"When we last saw master bladesmith Tony Swatton, he made a fully functional axe modeled after Gimli's from The Lord of the Rings. Most recently, he created a battle-ready version of the bat'leth, a sword from Star Trek. Qapla'! His tempered steel sword is ready to sever Jem'Hadar heads. At the link, you can watch a video of Mr. Swatton making the sword. Be sure to watch until the end, which shows his assistants attacking targets with the bat'leth."
- Me
from Bookmarklet
"Sandwich Monsters is a project by New York-based art director Kaisa Haupt of delicious photos of creatures, animals and well-known pop culture characters built out of sandwiches."
- Anika
from Bookmarklet
Lol. Yes, mommy has hypermesis and has been home for the past month with no end in sight. Other than the constant vomiting everyone is healthy.
- Mary Carmen
from iPhone
I just saw your pregnancy whine post and I think all of downtown Sac heard me say, "Wait, she's pregnant?" (scroll back scroll back scroll back, find announcement) Wow! Congrats to you and Scott.
- Corinne L
what's the construction? anything on the bottom to isolate the box soil from the ground soil?
- Joe Silence
i ask cos the soil in my city is something i would never grow food in.
- Joe Silence
Yeah, there's a layer of alfalfa on the bottom, and then flattened cardboard boxes atop that.
- Bill Mason
I'd really like to build something like this, except that I'm not very knowledgeable about gardening. I used to help my grandmother with her (50+ years ago) but didn't take any notes! Also, I'm guessing it's important that they be reasonably level, so I'd have to terrace my back yard a bit more. Maybe one box per terrace or something.
- Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ
"Giving a little bit of formula - the equivalent of a single bottle over several days - to a newborn who's losing too much weight after birth might actually increase the likelihood that the baby will be breast-feeding three months later, according to a small Bay Area study. In a climate of aggressive public health policy trying to cut down on formula use and encourage new moms to give infants only breast milk, the study results are likely to be controversial, and they may seem counterintuitive, the authors said. But for a select group of new mothers who are eager to breast-feed, small doses of formula, given for a short and carefully monitored time, may alleviate some of the stress associated with breast-feeding and, in turn, give them confidence to stick with it, said Dr. Valerie Flaherman, lead author of the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. "This study does not mean that all babies should get formula or that formula is better than breast-feeding. It's my strong...
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- Anne Bouey
from Bookmarklet
"But in the United States, while roughly three-quarters of mothers attempt to breast-feed, only 30 percent of them are breast-feeding exclusively at three months, and less than a quarter are breast-feeding at all by the time the baby is a year old. The reasons women stop breast-feeding are varied and complicated and not always well understood. One possibility that the study authors...
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- Anne Bouey
"The study authors agreed that their results may not apply across the country, and they noted that Bay Area women in general are much more eager to breast-feed than women in other parts of the country. At UCSF, 98 percent of women who give birth there leave the hospital at least having started to breast-feed. Suggesting any amount of formula supplementation, if only a couple of...
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- Anne Bouey
One of my friends did something like this, and it helped a lot (she was having production issues, so there literally wasn't enough to feed her son by itself for the first month.)
- Jennifer Dittrich
Breast feeding can be such a minefield. It was so hard with our first kid, and got easier with the others. But still, it can be really hard and all of them had some formula here and there. Trying to relax enough to realise that it's not the end of the world can be so difficult.
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
It's really tricky, because the way to increase milk production is to continue feeding: the tactile stimulus from feeding is what stimulates prolactin and oxytocin production which leads to more milk. But I think the key is that mothers shouldn't be stigmatized due to their feeding choices, which I think a lot of breastfeeding advocates aren't partcularly sensitive of. Sure, there are a lot of benefits to breastfeeding, but a lot of those benefits can be realized with a limited course of breastfeeding.
- Victor Ganata
(My comments on breastfeeding advocates are, admittedly, limited to my experiences rounding in newborn nurseries during residency and my mom's anecdotes from working as a nurse on a mother-baby unit—she's not a big fan of the drive towards exclusive breastfeeding and she'd frequently tell me about all the mothers who were reduced to tears because they had problems with feeding their baby.)
