

Waxy Hits the Deck

Campfire group chat released.

Google Buys Measure Map. and Veen leaves Adaptive Path.

Yahoo! OSS Ajax and Design Tools. The effort includes a User Interface Libary, a Design Pattern Library, and a blog.

The Beastles. A Beastie Boy, Beatles mashup. Brilliant.

Winter Olympics TV schedule all on one page. Via.

Nonviolent Westerns. "A Man Called My Little Pony."

Engadget Mobile. Daily coverage of mobile gadgetry.

earBuddy armor for your buds.

FireBug is the silver-nugget Firefox extension that helps tame the ECMA script debugging beast.

Some guy out on the SA forums took [two of Nickelback's] hits and mixed them down into one mp3. One of their songs plays in the right channel and one in the left. Normally, doing this with two songs would produce something that is completely un-listenable. Not so with Nickelback. The songs are in the same key, have the same tempo, and use the same chord changes.

1. Hurricane Katrina
2. Papal Transition
3. Iraq
4. Supreme Court
5. Oil Prices
6. London Bombings
7. Asian Quake
8. Terri Schiavo
9. CIA Leak
10. Bush's Struggles

I went and updated the design again. I liked the last one, but it had a really fine sheen to it, which was much more polished than I actually am as a person. My intent is that hopefully this design (and the addition of a swappable photo) represents me in a more realistic way.

This has been floating around on del.icio.us and digg for the last few days: Resources for Getting Things Done Online.

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible. "The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. [...] The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: 'We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.'" The title of the new publication: The Gift of Scripture.

Zoho Writer. Is it just me, or has there been a flurry of office-type AJAX apps released recently? Although I think AJAX is sweet, and these office apps are cool, how useful are they-- really? Anyway, here's another one to add to the mix: Zoho Writer.

Writeboard was released today by 37signals.

Harriet Miers nominated to the Supreme Court.

"John Roberts was sworn in Thursday as the 17th chief justice of the United States after winning Senate approval with a solid majority."

elfURL. A new site that makes long URLs short I found is called elfURL. It's essentially the same thing as tinyURL, but includes a few new features. They claim that their URLs will never expire. Oh, and they offer some concept of statistics for links in their database. I'm not sure how useful that will be, but you gotta love their motto: "Statistics lie, elves never do."

Jason Santa Maria's Photo of the day: I Am Forkbender.

Some clever uses of technology just make me smile. Like Eric Meyer's standards-based slideshow system: S5. Particularly interesting to me is the simplicity of design, that it's standards-based, and accessible. It uses XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript and does a great job having highly semantic markup for the slides. Beautiful. Check out the introductory slideshow. Just use it like you would a Power Point presentation (space, down-arrow, right arrow, return, click, etc...).

There's been a ton of new AJAX applications released recently, and I expect to only see the number of these increase. Here's one: Writely -- a web-based word processor that allows secure collaboration. And if you have a blog on Blogger, you can post there directly.

Reindeer Run 2005. Registration is now open for the Reindeer Run 2005 in Minneapolis. The race is December 3rd at Lake Harriet. Mandy, Chloe, and I ran it last year and it was a blast. I'm extremely bummed that I won't be able to run it this year--I've got graduate school classes all day.

Well, as you can probably see, I redesigned the site. This is something I've been working on for a while, but I thought it was time to pull the trigger.

Getting started with "Getting Things Done" From 43 Folders.

I just added a Syndicated Feeds section to the site. It's still experimental and I'm in the process of working out a few functional and usability issues, but read on for more technical description of the script, and what syndicated feeds are in particular.