Hi all. I'm new to the site, though I've been searching and reading posts having to do with having a kid for the past couple of weeks. I have a question I'd like to pose to people interested in such matters. That is, can you have an intimate, supportive, loving, and prioritized relationship with your partner after you have a kid?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cellocat at 12:49 PM on October 22, 2007 (56 comments)

Pink Floyd fans may not need no education but Gilmourish, an exhaustive review of the guitars and audio effects of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour (with help from an insider), will leave most comfortably numb.
posted to MetaFilter by punkfloyd at 10:34 AM on October 19, 2007 (31 comments)

Roy Orbison in cling film ... and now, in print. "Any self-respecting bookshop should have a Clingfilm Wrapping section and the book will most likely be located there." Confused? Read the original story, followed by MeFi's first encounter (of many) with this phenomena in 2003.
posted to MetaFilter by grabbingsand at 12:03 PM on October 16, 2007 (23 comments)

Shoegazer 101 Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze or shoegazer; practitioners referred to as shoegazers) is a genre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It lasted until the mid 1990s, peaking circa 1990 to 1991. The British music press (notably NME and Melody Maker) called this genre "shoegazing" because the musicians in these bands often maintained a motionless performing style, standing on stage and staring at the floor while playing their instruments; hence, the idea that they were gazing at their shoes. The shoegazing sound featured extensive use of guitar effects, and indistinguishable vocal melodies that blended into the creative noise of the guitars. Some notable bands are Ride, Lush, Swervedriver, Slowdive, Curve, and American bands Lilys and the Swirlies.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 7:41 AM on October 3, 2007 (113 comments)

What are your favorite autobiographies? For the purposes of this discussion, I'm including "autobiographies" that were written collaboratively (like Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X) or that were straight up written by someone else (like Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas). The point is, the book is written from the point of view of the subject and it's (ostensibly at least) non-fiction.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by serazin at 3:19 PM on September 30, 2007 (57 comments)

LATE BREAKING NEWS (9.20/2007) 4:57 PST. In an unprecedented display of Huge Crab rage, A Huge Crab claims the lives of 2 innocent civilians...
posted to MetaFilter by crunchywelch at 11:28 AM on September 24, 2007 (49 comments)

What is the best solution for setting up a media center that can serve regular DVD, HD DVD, BluRay, QT, MKV/H.264, AVI, et cetera to a 47 inch LCD at 1080p?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by adi at 11:00 AM on September 23, 2007 (9 comments)

Did anyone in the history of Used Car Dealerships ever go to greater lengths to get you to go see him than Cal Worthington and his Dog, Spot? Warning: video contains music that cannot be unlistened to & will haunt you to the grave.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 11:23 PM on September 18, 2007 (63 comments)

Zork - The Original Map. This was too awesome not to post! (via)
posted to MetaFilter by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:08 AM on September 18, 2007 (132 comments)

We got absolutely screwed by the guy who sold us our house. Can you suggest some recourse?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 5:03 PM on September 14, 2007 (31 comments)

Your experience with Hong Kong Tailors.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by subtle-t at 3:36 PM on March 15, 2006 (11 comments)

Allow me to properly introduce you to MarkovFilter.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:37 PM on September 11, 2007 (348 comments)

What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by limon at 5:40 PM on September 8, 2007 (237 comments)

Streaming NFL Games
posted to MetaFilter by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:00 AM on September 8, 2007 (25 comments)

When I was a kid, I used to have fairly significant weakness in both my hands when I woke up in the morning. Any ideas what that might have been?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by peep at 9:13 AM on August 31, 2007 (29 comments)

You’d need years to really study these murals of Califonia’s history - the artist certainly had a lot a free time to create them. You'd probably also need a special invitation to engage in a multi-year study in the gallery - and you probably don't want one.
posted to MetaFilter by rtha at 12:11 PM on August 20, 2007 (8 comments)

Toronto: 1977 vs 2007. Shige Sakamoto spent a week in Toronto back in 1977, and took several photographs. Damon Schreiber is retracing Sakamoto's steps, taking photos of the same locations today. He's presenting the photos on his photoblog.
posted to MetaFilter by chunking express at 8:04 AM on August 17, 2007 (43 comments)

