Free online graph paper generators: variations of squares, triangle, rhombus, and hexagonal, circular and polar, for drawing, gaming, writing, note-taking and much more. Blank Sheet Music (Flash) for all arrangements (PDF). Create and edit your own grids, probability and logarithmic graphs, petri-dish inserts and storyboards. Also, multilingual  monthly and yearly calendars. Plus, more than you ever wanted to know about ISO paper dimensions and printable paper models of polyhedra. Prev-ious-ly.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:50 PM May 28 2012 - 35 comments [270 favorites]

America's Test Kitchen Super Quick Video Tips: "Test Kitchen wisdom distilled into eminently watchable video clips" of no more than a minute or two long, including tips for meat (how to make the most perfect bacon ever - how to quickly defrost meat - how to dry-age steak at home) to coffee (how to make pour-over coffee - how to fake a latte at home) and wine (the fastest way to chill wine) to pizza (flattening dough and baking a perfect thin-crust pizza ) and general kitchen tips (is your knife sharp enough? - do you really need to buy regular olive oil? - how to quickly soften butter and soft cheese). And there's Ask the Test Kitchen quick video tips as well (what's the best way to peel eggs? - how do I store brown sugar?).
posted by flex at 7:57 PM May 23 2012 - 72 comments [166 favorites]

He uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated. Random P G Wodehouse quote generator. That is all.
posted by unSane at 12:45 PM May 24 2012 - 104 comments [127 favorites]

The Disappearing Double Chin Trick for Portrait Photography: "The key to looking good in photos? It's all about your jaw, as photographer Peter Hurley explains in this video." (YouTube, ~15 min.) Hurley's quick tips for better portraits in the NYT; Hurley's helpful headshot tips for actors. (~8 min.) Want more? FStoppers behind-the-scenes video (10 min.); an excerpt (from his DVD) of one headshot session (20 min.); a 2-hour seminar on "The Basic Headshot". An SLR Lounge interview with Hurley. (~40 min.) (main link via laughingsquid + lifehacker)
posted by flex at 6:23 PM May 22 2012 - 46 comments [232 favorites (124 in the last 7 days)]

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.
posted by Artw at 3:20 PM May 24 2012 - 33 comments [91 favorites]

Star Wars: The Radio Play - Seven top voice actors table read Star Wars (YouTube) at Emerald City Comicon. "Join voice actors Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell, and Rob Paulsen as they re-create the magic of the Star Wars films, albeit in their own special way!" Characters include: Fry, Bender, Batman, Yakko, Wakko, Pinky, The Brain, Morbo, Bubbles, IronHide, Dr. Zoidberg, Jake the Dog, and many impressive celebrity impressions: Shatner as C3PO, Walken as R2D2, Tony Soprano as Greedo, Twilight Sparkle as Han Solo... (via reddit)
posted by flex at 9:00 PM May 24 2012 - 44 comments [88 favorites]

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:35 PM May 26 2012 - 65 comments [86 favorites]

Reggie Watts gives the Ultimate TED Talk which means deconstructive, meaning-free, musical and far more entertaining than most.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:50 PM May 26 2012 - 46 comments [70 favorites]

BBC's Essential Mix has been running two hour DJ sets for nearly 20 years, usually continuous mixes of current club tracks. Nicolas Jaar took things in a decidedly different direction this week, with an eclectic mix of sound track music, jazz, hip-hop, IDM and pop music with just a sprinkling of deep house here and there. Truly essential listening.
posted by empath at 2:39 PM May 22 2012 - 60 comments [126 favorites (64 in the last 7 days)]

Excavations in Argentina have unearthed a new dinosaur with a short skull and tiny forearms: Eoabelisaurus mefi.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM May 25 2012 - 111 comments [63 favorites]

Tempero Brasileiro (mp3) is a collection of rare Brazilian tracks originally issued on 7″ vinyl. Compiled by Edson Carvalho, one of the top São Paulo crate diggers.
posted by Tom-B at 1:07 PM May 26 2012 - 10 comments [63 favorites]

Spoiler.

The zombie apocalypse happened -- and we won.

But though society has recovered, the threat of infection is always there -- and Los Angeles coroner Tommy Rossman is the man they call when things go wrong.
posted by Drexen at 10:36 AM May 27 2012 - 42 comments [60 favorites]

"Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's. The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash." Louisiana Incarcerated is a tour de force eight-part series on the Louisiana prison system.
posted by painquale at 1:26 PM May 26 2012 - 47 comments [58 favorites]

Ektoplazm is now the world’s largest distributor of free (and legal) psytrance music specializing in high-quality Creative Commons-licensed content from netlabels and independent artists, all released in MP3 and lossless CD-quality FLAC and WAV formats.
posted by Trurl at 7:30 PM May 23 2012 - 47 comments [57 favorites]

Do SLR cameras confuse you? Then try the SLR Camera Simulator.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:33 AM May 29 2012 - 45 comments [57 favorites]

I used to be a lifehacking addict [...] But sometime over the last couple years (around the time I turned 30, not coincidentally), it has begun to dawn on me: Maybe all the time I spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping me from, well, doing things.

Confessions of a recovering lifehacker
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:18 PM May 23 2012 - 64 comments [56 favorites]

A fan asked Bill Murray for an autograph. Instead Bill gave him this. [via]
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 PM May 25 2012 - 33 comments [56 favorites]

What’s a Readlist? A group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone.
posted by netbros at 5:57 PM May 23 2012 - 42 comments [52 favorites]

Revolutionary hardware backdoor discovered in China-made military-grade FPGA chips. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims. We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip. We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.
posted by scalefree at 7:38 PM May 27 2012 - 139 comments [52 favorites]

Architecture of Open Source Programs The Architecture of Open Source Programs is a guide into the functional implemenation of major opensource code bases. Notable Open Source Projects that are included: BASH, CMAKE, LLVM,GDB,Puppet and PyPy among others
posted by Rubbstone at 8:06 PM May 23 2012 - 12 comments [48 favorites]