Mar
17
This prototype of a Microsoft iPad-alternative looks surprisingly useful and well-designed. This video is dated before Apple’s announcement, so it’s not a iPad clone.
Given this video and their pretty decent IE9 preview release, can we conclude that Microsoft is not really going extinct after all?
Mar
11
Christophe Gevrey took this picture of the Promenade, close (<200 meters) to where I live.
Still can’t believe I actually live there 
Mar
8
As sung by Rodney Carrington
No-one thinks of fighting, when they see a topless girl
Maybe if you’d show yours too, we could…
…saaaaave the world
Mar
3
Feb
25
Feb
23
Feb
15
In honour of yesterday’s Valentine day: Tim Minchin’s “If I didn’t have you”. A cynical, statistically correct love song. The engineer in me appreciates this
Lyrics:
Read more »
Jan
26
When choosing a font for use on a website, you are restricted to one of the 15 or so “web fonts“. That sucks. The only way you can use a different font is by resorting to hacks such as Cufon, sIFR or FLIR.
But if you do that, you’ve only solved half the problem. You’re still in muddy waters regarding the licensing of the fonts you’re using, possibly opening yourself to future litigation. And, whether you choose Cufon, sIFR or FLIR, the text that’s in a different font will behave differently than ‘regular’ text. You can’t select it, copy it or edit it like ‘regular’ text. That’s because it’s not regular text. It’s a Javascript image, Flash movie, or plain image - respectively. That sucks!
Fortunately, there’s a solution for that: the CSS3 @font-face tag. It allows you to set the font of any given text on your web page. If the user does not have the font you indicated, it will be downloaded and used. It even works cross-browser.
So only the legal issue remains. Obviously, you can’t redistribute high quality commercial fonts like Minion or ITC Franklin Gothic. The companies holding the rights won’t allow it, and probably rightfully so.
So what to do? As Mark Pilgrim so eloquently stated: Fuck the foundries. If we can’t legally use their fonts on a web page, then we’ll have to look for high quality fonts that we CAN use on a web page.
And that’s when I came across Font Squirrel, and I must say: I LOVE IT! Free high quality fonts that you can use on your website. 100% free for commercial use. No licensing issues! Just what web typography needed
Jan
23
Matthew Albanese creates fake photorealistic pictures by building scale models and photographing them from a specific angle.
For example, this image does not show a real volcano:
Really, it doesn’t. Proof: Read more »
Jan
23
Peter Schiff is the clearest thinking American economist.
Jan
21
Jan
20
Jan
4
I read this quote today and it somehow reminded me about Fox News…
never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
But the thing is, it’s not about Fox News, but from a psychological profile prepared during WW2 by the United States Office of Strategic Services.
Jan
3
Dec
25
Dec
25
Dec
17
”Scientists and engineers can use the 3-D bio printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3-D,” said Murphy. “Researchers can place liver cells on a preformed scaffold, support kidney cells with a co-printed scaffold, or form adjacent layers of epithelial and stromal soft tissue that grow into a mature tooth. Ultimately the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses, and the best way to do that is get a number of bio-printers into the hands of researchers and give them the ability to make three dimensional tissues on demand.”
Dec
14
Some genius (cough) has made some nice pictures of a yearly Genevan tradition called l’Escalade
Nice
Dec
14
Dec
14
Dec
12
Dec
10
So how do all the different European Partnerships relate to each other? This diagram from Wikipedia provides some insight.
Bonus points if you can identify every flag
Dec
4
Dec
4
Nov
26
Nov
25
More Muppets! This one is truly genius.
It’s part of an all new (!) series of Muppets clips, available on YouTube.
Nov
23
Nov
18
Today, across South Korea, 650,000 high school seniors will face the most crucial evaluation of their young lives: the national college entrance examination. And on this day each year, a nation of 48 million holds its collective breath: Grounding airplanes and shushing car horns, noisy vehicular traffic, even loud conversations.
(…)
Efforts to ensure fairness are often mind-boggling.
In Seoul this year, nearly 100 domestic flights at nearby Gimpo Airport will be either delayed or canceled so as not to conflict with the exam at surrounding schools, according to the Korea Airports Assn.
Morning commute hours will also be delayed in most large cities so students won’t get tangled in traffic en route to their test sites. Those who do can request a police escort to make it on time.
Even the national stock market opens an hour later, to account for tardy employees.
At each school where the exam is given, a team of police officers patrols the surrounding neighborhood to ensure quiet. That means no roaring motorcycles or unnecessary horn-blowing.
Nov
12
Nov
12
I think this is the first time I ever found something funny on Twitter. Some guy is twittering things his 73-year-old father says, and it’s hilarious:
“Don’t touch the bacon, it’s not done yet. You let me handle the bacon, and i’ll let you handle..what ever it is you do. I guess nothing.”
“The dog don’t like you planting stuff there. It’s his backyard. If you’re the only one who shits in something, you own it. Remember that.”
“The worst thing you can be is a liar….Okay fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but THEN, number two is liar. Nazi 1, Liar 2″
“Here’s a strawberry, sorry for farting near you…Hey! Either take the strawberry and stop bitching, or no strawberry, that’s the deal.”
Nov
12
More unconventional charts and graphics at Lunchbreath’s Flickr-stream.
Nov
9
Are you sure this is safe?
And why are these people laughing? Well, because they are…
Read more »
Nov
9
Oct
29
1. Ask them why they are bitter against God.
2. Tell them that if there’s no God, they might as well go out and kill people.
3. Ask them to pray with you.
4. Invite their children to go to church with you.
5. Insist that there is a God, and show them where in the Bible it says so.
6. …
7. …
Maybe a little bit too bitter, but some made me laugh anyway.
Oct
27
Oct
26
Oct
25
At Cleverbot.com you can talk to a computer program. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very clever yet:
User: Do you know the difference between white and black?
Cleverbot: Yes I know the difference.
User: Tell me.
Cleverbot: I have ears.
User: That’s not a very good answer.
Cleverbot: Yes. You think I am christina : I lied.
User: My my, the turing test is still way off for you, now isn’t it?
Cleverbot: The cuisine is more sweet than Biblical.
User: You call yourself clever?
Cleverbot: Hell yes I do.
User: Because a point about the turing test implies a reply about cuisine and the bible?
Cleverbot: What the heck?
User: Ok, simple things then.
Cleverbot: Like?
User: Nice weather, hey?
Cleverbot: Very nice!
User: Has it been this nice for a long time?
Cleverbot: About 7 years.
User: 7 years of nice weather - wow. You are one lucky bot!
Cleverbot: We don’t have ‘food’, only Mars bars.
Cleverbot (To myself): I love Mars bars.
Oct
24
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has done some serious science on how to boil an egg - and he found a way to boil it perfection, time and time again:
In this image, the egg to the right has been in the water for half an hour longer than the egg to the left, yet they’re both perfectly cooked.
Oct
22
JL Rodriguez won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award with this stunning photo of an Iberian wolf:
Oct
17
“Researchers have devised a way to write memories onto the brains of flies, revealing which brain cells are involved in making bad memories.”
