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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 2010-11-03

  • A NASA official may have made a 35-million-mile slip of the tongue. The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond. There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.  The 100-year ship would leave Earth with the intention of colonizing a planet, but it would likely be a one-way trip because of the time it takes to travel 35 million miles. That’s a daunting prospect, partly because of the ethical dilemma, and partly because it may be the only recourse. "What psychological challenges should we anticipate in those who volunteer in good faith and with great courage
  • If you have multiple computers, you probably want an easy way to share your keyboard and mouse. There are different ways to accomplish this goal. You can try using a hardware KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse). I’ve tried a couple KVM switches, and they never worked reliably. How would you like free software to share the keyboard and mouse?! How would you like to handle both PC’s and Macintosh computers?! Synergy is a PC program. It’s rather complicated. I had to get help setting it up for multiple PC’s.
  • I’ve written posts like If I started today and Start From Nothing, where I talked about how I’d go about building my social presence. In this post, I want to talk about if I were managing a small team or department for an organization using social media tools. There are similarities, but there are some things I’d set up differently. In building any social media platform, if you don’t start with goals, you’re starting with a hope for failure. There are many possible goals: relationship-building, lead generation, sales, marketing, awareness, customer service. In my example, I’m going to set mine up with the goal of improving leads and sales, while helping out my customer service department. You can alter the recipe to taste. For internal communication, I’d use a mix of Yammer and Google Docs. I’d use Yammer for the “fluid” information for our organization and I’d use Google Docs for static information, such as spreadsheets and records and documents.
  • As the next part of our Web Design Layouts series, today we’re going to examine the “F Pattern Layout”; Rather than trying to force the viewer’s visual flow, the F-Layout gives in to the natural behaviors of most web surfers and it uses scientific studies to back it up. This tutorial will walk you through the principles of the F-Layout, why it works, and how you can create your own.
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    links for 2010-10-27

  • A low pressure system slinking its way across the northern midwest of the United States has set a new record  as its central pressure is now the lowest on record for a U.S. non-tropical land-based system with a barometeric reading of 956.31 mb 954.95 mb in Minnesota.  To put this into some perspective, a Category 3 hurricane usually has a atmospheric pressure of 964-945 mb, but unlike a hurricane the pressure system does not have a large, warm body of water to feed itself with so it isn't quite the same.  The center of the storm is off to the northwest of me, and our local barometer is reading 979.68 mb.  The wind is howling, rain is coming down in sheets, and I need to walk the dog still.
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    links for 2010-09-27

  • In my grouchier moments (one of which I am having right now), I am considering a public relations campaign to make fun of people who can't do simple math and shame them into either acquiring some fundamental skills or staying quiet and not bothering the rest of us with their ignorance. I've devoted a significant part of my career to education: working with K-12 teachers, teaching at a university, developing programs for the public.  I'm beginning to wonder whether we are not all just wasting our time and we would do much better to focus on developing an elite cadre of high-powered science literate researchers who will discover wondrous things and save us all from ourselves.  Of course, that won't work because the people who know the science will be prevented from fulfilling this task by the science-ignorant who comprise the public, as well as the executive and legislative branches of the government.
  • When it comes to logo design a lot of designers find it difficult to combine a lot of ideas in a small icon, if the logo have a symbol, or to make a unique typeface that tells you all you need to know about the business it represents. And the truth is that logo design is not easy. Here at ProDesignMedia I try to make designers’ life easier. This time I want to help the logo designers. A tip can save you a lot of time and efforts. It’s easier to hear a tip from someone than to say the tip. To say a tip you must make mistakes; you must try what is good and what is not. The model is the same in logo design. In this article you will find 15 tips which will help you to design logos the right way.
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    links for 2010-09-13

  • Sorry Comics are a collection of autobiographical stories from my life. I started this process in 2006 during a tumultuous break-up and I can't seem to shake the habit. Hopefully, you'll find them to be humorous, self-effacing, awkward, funny, uncomfortable and humiliating (for both you and me).
    (tags: comics blogs love)
  • Incredible Star Wars Propaganda Posters
  • The first time I met William was at a friends house and he was showing everyone a documentary.
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    links for 2010-09-11

  • The European Space Agency has just released images showing all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 years of launching stuff since Sputnik. That's about 6,000 satellites up there—of which only 800 remain operational—plus thousands of other objects from launches and accidents. According to their mindblowing simulations things are getting a lot worse: About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10). Yes, we knew that there was a lot of crap out there, but not to this extent. According to the ESA, this is really bad news and urgent measures are needed. Explosions in space are not disastrous on their own, but because of the aftermath. One example: a geostationary satellite travels at 6,213 miles per hour. If it explodes, all the debris stays near the orbit, forming a cloud around the Earth within a few days, as this simulation shows:
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    links for 2010-08-27

  • Sometimes people put foreign languages in movies. Aside from this being treasonously un-American, they hardly ever do it right. Here are some of the most distracting attempts:
  • Not long ago, there was a lively discussion brewing on Sal Gentile’s article about the U.S. falling behind its rivals in college degrees. Readers weighed in about the ills of the country’s educational system, high school graduates’ lack of preparedness for the rigors of college-level work, and most of all, the fact that college graduates can face stratospheric levels of student debt without any guarantee of full-time employment. Given the state of today’s economy and the uncertainty that belies the job market, it’s no real surprise that the topic would generate a wealth of diverse opinions. One reader, Anna, said that college freshman are woefully unprepared for college life:
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  • You already know Gmail integrated with Google Voice for free phone calls (and cheap international calls) from your inbox. But apart from using it to a friend, Gmail's new phone calling capabilities introduce a lot of cool capabilities to your inbox. Get Caller ID from Your Computer Let's say you've got a landline set up with Google Voice and you don't want to pay for caller ID. Or you just spend a lot of time staring at your computer. If you're logged into Gmail, and someone rings up your Google Voice number, you can see who's calling on your computer without digging your phone out of your pocket.
  • Whether you’re just starting out in the graphic or web design industry, or you’ve been in it for years, the chances are there will occasionally be a time where you want to get a feel for a particular type of application (maybe something similar to Cinema 4D or Adobe Illustrator) before spending big bucks on it. Maybe sometimes you just need it for a very small job, in which case spending the big bucks on it just simply isn’t worth it. Or maybe you’re a student with not much money (which is usually the case) and just want an application that will do the job but not cost you an arm and a leg!
  • An enhancement to our video embed capability is now available through a new embed code style.
  • Mozilla’s Thunderbird is all yours – your language, your add-ons, your email. Experience the difference. Thunderbird is developed and supported by Mozilla, a global community working together to make the Internet a better place for everyone. For frequently asked questions, tips and general help, visit Thunderbird Help Center. For the latest product information, visit the Thunderbird Home Page.
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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 2010-06-28

  • It’s the twentieth anniversary of the famous “pale blue dot” photo – Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home). Sagan’s words are always worth remembering: Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
  • Avatar The Last Airbender Online is dedicated to the incredible TV Show Avatar The Last Airbender. Avatar The Last Airbender surprised and enthralled Millions of viewers both young and old, and is renowned for it's Striking Visuals, Fantastic, Creative, Awesome Martial Arts scenes, and other fabulous parts of Avatar The Last Airbender which in my opinion make it the Best Cartoon in it's class, if not the best TV show ever made! Hopefully AvatarTheLastAirbenderOnline.com can pay a lasting tribute to the fantastic show and be a place for fans of the show and those new to Avatar to learn more about Avatar and relive the awesome storyline and episodes.
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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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