Activity from WCityMike

Showing posts from:

Displaying post 1 to 50 of 316

Rental of Fujitsu ScanSnap (or Similar) in Chicago Area? Or General Advice?

At some point in the future, I'd like to follow the recommendations of some various sites I've seen online and scan most of my paper archives to PDF. It looks like this would be the best solution (I'm a Mac user) – or, at least, that's the device I've seen recommended a few million times. However, I really can't see having the discretionary $417+ to purchase this device, not for a very, very long time. Does anyone offer this device for rental? (I live in Chicago.) Is there a RipDigital equivalent for this kind of thing (a very long time ago, they did the initial move of my music from CDs to MP3s)? Are there cheaper alternatives that are just as good?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:20 PM on November 21, 2009 (9 comments)

Dollhouse Demolished

"Dollhouse" is dead. Joss Whedon falls victim to FOX once more.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 3:19 PM on November 11, 2009 (146 comments)

"My dad, Master Sergeant Joe Myers, is in Iraq right now ... "

Tricked on Halloween (in the nicest way imaginable).
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:06 PM on November 3, 2009 (90 comments)

OHHHH! EEEEEE! OHHHHHH!

Esteemed actor Christopher Walken performs Lady Gaga's "Poker Face". Not a cover. Not an impression.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:41 PM on October 31, 2009 (73 comments)

ACCORDION SOLO!

Be forewarned, the sound quality isn't the best. But for a dose of pure surreality strong enough to turn your socks into melted Dada timepieces, try mixing "Weird Al" Yankovic on accordion with the Presidents of the United States, performing a (non-parody) cover of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" (SLYT). (via Dave Dederer's Reddit interview)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:54 PM on October 22, 2009 (29 comments)

I Love XKCD, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da ...

"I Love the Whole World" + xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel + Noah Raby + the Map of the Internet + Olga Nunes = I Love XKCD, a pretty cute bit of animation. (It's not the first time Raby's animated an xkcd strip.)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:26 PM on October 21, 2009 (40 comments)

Cheezborgercheezborgercheezborgercheezborgercheezborger ...

Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger TM!! (ad infinitum) is one of the sounds you're likely to hear upon descending the stairs down to Lower Michigan Avenue and walking through a big fireman-red door (perhaps for the monthly Chicago meetup?) into the Billy Goat Tavern and Grill, where the bathrooms are confusingly named but not unisex, and where you can get a "cheezborger" or any one of a number of vegetarian-unfriendly menu options.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:24 PM on October 20, 2009 (35 comments)

Handling Drippy Food with a Non-Straight-Lined Torso?

I'm by nature a person who likes to keep myself looking neat. I'm having a logistical problem with that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:40 AM on October 20, 2009 (27 comments)

Punky Power 2009

Sometimes, there just aren't words: Punky Power 2009. (For those having no idea what's being referenced, linkage.)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:48 PM on October 14, 2009 (35 comments)

Me Go Too Far! Me Am Play Gods!

Caveman Science Fiction. Me Go Too Far! Me Am Play Gods!
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:55 AM on October 5, 2009 (25 comments)

Henry Rollins - The Death of Joe Cole

Henry Rollins: The Death of Joe Cole: Part 1, Part 2. About 17 minutes total, but, God, worth it.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 1:43 PM on October 1, 2009 (38 comments)

How the Fuck I'm Losing the Battle to Tyrese?

Doomsday vs. Lyric (YT). From Rhyme Spitters 2006, a documentary of an annual Chicago tournament of freestyle emcee battles – completely improvised verbal battles between two rappers where insults are brought to a lyrical form that's often hilarious, often very politically incorrect, and usually NSFW. It's usually not taken personal by either party – in fact, it's not unusual in these battles to see a rapper smiling in appreciation of a particularly well-crafted insult that just came from their opponent. See also Rhyme Spitters 1, 2, and 4, each hour-long documentaries online at Vimeo featuring tons more battles.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:58 AM on September 27, 2009 (36 comments)

GivesMeHope: For Those "Exhausted by the Negativity of the Mainstream Media"

