Monthly Archives: August 2006

The Dork Report for August 27, 2006

Posted on August 27, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Loads of new UNKLE releases com­ing up:
  • Self Defense, a four-disc boxed set of remixes from the Never Never Land album, on Sep­tem­ber 12. But it appears only three (!) tracks are pre­vi­ously unre­leased, so I think I may skip it.
  • Tons of new remixes, none of which are avail­able in the US, even on iTunes: I would espe­cially like to hear Depeche Mode’s “John the Rev­e­la­tor (UNKLE Re-Construction)”, and Mas­sive Attack’s “False Flags (UNKLE Sur­ren­der Sounds Ses­sion #2)”
  • Wikipedia notes UNKLE’s new album The Future is Unwrit­ten is due some­time this sum­mer (with a teaser on the offi­cial site).
• Steve Jobs’ lat­est inspi­ra­tions come straight from cheesy 1980’s sci-fi.
• Pic­oCricket, a new, uh… thing from Lego Mind­storms. Looks to be less “awe­some robot” and more “pipecleaner arts’n’crafts.”

The Dork Report for August 24, 2006

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• You too can gra­di­ent gel-ify your brand iden­tity with The Web 2.0 Logo Gen­er­a­tor.
• The Unof­fi­cial Apple Weblog airs its griev­ances about .Mac, but makes nice by offer­ing some con­struc­tive crit­i­cism. I don’t dis­agree with any of this, but I’m utterly and totally mar­ried to my book­mark, cal­en­dar, and address book syn­chro­niza­tion, so I’m not bail­ing any time soon.
• Learn who’s prob­a­bly not dead in the new Lost poster. (guest sub­mis­sion from Andrea)
• Film reviews in four words or less: Snakes on a Plane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cit­i­zen Kane.
• Yet another stun­ning exam­ple of the cat­a­strophic fail­ure of the Iraq inva­sion: Gen­eral Tommy Franks was issu­ing orders to his troops in Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tions (no, really). (spot­ted on Design Observer)

The Dork Report for August 23, 2006

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Whoda thunk, cows have accents too. Do Cana­dian cows say “moooeh”, and do Bris­tol cows saw “mo’”? (guest sub­mis­sion from “Cows come you moo like you’re from the norf?” Andrea)
• Up From the Cat­a­combs: The Best of Jane’s Addic­tion, unfor­tu­nately includ­ing tracks from the 2003 Bob Ezrin–pro­duced trav­esty Strays.
• Every other Mac Dork is blog­ging about the alleged Mac­Book seri­ous secu­rity flaw, so I might as well chip in. Dar­ing Fire­ball gives an impas­sioned, detailed overview of the con­tro­versy. Two observations:
  • The pas­sion with which self-appointed Win­dows evan­ge­lists attack Apple is amazing.
  • The pas­sion with which self-appointed Apple evan­ge­lists defend Apple is amazing.
• Another Apple con­tro­versy is brew­ing: Vivek Samb­hara and oth­ers leaked a copy of Mac OS X Leop­ard onto the inter­net, and Apple’s legal depart­ment came down on them like a ton of bricks.
• The Hoff Image Data­base great­est hits: Dr. Hoff, MC Hof­fer, and Being John Malko­hoff.

The Dork Report for August 22, 2006

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• My head is spin­ning, count­ing all these Doc­tor Who spin­offs! Can­celled before it even began was Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, star­ring Bil­lie Piper. The other three are still in motion: def­i­nitely Torch­wood and maybe K-9 Adven­tures and Sarah Jane Inves­ti­gates.
• Time Magazine’s 50 Coolest Web­sites for 2006 (and Top 25 over­all). Yay Cute Over­load! Boo Shockwave.com! (who knew you still existed? but you still suck for using a cross-platform tech­nol­ogy and exclud­ing Macs anyway)
• RightWingWatch.org, a new blog keep­ing track of our own home­grown rad­i­cal reli­gious nutjobs, such as those that that equate Dar­win with Hitler and use cheesy science-fiction night­mares to argue against stem cell research.
• Google expands their world-domination plans:
  • Writely, a browser-based word proces­sor use­ful to prac­ti­cally every­body (com­pet­ing, obvi­ously, with Microsoft Office)
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics, for web site, uh, ana­lyt­ics (com­pet­ing with things like Mint)
• Edge Mag­a­zine pro­files Kata­mari cre­ator Keita Taka­hashi. The orig­i­nal print design is fantastic.
• Life imi­tates art: Snakes in a Movie The­ater! (passed around at work)

The Dork Report for August 21, 2006

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Exca­vat­ing some barely-remembered child­hood tunes:
  • The Mup­pet Show Mahna Mahna song. Sublime.
  • The Sesame Street pin­ball count­ing song. Much more dated than I remem­ber, but I’m dig­ging those steel drums!
• A grand idea: My Dream App. On my first skim through the sub­mis­sions, a Quicken-killer sounds like a winner.
• Applepeels, the blog of a 20-year vet­eran at Apple.
• Inside the mind of busi­ness genius and worst boss ever, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.
• A Snakes on a Plane blow-by-blow.