Legendary competitive eating champion Takeru Kobayashi battles Kodiak bear [youtube]
posted to MetaFilter by KokuRyu at 1:37 PM on August 7, 2007 (27 comments)

Bitters. This sharp-flavored, slightly medicinal liqueur, originally used as an aperitif, remains one of the defining ingredients in many classic cocktails, including the Manhattan, the Pink Gin, the Champagne Cocktail, and the Sazerac. Some popular herbal liqueurs, such as Campari and Jägermeister, are essentially just big bottles of bitters. But bitters had fallen on hard times, with most bars stocking only one brand, Angostura, or, if they were particularly sophisticated (or Southern), a second option, Peychaud's. Orange bitters, once an essential ingredient in the Martini, were forgotten and impossible to purchase. Times have changed, with companies such as Fee Brothers, Regan's, the Bitter Truth, and even Angostura, releasing their own versions of the orange stuff. In fact, bitters in enjoying something of a renaissance, with bars experimenting with making their own. Hobbyists, in the meanwhile, are reviving lost recipes.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 8:45 AM on August 1, 2007 (74 comments)

The Hello Experiment
posted to MetaFilter by lemonfridge at 11:50 AM on July 22, 2007 (35 comments)

What's the link between:
1) the quickly-growing number of American homeowners becoming unable to pay their mortgages after their ARM's reset (a trend nicknamed "ARMageddon" -- applicable in the UK too), which is translating into soaring foreclosure rates, and in turn forcing at least 60 US semi-shady mortgage brokers to go belly-up in the past year (i.e. the "subprime meltdown"), and...
2) the recent implosion and impending financial bailout -- which may become the biggest since the Long Term Capital Management fiasco of 1998 -- of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which dealt in mortgage securities? [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by Asparagirl at 5:13 PM on July 11, 2007 (122 comments)

What was my grandmother's childhood like?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ikkyu2 at 8:44 PM on October 9, 2006 (17 comments)

I'm looking for the best little low-budget movies that few people you know have seen, but ought to have.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by melissa may at 1:45 AM on July 9, 2007 (67 comments)

Do you want to fly? Really fly? Not at the controls of a cockpit simulation, but just you ... flying ... your motion through space controlled by the gentlest of nudges of your mouse. Tranquility. Not a game; but an environment in which to 'travel'. View a short QT video clip of a typical Tranquility level. Download the 'game browser' (versions for all common computers) in which the game operates, work through the short training levels, and prepare to lose yourself in flight. (Don't be put off by the 'Buy the Game' links on the website; Tranquility is perfectly functional in demo mode, with the demo landscape changing daily. I've been playing it that way for more than five years.)
posted to MetaFilter by woodblock100 at 9:16 AM on June 15, 2007 (29 comments)

This might make you smile.
posted to MetaFilter by brittney at 7:50 AM on June 12, 2007 (136 comments)

CatCam is exactly what it sounds like. A crappy digital camera, Atmel Attiny13 and a little electronics skill are all it takes to get your cat photoblogging. The results are pretty great. via Hackaday and possibly also Baby_Balrog
posted to MetaFilter by tracert at 10:01 AM on June 3, 2007 (90 comments)

Someone puts a video camera on a Japanese sushi bar conveyor belt. You can tell it's in Japan because it doesn't get stolen as it travels around the bar. Via b3ta.
posted to MetaFilter by Mwongozi at 12:37 PM on May 25, 2007 (103 comments)

"My deepest sympathies for posting this. I lack all attempts at rhythm and meter, and don't even have a nice English accent to back things up!"
posted to MeFi Music by chrismear at 9:10 PM on May 23, 2007 (55 comments)

I am looking for true tales of adventure, preferably memoirs. Here are some examples I've already enjoyed: Apsley Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World", Thomas Cochrane's "Autobiography of a Seaman", and Ernie O'Malley's "On Another Man's Wound" and "The Singing Flame". Priorities are quality of writing, closeness of the writer to the events being described, and extremity of the adventures.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by stammer at 3:22 PM on February 6, 2007 (56 comments)

