Grey Explains

C.G.P. Grey is really kinda awesome. He has a series of videos called Grey Explains. Each video is short, but crams a ton of information (and more than a little humor) into its 3-6 minutes. Here are some of my favorites:

The United Kingdom Explained
The Difference Between Holland and the Netherlands (and a whole lot more)
Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever
Death to Pennies

Just awesome. I really need to watch each of these several times.

Web Stuff Friday: WeatherSpark and Nand2Tetris

WeatherSpark -- Such a great way to visualize the weather. Their tagline is "Beautiful Weather Graphs and Maps," and I agree. It looks good.

From NAND to Tetris is an interesting idea: It is a course that endeavors to have students build and program a working computer from first principals. Both Boy Kid and Girl Kid will have to do this at some point, but it will take some time for them to develop the necessary background. One of the founders of the effort has a YouTube video: Nand2Tetris in a Nutshell as well as a TED Talk: The Self-Organizing Computer Course (more on those ideas will come in a separate post).

Higgs!

When I rolled out of bed on July 4th, I grabbed a cup of coffee and my android tablet. When I fired up Plume (Twitter client), I was greeted with the greatest twitstream I have seen. Several people I follow were tweeting about the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer)
who? Writes the Bad Astronomer column for Discover Magazine
favorite tweet: Higgs! Higgs! Higgs! http://is.gd/pbmFwE #Higgs

HAL 9000 (@HAL9000_)
who? The computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey
favorite tweet: The size of the applause Fabiola Gianotti just got at the #Higgs presentation you'd think she had just unveiled a thinner iPhone

Lifey (@9to5Life)
who? A funny guy on twitter
favorite tweet: Comic sans on the CERN presentation slides because fuck the haters.
honorable mention: I actually just clapped, alone, like an asshole.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson)
who? Astrophysicist, author, science superstar
favorite tweet: On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great - July 4 - Europe reminds us that we suck at science. #HiggsBoson

Other folks such as Mike Scully (@scullymike), Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt), and many others chimed in as well. Reading through that stream was tremendous. Sincere thanks to all of you. That was really, freaking cool (in a totally geeky kinda way).

For anyone who wants to figure out what the big deal is, here are some resources for learning more:

• The video What's a Higgs Boson(thanks to The Guardian) is a quick, simple explanation of what the Higgs Boson is.
• Phil Plait's Higgs! (Bad Astronomy blog at Discover Magazine) has the big statistical plot that shows the "bump" at about 125 GeV that represents the Higgs Boson. His article has a ton of excellent links to other articles with background info.
• To learn more about the Standard Model (the physics theory for which the Higgs Boson provides long-awaited validation), check out The Standard Model.
• Matt Strassler's The Higgs FAQ is a really good and informative read.

Web Stuff Friday: Uber-Geek Edition

So, what have I done with my precation (that's a preliminary vacation used to burn some vacation hours and take care of stuff so we are a bit more ready for the summer)? I hacked my Wii!

Why hack a Wii? Our basement has video game stuff strewn about. Controllers, disks, and various accessories are everywhere. Disks are particularly hard to keep track of and I am constantly worried that a disk will sustain one scratch too many and will go down for the count.

The solution is to take a USB hard drive, connected it to your Wii, then install all your games to the hard drive. The result is that (with the right software) you can run all your Wii games without touching a disk.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive at Lifehacker got me started. Unfortunately, the process didn't quite work for me, so I resorted to...

Softmod ANY Wii, which really got the ball rolling for me. But first, I needed to get access to the inner workings of the Wii, so I went to...

Return of the Jodi, which explains how to use Lego Star Wars Original Trilogy (Jack did the game work to make it happen) to install the Homebrew channel using the Hackmii installer. With Homebrew installed, I went to the Softmod ANY Wii guide and followed the instructions (really closely) to get the system set up. The USBLoader (the software that allows you to install games to and then play them from the USB drive) they suggested didn't work for me, so I went back to the Lifehacker article and installed USBLoader GX, which works like a charm. I even got it installed as a new channel, so our Wii main screen has a channel I can select to view all our games in an interface that looks like the iTunes album cover browser.

