Links from October 2010

Links for Friday 1 October 2010
Human landscapes in SW Florida - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Every single aerial photo is stunning, go look. Photos of housing developments, many undeveloped. I wouldn't want to live in any of them. (via Kottke)

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Links for Monday 4 October 2010
London futures | images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate change debate in a way that everyone can understand
Images of a flooded future London. (via Beyond the Beyond)
Core77 - The True Story of Automoblox
From 2005, about the struggles to get a toy car product line manufactured in China. A good read. (via Kottke, a while ago)

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Links for Tuesday 5 October 2010
U B U W E B - Film & Video: John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972)
Ooh, all four episodes for download. I've never seen the TV version.

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Links for Wednesday 6 October 2010
Ubu Web (ubuweb) on Twitter
Lots of dodgy (in a legal sense) and intriguing (in an aural sense) listening on Ubu Web's stream.

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Links for Thursday 7 October 2010
Walter Benjamin’s Aura: Open Bookmarks and the future eBook
James Bridle again, saying and proposing wonderful things.
Notes.husk.org: Incompetence, Malice and ereading
Yes, this. So many iPad magazines are focusing on the whizziness. I'd just want the easy-to-read-ness.

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Links for Saturday 9 October 2010
Workflow smart collections - John Beardsworth
I don't need anything this complicated, but I find this ability to create complicated but very custom workflows fascinating.
A Hyper-Organized, Smart Collection-based Lightroom Workflow
Another complex, customised workflow.

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Links for Sunday 10 October 2010
A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years - The Globe and Mail
While my favourite Vancouver-based science fiction author (William Gibson) is writing about the present, my favourite Vancouver-based chronicler of the now (Douglas Coupland) has written this about the future. (via @moleitau)

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Links for Wednesday 13 October 2010
Backbone.js
What looks like a lovely way to structure large JavaScript projects into an MVC structure. (via Simon Willison)
The Unsorting Office
Leaving aside the making-my-blood-boil mess of the Royal Mail, that bit at the end about recording all the knowledge of posties about short-cuts, hills, gates, etc is interesting.
Today’s News • on iPhone & iPad • Powered by the Guardian
An iPad app that gives you a way to read The Guardian very much like my "Today's Guardian" site. The sincerest form of flattery, I guess.

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Links for Friday 15 October 2010
45cat - Vinyl Database - Records - Music Reviews - Discographies, Discoveries, Discussions
Scans, credits, etc for (currently) 73,788 UK-released seven-inch singles. Blimey. (via @dorianfm)
Carlos Bueno: A Paper Internet
Instructions for printing stuff out and encasing them in resin to bury in the ground, as the best way to preserve bits of the Internet. (via Tom Taylor)

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Links for Monday 18 October 2010
Evom - Convert and Download Videos to iTunes
"Download internet videos (YouTube and more) to iTunes and iPod." Handy. (via Ben Hammersley and more)
Dataists
"Our goal is to bring well-written articles on big data processing, statistics and statistical programming, and machine learning to one place." (via BERG)
Saul Griffith and Jonathan Bachrach's algorithmically-designed "DARPA Hoodie" - Boing Boing
Interesting. Want to find more modern/future-y but still wearable clothes. Any ideas? (via @GreatDismal)
Belstaff | Official Website
Heavily retro rather than futury, although there's still something slightly SF about some of the jackets. Also, the coat Sherlock wore.
The Pope and the Axis of Terror
Adam Curtis on the manufacturing of the idea of a "global terror network" from the 1970s to today. Fascinating story, worth the time to read. Shame the BBC's video clips are only in Flash though.

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Links for Tuesday 19 October 2010
Kardashev scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. These are based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization." (via The Speculist)

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Links for Thursday 21 October 2010
Movies, Downloads, Blu Ray, DVDs, Cinema & TV Listings | Find Any Film
Alerts for when films you want to see appear in the formats you want. Good idea but ugly, confusing, unintuitive, Lottery-funded. Needs a slap with the Web 2.0 stick.
Johann Hari: A colder, crueller country – for no gain - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent
I've just been trying to avoid the news, pretend it's not happening. I was lured into reading this. Fuckers.

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Links for Saturday 23 October 2010
Rejectamentalist manifesto
China Mieville with questions addressed to a hypothetical Liberal Democrat voter who still believes in a progressive agenda. "So it has to be asked of you: WTF?"
K-punk: The Great Bullingdon Club Swindle
Trying to find some optimism for the left from this almighty mess. (via @moleitau)
The Participant Observer » Blog Archive » Cyborganic and the Birth of Networked Social Media (It’s here!)
PhD thesis from a couple of years ago, on Cyborganic and other things (like Wired/Hotwired) that its members were involved in.

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Links for Sunday 24 October 2010
Facebook News Feed Settings: Random or Not, Biggest Secrets Revealed - The Daily Beast
Reverse engineering how Facebook's Top News feed decides what to show you. (via Kottke)
Some thoughts on Lightroom Keywords – Chuqui 3.0
I'm fascinated, amused and horrified that people have to spend so much time on thinking about the kind of thing that was once a relatively obscure part of a small profession. (via John Beardsworth)
Will Bad CGI Breath Cost The Social Network a Visual Effects Oscar Nomination? | Movieline
Glad it wasn't just me that found that weird CGI breath distracting. It looked like some weird Harry Potter-esque evil spirits escaping from their mouths.

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Links for Monday 25 October 2010
Mac Bundy Said He Was ‘All Wrong’ by William Pfaff | The New York Review of Books
About the Vietnam War, but also good on parallels with Iraq/Afghanistan, and how only one or two ideas can shape events that affect continents, very similar to that Adam Curtis article about a "global terror network".
Gallery - Brilliant SF books that got away - Image 1 - New Scientist
I've only read one of these. So much to read! (via @GreatDismal)

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Links for Tuesday 26 October 2010
Diagrams: What are your favorite complicated diagrams? - Quora
An already promising thread. More pictures! More!

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Links for Wednesday 27 October 2010
Google LatLong: History in the Unmaking
Very nice - Google Earth layers of London and Paris in 1945. I also didn't know Google Earth had lots of different post-2000 layers (for London at least). (via Booktwo)
Monbiot.com » Toxic Brew
[Slight 'Rubicon' spoiler ahead.] Interesting, scary stuff about Koch Industries, the Tea Party, and astro-turfing. But, pessimistically, I can't help thinking of 'Rubicon's Spengler saying: "Make your report Will. Knock 'em dead ... Do you really think anyone is going to give a shit?" (via @edmittance)

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Links for Thursday 28 October 2010
ASCII by Jason Scott / Archiveteam! The Geocities Torrent
There will be a 900GB torrent of all of the Geocities content that Archiveteam managed to save before the idiots at Yahoo turned it off. Wonderful. Wonderful. Could archive.org host it...? (via @antimega)
Flipboard | Beyond The Beyond
Bruce Sterling on Flipboard, magazines, etc. "Why not send me [Lady Gaga's] Flipboard? Why not sell me that? By subscription. Then it’s magazines all over again. What fun!"
Nathansearles's Faded at master - GitHub
"A super simple fading image and content viewer for jQuery" Looks good. (via Infovore)

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Links for Saturday 30 October 2010
Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior
Sounds like an awesome read. Just look at that table of contents: it reads like something John Hodgman would write, but it's real! (via Beyond the Beyond)

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Links for Sunday 31 October 2010
Actroid F Female Telepresence Robot Looks Super Real, Creepy (video)
Watch the videos. Yes, a bit creepy but also amazing progress with making human-like expressions with machines.

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