Lavonardo

Andy Baio’s eclectic link collection very much rubs me the right way, and I tend to click almost everything that he links to.

Here’s three great examples of pages I would have likely missed:

• The greatest bug of all, description of an epic error hunt by the author of Delicious Library.
• One Post Wonder, an entire blog devoted to blogs that never got off the ground (most having stalled at the very first entry).
• Touch Arcade, which neatly proves that Apple has created a state of the art gaming phone with its very first try.

I’ve used the site as a source for links before, and will, in the future. With or without attribution (been quite lazy lately).

A Facebook engineer’s rebuttal to the aging, but still very much valid Facebook is the New AOL (in the walled garden-sense) is only available to an undefined subset of Facebook users, with apparently no way to expand the audience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fond of the implausibly extending social network, but this is beyond lame.

And while I’m pretty sure that the F8 08 will feature plenty of new tools for application developers, the walls of the garden are not likely to become any more porous.

Meh.

Björk just cancelled her open air concert on thursday because of problems with her voice.

Didn’t have a ticket, but was quite prepared to loiter outside the arena to listen to the music.

Following the analysis of the robot-collection t-shirt, three more popular culture-dredging shirts have been produced by Chop Shop

The Internets chews the memes of the last decade, and has been analyzed in Flickr, just like the selection of droids. I’ve missed lots and lots of these, but at least a few of the less than obvious (like the Ceiling Cat) were instantly familiar.

A shirt on aliens has apparently not been analyzed yet, even though several instances of it are featured on Flickr.

The latest arrival, a weGo, shirt about cars, on the other hand, is the subject of a thorough identification already.

I chose LibraryThing as my book management solution a while back, but haven’t really been that active in entering data.

And to delay the inevitable “let’s go shelf by shelf”-effort, I spotted a nifty related meme the other day. The newest Tuesday Thingers post challenges readers to see which of the top 100 books they own and/or have read, “top 100″ referring to the most owned books on the service.

The amount of Potters in the top ten is downright scary, but the list does get better once they’ve been passed.

The instructions are simple: bold what you own, italicize what you have read, and use * to note which books you’ve liked most.

1. Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484)
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling (29,939)
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling (28,728)
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling (27,926)
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling (27,643)
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling (27,641)
7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (23,266)
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (21,325) *
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling (20,485)
10. 1984 by George Orwell (19,735) *
11. Pride and Prejudice (Bantam Classics) by Jane Austen (19,583)
12. The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger (19,082)
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (17,586)
14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (16,210)
15. The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (15,483) *
16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (14,566)
17. Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Bronte (14,449)
18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (13,946)
19. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (13,272)
20. Animal Farm by George Orwell (13,091)
21. Angels & demons by Dan Brown (13,089)
22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (13,005)
23. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (12,777)
24. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah’s Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (12,634)
25. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien (12,276) *
26. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (12,147)
27. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (11,976)
28. The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,512) *
29. The Odyssey by Homer (11,483)
30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (11,392) **
31. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (11,360) **
32. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11,257)
33. The return of the king : being the third part of The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,082) *
34. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10,979) *
35. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (10,823)
36. The chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (10,603)
37. The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams (10,537) **
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10,435)
39. The lovely bones : a novel by Alice Sebold (10,125)
40. Ender’s Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card (10,092)
41. The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (9,827)
42. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman (9,745) *
43. Dune by Frank Herbert (9,671)
44. Emma by Jane Austen (9,610)
45. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (9,598)
46. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain (9,593)
47. Anna Karenina (Oprah’s Book Club) by Leo Tolstoy (9,433)
48. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (9,413)
49. Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (9,343)
50. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (9,336)
51. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (9,274)
52. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (9,246)
53. The Iliad by Homer (9,153)
54. The Stranger by Albert Camus (9,084)
55. Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (9,080)
56. Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (9,027)
57. The Handmaid’s Tale: A Novel by Margaret Atwood (8,960)
58. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (8,904)
59. Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (8,813)
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery - (8,764)
61. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (8,421)
62. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (8,417)
63. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (8,368) *
64. The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck (8,255)
65. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (8,214)
66. The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (8,191)
67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (8,169)
68. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (8,129)
69. The complete works by William Shakespeare (8,096)
70. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (7,843)
71. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (7,834)
72. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Barbara Kingsolver (7,829)
73. Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare (7,808)
74. Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by John Steinbeck (7,807)
75. A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (7,793)
76. The Alchemist (Plus) by Paulo Coelho (7,710)
77. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (7,648)
78. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics) by Oscar Wilde (7,598)
79. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk (7,569)
80. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (7,557)
81. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman (7,534)
82. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (7,530)
83. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7,512)
84. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (7,436)
85. Dracula by Bram Stoker (7,238)
86. Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad (7,153)
87. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7,055)
88. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (7,052)
89. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (7,043)
90. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) by James Joyce (6,933)
91. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Milan Kundera (6,901)
92. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (6,899)
93. Neuromancer by William Gibson (6,890) **
94. The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer (6,868)
95. Persuasion (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (6,862)
96. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (6,841)
97. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (6,794)
98. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (6,715)
99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (6,708)
100. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (6,697) *

