If you Google "email me", kottke.org is the first result. This may explain all the spam I've been getting. (via two separate most-likely-drunken emails last night)
Le long Deck
The Deck is a smallish ad network that handles the advertising for kottke.org, which consists of an unobtrusive high-quality advertisement in the sidebar of each page of the site. The Deck recently moved to a spiffy new domain and is no longer so smallish; the network now includes 29 sites.
Some recent additions to The Deck include Ze Frank, Chip Kidd's Good Is Dead, FFFFOUND!, Dean Allen's recently resurrected Textism, Clusterflock, and Aviary.
If you'd like to advertise on kottke.org and 28 other great sites, head on over to The Deck site...we'd love to have you.
Last 100 posts, part 9
This is the ninth installment in an occasional series of updates to recent kottke.org posts. Previous installment is here, from almost a year ago. Eep.
Two still-active threads: will a helicopter on a treadmill take off? and my favorite kottke.org thread in recent memory, loads of people sharing words that they mispronounce on purpose.
Ben Saunders had to break off his attempt at a speed record to the North Pole after only eight days because of an equipment failure. The bolts on his skis snapped.
Those few hours in the tent were some of the lowest of my life; I thought of all the people that had gone so far out of their way to make this expedition happen, of the weeks of intense preparation, the months of training and the years of experience, testing and perfecting everything from my diet to the design of the sledge. This expedition was the physical embodiment of one of the biggest and most audacious dreams I've ever had, and the whole thing hung from a giant chain that involved countless people, places, promises and pieces of equipment. It turned out on Friday morning that the weakest link of that entire chain was a pair of screws, each with a head the size of my little finger tip, and each snapped clean in half.
Speaking of the cold north, I lamented the lack of charts in this post about the earlier onset of spring thaw in the northern hemisphere. Erin whipped one up for us.
Related to these architectural offices in an old auto body shop are the offices of a small London start-up operating out of a carriage from the London Tube.
You want strange restaurant names? I give you, The Butt and Oyster. (thx, nick)
The lost Prada sunglasses have not been found by their owner.
More abandoned amusement park photos: Maryland's Enchanted Forest and Seoul's Dreamland. (thx, guy & ross)
The business of parenting was a popular post...maybe I should turn kottke.org into a dad blog? Well, until that happens, here's a couple of related items that people sent in. First up is an NPR story on teaching kids how to play. Part of the solution discussed in the story? Deliberate practice. It's all connected, isn't it? And here's an earlier related story. (thx, michael & matt)
Here's a tangential connection: reading magazines within a Google Maps interface is related to telling stories using maps. And of course, there's Microsoft's Seadragon technology, demoed briefly at the start of this TED presentation. (thx, barrett)
Back in January, I linked to an interview of a hedge fund manager at n+1. They've posted a second interview with the same manager and he discusses, among other things, what happened with that whole Bearn Sterns run-outta-money government bailout thing.
More on the periodic table. Periodically is an album put together by DBLF Studios featuring 119 songs, one for each element. Peep the lyrics; here's a bit of the lithium tune:
I'm unbelievable for non-linear optics
high performance jet helicpotics
I have numerous commercial applications
am no longer integral for atomic weapons
unfortunately meth-amphetamines I do catalyze
I absorb carbon dioxide when I hydroxize
nuclear fusion totally relies on me
I allow the criminally insane to go running free
There is also Tom Lehrer's The Elements, a recitation of the elements of the periodic table, sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's Major-General's Song. Of course you can hear it on YouTube. (thx, george & philip)
A pair of responses to Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market: Myths, Media, Motives: A Cautionary Tale and The Nonsense of "Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market".
MovieStamer has filled out a bit more.
Some popular tags from the last three weeks: standardoperatingprocedure, movies, photography, lists, design, books, abughraib, video, food, science, errolmorris, interviews, war, bestof, nyc, videogames, games, typography, www, tv, art, sports, sex, architecture, and religion.
Comparison of old versions (5,10,12 years ago) of popular web sites (Yahoo, CNN, Starbucks) with the current versions. Here's a comparison from a less popular site of your acquaintance. (via vitamin briefcase)
kottke.org is ten years old today
Three cities, two serious relationships, one child, 200,000 frequent flier miles, at least seven jobs, 14,500 posts, six designs, and ten years ago, I started "writing things down" and never stopped. That makes kottke.org one of a handful of the longest continually updated weblogs on the web...something to be proud of, I guess. The only thing I've done longer than kottke.org is sported this haircut. (Perhaps not something to be proud of...the hair-in-stasis, I mean.)
Being a digital packrat, I have screenshots of all the past designs the site has had. When I started, the posts were actually hosted on another site of mine, 0sil8, that I'd been doing since 1996. I didn't know at the time that kottke.org would eventually kill 0sil8. This was the first design (full size):
It's a little misleading because there's only one post shown on the page...there were usually more, displayed reverse chronologically. The stars were a rough rating of how well that day had gone called the fun meter.
When I moved the site to its own domain after a few months, I redesigned it to look like this (full size):
The aesthetic was influenced by the pixel grunge style of Finnish designer Miika Saksi...you can see some of his older work here. The font in the navigation is Mini 7...Silkscreen was still several months away at that point. The fun meter is still present as is the all-lowercase text, a house style I thankfully dropped a few months later. The cringeworthy writing took a few more years to iron out...if it ever fully was.
This one's still my favorite; it turned a lot of heads back in the day (full size):
With dozens of spacer gifs and five concentric tables, it was a bitch to code. There was also a capability to modify the look and feel of the site...you could choose between this design, the older design pictured above, and a text-only version. Inline permalinks were introduced on kottke.org in March 2000 and subsequently the idea was spread across the web by Blogger.
But it only lasted for about a year. In late 2000, I swapped it for this one (full size):
The familar burn-your-eyes-out yellow-green makes its first appearance. I never really meant to keep it or for it to become the strongest part of the site's identity. After this design launched, I cycled through a few colors (the old yellow, blue, red) before getting to the yellow-green...and then I just got lazy and left it. For 8 years and counting. The post style underwent several changes with this design. In June 2002, I switched to Movable Type after updating the site by hand for four years. Soon after that, I added titles to my posts. In late 2002, I added a frequently updated list of remaindered links to the sidebar. In late 2003, the remainders moved into the main column and have become an integral part of the site. I also started reviewing movies and books around this time...kottke.org became a bit of a tumblelog.
In July 2004, I refreshed the design a bit...tightened it up (full size):
After about a year, I changed it again to the current look and feel (full size):
Sorry, that got a little long...there's a lot I didn't remember until I started writing. Anyway, I didn't intend for this to become a design retrospective. Mostly I wanted to thank you very sincerely for reading kottke.org. Over the last ten years, I've poured a lot more of myself than I'd like to admit into this site and it's nice to know that someone out there is paying attention. [Cripes, I'm choking up here. Seriously!] Thanks, and I'll see you in 2018.
