|
|
Michael Verdi |
|
|
-
Posts
Any liberal (or sane moderate for that matter) would be crazy to say that we’re not better off today than we would have been had Obama not been elected. Of course we are. But that fact doesn’t negate the (still ignored by Sullivan et al.) criticism of the President: That he baited us with the reform rhetoric, and then switched to the administration promised by H. Clinton.
Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.
You’ve seen a million SOPA/PIPA posts today. This is the most important one.
Walkthough from Riven which which took me the better part of 1998 to complete. I love love love this game.
Inspired by another post here on Tumblr, I decided to look into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong a bit more, it truly was one of the most amazing and terrifying places on earth. Being slightly smaller than an NFL stadium, the structure was built of 350 smaller interconnected buildings and hosted, at it’s peak, a population density of 5 million people per square mile.
To put those numbers in perspective, this would be like taking the entire population of metro Philadelphia, the 4th largest in the US, and putting it in 1 square mile instead of 1,744.
The area was also largely ungoverned and unregulated. Factories, apartments, schools, temples, churches, shops, cafes, hotels and almost anything else one could imagine were housed within the structure that never had a full blueprint of it done. Buildings were built onto buildings, expanded, rebuilt, and re-purposed as needed without a central authority of any kind.
Within the structure, natural light was almost non-existent, and an unknown number of miles of jury-rigged wires provided electricity to everything. Water constantly dripped down to the lower levels from both rain and leaking pipes, while garbage filled every passage. A constant yellow haze filled the structure and there were never any government safety inspections.
The Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the early 1990s as part of the deal that returned Hong Kong to the Chinese from the British. The entire area is now a park.
I find places like this fascinating, it is just incredible what we, humans, build and live in. This, hive, for lack of a better term, was one of the most interesting structures I’ve yet looked at.
For a documentary shot inside of the Kowloon Walled City, check here:
Hackasaurus, X-Ray Goggles for the Web
Atul Varma wants everyone to know how the worldwide web works. He envisions a generation of web makers: people as at home in the code language underlying the web as in the sites and social media tools that sit on its surface. This vision led Varma to spend the last year developing a neat new online tool for youth, called Hackasaurus.
- Did I Dream You Dreamed About Me?
My favorite 11 versions of ‘Song to the Siren’
01. This Mortal Coil
02. John Frusciante
03. Sinead O’Connor
05. Bryan Ferry (Somerset & Monkman version)
10. The Czars
The two basic topics which fascinate me are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?” Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again.
-
Posts
- Dec 30, 11
My earliest memory is just horror and dread. I’m being held, paralyzed on the floor by Lady Elaine. Yes, that Lady Elaine — the creeptastic puppet from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Only she’s not a puppet. She’s a tiny, crazy bitch. And we’re right there in the living room with my parents but they can’t see what’s happening. With every bit of energy I have I’m trying to scream but nothing comes out. I can’t breath, I can’t move and every nerve is on fire because Lady Elaine is force-choking the hell out of me. Then she leans in close, poking her red, bulbous nose at me and showering spittle in my face as she seethes, “If you even think about saying a single word, I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll wish you were dead.” And just like that, I fully enter my body and I can breath again.
-
Talkbot
One of these days we'll make a new season of Talkbot.
While you're waiting, kick back and watch Season 3.
-
Photos
-
Tweets
- "The scene outside the window suggested the world had settled in a place somewhere midway between 'being miserable' and 'lacking in joy'"
- Banana Day - the day that your bananas ripen and you have to eat 5 to keep them from going to waste.
- Was out running 6.87 miles with #Endomondo. See it here: http://t.co/6G0K67sv
- Thanks @jaydedman for introducing me to Haruki Murakami. His new book 1Q84 is so good, I don't want it to end.
- Was out running 4.99 miles with #Endomondo. See it here: http://t.co/amLrXrku
-
Posts
- Jan 09, 12
This is weekly Mozilla project meeting for January 9, 2012. These are great for keeping up with the cool stuff happening all over the project. Here are the meeting notes.
- Jan 04, 12
David and I went to Mozcamp Asia in Kuala Lumpur back in November. It was fantastic and afterwards we got to spend a day seeing some of the sights. These are few moments from the trip, including a failed attempt at creating a special What’s Up With SUMO introduction (like this one).
- Jan 04, 12
I attended Mozcamp Asia back in November. Here are a few moments from the weekend.
- Aug 09, 11
We have a lot of troubleshooting articles on the Firefox Help site and they come in handy all the time. But sometimes, it’s just not worth all the effort to try to figure out what the problem is — especially if it’s something like “generally slow and crashy.” Sometimes it’s just easier to start fresh. This two minute procedure will make Firefox new again. The caveat is that this will remove your bookmarks, history, passwords and add-ons.
- Aug 01, 11
Instead of hunting all over Firefox to change various website permissions, the Permissions Manager now collects them all in one place. You can customize permissions for individual sites or set the default permissions for all sites. This video will get you started. Note: This feature is now in the release version of Firefox – grab it and then learn more about how it works on the Firefox Help site.
- May 11, 11
Firefox 4 doesn’t ask you to save your tabs when you quit (like Firefox 3.6 did). Instead it let’s you open them after you start Firefox. This video explains how it works. Get more info about this on the Firefox Help site.
- May 05, 11
Hands down, the Awesome Bar is my favorite Firefox feature. I no longer worry about organizing my bookmarks. I just start typing the name of the site I want to go to and the Awesome Bar finds it for me after just a few keystrokes.
- May 05, 11
Tab groups are one of my favorite new Firefox features. They are so helpful for managing a lot of tabs that I can’t imagine using a browser without them.
- May 05, 11
If you forget to use private browsing mode, you can clear your browsing history when you’re done. Check out the Firefox Help site for more details.
