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Archive for the ‘Google Reader’ Category

Jon Stewart, Skeptic of Science’s Cosmic Ontology

19 Jul

I’m not ashamed to say that two of my favorite social critics are Marilynne Robinson and Jon Stewart, though it’s hard to imagine two people who could be more different, and it’s hard to take both equally seriously (for good reason). But when they met on Stewart’s show (to plug Robinson’s excellent new book Absence of Mind), the cordial exchange revealed not only how underrated Stewart is as an interviewer, but also how insightful he can be about bigger issues. Take his comment on the seemingly unscientific “beliefs” or “truth claims” made by scientists in explaining the universe, which he gave in an paraphrased dialogue between scientists and the public. I was nodding my head in agreement with Stewart, and so was Robinson.

STEWART (at 2:52 in the above clip): I’ve always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.


You know, when they start to speak about the universe, they say,


‘Well, actually most of the universe is anti-matter.’


‘Oh really? Where’s that?’


‘Well, you can’t see it.’


‘Well where is it?’


‘It’s there.’


‘Well can you measure it?’


‘We’re working on it.’


And it’s a very similar argument to someone who would say,


‘Well, God created everything.’


‘Well where is he?’


‘He’s there.’


And I’m always struck by the similarity of the arguments at their core.


ROBINSON: I think you’re absolutely right.

 
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Asteroid mining will give us all the platinum we’ll ever need, and maybe start a new Space Age [Asteroid Mining]

19 Jul
The platinum group metals are crucial to electronics, massively expensive, and extremely rare on this planet. But on asteroids? A single one holds billions of pounds of these metals - and that could start the era of private space exploration. More »
 
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Handmade knife chipped from fiber optic glass

16 Jul

Flint (and glass) knapping is no longer practiced on a large scale, but it used to be the primary method of making weapons for primitive cultures. In this day and age of course, it’s easy to go to the sporting goods store and pick up a quality steel knife, but it wasn’t always so.

There are still people out there that practice the art (and I do mean art) of knapping; one such artist created this knife from fiber optic glass, and offers them for sale on his web site. Personally, I doubt I would ever use such a knife for fear of breaking it, but it does make an amazing display piece. If you want one, it’ll cost you $165 – a small price to pay considering the amount of time it must have taken to hand make this knife from a piece of glass. Remember, one mistake, and you have to start over.

[via Make]

 
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Voice actor Billy West on how to create Popeye’s two-octave grumble

16 Jul
Voice actor Billy West was on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. I always love hearing actors do roles on radio, especially someone like West who is known for such original roles as Fry, Professor Farnsworth, and Dr. Zoidberg on Futurama. But what really wow-ed me was his description of how he learned to emulate the unforgettably unique voice of Popeye, as originally done by Jack Mercer:
popeye.jpgI loved Jack Mercer, and I got him. I understood him. And what helped me understand that Popeye voice -- it's a high voice and a low voice at the same time -- cause when I was a kid, we all used to try to do that and we all stunk. It didn't sound right. So one day, I see this film -- it was an independent film called Genghis Blues. And it was about this blind singer in San Francisco who wrote a hit for Steve Miller. ... And he was listening to a world-band radio one night, and he heard this strange noise. And it was a program about Tuvan singers. And Tuvans had a way of singing where they could do one and two voices. And I realized, 'Oh man, that's how this guy did it. Jack Mercer.' [He imitates both voices.] There'd be two voices, an octave apart. And he'd put them together."
It's worth listening to the whole segment (it's 28 minutes long), but the Popeye bit starts at about 17:05.

Billy West: The Many (Cartoon) Voices In His Head [Fresh Air]

 
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Textarea Tricks

16 Jul

Oh, <textarea>’s. How many quirks you posses. Here is a collection of nine things you might want to do related to textareas. Enjoy.

1. Image as textarea background, disappears when text is entered.

You can add a background-image to a textarea like you can any other element. In this case, the image is a friendly reminder to be nice =). If you add a background image, for whatever reason, it can break the browser default styling of the textarea. The default 1px solid bolder is replaced with a thicker beveled border. To restore the browser default, you can just force the border back to normal.

textarea {
  background: url(images/benice.png) center center no-repeat; /* This ruins default border */
  border: 1px solid #888;
}

That background image might interfere with the readability of the text once the text reaches that far. Here is some jQuery that will remove the background when the textarea is in focus, and put it back if the textarea is left without any text inside.

