A fascinating view of the pronunciations of words around the United States, done by Joshua Katz at North Carolina State University. Given my background, I wasn't surprised to see my own speech has origins in a rather mixed geography. I say "ben" (not "bin"), "pick-AHN", think that car-ml & carra-mel have two different meanings, say "mischievous" as three syllables, feel there is a difference between roundabout and traffic circle, have played mumbledy-peg (and called it that), call it a "roly poly", and definitely know the difference between a freeway and a highway. #
I've been listening to this album on Spotify for the past week or so, and I really like it. Think of the blues, mixed with… well… mixing. A DJ meets a stack of old blues or jazz on 45's. Father's Day is coming up... #
I saw this almost two months ago, and haven't closed the tab in my browser. I love the detail of this, the colors, and the overall feel of it. What great work by Simon Frouws. #
"Inspired by Anita Sarkeesian’s Video Game Tropes vs Women, I wanted to pitch a Zelda game where Zelda herself was the hero, rescuing a Prince Link."
I love the idea, and the sample artwork and write-up are spot-on. I'd love to play this game (although I doubt Nintendo would actually do it - which is a shame). #
Bret Victor gives us another very thoughtful essay on programming (which I admit has been opened as a tab in my browser for the past five months). I admit I'm a person who has tried to learn to program several times, and (in my opinion) failed every time, despite being able to accomplish all of the prescribed activities. Now don't get me wrong, Bret doesn't offer some miracle solution that makes it so we can all program, but I really like his examples and encouragements. All of it may be the real reason why I've taken so well to SQL - my mind has easily taken to visualizing data in that way. #
I'm to the point that I think my site is bloated. Although I like Movable Type (which is what runs this site), it's too heavy these days for what I need/want out of a site. Kirby CMS is almost in the complete opposite direction - a completely file-based CMS. I've been toying with it locally for a few weeks, and although I'm not ready to say I'm going for it, I can certainly see examples of how/when I'd use it. $40 to be database free, and insanely flexible. Very very tempting. #
Truth be told, I wasn't always a Mac/Apple user. Our first computer at our house was actually an Amiga. Unlike Apple, they weren't able to make the crawl out of financial despair. The other day I wondered if I could actually find the old game I used to play on our Amiga back in the 80's. Thanks to this emulator, a kickstart ROM, and the Boomerang & Dominion & Shark & Gerbils & Startrek ROM, I was able to relive a moment of my childhood (although my brother claimed he doesn't recognize the game when I sent him a screen shot). That computer lived for a few more years, until we ended up with a swarthy Performa 6200CD (with a 75 MHz PowerPC, we were livin' large). #
Want to make your own custom woodblock prints? Now you can, with ease. Sure, you still need to go through the effort of rolling out each one, but that's the point - they're individually made… by hand. Don't get me wrong, the insane beauty of multi-layered Japanese woodblock prints is unparalleled, but still, this is pretty cool. I'd go for something fairly small, so I could use it as stationary, but then again, nobody is offering to buy one for me. #
This handy little OS X application will let you use that non-standard gamepad (like an old school SNES gamepad, along with one of Retro USB's USB Super RetroPort), and use it in any application. USB Overdrive can too, but it's too much for my purposes. Now don't get me wrong, Richard Bannister's perfect Emulator Enhancer is all you need for SNES9X, Nestopia, or Visual Boy Advance. One of its best features is the ease of being able to turn it on/off, and to have different profiles for different programs… and you can't beat the price. #
I love the design of these cards. It doesn't look like any faces are customized apart from the usual Ace of Spades and Joker, but those designs, as well as the design of the box and card backs, I think they're gorgeous. Last time I bought cards from Theory11 (which was for a few boxes of these Sentinals), I was blown away. Those were/are gorgeous cards. And, I've said nothing of the cool laser-etched wood box you can buy as well. #