- Victor Ganata
The more the baby suckles, the more milk is produced. That's the general rule. But if you have sore, cracked and bleeding nipples, are ill, or in the throes of painful mastitis then knowing you can have a break can mean the difference between carrying on and giving up all together. It's really hard to be kind to yourself when you feel like giving a bottle is failure, so I'm all for pragmatism and understanding.
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
I agree with you Victor. Lots of my friends have had children here in the Bay Area and lost of them have had huge amount of pressure put on them to breastfeed only. Some pushed themselves too hard when signs of problems (cracking, mastitis, etc) showed and tried to power through, only making the problems worse. If they had done a little of both they may have been able to treat the...
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- Rachel Lea Fox
An extremely rare white rhino, of which there are only four left in the entire world, in the Kenyan Ol Pejeta reservation, roams about the plains flanked by armed bodyguards - Imgur - http://imgur.com/gallery/trLr6
John's post made me look up some figures about how many are actually left in the world and found this which makes me both sad and happy, but mainly sad that the human race is still so ignorant, i don't mean that in a rude way, but seriously, we are failing to educate people, i know ancient traditions are hard to deal with, but it's 2013 for goodness sakes :'(
- Halil
from Bookmarklet
Also so strange that the Northern White Rhino and the Sourthern White Rhino are not sub-categories of the White Rhino species but that the Northern White Rhino is a species of it's own separated genetically for over a million years. I have had the privilege of being up close and personal with the less at risk Southern White Rhino and they are just amazing and wonderful creatures. It makes me so sad whenever I hear about any poaching of any type of these creatures. :(
- Rachel Lea Fox
Reading the comments on the article/image is awesome. "I would pet the shit out of that beautiful rhino." "He looks so epic and full of wisdom." "fuck humans, that he NEEDS to be guarded."
- Hookuh Tinypants
Hmmm, so you liberated that poor low flush toilet from the confines of the smallest room so it can be a free range, outside lavvy? Good job!
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
No need for a fan or lighting a match.
- c.a.j.
from Android
I wish my toilet came with an opener (and was situated outside.) Pooping under a blue sky while drinkin' a beer is every redneck's dream! (Though I'm not a redneck. Honest.)
- Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ
Hah! You're both right. Just came from my physical -- clean bill of health other than a bit of cholesterol and vision starting to go. So I have a lot to be grateful for. But 50 is only four years off, how did this happen?
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
I have a sudden urge to get a sports car for some reason. Blondes seem attractive. What does this mean???
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
Yeah, I'm definitely more scared being this close to 50 but that has a lot more to do with where I personally am in my life than the age of 50 itself. I'm sure other people do really well with it. (I'm permanently about 22 in my head...except slightly wiser and more world weary. You can be permanently 35 in your head!)
- Spidra Webster
In all seriousness, there's a certain feeling of triumph that comes with getting a clean bill of health after a CPE. I had mine today too.
- Jim #TeamMonique
You youngun. Ya know - we have a grownups' table you can join here at 50. Remember, m9m? Also, I didn't even start learning proper HTML/CSS until I was 47, nearly six years ago.
- Mary B: #TeamMonique
LOL Mary, these are the true hours of aged wisdom, right?
- Janet:#TeamMonique
Does this mean I'm not old enough to be your friend Janet?
- Headless Gnad Kicker
Apparently. Also, the pills are in the kitchen. ;-) And I've been going to stand up and go there for an hour.
- Mary B: #TeamMonique
I worked a 13 hour shift and came home to become very angry with other half. Anger does not bode well for sleep. Going to see if I can grab two more hours before I am back at work. Hope you have good pills.
- Janet:#TeamMonique
I have GREAT pills. But I respect them, too. They're like big dogs - gotta keep a certain perspective.
- Mary B: #TeamMonique
I *feel* 32 today. But somehow that doesn't add up properly when I subtract my birth year from the calendar year. Odd, that.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
For the record. Melly is also old enough to be my friend......and niece!
- Janet:#TeamMonique
from FFHound!
"I've just had a deep trawl through Etsy's selection of weird, handmade Haunted Mansion (and hauntedmansionesque) gewgaws and gimcracks"
- Me
from Bookmarklet
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
Cool! can i get a daily or weekly email digest for the "Saved searches"?