The UK Sunday newspaper The Observer recently published a list of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. kottke.org is fourth on the list. "Powerful" seems to be a word used here for its succinct headline value...that adjective doesn't fit many of the blogs on the list. But The Observer has made an effort to build a wide-ranging list of blogs that you should be reading...it's very nice to be included.
Ok, I'm back from a week of sickness, grueling travel, little sleep, and nothing done on some kottke.org projects I wanted to tackle. Time off is a bit different with an 8-month-old. But I'd like to thank Deron for holding down the fort while I was gone...I enjoyed his contribution to the site; I hope you did as well. Thanks, Deron.
Regular posting to commence after a short mental nap.
In case you're wondering if Kottke is blogging this week.
(A nice addition to Jason's list of Single Serving Sites.)
Update: Brought to us -- ironically? -- by, Jason.
Your host for the next week: Deron Bauman
Clusterflock's Deron Bauman is going to be editing kottke.org for the next week or so. Here's what he's all about:
I am the founding editor of elimae, for which I designed, produced, and distributed a series of hand-made books. I am the author of Mockingbird, reviewed favorably by Guy Davenport in the April 2002 edition of Harper's. I founded and blog at clusterflock, a group blog dedicated to pretty much everything. I am the director of The World Come of Age, a documentary about the life of a gay man living in a rural north Texas county. I am in the process of deciding what to do next.
Clusterflock is one of my favorite blogs (and trial member of The Deck) and it's a treat to have Deron helming kottke.org for the week. Welcome, Deron!
If you can even read this, sorry for the downtime on kottke.org this morning (and, from what I can tell, last night too). My robot and someone else's robot are chatting away gaily and no one else seems to be able to get a word in edgewise. We're hoping they quiet down soon. If you need your kottke.org fix before that happens, I'll be standing on the corner of Canal & Bowery in Manhattan handing out slips of paper with cool URLs on them.
Update: Ok, things seem to be a little better.
Let's Go
Good morning, and thank you for attending. Should you have advice or ideas for me this week, I can be reached at choire [at] choire sicha [dot] com. I love mail. A brief moment of self-referentiality follows. Over the last nearly-decade, Kottke (the work product, not so much the actual person) has become incredibly (sometimes overly) smoothed and honed. When I first wrote a story for the New York Times, a very wise editor there told me this: That it was not the paper that made writers sound Timesey; instead, writers most often made themselves Timesey in anticipation of the venue's expectations. That was usually a bad thing! But in the case of Kottke (the site), perhaps a good amount of impersonation of or loyalty to its conventions is in order, don't you think? (That effort may fail as this week progresses.) So to those who are pre-gagging over my appearance here this week, I can only offer the same response that Joan Didion offered a letter by John Romano in the New York Review of Books on October 11, 1979.
This week on kottke.org: Choire Sicha
Fresh off his exit from Gawker and covering last week's New Hampshire primary for the New York Observer, Choire Sicha will be handling a slightly easier, less glamourous, and potentially more spiritually rewarding job: editing kottke.org for the next week.
Choire has written for Gawker (on two non-consecutive occasions, making him Gawker Media's Grover Cleveland), the NY Times, the Observer, and a host of other publications, but I remember him mostly from from the olden days of the blogosphere. He was one half of the tandem that wrote the now-defunct East/West, an early blog detailing the lives of two friends who live on opposite ends of the US. He's also done a bunch of other stuff but I'll let him share or not share about all that. Welcome, Choire!
The Best Links 2007
For the fourth year running, here are some of my favorite articles, videos, games, photography, discussions, and design pieces that I linked to in 2007. After you're done with these, try the lists from 2004, 2005, and 2006.
The streets of Portland are an ice skating rink for cars in this video.
Reconsidering the original three Star Wars movies in light of the prequels. R2D2 = top rebel spy.
Adam Gadahn's journey from rural California teen and death metal fan to a trusted member of Osama bin Laden's team of operatives.
Chris Jordan's photo series, Running the Numbers.
Michael Poliza's aerial photos of Africa. More here.
Malcolm Gladwell on Enron and the difference between puzzles and mysteries, investigationally speaking.
Smashing Telly, a collection of TV on the web, with an emphasis on documentaries and factual programs. I liked David's post on Zeitgeist and FEBLs.
Video of an autistic person describing the language she uses to communicate with her surroundings.
Good People, a short story by David Foster Wallace.
Nicholas Felton's personal annual report for 2006.
A pair of posts from Neatorama on photography: 13 Photographs That Changed the World and The Wonderful World of Early Photography.
Susan Orlean on Robert Lang, former physicist and current world-class origami master. Here's my post on Lang.
A Line Rider masterpiece. (Line Rider?)
Kremlin Inc., a story of Vladimir Putin's de facto dictatorship of Russia.
2007 was the year of book art: Thomas Allen's pulp cutouts, Cara Barer's water-crumpled books, Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books whose spines tell small stories, and Brian Dettmer's book sculptures.
Joel Johnson's great post on Gizmodo scolding the site's writers, gadget makers, and the site's readers "for supporting the disgusting cycle of gadget whoring".
Denis Darzacq's photographs of people seemingly floating above the pavement.
Panoramic photos from the Apollo missions. These are stunning.
Michael Pollan on the rise of nutritionism. His advice for healthy eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Desktop Tower Defense. This would top my Ten Best Games of the Year list if I'd done one.
On Conscientious, several photographers answer the question "What makes a great photo?"
Shorpy, a photoblog of old photographs, and FFFFOUND!, an image bookmarking site. Neither is probably legal in the strict sense, but they're both great online curated galleries.
Alberto Forero has collected a staggering amount of photography and design imagery and posted it to his Flickr account.
Social Explorer, interactive demographic maps.
Hypermilers try to wring as many miles per gallon out of their cars as they can. (My post.)
Darwin's God. Are humans biologically wired to believe in God?
Dan Hill reviews Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a film that follows soccer star Zinedine Zidane through a single game.
Minority Kart, possibly the GAGOAT (greatest animated gif of all time).
Miranda July's wonderful handcrafted web site for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You.
An article on commuting, this crazy thing that most Americans do too much of.
The graph of US home prices from 1890 to the present as a rollercoaster.
As a social experiment, the Washington Post arranged for internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell to play outside a DC subway station. Would anyone notice?
The New Yorker on David Belle and parkour, the sport he invented.
Maciej Ceglowski reports on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
NB: Studio's map of London constructed entirely out of type.
Trulia Hindsight, a map of property development through time.
