You say I'm supposed to tell a doctor? Sir, if I got an erection that lasted four hours, I wouldn't tell my doctor I'D TELL EVERYONE (click)



This really needs to be a popup window or sidebar app I can have always at my ready when I need it.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 8:17 PM on May 12, 2008

Man, if only Nissan cars just gave the guy a million for the domain in 1999, this could have been all avoided and saved everyone money, time, and frustration.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 5:18 PM on May 10, 2008

I bought a brand-new Waterman Harmonie fountain pen on eBay about two weeks ago for half of the retail price. Got it two days after the purchase. eBay works fine for what I use it for, esoterica and books.

Yeah, I have to say buying oddball european bike parts and bike clothing has worked wonderfully for me for years. I would never buy/sell a laptop or cellphone on ebay -- those two categories certainly attract all the scams, but the other 90% of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:11 AM on May 9, 2008

I fixed the quote.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:09 PM on April 24, 2008

Doug Benson is a pretty funny guy -- he's done a pot-themed comedy show called the Marijuanalogues and I've heard several interviews where he comes off as a pretty sharp guy that likes a bit of weed every now and then and doesn't totally enjoy being known as a "pothead humorist". I thought the trailer looked pretty good, though I suspect there won't be much difference between the smoking month and the non-smoking month (aside from weight gain I would suspect).
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 3:15 PM on April 13, 2008

flatlugi, I changed the link to point at eeggs.com
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:00 PM on April 8, 2008

I thought this would be a boring re-do of the best gig ever prank they did in NYC but oh man, by the time I got to the end of this I was teary eyed.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:52 PM on April 7, 2008

I've heard people call the Clinton campaign Rove-ian, but just like the Bush admin, they release bad news late on a Friday.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:00 PM on April 4, 2008

This reminds me of my dad's crazy pointless emails to me. Also, he started talking like a nigerian spammer for no reason and never stopped.

About two years ago, he started sending email like this "I have a question...[paragraph of problem and question].... PLEASE ADVISE, Dad.

Almost every email ends with blah blah blah PLEASE ADVISE. I've never heard him speak those words and I've rarely heard any native english speaker in the US talk like... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:23 AM on April 4, 2008

What's weird with gaming is that it there seems to be a pretty huge gap between the people at this professor's dinner party (that last touched a video game 20 years ago) and what we regularly think of as "gamers" (cut to 30-year old in parents basement with a xbox360 running a FPS for 16hrs/day).

I myself am merely a casual gamer, an hour here, an hour there a week, tops, and it seems like that almost no one markets to me (aside from Nintendo) and no one writes... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:26 PM on March 30, 2008

Holy fucking crap. If you pause the left side original Hammer video for 2 seconds, the music and moves start matching up perfectly around the 30 second mark onwards. It just blew my fucking mind.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:52 PM on March 29, 2008

For the doubters in the audience, just watch the doubled youtube for one minute. There is magic from about 30 seconds to the end. I just bought a screencasting app to save that thing.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:35 PM on March 29, 2008

Dancin' Machine side-by-side with the original is pretty good too.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 8:06 PM on March 30, 2008

I read about this a couple days ago somewhere, with a bunch of background on how Creative has dragged their feet on Vista support and how amazing the efforts were of this lone hacker, but I can't seem to find it. It's pretty amazing that someone even fixed their drivers, much less that they are trying to shut the guy down.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:27 AM on March 30, 2008

how did Paul Graham get permission to use the Yahoo! favicon! as his own?

He sold his first company to Yahoo, which became Yahoo Stores. That's what gave him his money and power and why people pay attention to him instead of ignoring him like that linux crank with aspergers in your IT group.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 6:44 AM on March 30, 2008

He uses the same app (Yahoo Stores) to power his essay site, so essentially yeah, he gets to use the Y! logo because they set that as the favicon on every Yahoo Stores user.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:47 AM on March 30, 2008

As much as I wanted to love the story, I acted like the guy in the story for the first couple decades of my life (my parents always said be nice to folks, give them the benefit of the doubt, be considerate of others, etc), but by the time I hit college I realized I was everyone's doormat. Everyone took advantage of me, even really close friends treated me like shit because they knew they could get away with it and I'd let them.

I eventually stopped going out of my way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:38 AM on March 28, 2008

Gun dealer thinks the solution to all problems are for more people to buy guns (from him).

