General

sweetcode is cool. I am sick. Thus, few words surround this pointer. I barely managed a half-clever title. Cool for sysadmins and programmers, that is; not sure anyone else would care.

In keeping with my theme for the day (terseness. will talk more later), here’s a quick link to a Bruce Sterling interview. It’s happening right now. Like, real time. Maybe it is to talk about it in this thread, which is hijacked from Boing Boing. Transfictionalism now!

This is what we call an excellent cause. You know what’s even better? The people he’s trying to help grow coffee (original). This matters; donate if you can.

Happy Tolkien’s eleventy-first birthday! At 9 PM, raise your glass and toast “The Professor.” (Via MetaFilter.)

I was thinking about doing my year’s best film list, so I wandered over to IMDB to look at their list of the top movies of 2002 by popular vote. It’s just weird. I am not surprised that some movie fans decided to push their favorite flick to the top of the charts. Duh; it’s an online vote. That’s what happens. But from all appearances, we have a bunch of separate groups all pushing frantically without any hint of trying to pull down someone else. You’d think that the Nine Inch Nails fans might want to cement their number 1 position by voting against the obscure Polish flick, maybe. And where are all the people who hate Michael Moore? How did Bowling for Columbine rack up a 9.0 average over 4,986 votes?

“In sports, the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl, thus using up all the sports luck that New England has been accumulating for decades, and thereby guaranteeing that the Red Sox will not win the World Series for another 150 years.” Dave Barry’s year-end report is up.

British Pathe (original) has put all their old newsreels online. You can download lowres versions for free; they sell higher res versions as well. Kind of a cool glimpse into the world of British newsreels. I really like the Lucky Dip feature, which displays the info for 20 random clips.

This is probably the most brutal quiz I’ve ever seen. Here’s last year’s. Here are the answers from last year. Ow. I got four this year, assuming I was correct when I think I was, but I’m pretty confident.

Ray Wallace (recently deceased) created Bigfoot. I think the moral of this story is that individuals can have a profound effect on the world. Seriously!

Funniest damn thing I’ve read in a while. Excerpt: Madame Galadriel, famous Elf Queen, Had a forbidding realm, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Middle-Earth, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Wizard, (Those are the grey robes that were his garb. Look!) Here is Eowyn, the Lady of the Horses, The lady of battle. Here is the man with many colors, and here the Staff, And here is the one-eyed Sauron, and this card, Which is blank, is something he searches for in your pack, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Uruk-Hai. Fear death by Nazgul. I see crowds of people, talking about a Ring. Thank you. If you see dear Master Gamgee, Tell him I bring the mallorn myself: One must be so careful these days. ...