Movies showing a closeup view of the Sun's surface.
Video footage of Joseph Kittenger's record jump from 102,800 feet up. Photo from Life magazine and a Boards of Canada music video that uses the footage.
Alex Reisner's site, especially the baseball section. (My post.)
Interview with journalist Jonathan Rauch.
The greatest long tracking shots in cinema, including those in Touch of Evil and Children of Men.
Meg Hourihan took a bunch of different chocolate chip recipes, averaged the ingredients, and made cookies from the resulting meta-recipe.
The infamous four guys humping an ottoman video.
Does the Piraha language upend the theory of universal grammar?
Vimeo's sign in page is lovely.
Tim Knowles' drawings by trees. (My post. And more.)
How a woman randomly bumped into the person that stole her identity and chased her around until the police showed up to apprehend her.
Portraits of breaking sculpture by Martin Klimas.
Photo gallery that shows families from around the world and the amount of food they eat in the course of a week.
Errol Morris' investigation of a pair of Roger Fenton photographs in three wonderful parts.
Roger Federer's conservation of energy and attention helps him perform when it counts.
Jay Parkinson M.D. makes house calls, visits with patients via IM, and is generally trying to find new ways of doctoring.
Anthony Lane's appreciation of the Leica.
Kohei Yoshiyuki's photos of voyeurs watching lovers in a Japanese park. (My post.)
A restaurant review from the NY Times, circa 1859. My post about the review and lots more from the archives of the Times.
The story of Oscar the Cat, who comforts the dying at a Rhode Island nursing home.
Portraits of bears by Jill Greenberg. More photos at Greenberg's site.
Long New Yorker profile of David Simon and The Wire.
Elizabeth Kolbert on bees and colony collapse disorder. And bee space.
Photoshopped pictures of people's faces combined.
A video round (turn on the sound).
Optical illusion: is the woman rotating clockwise or counterclockwise?
From the excellent xkcd web comic: Little Bobby Tables.
Aicuña is a small secluded town in Argentina with an extremely high percentage of albino residents.
David Foster Wallace's wonderful introduction to The Best American Essays 2007.
Video depicting several ways to melt a chocolate bunny.
Tyler Cowen on some of the opportunity costs of the war in Iraq.
Beautifully terrifying photos of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
Standing witness to a Guitar Hero wunderkind playing the game's most difficult song on expert level.
How America Lost the War on Drugs.
God's Eye View is an art project by The Glue Society depicting four Biblical scenes as they would have been captured by Google Earth.
The best way to deflect an asteroid turns out to be reflecting sunlight on it with a swarm of mirror bees.
Paul Otlet presages the web in 1934, calling it the "radiated library" or "televised book". (More context.)
This was my favorite post of the year. I hope you'll excuse the self-link.
Oh, and maybe the best thing I didn't link to this year: Daft Hands.
Thanks for reading kottke.org for the past year. Happy new year to you and yours.
While not as extensive as Rex's collection of 2007 "best of" lists, I'm compiling my own collection of such lists using the bestof2007 tag.
I feel welcome. I really do.
People who know me know that part of my charm is how wrong I tend to do things. Raleigh St. Clair could write books on my horrid sense of direction (I couldn't tell you how to drive to my favorite restaurant yet I'm a totally awesome driver, curiously). Yesterday I made out-of-the-box mac n' cheese but ruined it so royally I ended up dumping it and having an ice cream cone for lunch (no ice cream - just the cone).
So what the hell am doing guest-writing for this man, this hero of the web whom I so admire? I'd been toying with the idea of referring to Mr. Kottke only as 'Cousin Jason' hoping this would remove any doubt as to how I'd been put up to the task. But no, we're not related. If we were, I'd have an easier time backing out at the last minute.
You may think, "Well, here you are, these are your words on the kottke blog, so you must've done something right." I wouldn't be so sure of that. But we'll see if I can't class this place up a bit while Mr. Kottke maintains his undercarriage.
Your host for the next week: Adam Lisagor
For the next week, Adam Lisagor is going to be helping me out with kottke.org as I spend the week working on the site's undercarriage, performing some long-overdue maintenance and (hopefully) finishing a couple of projects begun long ago during the Golden Age of Weblogs. As it happens, Adam worked on The Day After Tomorrow, one of my favorite movies of all time. Seriously, Adam really worked on The Day After Tomorrow and, seriously, The Day After Tomorrow is one of my favorite movies of all time. (Seriously! I've seen it like 20 times.)
You may know (or get to know) Adam from the iPhone cut and paste demo video he did, his tumblelog lonelysandwich, or his Merlin Mann-recommended Twitter stream. He lives somewhere in California, which I'm told is a requirement for working on movies. But enough of that from me...I'll let Adam introduce himself tomorrow morning before he gets going. Welcome, Adam!
Feed reading
Warning, RSSoterica and kottke.org sausage-making to follow. Matt Wood has a post up on 43Folders about how he groups his RSS feeds in Google Reader for easier reading. I use pretty much the same system as Matt, but with a few more folders. I have several folders for reading long-form blogs:
Always
Often
Sometimes
Pending
Food and Drink
Frippery
Infoglut
Always, Often, and Sometimes are self-explanatory. The Pending folder is for blogs that I'm trying out, Frippery is stuff that is non-kottke.org-related to be read during non-work hours (ha!), and the Infoglut folder contains a bunch of blogs that have a low signal-to-noise ratio and are too high volume to keep up with unless everything else is read (any multi-author pro blogs that I read (not many) are in here). For organizing non-long-form blogs, I use these folders:
Links
Yummy
Photos
Tumble
Links contains link blogs, Yummy has a bunch of stuff from del.icio.us, Photos are photoblogs, and Tumble contains tumblelogs, FFFFOUND!, and other Randomly Curated Other People's Images White Background Sites. And then for news, I have an NY Times folder, a Sci/Tech News folder, and a Keywords folder for Google News keyword searches.
All this folder business might seem overcomplicated, but I find that grouping feeds by mode helps greatly. And by mode, I mean when I'm reading link blogs, that's a different style than reading/skimming long-form blogs in the Always folder. Posts from link blogs usually take a few seconds to read/evaluate/discard while the Always folder posts take longer. If they were all lumped together, I couldn't get through them as quickly and thoroughly as I can separately. A juggling analogy will help -- Wait! Don't leave, I'm almost done! -- it's easier to juggle balls or clubs or knives than it is to juggle balls, knives, and clubs at the same time...same thing with different kinds of blog posts.
