C. K. Sample III › Comments

PHONE LAUNCH: Nokia E72 hits store shelves, costs €350 unlocked - C. K. Sample III

shitmydadsays: "I don't need more friends. You got friends and all they do is ask you to help them move. Fuck that. I'm old. I'm through moving shit." - C. K. Sample III

[Jani] built his own photography ring light based on automotive LED rings. The rings he used are meant to encircle headlights on a car and are available at a low cost. The assembly is built around a filter that attaches to his camera lens. Two rings of LEDs are then glued to a case made from the plastic of a CD-R container. To diffuse the light, he sanded both sides of the clear plastic housing to make it opaque. LED rings operate on DC power and unlike a ring flash, they provide constant light to help set up your shot. His finished project is well-built and should come in between $10-20. - C. K. Sample III

Today, Twitter moved into a new, much larger office in San Francisco. The space, which was previously Bebo’s SF office, is right around the corner from their old one. A few members of the Twitter team spent much of the weekend decorating the new digs with a number of Twitter-themed elements like birds and @ symbols. Check out some of the pictures being posted to the web by Twitter employees below. And yes, there is a DJ booth — and apparently vanity mirrors in the toilet stalls. [photos: flickr/ryansking, twitpic/caroline, yfrog/robey, twitpic/wfarner, twitpic/jennadawn] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors - C. K. Sample III

Twitter's own homepage is still the most popular tool for users to update their status on Twitter. Around 46% of all updates are made directly on the site. Social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...'; tweetmeme_source = 'rww'; analyzed 500 million tweets it collected over the past 5 months and found that TweetDeck is the most popular third-party client. TweetDeck has a comfortable lead with a 8.48% share of the market, followed by Tweetie, Twitterific and Seesmic. Sponsor Compared to Sysomos' last study of Twitter clients in June, Twitter.com's share fell from 55% to 46%. As Twitter's growth is slowing down, then these numbers make a lot of sense. New users tend to use Twitter's web interface at first and then migrate to a third-party client. If Twitter.com's market share among Twitter clients is dropping, then this can be seen as a strong indication that the number... - C. K. Sample III

I got this nice comment from DB Dowd the other day and figured I'd share my response here: Hey Chris, congratulations on your set of drawings. I'm the source of this obnoxious but wonderful challenge, via Bob. So what did you ultimately get out of the experience? As a more-or-less fully formed professional with a coherent style, did you learn anything from it? It tends to work pretty well as a diagnostic tool for students (who often devalue or overlook what they naturally do well) but I haven't seen someone like you actually do it. So I'm curious--what did the process yield for you? Bob Flynn asked me some of the same questions and overall, I think I did learn something (way to be vague, Chris!). It wasn't so much the amount of time I spent at the drawing board in two days, but it was the amount of different illustrations that this exercise forced me to do in such a short amount of time. I learned far more about my thinking and creative habits than my drawing habits (although I still... - C. K. Sample III

itwbennett writes "What do your comments say about your code? Do grammatical errors in comments point to even bigger errors in code? That's what Esther Schindler contends in a recent blog post. 'Programming, whether you're doing it as an open source enthusiast or because you're workin' for The Man, is an exercise in attention to detail,' says Schindler. 'Someone who writes software must be a nit-picker, or the code won't work.... Long-winded 'explanations' of the code in the application's comments (that is, the ones that read like excuses), indicate that the developer probably didn't understand what he was doing.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. - C. K. Sample III

It seems the least Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza could do was offer a full scholarship. Ryan announced on the Least I Could Do website on Friday that they have created "The Rayne Summers Webcomic Scholarship", at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont: Beginning in the fall of '10, we will be covering the full tuition for the selected applicant. The applicant who, I might add, is working towards a career in webcomics. Over the course of the next 5 years, we plan on adding 1 student per year, thus by 2015, the Scholarship will be putting 5 students through the program per year. This scholarship will be managed by Blind Ferret, though there will be heavy involvement from others in our field, in the form of a board of Directors and a selection committee. More information will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks, including fund raising events, application rules and deadlines and more. Keep an eye on this space. Applause, applause, gentlemen. And this actually hints at a bigger... - C. K. Sample III

The Times has published an extract of Vladimir Nabokov's supposed-to-be-destroyed final novel, The Original of Laura. The book is out on Tuesday; cover by Chip Kidd. Tags: books   The Original of Laura   Vladimir Nabokov - C. K. Sample III

