http://www.kipbot.com/blog apophenic pretentia Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:16:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Just spent a very fun hour on BaseballBoss, a fantasy-like service that people have been predicting for years. It allows you to create teams, drawing on players from all eras of baseball. Here's a sampling of potential team members, using the baseball card metaphor: The explanation at the top ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/07/05/loving-web20-baseball-boss/ Really great article in The Atlantic about the internet's possible impact on our cognitive structures/patterns/modes. The title, "Is Google Making Us Stupid", sounds like the usual whingeing about the internet -- how it hurts our spelling, makes us less polite, decreases our capacity for independent thought, makes us less ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/07/05/internet-attention-deficit-disorder/ I had a conversation recently about what it means to post pictures on Flickr. I recently bought a pretty expensive camera (Canon EOS XTi) because I was starting to care enough about what I was recording to put money into some equipment that could compensate for my lack of ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/06/13/the-urge-to-share/ Biking past PS 22 in Crown Heights, I saw some cool fence decorations. From a distance, they looked like old guild symbols, and I thought perhaps this was a magnet school around science and technology. On closer inspection, they were much more: twisty lines of metal text ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/29/associative-inspiration-at-ps-22/ Crunchgear has some screenshots of a working version of Windows 7 -- about three years out from its projected release date. Looks like they're going with cover flow: Though I'm totally digging the more robust system tray area. Nice idea to take advantage of better bigger monitors with some ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/28/windows-7-preview-cover-flow-xo-wheel/ Not sure how I feel about this . . . http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/28/advertising-immortality/ From AfroMusing's photostream on flickr, a program that allows people to report violence through SMS. The objectives for reporting, listed in the poster below are: mobilization, study and tracking, assistance, awareness- and fund-raising. UnitedforAfrica maps reported incidents: http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/27/monitoring-political-violence-via-sms/ There's a small park just east of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I've played chess at the tables near the entrance literally dozens of times over the thirteen years I've lived in Brooklyn. But it was only today, while I was riding my bike along Eastern Parkway, that I ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/26/small-memorials-are-worth-a-look/ But will it be my FB friend? http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/26/mars-phoenix-is-my-anthropomorphic-robot-friend/ I've blogged about this guy before, but this is one of those places where amateur is really cool.  Flintstone Stargazer is a flickr contact who does astro-photography (as well as other kinds).  In addition to posting his astro-pics, he also posts pictures of his equipment set-ups, the impromptu devices he ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2008/05/26/jupiter-on-flickr-photo-sharing/