This week on kottke.org: Joel Turnipseed
In the interest of growing the site beyond its current boundaries (i.e. me having to be seated in front of a computer 24/7/365), I'm trying something new on kottke.org. Starting tomorrow and continuing through next Tuesday, Joel Turnipseed will be editing the site. Joel is a writer living in Minneapolis, has previously run a software company, and is the author of Baghdad Express, a memoir of his experience as a US Marine in the first Gulf War. His writing has appeared in Granta, GQ, and The New York Times. For the week, Joel will be posting links, interviews, and entries loosely organized around a theme; he'll introduce himself and explain exactly what's going tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.
(And yeah, this is the result of my help wanted post from earlier in the month.)
After posting about needing some help for a kottke.org project, I was overwhelmed with responses. So much so that I'm looking for an intern to sort through all the replies. (Just kidding.) Thanks to everyone who applied and for your patience...I'll be getting back to everyone soon.
Help wanted
I'm looking for a writer/blogger** to work on a short-duration kottke.org project. You must be available from 10/30 to 11/6, not counting the weekend. There's a small budget available if you wish to be financially compensated. The resulting project will be featured on the front page of kottke.org with full credit to the author...this isn't some behind-the-scenes thing. Apologies if all that's intentionally vague, but I'll share the full details with the applicants.
If you're interested in applying, send an email to jason@kottke.org containing: 1) a subject line of "kottke.org feedback - Oct project", 2) a one-paragraph cover "letter" of no more than 6-7 sentences, and 3) links to your resume (if you have one), your blog (ditto), and any applicable writing/editing/blogging samples. Use your own discretion as to what to reveal about yourself. Any email with attachments or excessive paragraphs will be deleted unread or will be read and then mocked. Publicly. Those who enjoy reading kottke.org but are unlike me, demographically speaking, are particularly encouraged to apply. Thanks!
** Update: To clarify slightly, I don't necessarily need someone who is a writer or blogger professionally, just someone who can write or blog, no matter their training or profession.
Update: Hi, I think I've got all the applicants I need for now. Thanks to all for your interest.
Back in the saddle
After two months of paternity leave and mostly not posting, I'm resuming work on kottke.org today. It's been wonderful getting to know my son and gaining some much needed perspective, but I've missed doing the site too...9.5 years on and there's so much yet to do. So here we go.
Two quick notes.
1. I've saved up several links found while on leave...they'll be trickling out to the blog for the next few days. Apologies if you've seen them before (some you probably haven't), but if you've been paying attention, kottke.org isn't a place for the exclusively new and fresh. There are several other sites out there for that; they function excellently but I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with much of the blogosphere that whatever is newest is interesting to the detriment of everything else. Bollocks to the new.
2. Several people have inexplicably assumed that since I'm now a father, kottke.org is going to turn into some kind of daddyblog, and furthermore asserted that they'd like that not very much. Rest assured, not going to happen. I'm sure I'll make occasional mention of the family, but don't look for posts entitled "Umbrella Stroller Buying Guide" or "How to Buy Gender Neutral Clothing for Your Newborn (A: Don't Try, This is Nearly Impossible)". For those who want Ollie, Ollie, Ollie all the time, may I suggest checking out my Flickr stream for the occasional photo.
Made some slight tweaks to the site, mostly on the front page. Might need to refresh the stylesheet (shift-reload or cmd-reload usually works) to see them properly. The left column is a bit wider and tags now appear on posts. The monthly archive pages are a bit busted, but I'm hoping to have them running again soon.
Ollie Kottke
Dear internet, I'd like you to meet Ollie Kottke.
Some vital statistics: He was born on July 3 just before 1pm, weighed about 7 lbs., 2 oz., loves to eat (and then sleep), is O.K. (ha!), dislikes sponge baths, unfortunately doesn't have any descenders in his name, both mom and baby are home and doing fine, Ollie is not a particularly popular name right now (and is not short for Oliver), and I've never been quite so content as when he fell asleep on my chest yesterday and we snoozed together on the couch for an hour or so. A little slice of heaven.
Also, I'm going to be taking about two months of paternity leave from working on kottke.org. I'll probably post a few things here and there when I can, but it won't be a priority by any means. I hope you all have a good rest of the summer and that you'll find the site again when I start back up in the fall.
Update: Meg has a post up too and there are photos on Flickr.
kottke.org tags
After working on this -- on again and off again, mostly off -- for much too long, I'm pleased to say that a significant chunk of kottke.org now has tags (around 5,100 entries are tagged, out of ~13,000). Right now, the only way to access them is through individual tag pages, but after all the bugs are ironed out, I'll be putting them in different places around the site (front page, main archive page, etc.).
Each tag page lists all the entries1 on the site that are tagged with that particular word...some good examples to start you off are: photography, economics, lists, infoviz, food, nyc, cities, restaurants, video, timelapse, interviews, language, maps, and fashion. Each page also has a list of tags related to that particular tag and further down in the sidebar, you'll find lists of recently popular tags, all-time popular tags, a few favorite tags of mine, and some random tags...lots of stuff to explore.
I've tweaked the design as well: the main column is a little wider, the post metadata look/feel is consistent among short posts and long posts, faint dotted lines now separate all entries, and per-entry tags were added to the post metadata. I'm testing all that out for eventual site-wide use. Questions, comments, bug reports, etc. are welcome...send them on in.
Update: I almost forgot, the nsfw tag.
[1] Not all the entries exactly. Until I figure out how to do some pagination, I've limited the number of entries to 100 for each tag page. The movies page was more than 1 Mb when all the entries were listed. ↩
outside.in just launched a new maps feature that shows the physical locations that people are blogging about. Here's the last few months of places I've talked about on kottke.org. I like the pie charts that show how exclusive a place is to a particular blog. (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to outside.in.)
Last 100 posts, part 8
Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently (previous installment is here):
The Celluloid Skyline exhibition at Grand Central is well worth checking out...I was up there this past weekend. Pentagram collaborated with Saunders on the exhibit and wrote up a brief piece on how it came together.
My short post on Nina Planck's reaction to the recent "death by veganism", as she calls it, of a baby boy is a good reminder that I don't always agree with the things I link to. My only criteria for posting a link is that it's interesting, whether I think it's right or wrong or am still trying to form an opinion about it. Anyway, I got lots of mail about this one, much of it that said that the parents' veganism was beside the point -- which the prosecutors and jury in the subsequent criminal case agreed with (thx, matt) -- and that a headline like "Death By Stupidity" was probably more appropriate. After all, you don't see "Death by Omnivorism" headlines every time a baby with a more traditional diet dies of starvation.
Debra from Culiblog pointed out that contrary to Planck's assertion that "there are no vegan societies", the Jainists practice vegetarianism and veganism. On the other side of the aisle, meat fan Michael Ruhlman chastised Planck for going too easy on vegans, saying that "Veganism is a colossal arrogance, a refusal to admit to our own nature, a denial of our humanity. Sometimes it kills people. And it's not very much fun, besides." You can imagine the discussion that generated...although it was nothing like the 300+ comment thread on MetaFilter.