The Dork Report for August 18, 2006

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Kit­ties bustin’ a move in the rekkid sto’. (passed around at work)
• A win for the ACLU! Con­firm­ing what every sen­si­ble per­son already knows, the gov­ern­ment broke the law.
• Flash bites the hand that feeds it. Bril­liant (and cathar­tic)! (spot­ted on Boing Boing)
• Too impa­tient for Snakes on a Plane to become an audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion phe­nom­e­non the nat­ural way? Here’s a script to rehearse for open­ing week­end. (spot­ted on Boing Boing)
• The snobs afi­ciona­dos at Pitch­fork have been busy mak­ing lists:
  • 100 Awe­some Music Videos. A few per­sonal faves: Tri­umph of a Heart, Cof­fee & TV, and D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat.
  • Worst Record Cov­ers of All Time. How could they have over­looked Yes’ Tor­mato (also, not coin­ci­den­tally, once of the worst records of all time)? Actu­ally, come to think of it, one of their bet­ter albums also has a hor­rific cover.
  • Top 100 Albums of the 1970s, from Eno to Bowie.
  • Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, from Minor Threat to Sonic Youth.
  • Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, from The Orb to Radiohead.
• After years of design­ing and build­ing web sites on a Mac, and ensur­ing they work in Safari, Mozilla, Mac Inter­net Explorer, Opera, etc. etc. etc., only to find them hope­lessly busted in Win­dows IE, I whole­heart­edly sup­port any move to boy­cott IE, a “can­cer on the web.” (spot­ted on project.ioni.st)

The Dork Report for August 16, 2006

Posted on August 16, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Behind the Type­face: Cooper Black. (spot­ted on Typo­graph­ica)
• Macitt, a Digg for Apple news. (spot­ted on Dougscripts.com)
• Although it’s hardly unbi­ased, Mac­World picks apart Apple’s claim that the Mac Pro is almost a thou­sand dol­lars cheaper than a Dell, and finds that, if any­thing, Apple under­stated their claim.
• Pitch­fork reports: DJ Shadow is back with a mix­tape and The Out­sider, a new album out on Sep­tem­ber 19.
• The Good The Bad and The Queen: a new super­group com­prised of Daman Albarn of Blur and Goril­laz, Tony Allen & Simon Tong of The Verve, and Paul Simonon of The Clash.

The Dork Report for August 14, 2006

Posted on August 14, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• A playable Lego gui­tar.
• Yay, fun! Lego Star Wars II!
• Sleepy Kit­ties II and III. (guest sub­mis­sion from Meowzzzzz… Andrea)
• The Tron Guy, the Peter Pan Guy, and all of us… we are the web. Net neu­tral­ity is no joke, actu­ally. (spot­ted on Zeldman.com)
• Title near-misses: Tri­mal­chio in West Egg, Tote the Weary Load, or The Nude Bomb.
• Revealed at last, the long saga of Snakes on a Plane.
• Proof pos­i­tive tuxedo cats are obsessive-compulsive. (guest sub­mis­sion from Kitty Shrink Andrea)

The Dork Report for August 11, 2006

Posted on August 11, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Oy, Madonna! Damn, girl! When are you not doing some­thing that offends some­body?
• Sep­tem­ber 12 brings And I Feel Fine, a new com­pi­la­tion of R.E.M.‘s “early years” (that is to say, when this Dork Reporter first heard them) on the I.R.S. label.
• Today we’re at 158 on The Rap­ture Index. Per­haps not sur­pris­ingly, the record high was in Sep­tem­ber 2001, and the record low was when Clin­ton was in office.
• The Sci-Fi Chan­nel will broad­cast Doc­tor Who sea­son 2 begin­ning Sep­tem­ber 29.

The Dork Report for August 10, 2006

Posted on August 10, 2006 by Chad Ossman

• Chris­t­ian Kent notes on Mac­in­touch that in the Apple pre­view video for their new backup soft­ware Time Machine, the demon­stra­tor searches for “Rose.” A coincidence?
• Another ordi­nary person’s life revealed by her AOL search his­tory. (spot­ted on Boing­Bo­ing)
• Wick­er­man and A Clock­work Orange bub­blegum cards from an alter­nate uni­verse. (spot­ted on Boing­Bo­ing)
• As more of a web designer than a devel­oper (although I do both), AJAX has always been a lit­tle bit out of my league. But Adobe/Macromedia’s new Spry frame­work might make things a lit­tle more acces­si­ble to non-programmers like myself, I dunno.
• What do you think, Art or Crap? More impor­tantly, what the heck is a yoyo stand? (guest sub­mis­sion from Dadandrea)