[ via Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho. ]

Microsoft is set to release Housemarque’s Golf: Tee It Up! tomorrow.

This will be the first finnish game to be released on the Live Arcade, and one that I expect to test-drive immediately.

XBLA games tend to be released in pairs, and also tomorrow’s second game is notable. Not due to its origin, but due to the development method - Schizoid is the first published game that’s been developed with XNA.

Somehow I doubt that replicating the homicidal GLaDOS from the almighty Portal as the guiding voice in a GPS navigator is classifiable as a tranquillity-providing idea.

Nonetheless, it’s now available for selected Garmin devices. Hopefully the tone and attitude are both preserved.

Blinked twice when the Helsinki metro rolled in to the station today.

The traditionally thoroughly orange cars had been replaced by replicas from New York and London.

Helsingin Sanomat in running train-sized mobile ads, and this caused quite a few doubletakes by fellow passengers.

Sadly, the insides of the cars did not emulate the originals.

The vacation took a nice running start yesterday with a surprise trip to Hyvinkää.
Watched my first ever paid for pesäpallo (finnish baseball) game, and came away with a conclusion that a repeat would not be too painful to contemplate in the future. The game has changed a lot since I last played it. Back in high school we had nine innings, and none of this new-fangled “two halves scored independently” stuff. The first half went almost scoreless, but on the second the home team struck deep and hard, blowing away the visitors 6-0. The stadium wasn’t exactly Fenway Park, but had the basic amenities available. Though the area where beer was available was blessed with the worst views on the stands.

In addition to the main event, enjoyed a multi-sausage barbecue and a free foosball game on the patio of a neighboring restaurant. Hadn’t played in ages, and was definitely rusty. And even though the playing field did have a slope towards the white team’s goal - my miserable goaltending cannot be explained by geographical facts alone. Noted that the game is very enjoyable 2-on-2, with an amazing lack of forethought offensive moves and plain desperation ruling the field. No idea what a proper game would cost, but based on the firm construction of the Carlsberg-sponsored unit, I think the price is in hundereds of euros.

I’m quite impressed by the quality of WordPress as the underlying engine in this very blog.

But organizing an International WordPress Day seems to be going too far into the shrill fanboy territory for my liking.

Then again, the prizes for participants do seem to be on the valuable side, so maybe it would be wise to just swallow my pride and join the teeming masses.

Disapproving Rabbits is not about taking a dim view on lagomorphs themselves, but about bunnies not really liking what they see all around.

Four weeks and two days of summer vacation ahead.

Sadly the weather will take a turn for the worse after today. But will have plenty of time to improve.

Just how long can a meeting lasting an hour feel?

Pretty long, when lawyers and commercial terms are involved.

The arena of guitar-fronted games seems to be in quite a flux.

Just to spoil this week’s release of the fifth game in the Guitar Hero series, the one concentrating on Aerosmith, Harmonix put out a press release to inform the game-buying public of the impending release of sequel to last year’s Rock Band. With Guitar Hero adding a comparable set of instruments in the forthcoming World Tour, Rock Band’s success is by no means as guaranteed as it appeared to be upon its release.

The first Rock Band still hasn’t been released in Finland - and the rumor mill spins out that it never actually will, and the sequel will take care of all the wannabe rockers. A very positive factoid of the christmas release is the continued usability of content from the first game as well as of any downloaded songs. Clearly a step up from the game-specific music of the Guitar Hero-series. My exposure to the game is limited to a two hour review session, but the guitars left a definitely flimsy impression. The instrument quality is one of the issues Harmonix will address in the sequel, so the complaint is probably not valid for long.

Incidentally, the third installment of the Guitar Hero-saga is available for a very reasonable price in the summer sale of Stockmann. The 30 euro price doesn’t include a guitar, but for owners of the previous games it’s a definite bargain. I’m now 3/4ths through the easy game, and the song selection has been very much on the impressive side, with only a couple of boring pieces thrown in.