Now all our Wii games are on the external hard drive, so the disks are in a case on a shelf, where they will stay forever. Next up: Finish installing new closet doors, clean the van, and maybe even clean the garage.

Web Stuff Friday: Go to Sleep

Go the F*ck to Sleep as narrated by Samuel L. Jackson is so good. I will think about this video tonight when Girl Kid comes out of her bedroom an hour and a half after "bedtime" because she's "thirsty."

Web Stuff Friday: Scat and Underground

S&*t You Should Know is hilarious. The language is quite colorful, but the posts are informative and hilarious.

• .9 repeating equals 1 is the post that got me there. A couple colleagues and I were having a discussion about this topic and I went looking for other thoughts on the topic.
• Reader Submission: The Immaculate Mis-Conception taught me something.
• Learn how to use a fucking semicolon. Fuck. is hilarious.
• I know you think “myself” sounds fancy is another funny gem.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Everyone should read every entry, either to learn something or to learn how to teach others the idea.

Urban Explorations is incredible. Check out the photo gallery and the videos. Undercity New York is cool and reminded me of Man on Wire, which was an impressive documentary.

DaVinci's Resume

Back in 1482, a job-hunting Leonardo DaVinci sent a letter to the Duke of Milan. This letter got into the hands of a guy at The Ladders (a job search site) and it made the rounds recently as DaVinci's resume.

DaVinci's resume is interesting, but I prefer a geek's take on the DaVinci resume.

Web Stuff Friday: Larry Miller

Larry Miller's The Five Levels of Drinking is one of the greatest comedy bits of all time. It always brings back memories of my 20's. My friends were such drunks! One of my favorite lines from the bit:

If you're nineteen and you stay up all night, it's a victory. It's like you beat the night.... If you're over thirty, man, that sun is like God's flashlight.

It's from him that I got the expression "It's like the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it." Larry Miller is so great.

Amazing Time-Lapse Videos of the Sky

A couple time-lapse videos of the sky have taken my breath away.

The Mountain was filmed at El Teide, Spain´s highest mountain.

The mountain and the sky are amazing.

Chile's Very Large Telescope

In this video, the sky plays opposite the telescopes. As in the other video, the sky is incredible, but I like watching the telescopes do their things.

Web Stuff Friday: Whipass and Ze

A friend from work sent me a link to a silly version of a song I know well, so this became a chance to reminisce. Let's take the story in chronological order:

First, a guy named Ray posted this audio message on MySpace for Ze Frank: Whipass (link to a page with the MP3)

Next, this inspired Ze to ask his followers to create remixes for the song. The longer version of the story and a link to the remixes are here.

Finally (today), I got a link to this video: Stress_Relief.wmv (which is FAR inferior to the original, but served the purpose of reminding me of it).

If you don't have Ze Frank's blog bookmarked and added to your Google Reader list, you really should. Lots of good, interesting, and/or thought-provoking stuff.

Web Stuff Friday: Hot Sauce Committee, Part Two

OMG. Check this out. This Spring marks the 25th anniversary of the Beastie Boys recording of (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!). My God. 25 freakin' years since short, hairy Steve used to blast this out of his dorm room on Friday afternoons. But I digress...

Here is an extended video of a few songs from the Beastie Boys' new album. The video is called Fight For Your Right (Revisited), but don't expect the familiar old song. It's a short movie with a zillion stars and some new Beastie Boys music.

Speaking of the zillion stars, check out who all is in this video. When you see the list of cameos at the end, I think you'll agree that it's simply epic.

I also like the music. Good to hear something new from the Beastie Boys. Pretty sure I need to buy Hot Sauce Committee, Part Two.

Web Stuff Friday: Sargent Mashup

Guy Sargent is an amazing photographer.

• What lies beneath the surface
• London, a personal view
• Common progress

Mashup Breakdown is just wonderful. The aforementioned B-Sizzle let me know that Girl Talk has a new album out. It rocks. When I checked out Girl Talk's Twitter feed (@therealgirltalk), I was introduced to this site that shows the mashup visually.

Web Stuff Friday: My Chrome Setup

If you haven't tried Google's Chrome browser, I think you should check it out. It's not perfect, but it is fast, portable, and has some really smooth features and add-ons.

The interface is pretty minimalist, but still provides quick access to your most visited sites as well as your bookmarks.

