Month: December 2005

Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us last week. This has the potential for some very interesting “Web 2.0” synergy, but for now I’m happy that del.icio.us is getting some overdue respect.

All the recent discussion about the War On Christmas prompted someone to go off on the ultimate rant: Fuck Christmas. It obviously goes a bit far, but there are actually some interesting points about the Pagan aspects of Christmas.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally revamped the DrikoLand Photos section, utilizing the free web-based Minigal software. I experimented with SimpleViewer (here’s the SimpleViewer gallery I started to work on), but as much as I liked the slick Flash interface, I decided against it because users without Flash would be unable to view anything, and the site wouldn’t be searchable via search engines. Although come to think of it, Minigal generates pages dynamically, so I’m not sure that my photograph pages would necessarily be “spidered” anyway.

I’ll try to update the page more often now that it’s easier to do so, although my goal of scanning in older photographs will take some time. Please let me know what you think of the new gallery, and by all means make use of the comment boxes below individual pictures if you’re inspired to do so. 😉

Update: Just in case someone reads this old post, I wanted to let them know that as of October 2006, I’ve revamped the gallery again, this time using JAlbum software. For more information, see my post on the change.

Angry Alien’s latest offering is A Christmas Story In 30 Seconds (reenacted with bunnies). Good one… 🙂

The Boing Boing post where I found the link also linked to A Christmas Gory, a remix/mashup of A Christmas Story.

TipMonkies’ Ultimate Guide to Yahoo! Services is a comprehensive roundup of all of the services offered by Yahoo! and its immediate affiliates.

Deflexion is a boardgame that combines the strategy of chess with a twist:

Players alternate turns moving Egyptian themed mirrored pieces around the playing field after which they fire their low powered laser diode with the goal of illuminating their opponent’s pieces to eliminate them from the game.

Turns involve the movement of pieces as well as the movement and/or rotation of mirrors, and at the end of each turn a low-powered laser is fired. A piece is eliminated if a non-mirrored surface is hit by the laser. Quite geeky, but I think it sounds neat…

MediaWeek reports that

Fox will produce original episodes of it’s resurrected hit Family Guy exclusively for the Web sometime next year.
…
While a specific distribution model was not discussed, Levinsohn implied that these episodes will be sold directly to users. Speaking hypothetically, he spoke of selling episodes of the series on an individual user’s MySpace profile for a $1.99 an episode after these users have made an initial purchase.

I’ll definitely be interested in finding out more about this…

Scientists at MIT have developed an anti-fogging glass that utilizes a “superhydrophillic — water loving — coating [that] is composed of nanoparticles made of silica, the same material that glass is made from, to create a coating with a rough surface, although it looks smooth to the naked eye.” The result is a surface that not only does not fog up but also lets more light in, acting as an anti-reflective coating that improves transparency. The page contains a video demonstration and interview. Very cool…

You have got to take a look at The Grabowskis, a horribly cheesy 80s rap music video starring Mike Ditka. Yes, Coach Mike Ditka. Very disheartening…

Someone who used to work in the Gateway service department has posted Stupid Computer Tricks, a gallery of some amazingly moronic things that people did to their computers.