Displaying post 1 to 50 of 147
How can I change the behavior of searching in windows in Firefox? The Firefox search-in-browser bar is, and has always has been, awful.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:25 AM on June 29, 2008
(14 comments)
Have you been salmoned?
I just met a stranger from Denver via the process of salmoning, in which a chatbot initiates an unexpected two-way conversation between two (apparently random) nicks, giving them both aliases ending with "salmon," and leaving both parties confused.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:42 AM on June 14, 2008
(26 comments)
Is there a cheap or free way to setup a phone number in Trinidad and Tobago and have it forward to an American number? Skype and Grand Central don't have numbers in that area code (868). A dozen other vaguely similar services don't, either.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:40 PM on May 20, 2008
(2 comments)
Can you send an email from your Nokia phone using your T-Mobile service?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 10:22 AM on May 5, 2008
(11 comments)
Television military analysts are wooed, courted, and privileged by the Pentagon.
An in-depth investigative report by the
New York Times uncovers logrolling, shilling, touting, back-scratching, and just plain bias on the part of the experts that television networks put on the air to talk about the war. Some of them appear to be as good as owned by the Defense Department. "The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves."
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:32 PM on April 19, 2008
(37 comments)
I am in need of a server-side Linux or Unix-based software solution that will sort uploaded PDF files that can be PDF-native (that is, created in such a way that the text in the PDF is freely copyable), PDFs with embedded text over images (usually the result of a previous OCR job), and PDF-scanned, which are PDFs containing no text, only scanned images. The PDF-native files and PDFs with embedded text it will extract text from, the PDF-scanned files it will then OCR and export that text.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 11:13 AM on March 17, 2008
(4 comments)
Is there a major online advertising network that allows targeting of specific IP ranges like those assigned to a company?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:43 AM on January 15, 2008
(7 comments)
What would cause web site traffic to rise and then hit a plateau for the middle of each day before falling again?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 1:10 PM on November 18, 2007
(16 comments)
Nominate your 2007 Word of the Year.
The American Dialect Society's word-of-the-year vote—the longest-running such vote anywhere—takes place in Chicago in January at its
annual meeting. The academic society is now accepting word-of-the-year nominations at
woty@americandialect.org. Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as "vocabulary item"—not just words but phrases. Your nominations do not have to be brand-new, but they should be newly prominent or notable in the past year, and should have appeared frequently in the national discourse. The word-of-the-year vote is not a formal induction of words into the American language, but a whimsical affair. Nominate accordingly.
posted to Projects by Mo Nickels
at 10:14 AM on November 17, 2007
I need somebody who can convert a single web page design into a working WordPress 2.3.x theme. The design will be delivered in a sliced Photoshop file. You need to be prepared to create as much of the look in well-formed XHTML and CSS as possible. No tables, no frames, and no more graphics or Flash than are necessary. You need to understand columns, boxes, styled text, tight code, cross-browser issues, and consistency. You will use dummy text where the WordPress-specific tags will go and someone else will replace them with working code later, but the styling information must already be in place. In order to apply, you must have an online portfolio. Do not apply if you cannot adhere absolutely to the deadlines. The work begins November 8th and must be complete by November 16th, with no leeway whatsoever. All revisions must also happen before November 16th. This is for a non-profit startup: there is a small, inflexible budget for this: $500, including two rounds of revisions.
posted to MeFi Jobs by Mo Nickels
at 2:44 PM on October 30, 2007
I'm looking for suggestions for open source software that will allow me to take a large amount of XML, do searches of it through a web interface (especially allowing selecting trees or tags for narrowing searches), and return HTML-formatted results.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 12:48 PM on September 7, 2007
(6 comments)
I have a dictionary web site that includes some custom PHP code built on top of a CMS. The custom PHP code is mine, but it's highly inefficient. I need somebody to streamline a single page of it. Familiarity with ExpressionEngine would be a plus. The work should be brief and easy for someone with solid skills. Inquiries will receive the code and instructions, to which you can reply with your preferred fee to indicate your interest.
posted to MeFi Jobs by Mo Nickels
at 8:15 AM on July 10, 2007
Skot
summarizes Ask Metafilter: "AskMe is often quite an amazing resource; it's made even more impressive by the fact that this 'community' of thousands of sun-deprived gripers frequently give good advice. Predictably, however, you have to wade through pounding waves of horrible bullshit to find it. And then, when you do find it, you have to sit there a moment and worry about the fact that this community—like all communities—is filled with a colorful band of assholes, half of whom hate the other half; a full two-thirds who are illiterate or insane; an unidentifiable portion who are basement-dwelling hate-wraiths; ten percent who are axe-grinding creeps, possibly with real axes; and your average random smattering of mean-spirited shitheads. But somewhere in there are some good answers! Usually." Great Scott!
posted to MetaTalk by Mo Nickels
at 2:55 AM on April 11, 2007
(95 comments)
Double-Tongued Dictionary is looking for volunteers to assist in the hunt for new or unrecorded words. This is ideal for anyone who wants beginning experience at learning lexicography—the art and craft of making dictionaries.
