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links for 2010-11-20

  • The 8 hour workday is one of those things that seems be something in place largely because it’s just the way we have done things for so long. I know there are exceptions to the idea that the 8 hour workday doesn’t make any sense. There are certain industries and certain jobs that are required to operate in the structure of an 8 hour day in order to function. I recognize and respect that. But as we move from industrial age to an age of information, it’s time to realize that the system is kind of an efficiency clusterfucj3$. Let’s look at the flaws of an 8 hour work day.
  • In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?
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    links for 2010-09-29

  • Technology is opening up new opportunities for people who want to work at home. Finding and landing profitable work isn't easy, but we've listed some options. These jobs will give you the flexibility you want and the income you need to keep paying your bills and maintaining a health credit score.
  • The film adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings' prequel has suffered multiple setbacks — the latest a worldwide union boycott. Is it time to throw in the towel?
  • Other than the frenzied anticipation for the coming breed of tablet PCs, the one topic that dominates the mindspace of the technorati these days is the world of e-readers. More specifically, a great debate is brewing; each of the e-readers and their associated online book stores favor differing standards and file formats, and we may have another good ole fashioned format war on our hands. (Nothing gets a techie's blood pressure going more than watching as competing technologies duke it out.) Format wars are to the tech world what elections are to politics, or what playoffs are to sports: a chance for competing candidates to go big or go home — based on the preferences of the masses. The most cited example is the great Betamax vs. VHS war of the early '80s (in which the objectively better standard got trounced), but, in truth, battles over standards have been with us since the first wheel was chipped from stone.
  • Last week I talked about 960 Grid System is Getting Old. Surprisingly a lot of comments have been made. It seems like people are using 960gs because of the "golden ratio" — all numbers are even. I’m a designer, not a grid scientist. Why restrict your layout so that it can fit into this 960gs? A grid is supposed to help you in design, not to limit your creativity. The 978 grid, that I mentioned before, is not just about increasing the page width, but to loosen the gutter space so users can read it more comfortably. Today, I would like to write a follow up post to further ellaborate on some of the points I brought up initially.
  • Designing and critiquing logos for web-based companies and startups is a pursuit of endless fascination for many of us. Over the years, we’ve seen enough startups come and go (and rebrand and merge) to fill a volume with how and how not to develop and execute a logo for a web company. We’ve also picked up some knowledge about trends in this field. Some of the trends are good; others, regrettable. Others still are simply overused, which is the saddest scenario of them all. We hate to see a good design trick or typeface grow hackneyed over the course of a few months, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.
  • While we all know the importance of the content of any webpage, what we often ignore is the first impression that the visitor forms when visiting any webpage. It is of paramount importance to know that the first thing that any visitor looks at is the look of the page. If the look is appealing enough only then does the reader move on to read the content. Graphic designers today are laying a huge importance on typography to make a webpage look attractive. When creating items like E-Books, brochures and pamphlets, it is important that the design and layout of the font is managed well so as to make any webpage look attractive. At earlier times, typesetters used manual modes to perform this action but with the advancement in technology, it is now possible to design fonts on the computer. There are some fantastic typography tools that are available for use now that enable the webpage creator to create some fantastic font styles to attract the readers.
  • Monet’s paintings evoke a sense of energy and life, they leap off the canvas with color and contrast, but Monet somehow managed to avoid using the color black for nearly his entire painting career. By avoiding black in your own designs, you can replicate some of this dynamism.
  • Amazon’s Kindle can do a lot more than just buy and read Amazon-sold e-books. This is often a surprise. I usually wind up in conversations where someone says “I’d like to try a Kindle, but it can’t _______.” Usually, it can. I was actually surprised when I bought my Kindle not just by how much it could do, but by how well it did it. The Kindle suffers from two things: 1) it’s never going to do everything that a full-fledged computer or even a color touchscreen tablet can do; and 2) the Kindle 3 has improved on a whole slew of features that were either poorly implemented in or entirely absent from earlier iterations of the Kindle. Here I want to gather up knowledge generated from and circulated by many of my favorite e-reader blogs, just to try to give you an inkling of all the things that a new Kindle can do.
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    links for 2010-09-03

  • Take one part love story, two parts SNES references, six parts awesomeness, let it stew in the fridge for a few days, remember it, freak out and race back, and you'll find Scott Pilgrim waiting there. So why did the movie lose millions of dollars?
  • As you probably guessed, my name is Jason M Ray. I'm a 26 year old guy from St. Louis, Mo. I spend my days as a software engineer for a flight simulator company. I earned my Bachelor's Degree in computer science in 2005. I wrote my first lines of code well over a decade ago, learning BASIC on a RadioShack TRS-80. Since then, I've written code in TI-BASIC, Z80 assembly, C, Perl, Java, C++, JavaScript, Prolog, PHP, and C#, among others. I've been a web developer for many years, having written my first website around 1998. I'm an amateur musician. I've been learning to play guitar since around 2006. I also consider myself an amateur graphic designer and cook (which means I sort of know what I'm doing, though things don't always turn out well). In general, I try to learn more things than I have time for. And I want to take up rock climbing. Seriously.. who wants to go with me?
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    links for 2010-07-21

  • The Misconception: Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis. The Truth: Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.
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    links for 2010-06-05

  • French psychologists recently spent some time analyzing Darth Vader (we're not sure why) and determined that the Sith Lord was mentally ill, according to LiveScience. Specifically they say he probably has a borderline personality, described by Wikipedia "as a prolonged disturbance of personality function in a person (generally over the age of eighteen years, although it is also found in adolescents), characterized by depth and variability of moods." The psychologists are going to publish their findings in the journal Psychiatry Research, but LiveScience has a preview: Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder. For instance, the future Darth Vader showed both impulsivity and anger management issues as an overexcited, lovelorn Jedi. He went back and forth between idealiz
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    links for 2009-12-05

  • Find the software you're looking for at CNET Download.com, the most comprehensive source for free-to-try software downloads on the Web.
  • Theoretically a vampire, Edward has shown a startling ability to remain at high school for almost a century without getting laid.
  • Luke Skywalker – Jedi Knight Premium Format Figure – November 30, 2009 – Filed under: Ministry of Information / Star Wars
  • Capitalizing on media-business synergies can be tricky, no matter how evident the benefits appear on paper. Just ask Jerry Levin and Steve Case. But while the world waits to see whether Comcast’s just-inked deal for NBC Universal proves to be more than Son of AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney Co. has quietly found a way to inject a little cooperation into its operations—combining two of its most iconic, if culturally disparate, properties: the Muppets and Queen. The Burbank, Calif., entertainment giant bought the Muppets from the Jim Henson Co. in 2004, and now it is in the process of relaunching the fuzzy-puppet franchise in the run up to a coming feature film (release date TBA). As part of that process, the company created a clip of Animal, Gonzo, and other Henson-created favorites doing a Muppetized rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” video. Since it was posted on YouTube on Nov. 23, it’s become a viral sensation, with more than 8.8 million views. (The Muppets also recently got Fa
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