Nifty interactive tutorial by John Resig.  ★ - C. K. Sample III

In a surprise move, Activision has released Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies for the iPhone. This first person shooter is a Zombie survival mode adapted from the console version of the massively popular Call of Duty game. This Zombie mode was an unlockable mode in the console version and pits you against endless waves of Zombie invaders breaking down barriers as you try to defend your position by rebuilding barricades and upgrading your weaponry. The iPhone version of the game includes one map "Nacht der Untoten" but Activision promises an add-on purchase for The Zombie Asylum, Verrückt in the near future. The game comes with both single player and multi-player Co-op modes that supports bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Online play. Yep, Online play. That means you can match up with 3 other players around the world and play together to defend your building. The gameplay video below shows some of this in action. The game comes with three sets of controls: dual-stick, tilt, and swipe look. Both... - C. K. Sample III

A movie adaptation of author/producer Frank Beddor's young adult book trilogy The Looking Glass Wars is in the works.  During an appearance to promote the third book in the series, ArchEnemy, on Good Morning America on Friday, Beddor said he was working with producer Charles Roven (The Dark Knight, Rex Libris) to bring The Looking Glass Wars to the big screen. The series has already spun off a graphic novel version and the spinoff series Hatter M, written by Beddor and Liz Cavalier with art by Ben Templesmith in volume 1 and Sami Makkonen in volume 2. A lengthy preview of the series can be found at HatterM.com. - C. K. Sample III

Whether your just want a quick and fun way to add some color to your kid’s room or playroom, or you don’t want to have to do any major redecorating every time he changes his mind about whether Batman or Spiderman is coolest, Peel & Stick Appliques ($varies) make short work of any blank ... Visit Playgrounder for the full post. - C. K. Sample III

Back in the day, the multitrack tool of choice for bedroom Springsteens was an analog four-track recorder from companies like Tascam. But with the advent of cheap laptops and powerful digital tools like ProTools, Logic, and Garageband, even the cheapest guitar slinger moved his workstation to the computer. The new solutions were a huge step forward for home studio enthusiasts, but new digital recording tools are going beyond the computer—into the pocket and onto the Web. The increasing power of smartphones means that musicians can now carry a complete digital scratch pad in their pockets, while moving the recording application to the Web allows simple collaboration with anyone from around the world, lowers the cost of entry, and provides access to a mixing console from any computer on the planet. - C. K. Sample III

It was just 11 days ago that Microsoft’s “ambassador to startups” Don Dodge was laid off as part of a broader workforce reduction. Last week he showed up in Silicon Valley to “see friends” as he put it. But it was clear that he was also interviewing for jobs. We sat down with him to do a proper exit interview while he was in town. I got a few tips from Googlers that he was seen roaming their Mountain View headquarters, and I confirmed tonight that he has been offered a job at the company. He has accepted, and will shortly begin working for the company that he only recently considered the enemy. It’s unheard of for Google to go from a first interview to an offer in such a short period of time. For Dodge, the process from first interview to first day on the job was less than a week. He’ll be working for another ex-Microsofter, Vic Gundotra. Gundotra worked 15 years at Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft’s developer outreach efforts. He joined Google in 2007 as VP Engineering,... - C. K. Sample III

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The new Kindle feature is intended to replace the old one, not to supplement it. The old feature generates a big HTML file every day or week for each user and emails it to Amazon’s email conversion and transfer service. This is the only way to get content automatically delivered to a Kindle. Unfortunately, it’s extremely unreliable. Very few people use it, yet I think I’ve heard from nearly all of them at least once about missing deliveries and content never getting through. Some have been told by Amazon that they were filtering my deliveries. Some were able to have these filters removed. I’ve attempted to get in touch with Amazon many times, through both official channels and business connections, and have never received a response. It’s clear to me that Amazon doesn’t want me to continue doing this. The new feature allows you to download saved articles as a .mobi file, readable directly by the Kindle if you transfer it via USB. It doesn’t involve Amazon at all, and therefore cannot... - C. K. Sample III

