l-dopa

There’s a really great article on MTV.com (and that’s the first time that phrase has ever been written!) on the game writer behind some of Nintendo’s latest games, and my current favorite: Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. Yeah, I know, how dorky. But it’s fun, I swear!

By the way, MTV.com is completely un-navigatable. Whoever over-designed that site should be fired. Or killed. Or killed then fired. Then eaten.

~jeff

Wonderful tips on creating bar graphs with CSS here.

~jeff

Really cool demo of live photo scaling on a web page (ala iPhoto and Aperture) here.

Absolutely beautiful, but I can’t think of a single thing to do with it.

~jeff

This site will create a short track based on cross-faded, tiny snippets of your favorite music, based on your iTunes listening habits.

Link.

Turns out Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show) used to play soccer for William and Mary.

I don’t have anything to say here except:

1. Check out that hair — I had that exact haircut in the early 80’s as well.
2. I really liked it when he was on Crossfire.

~jeff

I’ll do your USB fondue pot one better. This wireless device prints rss feeds on toilet paper. The comic potential is staggering. Unfortunately, chances of this actually existing seem slim.

Link via The Adventures of Teapot the Cat.

iTunes 6 supports adding lyrics to the metadata for your songs. If you have an iPod nano, 5G, or Photo, you can view those lyrics on your iPod. Problem is, you have to find those lyrics yourself. Thats where pearLyrics and similar apps come in. You can set it to download the lyrics to playlists or your entire library and automatically add them to iTunes.

Unfortunately, most song lyrics are copyrighted, and now apparently Warner Music got its panties in a bunch over it. Their response was not to shut down the websites that are actually distributing the lyrics, but to attack pearLyrics instead. The odd thing is that pearLyrics is essentially a specialized web browser, and doesn’t actually have any content of its own.

The developers at pearworks posted a letter here, and a mirror of the app is available here.

via boingboing.net

p.s. why the hell would they decide to handle lyrics distribution this way? Why not view it as a value-add? I mean, are they making tons of money by selling lyrics books or guitar tabs?

Surprise your loved ones — and I mean, really, really surprise them — with a gift from Vincent Gallo’s web store.

I suggest either the Chris Squire 8-track tape Vincent Gallo had sex in a car to ($200), or the in-vitro fertilization by Vincent Gallo ($1,000,000).

~jeff

I’ve been a fan of the Sony Fontopia earbuds for years. The sound is good, they fit my ears well and easily, they are cheap, and they are comfortable under a motorcycle helmet. But about three weeks ago, my set finally gave up the ghost, so I started looking for new earbuds.

I have a set of over-ear cans for work. A so so set from Phillips that get the job done– blocking out just enough noise to be useful without isolating me too much to hear what is going on. But for air travel and the moto, I like buds. So I picked up the Etymotic ER6i. They are Etymotic’s most affordable and accessible phones, and designed to be used without a headphone amp.

These things are fantastic. You will hate them as tinny and thin until you get a good seal on your ears, but when you nail it down, the sound and isolation are fantastic. I can hear detail on recordings I have never noticed before. Strong bass, clear midrange and crisp highs. Unless you want to carry around a headphone amp or wear open-air phones like the Grado SR80, you probably won’t find better on-the-go sound.

Along with a bunch of NBC shows (like “The Office”!), now “vintage” episodes of the mid-80’s kids show “Knight Rider” are available at the iTunes Music Store. “Knight Rider”, as a show was foolish, yes, stupid, indeed, remarkably retarded, perhaps, but check out this synopsis of episode 9 (”Trust Doesn’t Rust”) and tell me that you don’t kinda want to see it:

Trust Doesn’t Rust K.A.R.R. – the Knight Automated Roving Robot – was created by Wilton Knight years ago and was rejected as a prototype because its program of self-preservation was too threatening. It should have been destroyed, but instead was simply locked away. Now, Tony and Rev, two petty thieves who accidentally discovered K.A.R.R.’s warehouse and reactivated its circuits, have taken control of the machine. Using K.A.R.R.’s computer analyses, they set out to rob a nearby museum jewel exhibit, kidnapping Bonnie in order to maintain the car’s circuitry. Devon and Michael quickly realize that without K.I.T.T.’s altruistic programming, K.A.R.R. is devoid of a conscience, and, in the hands of people who misuse it, could become an out-of-control menace to humanity. The only one who can stop K.A.R.R. is K.I.T.T. – and the result is a spectacular car chase in which the two computers match wits and technical capabilities.

…I for one can’t click “Buy Episode” fast enough.

~jeff

I’ve implemented this lovely CSS drop shadow technique on ldopa.net; the best thing is once it’s set up at the CSS level, all you have to do is add a class=”shadow” into your IMG SRC tag.

(This picture is of my mom and my mom’s dog Snowball, taken at Thanksgiving 2005.)

~jeff

I imagine that this is what it’s like to be crazy. With maybe a little of this for good measure.

~jeff

Another wonderful Christmas gift suggestion: in this Japanese video game, not only to two girls whale on each other, but to win you have to take a picture of your opponent’s panties. Checkmate, Japan.

~jeff

Witch is a nifty little preference pane which lets you pick not which running application comes to front (that’s command-tab) but instead which open/minimized/hidden window comes to front, with an easy-to-remember option-tab. For users like me that often have like a centillion windows open on their machine, this is a godsend.

~jeff

Download version 1.1 here (now with actual workingness, adorable spinny feedback wheel, automatical self-update mechanism, and way better user experience overall).

If you could download this, fire it up, and make sure it works OK, I’d surely appreciate it — Ben and I have worked long and hard on both the engine and the UI, and I’m proud to say that it’s really coming along. Thanks especially to Jon and Tucker especially for testing builds as we went along and offering excellent suggestions.

~jeff