So, Vanity Fair reports rumors that Live Free Or Die Hard will be toned down to a PG-13 rating instead of a hard R. A writer for Aint It Cool News responds with an extended rant about "the pansy-assing of the 4th DIE FLACCID movie." End-of-the-world fanboy ranting continues in the TalkBacks for a couple days, when a Walter B shows up claiming (indirectly) to be Bruce Willis. Walter B trash-talks about the previous Die Hard sequels, Michael Bay, and Cybill Shepherd. The admins are skeptical. iChat FTW! Just wait till the bloggers get ahold of this one!
posted to MetaFilter by designbot at 12:16 PM on May 11, 2007 (77 comments)

How can I make fall-off-the-bone chicken?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by proj at 6:43 PM on May 7, 2007 (28 comments)

There may be some among us who can imagine 20 days in captivity; perhaps a fraction of those can imagine a full year deprived of liberty and most human contact. But 20 years? Downey and Fecteau have consistently sought to downplay their period of imprisonment; and neither has done what arguably too many former CIA officers do these days with far less justification: write a book. Downey has said that such a book would contain "500 blank pages," and Fecteau says the whole experience could be summed up by the word "boring."

Extraordinary Fidelity: Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952–73 [secure link] by Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA historian and a veteran intelligence analyst. Time article about Downey and Fecteau from 1954.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:15 PM on May 3, 2007 (26 comments)

Name this San Francisco Neighborhood! I'm in the process of moving from Chicago to SF and am considering an apartment on Geary between Baker and Lyon. It's been described as being in "Lower Pacific Heights", but I've since learned that this is something of a misnomer - a way for realtors to make the place sound more impressive than it is. So where is this apartment in actuality?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by aladfar at 8:17 PM on April 29, 2007 (21 comments)

British bookseller Waterstones asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. These are the results.
posted to MetaFilter by unSane at 8:55 PM on April 14, 2007 (53 comments)

Friday Flash Fun: Dot Action II. The first 30 or so levels are pretty easy, but it does get harder.
posted to MetaFilter by seanyboy at 9:46 AM on April 13, 2007 (14 comments)

How to get the *BEST* deal on a 5 star hotel in Vegas (Wynn, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, Mirage)?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ITistic at 7:37 PM on April 10, 2007 (11 comments)

1,100 Apple II games you can play online. If you are too overwhelmed by your memories to know what to play, some playable classics: Oregon Trail*, Ultima IV*, Archon*, Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear*, Drol*, Wings of Fury*, Choplifter *, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?* and Taipan*. Or you can play the first game mod in history: Castle Smurfenstein, a modification of the 1983 original Castle Wolfenstein. What did I miss? [Young whippersnappers can click the asterisks to find out why the game was important. Use the left and right alt keys for joystick buttons, the other instructions are on the site. Emulator only works with IE, sorry. See also this.]
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 12:17 PM on August 29, 2006 (98 comments)

See here and here and here. I'm posting this to music because Cortex insisted.
posted to MeFi Music by buriednexttoyou at 11:49 AM on April 9, 2007 (31 comments)

The dark side of Phobos, soundtrack tunes of the seminal first person shooter Doom from 1993 as an album remade by fans. The project originated at Overclocked Remix, a site dedicated to album endeavors of this sort. Of course there are others doing this as well, the freeware Jump'n'Run Doukotsu Monogatari (Cave Story) for example got this treatment. Not as albums, but SID tunes have been remixed a lot (e.g. here, here) and by Machinae Supremacy. Would you like a radio station with this music to tune into? You've got it.
posted to MetaFilter by Glow Bucket at 9:56 AM on March 28, 2007 (16 comments)

Virus is a very simple, addictive flash game; using the colors available to you at the bottom of the screen, convert all the tiles on the board into a single color. Similar colored connecting tiles become part of the viral mass. Via.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 9:52 PM on February 21, 2007 (75 comments)