The guy is kind of a slimeball, but at worst he's being an ethically-challenged capitalist.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 8:25 AM on March 24, 2008

Beautiful.

If it were in America, there'd be a steering wheel attached to the glass and people would sell t-shirts that said "Have you Driven a Fjord Lately?" with various Beer company logos sprinkled throughout.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:34 AM on March 22, 2008

This video is © 1999 by Daniel J. Simons. It is provided solely so that individuals can view it. This version of the video may not be used downloaded, saved, copied, reproduced, or used for any other purpose. It is not intended for use in presentations.

From a psychology researcher friend: the video is actually a copy of work from the 1970s by Ulrich Nisser, who had a video where a woman with an umbrella walked through some people in alternating... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:03 PM on March 19, 2008

Bikely is my favorite place to find new rides.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:37 PM on March 14, 2008

Man, what a crappy article. They grab a handful of crappy startups and half-baked Google ideas (like the "wikipedia killer" that I've never even seen anyone link to online) and declare the ideas just the start of a whole new wave. Filed under "zomg I found three things alike on the internet today therefore this must be a paradigm shift!"
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:40 PM on March 10, 2008

Why are several stories floating around wondering what is in Cedric Daniels' file? Didn't they explain that in season one? It was something about taking money from a big drug bust or something?
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:17 PM on March 10, 2008

Real Americans are fat (the peak of the bell curve is in the 'overweight' category) while comic book superheros are not. Fascinating.

Are you being sarcastic? The first thing I got was that women superheros are held to a different standard. Male superheros can hover over the upper limits of normal at 25, but women have to be down near 20.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:20 PM on March 4, 2008

I saw this story in several places, but as always, major news outlets just gloss over the details. Has anyone seen the posts by these ad blogs that were calling this executive out directly? I looked around and didn't see much, but then I didn't even know there were blogs about advertising agency news.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 1:36 PM on March 3, 2008

Awesome, awesome story. I've drooled over Cervelo bikes and Zipp wheels for the past two years, wondering if I'd be really much faster on a lighter/aerodynamic setup like that (I bet I wouldn't but hey, it's fun to dream).

It's a great story, like having Michael Jordan ask if he can use your basketball to finish a game at the park.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:30 PM on February 28, 2008

Those photos are really amazing -- exquisite beauty from a tragic event.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:10 AM on February 21, 2008

How long before he's framed as another San Francisco liberal, and his issues folded into a culture war narrative?

Eh, he's running for a state rep seat overlooking San Francisco liberals -- if anything he might be accused of not being liberal enough.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:18 PM on February 19, 2008

I actually thought it was a cool idea when I first saw it, but it was reading Jonathan Coulton's assignment that really soured me on the idea. I really like Derek's work and I love Jonathan Coulton's music, but this really rubbed me the wrong way: Just to be clear, any design that gets submitted to this contest may end up getting printed on shirts that I then sell and then give you zero dollars. But there are fabulous prizes. And of course I will be very grateful. I mean, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 6:58 PM on February 12, 2008

I think that Pixish could be fixed if they get rid of the insulting spec work voting idea, and just concentrate on connecting potential clients and creatives.

Actually, I did like the voting part, but not before finalists are chosen. I think Pixish could be fixed if it followed an approach more like this:

1. You submit an assignment describing work you want done (say, a t-shirt design to be sold) and how much you'll pay to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:47 PM on February 12, 2008

Pixish IS for people with work sitting around that someone might want.

I definitely see that as a better approach and the SXSW challenge on the site speaks perfectly to existing work (I want to dig through iPhoto and submit as well). It was probably the t-shirt assignments that filled the site up at first that definitely felt like new original work being asked for.

If the assignments were tweaked towards existing stuff... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:25 PM on February 12, 2008

My first toss went 900km (thanks to a couple fortunate whale blasts) but after that, I can barely get them out of the harbor.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 4:07 PM on February 9, 2008

Jesus, I was just doing research last night on a potential new bike purchase and ran across another one of his tutorial/how-to/review pages for the millionth time in my searches. I must have read his site hundreds of times while doing research for various aspects of cycling. Big loss for everyone, he was such a valuable resource.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:35 PM on February 4, 2008

Holy crap, that is a beautiful bike. I'm guessing it's a few grand though?
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:17 PM on February 2, 2008

DV82XL, you posted this to digg, delicious, and reddit, and posted half the comments on the post itself. Are you the author of this piece?
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 12:53 PM on February 2, 2008

This essay is essentially "tragedy of the commons" but told from the point of view of a single sheep farmer. Of course it doesn't seem like your actions make any difference in the big picture, but that doesn't mean individuals shouldn't choose to make better choices before a top-down choice is made for them.