GivesMeHope (RSS), a site for those "completely exhausted by the negativity of the mainstream media." Modeled after their polar opposite, Fuck My Life, the site serves as a source for sometimes glurgy, but much more often touching, 350-character stories that can serve to remind that "the world is a fine place and worth fighting for." The Top 10, as voted by readers, are enough to melt hearts of stone. Oh, and The Office's Dwight thinks it's "awesome".
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:39 PM on September 19, 2009 (64 comments)

Idea: Metafilter Link Checker (Needs a Fancier Name)

Idea: the Metafilter link-checker. Take the part of the 'new post' process that double-checks against prior posts, add the part of Mefi that conjures up the related posts, put a link to the feature up on the two lines of links near the logo.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 8:59 PM on September 18, 2009 (42 comments)

Calculating Probability Over Several Attempts?

How do you multiply probability across multiple chances? Let's say that every time you roll a die, you have a one-in-six chance of having five come up. What math would you perform to come up with the probability of five coming up at some point with the dice being rolled two times? Three? Five? Ten? (I'm using dice as a shorthand here: the actual probability figure I'm working with is 24%.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 9:39 AM on September 16, 2009 (15 comments)

My Name is Potato

"My Name is Potato," Rita Pavone (1977) (SLYT).
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 9:26 AM on September 15, 2009 (24 comments)

Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Bookstore

"Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Bookstore," by Robin Sloan. 'A short story about recession, attraction, and data visualization.' (via Boing Boing)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 9:36 AM on September 11, 2009 (18 comments)

It's Getting Hot in Herre / So Put On Coolin' Clothes

225° F (105° C) heat index. Easily impaled on 55-ton jagged crystals that are 36 feet long ... made out of drywall (kinda). "Most cameras with moving parts and tape mechanisms simply will not work."
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 5:37 PM on September 9, 2009 (45 comments)

"He'd bash your face in with the banhammer / If you ever tried to scan a cat ... "

Just wanted to highlight Lore Sjöberg's Mathowie-ing of Weird Al Yankovic's "Charles Nelson Reilly", which then inspired wendell's rewrite of the lyrics. Both fairly amusing and almost lost in the shuffle, I think.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:20 PM on September 3, 2009 (8 comments)

A Breathtaking Contortionistic Escape, and Revenge Wreaked


Thank God There's Not a "George's Journal" ...

"Hi. My name is Gene and this is my journal." Young Gene Roddenberry meets two Garfield-eyed aliens who proceed to take him everywhere in their exploration of this strange planet Earth. In the process, we see where Gene came up with the idea of a unified borderless, moneyless world that would allow dashing starship captains to seek out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before. We see where Gene first met tribbles, Orion slave girls, Organians, and the Guardian of Forever, and how Gene came up with phasers, tricorders, the Prime Directive, food replicators (from which he orders gagh), Questor androids, and the Enterprise design.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:32 PM on September 2, 2009 (28 comments)

At 1,789,549 mph, that's a hell of a flow ...


Ask Me Anything


For NPR, This is Daniel Schorr ... AGGGGH! *leaps for dial*

Whenever I listen to National Public Radio, I occasionally come across a news segment or op-ed by Daniel Schorr (he can be listened to here, and here's his Wikipedia article). I don't understand why, but his voice drives me up one wall and down the other. Why?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 5:59 PM on August 24, 2009 (32 comments)

Don't Blame Me, Kodos Told Me He Would've Vaporized Aetna

The Obama administration signaled today it is ready to entirely abandon the public option, i.e. giving Americans the choice of government-run health insurance (AP, Daily Kos, Politico, Hill). Further, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius indicated that end-of-life counseling was "probably off the table", presumably due to Republican "death panel" commentary.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:32 AM on August 16, 2009 (491 comments)

Case-Insensitive LS on Mac OS X?