The highlight of the show, the digit-maiming Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce is not available immediately, only after the game’s been beaten once. I’ve seen it shredded close to perfection on expert-difficulty, and don’t anticipate to be able to ever reach those lofty heights.

The Tuba Hero t-shirt pictured here is yet another spoof on the original game, this one produced by Torsopants.

This week marks the end of the first half of the photo thursdays of 2008. This week’s challenge is an image brought forward by Beirut’s song Sunday Smile (links to the song and video in the challenge page).

I didn’t find the song too upbeat or joy-inducing, so my participation is this smile-less lizard of an unknown species, who clearly is not having the time of his life.

My participation to this week’s Macro Day challenge is late for a couple of reasons, the biggest among them a failed attempt to upgrade the equipment - the shops downtown seemed all to be sold out of the 100mm Canon macro lens.

Nonetheless, my attempt to rise to the challenge of condiment lies above, had to check out the definition of the word from wikipedia, and happily enough, this collection of sampler bottles of strong chili-sauces fits the bill perfectly.

It’s been a while since I read Sleevage, the premier record cover analysis blog.

Today, however, the lead article was on the long and varied history of Iron Maiden’s sleeves. From the heights of Derek Riggs‘ finest to the nadir that was Dance of Death in 2002.

Sadly, Riggs’ own site seems to be down right now.

The majority of summer movies are still unreleased, but I began my trail through this season’s “leave brain in the coat rack”-films with Timur Bekmambetov’s Hollywood debut Wanted. I didn’t know this was a comic adaptation in advance, but the thinness of the plot became obvious very soon into the movie.

In fact, I knew next to nothing before the film started - not remembering much beyond the cool vehicular acrobatics and vaguely assassin-related plot seen in the trailer.

And those two things pretty much define the movie. In addition to almost pornographic slo-mo headshots shown repeatedly. This turned out to be an unexpectedly violent movie - in addition to ballistics there’s lots and lots of other kinds of applied violence straining within the two hours of showtime. While the plots of summer movies are not rated on the same intellectual scale as more cerebral works of art, there are so many violations of common sense (and uncomfortable re-uses of old scenery) that suspenders of disbelief come unhinged a couple of times during the film.

And only the briefest look at the plot of the graphic novel proves that a lot of material was excised from the movie. Which is probably a good thing, since anything this complex would bascially demand an extended mini-series on HBO. Having quite liked Millar’s recent Civil War, I’ll keep an eye out for the collected edition of the six issue story.

James McAvoy’s evolution from a pushover to a top assassin is unconvincingly rapid (aided by an out of left field plot device). Somehow most of the actors seem uncomfortable in their roles across the board. Especially Angelina Jolie remains frigidly distant throuhout the proceedings, almost as if she were on autopilot.

Matrix and Fight Club are relentlessly stripmined for ideas, and especially the former’s themes (and penchant for flashy visuals) are repeatedly used.

The soundtrack is unexpectedly strong. While the use of a Nine Inch Nails-song is always appreciated, the highlight of the audio is the Little Things sung by Danny Elfman during the first batch of the credits.

And of the real summer movies, the two biggest attractions - the Hellboy sequel and Dark Knight looked nothing short of excellent in trailer form.

Olympukes is the name of a free font by Jonathan Barnbrook that displays the dark side of the olympics.

Steroids, bribes, boring events - it’s all here.

Watched Planet Terror the second half of the Grindhouse two-parter off a dvd a couple of days ago. I quite liked Death Proof last summer, and had reasonably high hopes for this movie as well.

Planet Terror definitely does notsport the world’s most complicated plot, but pays great homage to the innumerable zombie-infested splatter movies of the eighties. There IS a plot, or actually multiple semi-converging threads, but it’s the gimmicky use of a missing reel that takes care of a complicated bridging segment between two scenes and ties together the action. The effects are simple to the point of unspectacularity, apart from a couple of acrobatic set pieces, they’re mostly vehicles for gore and more gore.

Like Death Proof, this movie is dominated by strong women, and Rose McGowan takes the top spot as the assault rifle-legged go-go dancer (yes, by the time the gun is installed around the halfway point, it feels a lot less ludicrous). Freddy Rodriguez comes off rather well as an action hero.

Sadly, of the fake trailers shot for the Grindhouse double only Machete makes an appearance on the disc.

Executive summary: entertaining, but not as good as Death Proof.