Superman I didn&apost know you had Super Handsomeness - C. K. Sample III

Review: Chess Genius—$9.99 Released: December 6th, 2008 Developer/Distributor: Lang Software Limited Genre: Games Version 2.0 tested on a 16GB iPhone 3GS Chess Genius is the first chess application for the iPhone that I purchased. I bought it, because I enjoy playing chess and trying to improve my game, and the application is the only one that will let you load PGN databases from the internet onto your iPhone so that you can study multiple games that are freely available online. You can also save your own games to your iPhone and email games to yourself as PGN files. As a portable chess database, notation system, and study aide, Chess Genius is a great chess application. However, if you’re not interested in those features, then you’re probably better off with an application like Glaurung Chess for iPhone, which is free and which I reviewed previously here. The feature set of the two programs is very similar. Although both apps have a hint function and various levels, there is no real... - C. K. Sample III

Submitted by: fred staal. the shaver is mine via Submit a Kludge! - C. K. Sample III

C.K. Sample III posted a photo: - C. K. Sample III

pickens writes "Denmark has unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, sunscreen lotion, and moisturizing cream. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminizing male children all over the developed world. Research at Rotterdam's Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes. 'The amounts that two-year-olds absorb from the [preservatives] parabens propylparaben and butylparaben can constitute a risk for oestrogen-like disruptions of the endocrine system,' says the report. The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the sex of babies. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact... - C. K. Sample III

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen is one lucky man. Not only did he get to swim and take photos of a 12-foot leopard seal in the Antarctic (and didn’t get eaten), he was actually "adopted" by it! I slipped into the water, terrified of what might happen, and I swam up to this leopard seal. My legs were shaking and I had dry mouth. Right away she dropped the penguin. She came up to me and she opened her mouth … and her head is twice as wide as a grizzly bear’s head. She’s huge. She took my whole head and my camera inside her head and did this threat display. But then the most remarkable thing happen. She went off and got me a live penguin. She came up and she started to feed me a penguin. She kept letting these live penguins go and the penguin would shoot past me and she’d look disgusted as she go by me. She did this over and over. And then I think she realized that I was this useless predator in her ocean, probably going to starve to death and I think she became quite... - C. K. Sample III

With that mini ear-to-head ratio AND yawing action, this pup might start a cute vortex in the time/space continuum we’d be unable to close. Amy O., don’t get sucked in! Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Pups - C. K. Sample III

tugfoigel writes "Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two bodies the size of earth with oxygen-rich atmospheres — however, there is a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves. These are not planets, but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars." The objects, 220 and 400 light-years distant, are believed to be remnants of stars between 7 and 10 solar masses. Such stars, the largest that evolve to white dwarves, have been sought for years. If the stars were a little more massive they would collapse to neutron stars, or so the theory goes. Here is the paper on the arXiv. Read more of this story at Slashdot. - C. K. Sample III

It took only a little googling, but it isn’t dead obvious — until you know how to do it — so here’s how you connect your Droid to your Mac. Connect the two via USB. Pull down the Notifications sheet on the Droid. You do that by pulling with your giner on the very topmost menu bar in the system. You should see a USB symbol in that bar. Click on the obvious entry in the notifications, which says something like “Turn on USB” or some such. Check the Finder on your Mac. It should show a “NO NAME” mounted under devices. Welcome to your Droid. (And then be prepared to trash your SD card by accident.) - C. K. Sample III

Snap Hendrick - Deceased Had a hard time coming to terms with his white tan-resistant skin. It turned out for the best - when his blood stopped flowing, he was already very used to looking pale so had an easier time than most making the adjustment. - C. K. Sample III

Submitted by: Driving around via Submit a Kludge! - C. K. Sample III

My parents are awesome has to be one of the best tumblr accounts to date – the simply concept is it posts retro pictures of parents, who are looking awesome. Your parents were awesome, too, so why don’t you send in an awesome picture? Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome. Link – via cakeheadlovesevil From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cakehead loves evil. - C. K. Sample III

If anybody wants to let me know where the Gizmo download links disappeared to, I’d sure appreciate it.  After fighting with Gizmo for many months about a year ago, trying to keep it from becoming corrupt on my Mac (which required me to reinstall it repeatedly), I eventually gave up on it, switched to Skype, and then eventually stopped using IM altogether. Now I can’t blame that on Gizmo.  Much of it has to do with the SwitchVox system and iPhone I adopted for business use–those two have been transformational to the way I communicate daily.  But now that Google has lapped up the Project, I’m interested in seeing if the Mac version has lost its self-destructive tendencies. But presto the download links are gone.  Boo. - C. K. Sample III