Unix mavens: is there a way for ls on a Mac OS X install to alphabetize its listing case-insensitively, while still preserving any other ls flags you may be using? If not, does another ls variant offered by anybody offer case-insensitivity, and if so, how can I supplant one with the other, without risk of any harm to anything else on my system? (If it matters, my shell of choice is tcsh.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:03 AM on August 16, 2009 (17 comments)

Can't Find the Right Metafilter Search-Fu For This Question

I am wondering if people could assist me in locating Ask Metafilter questions along the lines of this and this. I know it's a concept frequently asked about, but evidently the concept's too amorphous for tags to be of help, Related Questions just circularly refer to each other, and I can't find the right Google-fu for this one.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:03 PM on August 6, 2009 (11 comments)

He Was Somebody. He was a CONTENDAH.

An uncredited contributor to A Star is Born; a writer for Little Orphan Annie; the writer of Nuremberg and a writer of December 7th – both productions of the Office of Strategic Services documentary unit led by John Ford; author of a 1940s hit, What Makes Sammy Run? – the story of Sammy Glick (Shmelka Glickstein)'s rise from newspaper office boy to studio production chief – oddly enough also made into a musical. And, of course, the man who put the words "I coulda been a contender" into Marlon Brando's lips. Screenwriter Budd Schulberg dies today, five years short of a century.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 3:46 PM on August 6, 2009 (13 comments)

What Medically, Anatomically Is Happening In This NSFW Skydiving Photograph?

Something that's always had me a bit curious: how is what's happening to the breasts of the female skydivers in this image that's circulated around the 'Net (NSFW) even anatomically possible?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:59 AM on August 3, 2009 (10 comments)

Wait a tick. Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably, I could go back and visit my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how cou ... oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.

M. Joseph Young does rather interesting, detailed temporal analyses of the different timelines created by the Terminator films, the Back To The Future trilogy, Millennium, those Trek films that dealt with time travel, 12 Monkeys, Flight Of The Navigator, Army of Darkness, Lost In Space, Peggy Sue Got Married, the Bill & Ted movies, Frequency, Planet of the Apes, Kate and Leopold, Somewhere In Time, The Time Machine, Minority Report, Happy Accidents, The Final Countdown, Donnie Darko, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Deja Vu.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:44 PM on July 30, 2009 (56 comments)

Wouldn't that be L'Ira di Khan?

Le Wrath Di Khan. This is too much of a geekgasm not to share.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:15 PM on July 28, 2009 (34 comments)

Question Re: "Tubthumping" Music Video

I was watching the Chumbawumba "Tubthumping" video, and while it's obvious that most of the women in the bathroom scenes are men in drag, I wasn't so sure about one: am I right in saying that the woman we see mouthing to "pissing the night away", "oh, Danny boy, Danny boy", and "don't cry for me, next door neighbor" is the lead singer in drag?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 9:57 PM on July 26, 2009 (4 comments)

I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

"I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," a beautiful little moodful animated Larry Mullen Band music video.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:26 PM on July 24, 2009 (33 comments)

Deleted Posts Accessible to the User?

I recently had a MeFi post deleted. I know it will still show up in my Metafilter Recent Activity for a while, but once it goes from there, is there any way to track it and any deleted posts from my past?
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 8:30 PM on July 18, 2009 (34 comments)

With that keyboard, I wonder what Ctrl-Alt-Del would do ...

Ctrl is an NBC webseries starring Tony Hale (Arrested Development's Buster, Chuck's Emmett Milbarge) as an office drone who suddenly finds that, thus far, CTRL-Z lets him undo recent events in his own life, and CTRL-B emboldens him to stand up to his boss and confess his love to the source of his crush. It was based on a short film, Ctrl-Z, starring Hale's Chuck co-star Zachary Levi as the boss. Not exactly a new concept, but nonetheless well-executed by a fairly good comic team ...
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:14 PM on July 18, 2009 (38 comments)

Hell no, hell no, hell no-oh-oh-oh-ooo ....

Auto-Tune the News #6. I know the Autotune folks aren't exactly new to Metafilter, but, damn, this one's pretty catchy, and it's about the only time I've loved what came out of Rep. Boehner's mouth.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:26 PM on July 13, 2009 (71 comments)

Help Explain Total Eclipse's "Glee Club of the Damned" and Dr. Horrible's "Dead, Not Sleeping"?

