Being Random

So that’s what’s sad about not eating. The loss of dining, not the loss of food. It may be personal, but for, unless I’m alone, it doesn’t involve dinner if it doesn’t involve talking. The food and drink I can do without easily. The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss. Sentences beginning with the words, “Remember that time?” I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to break out in a poetry recitation at any time. Me too. But not me anymore. So yes, it’s sad. Maybe that’s why I enjoy this blog. You don’t realize it, but we’re at dinner right now.

—

Nil by mouth - Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was rendered unable to eat, drink and speak after surgery to remove cancer.

8 January 2010 Discuss

Faux Friendship - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Best thing I’ve read online in months—years, perhaps.

(via Instapaper)

7 January 2010 Discuss

staff:

Now testing: Ask Me

The new Ask feature lets your friends or readers ask questions that you can choose to answer on your blog.

You can enable it from your new Messages page (where we’re about to start adding a bunch of new messaging options!).

They even come with a bunch of new theme variables for designers to format them:
{block:AskEnabled}
    <a href="/ask">{AskLabel}</a>
{/block:AskEnabled}

{block:Answer}
    <div class="answer">
        <div class="question">{Question}</div>

        <span class="asker">
            <img src="{AskerPortraitURL-24}"/>
            {Asker}
        </span>

        <div class="answer">{Answer}</div>
    </div>
{/block:Answer}
Enjoy!

6 January 2010 • reblog: staff Discuss

stayforthecredits:

kidcasting:

Big, 1988

Trivia that blew my mind the other day: To give star Tom Hanks an idea of how a 12 year-old would behave, director Penny Marshall filmed each “grown-up” scene with David Moscow (Young Josh) playing Tom Hanks’s part, who then copied David Moscow’s behavior. (via)

3 January 2010 • reblog: kidcasting Discuss

Even before a Nigerian with Al Qaeda links tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet headed to Detroit, travelers could see we had made no progress toward a technologically wondrous Philip K. Dick universe.

— Maureen Dowd in her op-ed piece for the New York Times, wondering why our airport security isn’t more technologically advanced. Memo to Maureen: when attempting to use a sci-fi writer’s name as a shorthand for a vision of the future, it’s a good idea to actually be familiar with the writer’s work. Some would say that “a Philip K. Dick universe” is the last thing we want airport security to turn into. (via mrgan)

31 December 2009 • reblog: mrgan Discuss

playhimoffkeyboardcat:

Sheet music for the Keyboard Cat song via touchcream

27 December 2009 • reblog: playhimoffkeyboardcat Discuss

The titles of P. K. Dick

mrgan:

Dear friends, I apologize - I think.

I have consistently mislead you, being mislead myself, to believe that P. K. Dick was the world’s greatest book-title writer. This has come up frequently in our conversations, I’m sure. I tend to obsess over the sounds of things, and titles - of books, of songs, news headlines - hold a place of special power. Just look at these words:

27 December 2009 • reblog: mrgan Discuss

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szymon:

Recoiling Socket In The Wall from Meysam Movahedi

25 December 2009 • reblog: szymon Discuss

422. The best way to show thanks is to wear it. Even if it's for the last time.

(via rulesformyunbornson)

25 December 2009 • reblog: rulesformyunbornson Discuss

X-RAY ANALYSES OF SPEECH

12 December 2009 Discuss

Bollocks.

10 December 2009 Discuss

Tumblr Backup

mrgan:

marco:

The Tumblr Backup app is ready for its first beta testing.
Unlike other publishing sites’ approach to backups, our goal was to create a useful copy of your blog’s _content_ that can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD, or hosted as an archive of static HTML files.

This is great news. Now, to look a gift horse in the mouth for a moment, let’s establish a rule that if you’re building a service the whole point of which is to store user data, you must have a full backup solution - I mean a user-accessible one, not something on your end - at launch. There have been too many stories of dispersed clouds lately.

My favorite release note:

Sorry, there’s no Windows version yet.

Ho, ho, ho.

10 December 2009 • reblog: marco Discuss

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