- 0M0M
from email
This will be incredibly useful. Thanks to all involved in the design and execution.
- Kathy Fitch
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Franc, a rememberer
Really I'm not, I'm still learning. You should see some of the true artists..they'd knock your socks off.
- Shannon - GlassMistress
And, as for the studio folks .. A bunch of retired people that took up painting and labeled themselves artists. It's an 'in you face' kinda thing. Not very lady like of me :-)
- Shannon - GlassMistress
Am home! Doc says looks good, went well, and he got all of the tumor he could. He also said it looks like normal tissue and he'd be surprised if the pathology came back bad. Woot!
"The Solar Foundation, which has been releasing reports for a few years on the state of the solar industry in the U.S., has just launched a very cool interactive map that breaks the stats down state by state. This allows us to see that there are only 80 solar jobs in Alaska (not too surprising), and over 43,000 in California. Add all 50 states together, and solar employs 119,000 people in the country, a growth of 13.2% in 2012. Another interesting way to gain perspective is to compare these solar jobs to the number of jobs created by other sectors. Looked at it this way, the Solar Foundation (using stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) found that there were more solar energy workers in Texas than ranchers, that solar workers outnumber actors in California, and that across the whole 50 states, there are more solar workers than coal miners."
- Bluesun 2600
from Bookmarklet
From the post: "Summary: Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad."
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from Bookmarklet
More: "One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. "Windows" no longer supports multiple windows on the screen."
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
More: "But the new look sacrifices usability on the altar of looking different than traditional GUIs. There's a reason GUI designers used to make objects look more detailed and actionable than they do in the Metro design. As an example, look at this settings menu. [first FF image above. Caption: 'The bottom of the Windows 8 settings menu on Surface RT.'] Where can you click? Everything...
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- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
More: "Quick, without reading the caption, which apps do the following 4 tiles represent? [second FF image above. Caption: 'Live tiles for (clockwise from upper left): Urbanspoon, Los Angeles Times, Newegg, and Epicurious.'] Newegg is the only app that includes its full name in the tile. When we asked participants to use the other apps, they couldn't find them. This on a new tablet with...
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- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
I haven't used Windows 8 at all, but this review makes me feel like I'd really despise it.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
I've only used it on the desktop. I couldn't even imagine it on a tablet. I would assume it would be more intuitive, but I guess not.
- Anika
from Android
I can't imagine a situation where I'll be using a Windows tablet, to be honest.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
It's too bad. I wanted Windows 8 to succeed. It seems like it would make a decent tablet or phone UI, but the idea of having the same UI for both desktop and mobile usage seemed doomed from the start.
- Victor Ganata
I have been using Win8 on a new church computer and though it looks nice, it is annoyingly difficult to use on a regular non-tablet computer. Stupid annoying.
- Friar Ticket to Ride
Cristo: "From 1994 to 1998, [Nielsen] was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. [...] Dr. Nielsen ended up spending most of his time at Sun defining the emerging field of web usability. He was the usability lead for several design rounds of Sun's website and intranet (SunWeb), including the original SunWeb design in 1994."...
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- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
(Cristo deleted his comment, which was asking about what products Nielsen had built. I think people can be qualified to write about designs even if they don't build products themselves. This applies generally: Excellent movie critics might be terrible movie directors, for example -- and vice versa. Or a well-respected restaurant critic with useful opinions might be a terrible chef.)
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
You already have a pope name, and I suspect you are a bit closer to me politically than most of the other candidates. I'd vote for you :)
- Eivind
from Android
initial thoughts upon the appearance of white smoke: only the first Francis? ummm, St. Francis of Assis was never ordained as priest, ok then, elections, Francis Underwood plotting at the window of his dining room :-), Francis Bacon paintings of popes. Why not Adrian VII ?
- Adriano
Z, a shorted heat detector. We tested about 80% of the FA devices until we found the culprit. Man, the ladies washroom is luxurious compared to the dudes'.
- Micah
from FFHound(roid)!
Ah, thanks! I was curious. Not about the ladies room though. They're always luxurious. :)
- Zulema ❧ spicy cocoa tart
from Android