Could someone explain to me two references I don't get? In Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, Billy receives a letter from "Dead, Not Sleeping" (clip). Is that a reference to something? Also, in the Total Eclipse of the Heart "literal" video I posted to Mefi, there's a lyric that says: "And I've joined the Glee Club of the Damned (reference joke!)" (clip). What's "Glee Club of the Damned" a reference to? I presume it's a reference to something since they outright say it is ...
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 6:47 PM on July 4, 2009 (19 comments)

You See, In Order to Save the Village America, We Have to ...

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's "bin Laden Station", and the initially anonymous author of Imperial Hubris, pulls an O'Reilly on yesterday's Glenn Beck broadcast:
"The only chance we have as a country have right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States [...] only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them [...] with as much violence as necessary."

posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:24 PM on July 1, 2009 (96 comments)

A Study in Subtitles

A Study in Subtitles (SIL).
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 7:24 PM on June 28, 2009 (28 comments)

Best of the Best of the Best, Sir! With Honors, Sir!

Click on "My Profile". Click on the number to the right of "Favorited by others:". Click on the word "Popular". Copy and paste the top result into this MeTa thread (with hyperlink).
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 7:27 PM on June 25, 2009 (311 comments)

He's Barack Obama

He's Barack Obama, to a Jack Black-ian rock version of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:04 PM on June 21, 2009 (21 comments)

Could the Layout of Favorites Be More Unified and Clearer?

There are about six different places where favorites live, and I often find myself confused as hell as to the differences between the various tabs and links.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 7:14 PM on June 18, 2009 (58 comments)

Bill O'Reilly Is Teh Master Video Remixer!

I'll admit it borders on LOLneocons, but it really takes it to a truly amazing level, reminiscent of the media outlets depicted in 1984, to see Salon.com editor-in-chief Joan Walsh's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor and then compare it with Bill O'Reilly's "remix" of the interview which actually aired. We already knew we were in the age of malleable media, but ... (See also Gawker's summary of what techniques Walsh employed to come out on top, which are generally useful in life, too.)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:13 PM on June 16, 2009 (118 comments)

How Can I, Early in the Process, Make Sure a Potential Employer and I Aren't Way Too Far Apart in the Potential Salary for a Position?

Does formal, or politely euphemistic, language exist by which, early on in the job-hunt process, you can make sure you and a potential employer aren't considering salary ranges that are half a planet apart?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:45 AM on June 12, 2009 (8 comments)

"And Then All of a Sudden a Communist Appears Out of Nowhere!"

Saturday Night Live comedic actress Victoria Jackson (whose website, upon entering, acoustically informs you of her non-bimbohood) appears on Sean Hannity's show with a rather large amount of enthusiasm and a torrent of very enthusiastically stated, if somewhat stream-of-consciousness, insights (YouTube, transcript).
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:58 PM on June 9, 2009 (75 comments)

Pony Request: MyAskMefi to Track Anonymous Questions (or Track Users' Questions?)

Pony request: can following all anonymous posts (or maybe, more widely, following a specific user) be integrated into MyAskMefi?
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 1:21 PM on June 9, 2009 (29 comments)

Total Eclipse of the Heart (Literal Video Version)

Total Eclipse of the Heart (Literal Version) (SLYT). This video has a cracktasticness-surreality quotient that's through the roof.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:16 PM on June 3, 2009 (78 comments)

Fathom Me This, Batman!

It's a bit difficult to give context to Fathom without ruining the fun of the game, but I daresay it's worth your time. A bit more here, and the comments there seem to offer a few useful hints if you're getting too frustrated.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 4:38 PM on May 19, 2009 (44 comments)

Web-Based or Mac OS X Twitter Client with Navigation, Deletion/Hide of Read Tweets, and URL Launch -- All Via Keyboard Shortcuts?

Looking for a Twitter client with very specific certain requirements. Does it exist?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 3:52 PM on April 21, 2009 (6 comments)

Life's Calendar

Eventually ... (SIL), by Winston Rowntree.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2009 (12 comments)

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7