The fact is, the government doesn't do anything until there's enough public support for it. It's like saying "no one should waste... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 1:00 PM on February 2, 2008

chasing after small reductions and believing you are making a significant difference is silly. Pushing for greater change across the board is what is needed

On the microscopic level (ie, looking at what one person can do), "pushing for greater change" and "chasing after small reductions" looks exactly the same, hence my problem with the whole "throw your hands up and don't change your lightbulbs, change everything from the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 1:23 PM on February 2, 2008

He worked at Disneyland first, then Knott's. It's all in the book (I finished it last week -- pretty good overall and a great description of how he came to become a legend in comedy but also kind of weird in that he mentions every girlfriend he had and the account is hyperdetailed from roughly 1968 until 1981 but the times before and after are a blur barely worthy of mention).
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:54 AM on January 30, 2008

Seconded odinsdream. Reckless driving kills people all the time. Many of them contribute to online communities. Nothing noteworthy here unless you're a tricked-out-motorhead.

It's not often that someone dies doing something with a history on an online community of talking about doing the things that got them killed. Posting about rough shifting at 140mph the night before the crash? That's pretty incredible and rare.

If it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 4:17 PM on January 29, 2008

I have a thing for Abraham Lincoln so when I heard about good reviews from The Teaching Company from friends, I finally took the plunge on a complete course on Lincoln's life.

I must agree with friends that are fans of TTC -- they pick out really great lecturers that are passionate about their topic and they're way more listenable than any college course I ever took. I really liked it, though they're expensive (see if your library has any on tape/CD)
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:05 AM on January 29, 2008

I wonder what kind of fake concrete they used -- it seems tough enough to skate on but blows up into pure dust with (I'm guessing) small (and safe) explosives.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:53 AM on January 27, 2008

Yeah, I agree on the local news front for small cities. I imagine given the goals, it's much easier to cull from dozens of options in big cities to offer local feeds versus say a small town in the middle of america that might only have one new item a week.

I imagine they'll eventually get to the small towns and syndicate the info, since there certainly still are photos, restaurant reviews, and other things taking place even in the smallest of cities.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:15 PM on January 23, 2008

That's awesome, I love the shot of someone somersaulting into it.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 2:42 PM on January 16, 2008

Jason Levine's wrap-up here perfectly captures the irony of their jokey newsletter (a style that annoys me) biting them in the ass with this mistake.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:19 AM on January 15, 2008

Annalee rules, so io9 should follow. I'm happy to see it and subscribed immediately.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:24 PM on January 3, 2008

More background: this was in response to Patton Oswalt's blog entry.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:35 PM on January 1, 2008

I became slightly addicted to this stuff after stumbling upon Premiere Props' ebay auctions for stuff. The really compelling stuff isn't the big ticket items like anything worn by a famous hollywood actress, but the total minutia of things like watches and keys and fake money used by stars. I found that with less successful films, you could pick up a leading actor's entire wardrobe for less than the cost of actually buying the clothes at a store.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:32 PM on December 18, 2007

I love the idea that all highways will be illuminated from inside and contain radiant heating to keep them dry and unfrozen. I can't imagine what the energy costs of something like that would be.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:46 AM on December 17, 2007

I'm gonna move from WP back to MT. I still contend that WP's templates are a nightmare mixing display code with application logic. It's a horrible approach. I never have to look at perl in MT, I shouldn't have to look at PHP in Wordpress. Also, due to PHP exploits, I had to turn off xml-rpc, which limits how other services can tap into my blog. I fear upgrading my WP install because the last one hosed my templates (which again, shouldn't happen because I shouldn't be able to mess up application... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 8:04 AM on December 13, 2007

Wow, the youtube comments are worse. Everyone giving the filmer crap for filming it? It's just a bunch of strange butts parading by! Seriously, on a scale of innocuous anonymous semi-nudity to creepy lurid hot sex action, that video was firmly all the way over on the harmless side.

You can't ID anyone from it, no one gets hurt, no big deal, right?
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:55 PM on December 12, 2007