Double-Tongued Dictionary is a three-year-old web site devoted to discovering real words that are unrecorded or under-documented in mainstream dictionaries, including slang, jargon, and new words. The work is interesting but simple, rewarding but tedious. We strive to maintain high lexicographical standards.
You're literate, well-read, educated, and alert to the subtleties of language. You are a speaker of any variety of English as a first language. You fancy yourself a wordsmith. You read the dictionary for pleasure. You have a perverse delight in arcana. You keep up with current events and you read a lot of periodicals, online and off. You have three to ten hours a week to volunteer your time.
In the beginning, your task would be to sort through incoming messages to note those words that are new to you, just one of three steps a word travels before it is recorded in the database. This is an important part of making any dictionary—larger operations, like the
Oxford English Dictionary, have thousands of people searching for new words. Later, there may be opportunities to learn how to construct dictionary entries, including writing definitions.
I'm sorry, but there is no compensation available for the work. For what it's worth, you will be credited on the staff page of the web site, including links to your own sites or projects. If your school allows, this could be considered an unpaid internship.
Please send an email explaining at length your interest in volunteering for the dictionary. No phone calls, please. Resumes are interesting but not necessary.
Thanks,
Grant Barrett
Editor, Double-Tongued Dictionary
posted to MeFi Jobs by Mo Nickels
at 4:32 AM on April 3, 2007
Duclod man uncovered.
Sarah Aswell uncovers but does not name the author of bizarre letters. "As early as 1992, students at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school in Iowa, began receiving strange, anonymous letters in the mail. The letters contained homemade greeting cards with crudely drawn pictures—men crawling on the ground, toilets and trash cans, twin closet doors—and jokes that didn’t make any sense."
Previously on Metafilter, plus
this blip.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 5:51 PM on March 12, 2007
(156 comments)
How do I stop Google Notifier on OS X from notifying me repeatedly about an event?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 12:11 PM on March 11, 2007
(5 comments)
A revamped
Last fall I became the new cohost of the call-in radio show
A Way With Words, a weekly hour-long question-and-answer program about language, grammar, word origins, and related topics. We've been working undercover ever since to take it in new directions, changing the show in great ways. Well, the first shows in the new season—my first as permanent new cohost—air Saturday, January 20, and then every week thereafter. They're broadcast from
KPBS in San Diego via radio, streaming, and
podcast, as well as on
WFPL in Louisvile and on the
Wisconsin Public Radio network.
posted to Projects by Mo Nickels
at 10:26 PM on January 17, 2007
I was a slave in Puglia.
A long first-person exposé, in English, about immigrant slave labor in Italy, from Fabrizio Gatti writing in the Italian newspaper
L'Espresso. "I can hire you. Tomorrow," he promises. "Do you have a girl friend?" "A girlfriend?" "You have to bring me a woman. For the boss. If you bring him one, he'll put you to work right away. Any girl will do." He points to a twenty year-old woman and her companion, working on the conveyor belt of a huge tractor that is being used to gather tomatoes. "Those two are Romanians, just like you. She slept with the boss." "But I'm alone." "No work for you then."
Photo galleries.
Italian version (includes additional sidebars not found in the English version, including local and government reaction to the exposé and more photo galleries under the sidebar "Reportage Fotografico.")
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 3:57 PM on September 4, 2006
(16 comments)
Tag feeds (like
this one) in Ask MeFi don't work in NetNewsWire though they work in Safari. Can anyone duplicate this or offer me a solution?
posted to MetaTalk by Mo Nickels
at 12:11 PM on July 26, 2006
(9 comments)
Can you recommend a MySQL hosting provider?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 9:14 AM on July 10, 2006
(14 comments)
I've just copied all my data from an iBook G4 to a Macbook. For some reason, the delete and return keys don't work in Safari and Mail.app on the Macbook. I think I've solved this before but I can't remember how and can't find the answer.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:35 PM on May 24, 2006
(4 comments)
The seller called 'em polkadots.