This song is called mathowie's community blog, and it's about mathowie, and the community blog, but mathowie's community blog is not the name of the community blog, that's just the name of the song. - lyrical brilliance by It's Raining Florence Henderson, with extra bits of artistic license taken in the studio. - Arlo-esque lead vocals by French Fry, aka my brother Alex.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:40 PM on September 3, 2006 (142 comments)

BoxHead - An entirly addictive zombie shot 'em upper. (via digg)
posted to MetaFilter by Dr.James.Orin.Incandenza at 11:44 AM on February 15, 2007 (71 comments)

3000 answers, and not one of them should be taken as medical advice. Here's to you, ikkyu2.
posted to MetaTalk by Busy Old Fool at 5:52 AM on February 4, 2007 (72 comments)

How do I properly prepare Chinese Gunpowder Green Tea? My mom recently received as a gift a box of Chinese Gunpowder Green Tea (brand pictured here). We'd like to try it but we're both confused about how to prepare it, since we've never been big tea drinkers and until now have been spoiled by the convenience of teabags.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by DrSkrud at 10:22 AM on November 21, 2006 (17 comments)

You've heard of ScummVM and MAME, but harvest time is approaching in the field of reverse-engineered open source re-implementations of other classic games too:
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon), LinCity (Sim City), Advanced Strategic Command (Battle Isle), Freeciv (Civilization), Enigma (Oxyd), Widelands (Settlers), OpenArena (Quake 3), Spring (Total Annihilation), JJFFE (Frontier First Encounters), Vega Strike and Oolite (Elite), FreeOrion (Master of Orion), Pingus (Lemmings), Stratagus (Warcraft II et al.), CloneKeen (Commander Keen), Exult (Ultima VII), FreeCNC (Command & Conquer), REminiscence (Flashback), LGeneral (Panzer General), Pioneers (Settlers of Catan), and Freedoom (Doom).
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:27 PM on February 1, 2007 (41 comments)

The modern slave trade is thriving. The Dept of State estimates that 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are trafficked - brought across borders and forced to labor. Among them, DOS estimates, hundreds of thousands are minor children. Some of those children - as young as 5 years old - are being sold as slaves and kept in cages while they are raped and sold for sex, some servicing as many as 30 men a day. They are bought for as little as $10 from desperate parents. But all is not lost: Somaly Mam, a former child prostitute, is the Mother Theresa of Southeast Asian child prostitutes, using AFESIP as her vehicle for saving them. Glamour awarded her their Woman of the Year honor, and she has been lauded in other ways internationally. Cambodian sex traffickers weren't as happy with her, though - her opponents kidnapped her 14-year old daughter, held her hostage for days, and raped her. It's hard to be on the wrong side of this issue, but some advocates raise a few hackles by claiming legalized prostitution and porn contribute to sex trafficking and child prostitution. Sex trafficking, and child prostitution, is a sizeable problem in the US as well. Although trafficking is illegal in the US, combating trafficking is tough in part because victims often fear authorities, personal reprisals, harm to their families at home, or even deportation (although special visas - T visas - are available to them in certain circumstances). In Southeast Asia (and throughout the world), child sex tourism is even harder to stop.
posted to MetaFilter by Amizu at 2:51 PM on January 24, 2007 (41 comments)

Tower Defence A Macromedia Flash based Tower Defence game inspired by Elemental TD for WarcraftIII.
posted to MetaFilter by srboisvert at 5:03 AM on January 9, 2007 (110 comments)

I'm testing out ajax favorites on MeFi right now (only www.metafilter.com). If you open any thread you can add the post or any comment as a favorite without leaving the page. Lemme know if you hit any snags and please hold off on "but, but, can you also make it do x?" requests until we're sure it works in most all browsers.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 9:59 PM on December 29, 2006 (40 comments)

This sort of misogyny is just not on.
posted to MetaTalk by econous at 10:21 PM on December 20, 2006 (33 comments)

One of the world's most expensive chocolates expertly debunked. (For maximum awesome, read all 10 parts)
posted to MetaFilter by hindmost at 5:50 PM on December 20, 2006 (201 comments)