I have three add-ons installed that I see as small icons to the right of my location bar.

• goo.gl URL shortener. With a single click, I can take the URL of the page I am on, shorten it, and copy the short URL to my clipboard. So, if I see a great article, I just click the goo.gl button and paste it into an email or IM window. Very handy.
• Chrome to Phone allows me to send links to my Droid phone. If I'm on my computer when someone sends me a link about a great android app, I just send the link to my phone and I can check it out later.
• Chrome It Later integrates with Read It Later, which I love. When I see an article I want to read somewhere and somehow, I just click the button and it's saved to my reading list. I can then access my reading list from any browser or from my phone and they all stay in sync.

I live lots of my life in a browser window, so I care about what I use for my Web stuff. Chrome is a good thing.

Web Stuff Friday: War Golf Titles

Here are a couple interesting videos:

• Jason Forrest: War Correspondent
• Tipsy: Space Golf

And here are some suggestions for Better Book Titles that can save everyone lots of time.

Web Stuff Friday: First Cousin Once Removed

WolframAlpha rocks, but the coolest thing I have seen recently is alluded to in the WolframAlpha blog: My Cousin’s Cousin’s Niece’s Grandfather Said to Just Ask Wolfram|Alpha. Now, I know what to call the woman who is my uncle's granddaughter.

Bonus: Missing Cat by David Thorne is sublimely funny.

TwitTalk: Who Do I Follow?

I have been doing the Twitter thing. The folks I follow fall into a few main categories.

Math teachers: This crowd will get a post to themselves, but suffice it to say that there are a bunch of innovative math teachers out there and they are blogging and tweeting and it is a very good thing.

Comedians: Some comedians write good movies, some are best with short stories, and some are good at standup. I have found several for whom 140 characters is plenty.

Sports guys: I have been disappointed by most athletes on twitter, but some columnists are pretty good.

Friends: I also follow a handful of friends & colleagues. They are fun, but their tweeting frequency isn't as high as the masses of others I follow.

George Lazenby: Yeah, he gets his own category. When reading this guy's tweets, I generally feel as dumb as a box of rocks. Still, I follow because every once in a while he recommends a great book or makes some comment/reference I actually get.

To check out all these tweeps, go to  my twitter page: @RestonKid 

Web Stuff Friday: thesixtyone

thesixtyone is a music site that is designed to help you discover new music. If you want to listen to Pandora's Rush Radio ('cause you love you some Geddy Lee), then this site is not for you. If you want to discover new music that you will love, then thesixtyone is for you.

First of all, the site starts by playing music for you. You can skip any time you want. On the other hand, if you like a song, you can find out more about the artist and if you really like a song, you can "heart" it after listening for 60 seconds.

My new favorite feature is the "Quests." The site gives you tasks to complete such as listening to 7 different new songs or listening to some of the Mood channels (another cool feature). These quests are an interesting way to get people into new music and to learn the features of the site.

The only thing I am not wild about is sometimes not being able to dismiss popups, but once I figure that out, all will be groovy.

Anyway, if you like being exposed to new music, check out this site. It is quite worthwhile.

Web Stuff Friday: Friction

Gimme Friction: The math in this is interesting. I haven't read the instructions, but find it fun anyway.

Taberinos: This is a really fun game.

Web Stuff Friday: Publishing Ponies

The Future of Publishing video is clever. You have to watch it to the end (at least a bit over halfway) to really get the cleverness of it.

Singing Ponies is fun. Reminds me of one of Boy/Girl Kid's Reader Rabbit games.

A Friday-Monday Mash-up: Some Music Blogs

So, Friday is supposed to be the day for Web Stuff and Monday is for Music, so here is a day devoted to some Web sites devoted to music.

My musical self is like a shark. If it doesn't keep moving forward, I feel like it dies a little. These sites help me move forward musically.

Useful Noise is a blog about music of the aughts. I know the music isn't actually new, but much of it is new to me, so it counts.

Chris Hanaka has a blog that regularly opens my ears to great music. Tons of embedded songs, so I spend most of my time on the site actually listening to music--not reading about it.

Music Uncovered and Covered is basically a sub-site by Hanaka that focuses on song covers. I love covers.