"When I got the dress, my eyes about popped out of my head. These were NOT creamy white polkadots. My mind raced. This was a novelty print, yes, but not of balloons or cheerfully wriggling tadpoles. There's no way…could it be!? Could the 1950's designer Mark-Robbins been so devious as to devise a blue dress covered—literally covered—in…"
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 4:10 PM on March 11, 2006
(16 comments)
Anti-Valentines:
"She said, 'I've been tapping my foot under my desk so that you'll be my friend again.' Then she started crying."
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 8:17 AM on February 14, 2006
(56 comments)
Please recommend a Windows 2000 program that will allow me to assign a keyboard command to bring all windows of an active application forward or launch the application if it is not yet open.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 12:07 PM on January 9, 2006
(7 comments)
For a friend: "My boyfriend and I work for the same company. After a couple of years, we are becoming very serious. I work in human resources. He works elsewhere in the building. As part of building our total trust in each other, he told me that he was once arrested for a non-violent, non-drug crime and jailed for a few days. Do I report him?"
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 11:44 AM on December 12, 2005
(245 comments)
How do I get Firefox to rename with unique names simultaneous downloads that start out with the same name?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 12:16 PM on November 1, 2005
(13 comments)
Interactions between migrating birds and offshore oil and gas platforms in the northern Gulf of Mexico
(PDF, 5.9MB). A scientific but engrossing look at bird migration over the Gulf of Mexico, describing, in part, death by starvation of migrants who have metabolized all their bodily fat, “overshoots” that inadvertently travel past their intended destinations and find themselves unexpectedly over water at first light, and a suggestion that peregrine falcons not only recovered from near extinction due to the presence of oil platforms in the Gulf, but that they may eventually establish a breeding population on the Gulf platform archipelago.
Summary.
Full report (PDF, 5.9 MB).
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:13 AM on September 22, 2005
(9 comments)
I need software, OS X (including Darwin or XWindows) or Windows 2K, that can be set to automatically check the maximum download or upload speed to and from multiple machines outside my WAN at given time intervals by doing pre-set tasks and recording the total time the tasks take and the size of the total data transferred. I do not need software that shows me the current throughput of whatever random surfing or emailing I'm doing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 9:04 AM on September 12, 2005
(4 comments)
Ideophones
are words that are usually spoken but not written and are often
onomatopoeic, including (
but not limited to) the calls—often
reduplicated—with which we beckon domestic animals, kindred to our
animal imitations. In the States there are many more
pig calls beyond
soo-ee. Maxim Gorky wrote that the sound
tse tse is used to call pigs in Russia. In Spanish
coch is used.
Americans use
pipi and
biddy to call chickens and turkeys. In
Ambon Malay chickens are called with
kurrrrr or
pan kur. In
Kiswahili you call chickens with
gurúgurúgurúgurú, call dogs with
aháháhá, and straying cattle with
ishiyeeyeeeeee or
ngoyéeeeee. In Sweden, they call cattle with a loud, high-pitched
kulning (akin to
yodeling). Cervantes wrote that they use
tus tus to call dogs in Spain.
One source says in
Coolderry, Ireland, they use
gen-gen to call pigs to ford,
puddly pudde to call ducks,
peopeo to call horses, and
geg geg to call geese. In Iceland,
kibbakibb is used to call sheep. In the Hiligaynon language of the Philippines, they call cats with
míming. In the parish of Nantcwnlle in Wales they have their own
set of calls.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 8:46 AM on August 27, 2005
(17 comments)
Are there any members who are serving or have served in Iraq? Any members who live, or have constant contact with someone who lives, in Iraq? If you're willing, I have language-related questions, both about American military usage and colloquial modern Iraqi Arabic. Email me at the address on the web site linked in my profile.
posted to MetaTalk by Mo Nickels
at 11:30 AM on August 6, 2005
(6 comments)
Portable parking spaces
are the mind-bending Atomic-age outcome of centuries of humankind's best technology: they enable a bike to occupy the same perimeter as a car. They're arts and crafts, they're couture, they're
vehicles of dissent [Flash, contains photos, project info, instructions on building your own PPS]. See the
movie [11MB QuickTime]. A
different take on the concept.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:05 PM on August 1, 2005
(52 comments)
They
dance and eat as
they steal.
