2012.11.26 Jerrod Maruyama - Breakfast Buddies (Flickr)

I'd like to have a bowl of cereal right now, thanks in part to an insubstantial lunch, and the memories of staring at each of these boxes growing up. Even after all these years, I still think Corn Flakes is a crappy cereal. #

2012.11.26 DKNG Studios - The Films of Wes Anderson

I'm not a devout fan of Wes Anderson's films, but I've enjoyed those that I've seen, and I like the feel of each of them. As you might guess, I really like the design of this poster, and the insight into the design process. #

2012.11.17 Spelunky v1.3 (and Source)

I'm clearly late to the game on Spelunky, but I have don't own an XBox, nor do I intend to play games on a PC… but on my Mac? Absofruitly. The controls are a bit weird to get used to, and there is no doubt that the game is hard, but I agree with Andy - it feels fair. To keep you interested, I love that the levels are random. I'm just trying not to get my butt kicked. Maybe this next time I play that won't happen. #

2012.11.12 United Pixelworkers - Standard Issue Patch

$5. I'm not sure how one of these won't end up belonging to me (though I admit they look quite a bit familiar (the Draplin-designed logo of UP obviously contributes). Maybe I'll just make sure to keep the two separated. #

2012.11.12 Retro Game Crunch - Kickstarter

It's no secret I pretty much have a man crush on Shaun Inman. Now he's gone and come up with a Kickstarter project involving the same two collaborators as he worked with for Super Clew Land. You should back it. $25 for 6 7 games from him is a bargain, though that $75 tier sure looks appealing. #

2012.11.12 Mille Bornes Design

An interesting view into the historic design of Mille Bornes - a fabulous game I've always enjoyed. Growing up, we had the 1971 version in my home, which sported the 1960 card design. I'm intrigued by the “edition spécial”, but no matter which version we play, I'm most certainly going to try to Coup fourré you. #

2012.07.19 Vulture’s Downton Abbey Paper Dolls

I saw this months ago, but didn't actually watch Downton Abbey until recently. If you haven't watched the show, you really should. It's fabulous (you can get both Season 1 and Season 2 really easily). Afterwards, create all your own scenes with these fun paper dolls. #

2012.07.18 xkcd: United Shapes of America

I'm particularly pleased to see this is available as a print. I've already purchased it, but I admit I might not hang it. That's just how I roll. Check out the detail on Colorado, because it's particularly entertaining. #

2012.06.12 Readlists.com

The folks at arc90/Readability have created something I really like (though I'm still leery of them). Readlists give you the ability to create eBooks from a compilation of URLs. Simply type/paste in all the different pages you want combined, and it'll generate an eBook for you in multiple formats. It's perfect for things spread out over multiple pages (like Tor.com's Rothfuss Reread (see my Name of the Wind & The Wise Man's Fear readlists)).

I suppose that Marco Arment's brilliant Instapaper could do this same thing. You can just organize things in a folder, and export that individual folder as an ebook. The (current) benefit of Readlists is that they can be renamed, organized, and shared. #

2012.06.12 Merge MP3 Files with the "cat" Unix Command

I enjoy listening to audio books, and wanted a way to mash all of those three-minute tracks together. It's a multi-step process, but worth it to narrow down the number of files. Here are the steps I take:

1. I organize all of my MP3s into nicely named folders, like "Chapter 1". Tricky, I know.
2. Now, you should remove all the ID3 tags (the meta data inside each MP3 that has the Title, Artist, etc). I use my favorite ID3 tag editor - Media Rage. In the Data Remover tool, just set the MP3 ID3v2 and ID3v1 tag to "None", and process all of your nicely named/organized MP3s.
3. Now go through the step explained on this page. Basically, cd into each directory, and then run that happy "cat" command. If I continue our example, I'd go with "cat * Chapter01.mp3". Avoid spaces in the file name (I don't want to go into escaping spaces). Do that with each folder you want combined.
4. You're done, but I'd go through and move each of your new files into a folder, and go back and re-add ID3 tags. Again, use Media Rage. It's awesome (especially at this point, where it can read the file names, and put them into the ID3 tags automagically. Yes. It's magic.)

Or, you could do it a different, super simple way, and pay $6 for the great OS X application Audiobook Builder. I admit I like to have the combined MP3s in addition to the nicely formatted M4B file. So, after I go through the above steps, I throw them into Audiobook Builder, and get that iTunes/iOS-friendly file (so I can play the files at double-speed). #