My opinion of Cars improved with a second viewing.
Discover's chat bot conversation reminded a reader of this old interview with the Ask Jeeves search engine (thx david). Back in 2002, I interviewed ELLEGirl magazine's AIMbot:
jkottke: Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons?
ELLEgirlBuddy: do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? that's a tough choice.
jkottke: yes, to celebrate or merely recognize. that is a toughie.
ELLEgirlBuddy: yes to celebrate or merely recognize that is a toughie? i dunno.
jkottke: you seem like an actual 13 year old girl.
ELLEgirlBuddy: i haven't really made a decision 'bout that.
jkottke: growing up is tough, isn't it?
ELLEgirlBuddy: i dunno.
And whoever posted the chat bot story to Digg (5696 Diggs and counting!) used the exact wording from my original post. You're welcome!
Prime, David Burke's quarter-million-dollar Black Angus bull, has his own web site. (thx, brian)
Regarding Alex Reisner's excellent baseball statistics web site and, in particular, the pennant race graphs, here's another interesting visualization of the pennant races...you can see the teams race to the end of the year like horses. (thx, scott)
Re: my post on better living through self-deception, I've heard that pregnant women tend to forget the pain of childbirth, perhaps because "endorphins reduce the amount of information trauma victims can store". Also related tangetially is this article on research into lying and laughing, which includes this simple test to see if you're a good liar:
Are you a good liar? Most people think that they are, but in reality there are big differences in how well we can pull the wool over the eyes of others. There is a very simple test that can help determine your ability to lie. Using the first finger of your dominant hand, draw a capital letter Q on your forehead.
Some people draw the letter Q in such a way that they themselves can read it. That is, they place the tail of the Q on the right-hand side of their forehead. Other people draw the letter in a way that can be read by someone facing them, with the tail of the Q on the left side of their forehead. This quick test provides a rough measure of a concept known as "self-monitoring". High self-monitors tend to draw the letter Q in a way in which it could be seen by someone facing them. Low self-monitors tend to draw the letter Q in a way in which it could be read by themselves.
High self-monitors tend to be concerned with how other people see them. They are happy being the centre of attention, can easily adapt their behaviour to suit the situation in which they find themselves, and are skilled at manipulating the way in which others see them. As a result, they tend to be good at lying. In contrast, low self-monitors come across as being the "same person" in different situations. Their behaviour is guided more by their inner feelings and values, and they are less aware of their impact on those around them. They also tend to lie less in life, and so not be so skilled at deceit.
The skyscraper with one floor isn't exactly a new idea. Rem Koolhaas won a competition to build two libraries in France with one spiraling floor in 1992 (thx, mike). Of course, there's the Guggenheim in NYC and many parking garages.
After posting a brief piece on Baltimore last week, I discovered that several of my readers are current or former residents of Charm City...or at least have an interest in it. Armin sent along the Renaming Baltimore project...possible names are Domino, Maryland and Lessismore. A Baltimore Sun article on the Baltimore Youth Lacrosse League published shortly after my post also referenced the idea of "Two Baltimores. Two cities in one." The Wire's many juxtapositions of the "old" and "new" Baltimore are evident to viewers of the series. Meanwhile, Mobtown Shank took a look at the crime statistics for Baltimore and noted that crime has actually decreased more than 40% from 1999 to 2005. (thx, fred)
Cognitive Daily took an informal poll and found that fewer than half the respondants worked a standard 8-5 Mon-Fri schedule. Maybe that's why the streets and coffeeshops aren't empty during the workday.
Made some long overdue changes to the sidebar on the front page, including an even longer overdue update of the "sites I've enjoyed recently". I used to use that list for my daily browse but it fell into decay when I started reading sites in RSS. Now the list is a random sampling of sites from the current reading list in my newsreader. If things look a little weird, you may need to refresh the stylesheet (do a Shift-reload on the home page).
kottke.org banned from Technorati top 100?
Since swearing off Technorati a couple of years ago, I've been checking back every few months to see if the situation has improved. The site is definitely more responsive but their data problems seemingly remain, at least with regard to kottke.org; Google Blog Search gives consistently better results and easy access to RSS feeds of searches.
Technorati recently introduced something called the Technorati Authority number, which is a fancy name for the number of blogs linking to a site in the last six months. Curious as to where kottke.org fell on the authority scale, I checked out the top 100 blogs list. Not there, so I proceeded to the "Everything in the known universe about kottke.org" page where a portion of that huge cache of kottke.org knowledge was the authority number: 5,094. Looking at the top 100 list, that should put the site at #47, nestled between The Superficial and fishki.net, but it's not there. Technorati also currently states that kottke.org hasn't been updated in the last day, despite several updates since then and my copy of MT pinging Technorati after each update.
Maybe kottke.org has been intentionally excluded because I've been so hard on them in the past. Or maybe it's just a glitch (or two) in their system. Or maybe it's an indication of larger problems with their service. Either way, as the company is attempting to offer an authentic picture of the blogosphere, this doesn't seem like the type of rigor and accuracy that should send reputable media sources like the BBC, Washington Post, NY Times, and the Wall Street Journal scurrying to their door looking for reliable data about blogs.
Update: As of 3:45pm EST, the top 100 list has been updated to include kottke.org. The site also picked up this post right away, but failed to note a subsequent post published a few minutes later..
Ways in which working on kottke.org is like gardening
- Pruning the list of RSS feeds I follow.
- Digging.
- Writing about hoes.
- Keeping deer out of the <p>s.
- Growing my traffic.
- Worrying about bees.
- (Com)posting links?
- Weeding out spam from comment threads.
- ^s.
- There's never enough thyme.
- Wondering about the weather.