Yomango, a counter-but-consumerist-culture of shoplifting,
surfaced July 2002 in Spain. It's shoplifting as a movement—taught in
workshops, choreographed, organized as missions, and executed with prankish gusto on three continents. Why? One, it's civil disobedience that believes stealing to stay alive should be permitted. Two, it
takes back what once belonged to everyone. Three, there's humor in it, even with the communistic undertones and its little
red book. Discussion:
Dark Matter, Las Agencias, and the Aesthetics of Tactical Embarrassment.
A Poliedric Debate On Collabora Art.
¿Lo quieres?¿Lo tienes? (Spanish). More about Yomango:
Ten Style Tips for a Yomango Life. A
gallery of promos, news, and event photos.
Yomango fashion show.
Yomango tango.
Yomango dinner.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 4:30 PM on July 31, 2005
(46 comments)
Firefox deal-breakers. 1. Instead of scrolling the page, panning use the trackpad on OS X goes back one page in the cache. 2. I want to change the keybinding to so that control-click on a link opens in a new background tab, instead of in a new foreground tab.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 12:16 PM on July 28, 2005
(15 comments)
From the folks who brought you Abu Ghraib,
new information from Afghanistan. More torture of "terrorists," more deaths of prisoners, more untrained interrogators pummeling instead of interrogating—facts direct from a leaked Army investigation.
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:42 AM on May 20, 2005
(83 comments)
In June I attend a conference on the Boston University campus. It looks like the BU network will be closed to attendees who are not BU students. Do you know of wifi access close to the BU campus?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 8:30 AM on May 18, 2005
(5 comments)
Stories from a prison in South Korea,
told by an English teacher imprisoned for teaching without a license. Punishment: deportation. But if a prisoner can't collect wages due, then the prisoner can't buy a plane ticket and stays jailed, where the prisoner can't make money, until such time as the prisoner can afford a plane ticket, ad infinitum.
Part one. "The massive Mongolian sings beautifully. A sad falsetto—I imagine it to be about missing a faraway homeland of vast, green pastures, endless fertile grasslands, deserts and broad skies."
Part two. "He should really go to a hospital outside of the detention center, but…he would have to pay for any medical treatment outside.…If he spends any money on medical bills he would have less money for buying his airplane ticket home. So he must go untreated."
posted to MetaFilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:35 AM on May 18, 2005
(16 comments)
Do you know of a page or project that will show a list of Amazon's
statistcally improbable phrases, live-linked to the Amazon content the are found in? Options for sorting by source date, title, author, subject, or other classes are what my inner librarian really wants.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:46 PM on March 21, 2005
(5 comments)
Stoopid Safari question: URLs often only load on the second try. I type in the URL, hit enter, the URL disappears, no page loads, any URL that was there before reappears.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 10:01 AM on March 8, 2005
(13 comments)
As a white man in New York City, I've become conscious that when I pass some black men, they often spit immediately after I pass. Another white friend says it happens to him, too. Is it a statement about our race?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 6:45 PM on February 26, 2005
(42 comments)
I burned out my roommate's electric food chopper by trying cheese, so I need to get her a new one. Can you recommend a fairly priced model that won't go all stinky and smoky when I stuff it full of Wisconsin's best?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 10:29 AM on February 16, 2005
(12 comments)
Is there a free VST- or AudioUnit-compatibile plugin designed to remove or reduce compression artifacts from low-quality audio being re-recorded at a higher bitrate? Or special settings for a specific filter that will do this? I need one for AudioHijack on OS X.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 8:44 PM on January 20, 2005
(6 comments)
I received a $50 gift card from my parents for Christmas. From Sears. I think the intention was that I would buy underwear and socks. I'd like to swap it for one from a book store, but all the gift card swapping sites seem suspicious or they take too big of a fee. Recommendations?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 7:19 AM on December 26, 2004
(47 comments)
Hypothetical: You're abroad, temporarily resident in the home of strangers. Not a vacation. The shelter was voluntarily offered at no cost. You are vastly rich by comparison to your host/hostess. But you know they will refuse any money you give them, no matter what--it's not a coy negotiation technique. Gifts of baubles and luxuries aren't needed so much as basics. You can give the children sweets, but if you do anything more appropriate, such as buy meat for the household or pay to have the well pump fixed, your hosts will truly be insulted. Yet, you cannot leave without doing something: your religion/conscience/mother/employer requires it, and you might be back. There are no "oh, s/he's a foreigner" excuses. How do you monetarily or otherwise successfully compensate your hosts so everyone retains honor?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Mo Nickels
at 2:04 PM on December 16, 2004
(26 comments)
