Edgar Wright’s Top Ten – The Criterion Collection
Great selection of movies. And great explanations for why he chose these particular movies.
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Safe House
Panic rooms are so passe. What you want is a panic house. When the zombie apocalypse finally comes, I’m making a beeline for this place.
russell davies – the internet with things
Fascinating post about the approach of the ‘internet of things’ – the idea that, with a little bit of hacking, you can shape the internet to do what you want it to and make it more personal and magic. (Incidentally, I think if this then that is pretty close to magic already). He gave this as a talk on the BBC’s Four Thought radio series.
21 forgotten TV subplots – The A.V. Club
You could almost do an entire article about the many forgotten subplots in Lost alone. I particularly like their write-up of the Tori Scott episodes of Saved by the Bell
When NBC ordered more episodes of the show’s already-wrapped senior year, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley were already committed to other projects. So, employing its signature logic, Saved By The Bell allowed the characters to disappear completely, bringing in Leanna Creel’s motorcycle-riding tomboy Tori to replace them—and thus creating the “Tori Reality,” a parallel universe centered on Zack and Tori’s awkward courtship, a place where Kelly and Jessie simply did not exist.
Infographic: The Rise of E-Readers
Pretty interesting stuff – overall, people who own e-readers read more books each year than those without. Although I’m curious about the 1% of e-reader owners who read 0 books a year. What are they using it for?!
Transom » Radiolab: An Appreciation by Ira Glass
A fantastic article by Ira Glass discussing all the things that make Radiolab so great.
How many photos have ever been taken? | 1000memories
According to these boffins, Facebook hosts around 4% of all the photos that have ever been taken. And roughly 20% of all the photos taken this year will be uploaded to Facebook.
Kids — not even kids, teenagers — are growing up in a world where cameras are ubiquitous, they’re just part of the device you carry around with you. And photography isn’t some arcane, expensive hobby. It’s been democratized.
I can’t wait to see what this means for the next generation of photojournalists.
AV Club: Louis C.K. walks us through Louie’s second season (Part 1 of 4)
I know people are probably sick of me linking to
a. The AV Club, and
b. Louis CK stories
but honestly, this second season of Louie was one of the best seasons of TV I’ve ever seen. (And ‘Duckling’ was one of the best episodes of any TV show I’ve ever seen). Reading this background on the production of the first couple of episodes is fascinating.
Also, much as I hate to say “X is the new Y”, anyone else get the feeling that Louis CK is taking the reins left over from when Woody Allen packed up for Europe? No-one else is making New York seem so gorgeous.
Boom
Boom is a command-line key-value store written by Zach Holman. If you don’t know what this is, you probably don’t need it. Still, I really love the installation instructions:
Hey, run this:
$ gem install boom
See? Now you can do this:
$ boom
Pretty easy. Like your mom.
I wish more software developers were brave enough to make ‘your mom’ jokes in their installation instructions.