Might be a little slow today on the ol' kottke.org. It's raining, some dude died and a bunch of techy/copyrighty blogs are sorta trying not to dance on his grave, and I'm wishing a long walk off a short pier to a bunch of alpha male, loudmouth, know-it-all bloggers who are calling the kettle black to a degree way past insanity (or is that inanity?). Isn't it time you all shipped off to the Grey Havens or something? Sometimes I really don't like this blogos-whatever that we've all built for ourselves...don't we deserve better? That and the internet appears to be completely empty today, devoid of any new information. Melodramatically yours,
Last 100 posts, part 7
It's been awhile since I've done one of these. Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently:
Two counterexamples to the assertion that cities != organisms or ecosystems: cancer and coral reefs. (thx, neville and david)
In pointing to the story about Ken Thompson's C compiler back door, I forgot to note that the backdoor was theoretical, not real. But it could have easily been implemented, which was Thompson's whole point. A transcript of his original talk is available on the ACM web site. (thx, eric)
ChangeThis has a "manifesto" by Nassim Taleb about his black swan idea. But reader Jean-Paul says that Taleb's idea is not that new or unique. In particular, he mentions Alain Badiou's Being and Event, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. (thx, paul & jean-paul)
When I linked The Onion's 'Most E-Mailed' List Tearing New York Times' Newsroom Apart, I said "I'd rather read a real article on the effect the most popular lists have on the decisions made by the editorial staff at the Times, the New Yorker, and other such publications". American Journalism Review published one such story last summer, as did the Chicago Tribune's Hypertext blog and the LA Times (abstract only). (thx, gene & adam)
Related to Kate Spicer's attempt to slim down to a size zero in 6 weeks: Female Body Shape in the 20th Century. (thx, energy fiend)
Got the following query from a reader:
are those twitter updates on your blog updated automatically when you update your twitter? if so, how did you do it?
A couple of weeks ago, I added my Twitter updates and recent music (via last.fm) into the front page flow (they're not in the RSS feed, for now). Check out the front page and scroll down a bit if you want to check them out. The Twitter post is updated three times a week (MWF) and includes my previous four Twitter posts. I use cron to grab the RSS file from Twitter, some PHP to get the recent posts, and some more PHP to stick it into the flow. The last.fm post works much the same way, although it's only updated once a week and needs a splash of something to liven it up a bit.
The guy who played Spaulding in Caddyshack is a real estate broker in the Boston area. (thx, ivan)
Two reading recommendations regarding the Jonestown documentary: a story by Tim Cahill in A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Seductive Poison by former People's Temple member Deborah Layton. (thx, garret and andrea)
In case someone in the back didn't hear it, this map is not from Dungeons and Dragons but from Zork/Dungeon. (via a surprising amount of people in a short period of time)
When reading about how low NYC's greenhouse gas emissions are relative to the rest of the US, keep in mind the area surrounding NYC (kottke.org link). "Think of Manhattan as a place which outsources its pollution, simply because land there is so valuable." (thx, bob)
NPR did a report on the Nickelback potential self-plagiarism. (thx, roman)
After posting about the web site for Miranda July's new book, several people reminded me that Jeff Bridges' site has a similar lo-fi, hand-drawn, narrative-driven feel.
In the wake of linking to the IMDB page for Back to the Future trivia, several people reminded me of the Back to the Future timeline, which I linked to back in December. A true Wikipedia gem.
I'm ashamed to say I'm still hooked on DesktopTD. The problem is that the creator of the game keeps updating the damn thing, adding new challenges just as you've finally convinced yourself that you've wrung all of the stimulation out of the game. As Robin notes, it's a brilliant strategy, the continual incremental sequel. Version 1.21 introduced a 10K gold fun mode...you get 10,000 gold pieces at the beginning to build a maze. Try building one where you can send all 50 levels at the same time and not lose any lives. Fun, indeed.
Regarding the low wattage color palette, reader Jonathan notes that you should use that palette in conjunction with a print stylesheet that optimizes the colors for printing so that you're not wasting a lot of ink on those dark background colors. He also sent along an OS X trick I'd never seen before: to invert the colors on your monitor, press ctrl-option-cmd-8. (thx, jonathan)
Dorothea Lange's iconic Migrant Mother photograph was modified for publication...a thumb was removed from the lower right hand corner of the photo. Joerg Colberg wonders if that case could inform our opinions about more recent cases of photo alteration.
In reviewing all of this, the following seem related in an interesting way: Nickelback's self-plagiarism, continual incremental sequels, digital photo alteration, Tarantino and Rodriquez's Grindhouse, and the recent appropriation of SimpleBits' logo by LogoMaid.
Apr 19, 2007 • tags: cities kottkedotorg kenthompson securitynassimtaleb nytimes journalism katespicer food twitter music lastfm movies caddyshack jonestown maps videogames games globalwarming nyc nickelback mirandajuly noonebelongsheremorethanyou backtothefuture desktoptd energy dorothealange photographyWindMaker adds motion to a web site based on the current wind conditions at a place of your choosing. Here's kottke.org with NYC wind and with Chicago wind. (thx, jim)
Personalized spam
Got a penny-stock spam this morning where most of the text designed to confuse spam filters was taken from kottke.org.
From: "Harriot Mckee" <mwuq@symlog.com>
Date: March 27, 2007 10:28:25 AM EDT
To: <jason@kottke.org>
Subject: The outside of one particular prison is all glass like an Apple Store, the furniture is nicely designed, and the sports facilities are top-notch.CWTD Receives "National Park Award"
China World Trade Corp.
Symbol: CWTD
Price: $0.489CWTD a diverse company involved in world trade and business services has just been awarded the "Nation Park Award" for one of the parks it manages. CWTD is expected to issue a huge news release this week. We always see big returns when they do. Read up and get ready. Get on CWTD first thing Tuesday morning!
" (via that's how it happened) Looking for work?
Exburbians moved to the farthest reaches of suburbia for cheap real estate, willing to drive at least an hour each way to work.
Why, then, don't we pull for the Iraqi insurgents? "There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday.
Netflix has a "take as much as you want" vacation.
That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
Why can't we see ourselves in the faces of those kids firing RPGs at convoys of Halliburton trucks stealing Iraqi oil?
A French map shows that the Portuguese were the first.
All content by Jason Kottke (contact me) unless otherwise noted, with some restrictions on its use. Protect Your System From Online Intruders.
Sales of home coffee machines nearly . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.
You could say it would be a lifetime's quest to reconcile this battling trinity into a seamless whole. (thx, jennifer)
Looking for work? Bob Saget was onto something.
I don't think it's any coincidence that one of the people responsible for Blogger is also responsible for Twitter.
jonreese(or how i learned to stop worrying and love the blog): Who Murdered 32 Iraqi Children?
Update: The Showtime site doesn't seem to be available to those outside of the US.
jonreese(or how i learned to stop worrying and love the blog): America is over.
An interview with Michael Pollan about The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Men look at men looking at crotches
My post about eyetracking and men looking at crotches in photos got a bunch of attention on Digg, by far the most inbound links I've gotten from Digg for kottke.org post. Which kinda proves the point of the eyetracking post: that Digg's predominantly male audience was very interested in clicking on a story about how men are interested in looking at other men's crotches (and then commenting about how gay they aren't for doing so). It's perfect really.
Admin/massage note
kottke.org might be a little slow today with (hopefully short) periods of downtime. I'm doing some long-overdue maintenance on the server to pave the way for a bit of future development. In Flickr parlance, kottke.org is having a massage.
Update: Alright, we had two little blips of downtime and now it looks like the site is back up and running like a finely tuned watch, a watch with a web server running on it.
Update: Took care of one last little glitch last night...should be alright now. You may need to clear your cache to make sure everything works smoothly.
kottke.org is 9 years old today
On March 14, 1998, I made the first post to this little site. And I'm still standin' (yeah yeah yeah). Here's to 9 more years. Actually, I'll settle for making it to 10. Baby steps.
In addition to my regular duties on kottke.org, I'm editing Buzzfeed today. Stories so far: Bracket Madness, Sweet Sweet Passover Coke, and 2007 Movie Season. More to come this afternoon.
And if that weren't enough excitement for one day, it's also Pi Day. (Whoa, the Pi Day web site uses Silkscreen!) I bet the Pi Dayers are really looking forward to 2015 when they can extend the fun to two additional decimal places.
Some RSS and remaindered links changes
As promised, I've made some long overdue changes to the kottke.org RSS feeds and the remaindered links. I've combined the two kottke.org feeds -- previously one contained main posts, movie posts, and book posts and the other contained the so-called remaindered links -- into one feed, located here:
If you're already subscribed to the main feed, you shouldn't have to change a thing. If you're subscribed to the remaindered feed, your newsreader (if it's smart enough) should automatically and permanently redirect you to the new feed. If not, just change the subscription to point at the above feed. If you're subscribed to both, unsubscribe from the remaindered feed. The new combined feed will mirror the front page of the site...whatever appears there will appear in the feed.
Second thing: the remaindered links are dead. Long live the remaindered links. Oh, they're still here on the site, but it's been a long time since they were just links...they're more like mini posts with no titles -- some of them are actually longer than the non-mini posts. The distinction made sense when they were included in the sidebar on the front page, but not anymore. Functionally that means no separate RSS feed, no separate archives, and no separate index page...they're all gone (or will be soon). All the remaindered links posts are still available, but they're in the main monthly archives now. The point is, you don't need to worry about any of this. Just subscribe to the above feed or come to the front page each day and you'll get everything that's new on kottke.org everyday. Simple.
Things should have worked this way for, oh, the past two years, but I just never got around to changing it. What finally kicked my butt into action were two things that happened in the past two weeks. I had coffee with Cory Doctorow last weekend. He asked how things were going with kottke.org and remarked that I'm not posting nearly as much as I used to. I replied that I had been posting as much as ever, but got the feeling that Cory was only subscribed to the main RSS feed, which only accounted for about 15-20% of my total effort on the site. I wondered how many other people out there were only subscribed to the main feed and started to, oh, I guess "fret" is the right word.
Fret turned to panic when I checked my server logs. Bloglines sends along how many people are subscribed to an RSS feed in the user-agent string that's deposited in the referer logs on the server, like so:
Bloglines/3.1 (http://www.bloglines.com; 200 subscribers)
When I compared the number of subscribers to the main feed to the number subscribing to the remaindered feed, the main feed number was nearly 3 times higher. Even worse is when I looked at my server logs for the feeds (I stopped looking at my stats months ago)...visits to the main feed are outpacing visits to the remaindered feed 5:1. Which means that somewhere between 75-85% of the people who are reading kottke.org via RSS aren't even getting most of what's on the site! Which was dumb, dumb, dumb of me to let happen for all these months and why I've now corrected the situation. Interestingly, the stats from Rojo indicate the opposite situation...way more people are subscribed to the remaindered links feed than the main feed. Weird. (Another RSS stats tidbit: I've served up 58 gigabytes of RSS so far this month. That's crazy!)
As always, your bug reports, questions, and concerns are appreciated and may be directed to jason@kottke.org.
kottke.org 5.0.0.1
Apologizing for not posting much lately is liable to get a fellow burned at the stake around these parts but since I'm feeling a little chilly today, I figured why not. Things outside kottke.org have been taking up much of my attention for the last week or so and they've made posting here regularly and with gusto more difficult than usual. Apologies.
But also, and more relevantly, I've been working on a number of improvements for kottke.org and I'm finally rolling some of them out. On the front-end, the part you see, the changes are relatively minor but things are working differently now on the back-end. I'm still using Movable Type to edit the site, but now there's a layer of PHP that takes what MT spits out, works some magic, and presents it to you folks, an arrangement that is probably a little nuts to anyone who knows their bangs from their octothorpes, but it promises to allow me more flexibility with how I want to present things around here.
Anyway, here's what's new:
- Slight changes on the front page, including dates for the short entries and separate listings for each movie "review".
- Monthly archives are now combined. Instead of going to separate pages to see the December 2006 entries for movies, books, remaindered links, and main entries, all entries are presented on one page. Books and movies are still available on their own pages.
- A pared down the archive page to remove the superfluous monthly archives, as well as little changes to pages here and there for the same reason.
- Something fun: a page of random posts from the kottke.org archives, featuring lots of broken links, really poor writing, but also some nice posts from back when. The posts randomize every time I update, which is every hour or two during the day.
That's it for now. There will be more over the weekend, I hope, including some looooooooooooooooooong overdue changes to the RSS feeds and remaindered links. As always, your bug reports, questions, and concerns are appreciated and may be directed to jason@kottke.org.
Ben Brown has a built a little site that takes the content from kottke.org's RSS feeds and adds the ability to comment on them. "Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, Jason does not allow readers to leave comments. Kottke Komments contains the same stuff as Kottke.org, but with comments turned on!" Here's more from Ben on the why/how. "The site [...] is already built to parse, combine, and remix multiple sources of content. BoingBoingBlurbs, anyone?"
The Best Links 2006
Compiling a list of the best things I've linked to from kottke.org seems to get harder each year. I estimate posting about 2400 links to kottke.org in 2006, which is roughly one link every 2.5 hours on weekdays. Which is insane...I don't know how you guys read all of that. Last year I managed to whittle down the best-of list to ~65 links (2004's list had ~40 links), but I couldn't manage less than 100 this year. (Hell, the overflow list contains another 100 links that didn't quite make the cut...hopefully I'll be posting those in a few days.)
But enough with the statistics. Besides containing some really entertaining, informative, and provoking reading/viewing material, this list also functions as kottke.org's year in ideas for 2006, akin to the annual list in the NY Times Magazine. Climate change, the industrialization of childbirth, race & class in college & professional sports, the inherent messiness of science, adults who don't want to grow up, the role of journalism in the age of information abundance, and how creative work gets done are all ideas represented in the links below. Even the funny YouTube videos signal the arrival in 2006 of online video, especially if you throw Ze Frank in the mix. Enjoy.
Pruned found art in petri dishes. More.
The M.C. Escher-inspired art of Rob Gonsalves.
David Remnick's review of An Inconvenient Truth (and short biography of post-2000 Al Gore).
A collection of color photographs of WWII-era America from the Library of Congress. (I color-corrected some of the photos.)
New Yorker piece about the possible solving of the Poincare conjecture by Grigory Perelman.
NY Times Magazine piece by Michael Lewis on Michael Oher, excerpted from his book, The Blind Side.
The Smoking Gun's takedown of James Frey was fair, accurate, and devastating.
Line Rider. Not quite a game, not quite a toy, but hours of fun.
Tetris documentary, From Russia With Love.
Stabilized version of the Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Matthew Barney and Bjork on the phone with Ikea.
The Omarosa Experiment reveals the inner workings of reality TV.
Dorodango: shiny balls of mud.
Olivo Barbieri's aerial photographs taken with a tilt-shift lens spawned some amazing Photoshopped fakes on Flickr.
Details on how to speak to a live customer support person for hundreds of companies. Indispensable.
The story of how Pixar came to be.
Wasp creates zombie cockroaches.
Falling sand, another not-a-game game.
Tap out a rhythm and Song Tapper will tell you what song it's from.
London Tube map where all the stations are sponsored by companies.
The Simpsons intro done with live actors.
Interview with Jonathan Rauch about his popular piece about introverts for The Atlantic Monthly.
Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness.
Pregnancy is a tug of war between mother and fetus over nutrients.
Extensive primers for more than three dozen film genres.
It's a bad time to start a company.
Horrible Segues, With Local Anchorman Clive Rutledge.
American Express commercial directed by Wes Anderson.
Photo essay of female Israeli soldiers.
The four different types of explanations.
Pictures I Like For a Variety of Reasons.
David Copperfield thwarts would-be robbers with slight of hand. Hands down, the link of the year.
Magnum photographer Paul Fusco's photo essay of Chernobyl survivors.
Dozens of old Sesame Street clips on YouTube.
How to cure your asthma or hayfever using hookworm.
How one man fell for a Nigerian email scam.
Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner tell us that expert performers -- in math, football, ballet, chess -- are made, not born.
Michael Wolf's 100x100, 100 photos of Hong Kong apartments each 100 square feet in size.
1989 New Yorker profile of Errol Morris.
Dozens of historical sounds in mp3 format.
10,000 sheep created by people hired online through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program.
Web 2.OH, YEAAHH!! t-shirts. Pun of the year.
Extensive gallery of Russian/Soviet propaganda and advertising posters.
Implanting magnets in your fingertips gives you a sixth magnetic sense.
A history of Manhattan's diamond district and its informal historian, Stephen Kilnisan.
Photographs of a flock of more than a million European starlings.
Photographs of burn victims by John Brownlow.
What if great photographers posted their work on the web?
Why play "what if"? Here's an Henri Cartier-Bresson being rubbished on Flickr.
An image of human eyes placed above an honesty pay box results in more people paying for their food/drinks. More.
A blue-skinned family in the hills of Kentucky. More.
Daniel Raeburn writes about his stillborn daughter Irene. About two years later, her sister Willa is born.
Easily mispronounced domain names.
Turning innocuous video clips into naughty scenes with selective bleeping. Hilarious.
Kristoffer Garin follows a group of American men on a bride-hunting trip to the Ukraine.
MotherLoad, an extremely addictive online game.
Watch as Lake Peigner drains entirely into a hole created by an errant oil drill. More info.
The Art of the Shiv, a photo essay of prison weapons.
The Show with Ze Frank. The most consistently entertaining and informative online media in 2006.
The physical impossibility of gigantic and microscopic movie creatures.
Argentina on Two Steaks a Day.
Bijou's Bag of Tricks. This photo makes me laugh until I cry.
Geoffrey Chaucer gets an Xbox 360.
Six years of daily photographs compiled into a movie.
The Voyager spacecraft escapes from the solar system.
David Foster Wallace writes about Roger Federer as Religious Experience.
The vast majority of the decisions in the Senate are made for economic reasons, not social ones.
1964 New Yorker profile of Bob Dylan.
How to Write a Fugue, featuring a fugue of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again".
State of Emergency, a surprisingly political fashion shoot from Vogue Italia.
What if the inflight announcement you heard while traveling was honest?
The photography of Corey Arnold, particularly of the Bering Sea crabbers.
Billionaire Steve Wynn pokes a hole in one of his Picassos with an errant elbow.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about the myth of prodigy.
Atul Gawande tells us how childbirth became industrialized.
2003 New Yorker profile of the late R.W. Apple by Calvin Trillin.
Time lapse video of a man putting on 155 t-shirts, one over the other.
The world's best worst movie pitches.
Why There Almost Certainly Is No God by Richard Dawkins.
Scott Adams cures himself of losing his voice.
Phil Gyford's beginner's guide to freelancing.
New Yorker profile of Will Wright.
Maureen Gibson finds a picture of her rapist on the Engagements page of her hometown newspaper.
Comedian Aries Spears does great impressions of rappers Snoop Dogg, DMX, and Jay-Z.
A cognitive neuroscience grad student games Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
How to talk to a climate skeptic.
NPR piece with Jason Simmons, professional rock, paper, scissors player.
Lasse Gjertsen's Amateur music video.
What NFL games are going to be on in your part of the country?
Photo of young homeless man Beavis shooting up in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
NPR interview with Ed Burns, creator of The Wire.
Hans van der Meer's photos of European soccer fields.
Giant magazine's list of the 50 greatest commercials of the 80s (with accompanying videos).
Slate interview with Ed Burns, creator of The Wire.
Writers Dreamtools History by Decades...facts, figures, styles, language, and goings-on for fiction writers.
Here's what kottke.org looks like using the browser on the Wii. The browser is from Opera and is available for free by going to the Wii Shop Channel, then Wii Ware, and then click "Download".
Popular posts
Philipp Lenssen recently asked some bloggers what their most popular post was:
I asked several bloggers about their most popular, or one of their most popular, blog posts -- the kind that made an impact on people, had skyrocketing traffic numbers, or triggered a meme or changes.
I was asked to answer the question, but didn't get my response in on time. Here's what I would have answered. In terms of pure traffic, it wasn't the biggest, but my 9/11 post and the resulting 2-3 weeks of posts subsequent to that probably had the biggest relative impact on the site. My traffic immediately doubled and didn't go back down after things settled down a little. You might say that those two weeks made kottke.org, just like they gave birth to the war/political blogs. That day opened a lot of bloggers' eyes to the cynical truth that the traditional news media already knew: other people's tragedy and pain sells.
I don't regret covering 9/11 the way that I did because it came from the heart and I got so much email from people, even weeks and months afterward, who genuinely appreciated my small contribution. But followin