$('textarea')
  .focus(function() { $(this).css("background", "none") })
  .blur(function() { if ($(this)[0].value == '') { $(this).css("background", "url(images/benice.png) center center no-repeat") } });

2. HTML5 placeholder text

There is a new attribute as part of HTML5 forms called placeholder. It shows faded gray text in the textarea (also works for text-style inputs) which disappears when the textarea is in focus or has any value.

<textarea placeholder="Remember, be nice!" cols="30" rows="5"></textarea>

HTML5 placeholder text works in Safari 5, Mobile Safari, Chrome 6, and the Firefox 4 alpha.

3. Placeholder text, HTML5 with jQuery fallback

We can easily test if a particular element supports a particular attribute by testing with JavaScript:

function elementSupportsAttribute(element, attribute) {
  var test = document.createElement(element);
  if (attribute in test) {
    return true;
  } else {
    return false;
  }
};

Then we can write code so that if the browser does support the placeholder attribute, we’ll use that, if not, we’ll mimic the behavior with jQuery:

if (!elementSupportsAttribute('textarea', 'placeholder')) {
  // Fallback for browsers that don't support HTML5 placeholder attribute
  $("#example-three")
    .data("originalText", $("#example-three").text())
    .css("color", "#999")
    .focus(function() {
        var $el = $(this);
        if (this.value == $el.data("originalText")) {
          this.value = "";
        }
    })
    .blur(function() {
      if (this.value == "") {
          this.value = $(this).data("originalText");
      }
    });
} else {
  // Browser does support HTML5 placeholder attribute, so use it.
  $("#example-three")
    .attr("placeholder", $("#example-three").text())
    .text("");
}

4. Remove the blue glow

All WebKit browsers, Firefox 3.6, and Opera 10 all put a glowing blue border around textareas when they are in focus. You can remove it from the WebKit browsers like this:

textarea {
  outline: none;
}

You could apply it to the :focus style as well, but it works either way. I have not yet found a way to remove it from either Firefox or Opera, but -moz-outline-style was about as far as I tested.

REMINDER: The blue glow is becoming a strong standard and breaking that standard is typically a bad thing for your users. If you do it, you should have a darn compelling reason to as well as a similarly strong :focus style.

5. Remove resize handle

WebKit browsers attached a little UI element to the bottom right of text areas that users can use to click-and-drag to resize a textarea. If for whatever reason you want to remove that, CSS is all it takes:

textarea {
  resize: none;
}

6. Add resize handle

jQuery UI has a resizeable interaction that can be used on textareas. It works in all browsers and overrides the WebKit native version, because this version has all kinds of fancy stuff (like callbacks and animation).

To use it, load jQuery and jQuery UI on your page and at its most basic level you call it like this:

$("textarea").resizable();

7. Auto-resize to fit content

James Padolsey has a super nice jQuery script for auto resizing textareas. It works just how you likely hope it does. The textarea starts out a normal reasonable size. As you type more and more content, the textarea expands to include all of that text, rather than triggering a scrollbar as is the default.

The plugin has a variety of options, but at its simplest you just load jQuery, the plugin file, and call it like this:

$('textarea').autoResize();

8. Nowrap

To prevent text from wrapping normally in CSS, you use #whatever { white-space: nowrap; }. But for whatever reason, that doesn’t work with textareas. If you want to be able to type into textareas and would rather lines do not break until you press return/enter (a horizontal scrollbar is triggered instead), you’ll have to use the wrap="off" attribute.

<textarea wrap="off" cols="30" rows="5"></textarea>

9. Remove default scrollbars in Internet Explorer

IE puts a vertical scrollbar by default on all textareas. You can hid it with overflow: hidden, but then you don’t get any scrollbars at all when you expand. Thankfully auto overflow works to remove the scrollbar but still put them back when needed.

textarea {
  overflow: auto;
}

 

All the above examples can be seen here.

 
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Brain Slug Cupcakes at Final Futurama Script Reading

15 Jul

Glenn Fleishman shares a treat with us:

I was lucky enough to attend the last scheduled table reading (where a script is read by the voice actors) for Futurama, the animated cartoon show revived twice now after Fox's broadcast network failed to kill the show. Featured at the reading were piles of delicious brain slug cupcakes. I LOVE THE BRAIN SLUG CUPCAKES, TRY ONE.

The final script is quite hilarious, naturally, and it was a pleasure not just to hear it read in person by the actors, but to watch how much of a family the show is, cast, crew, and their friends and families. That feeling comes through in the show, which was created by Matt Groening and David "X" Cohen, through whose good offices (and my dear friend, his sister) I garnered an invite.

It was especially neat to watch Billy West talk to himself, cycling through Fry, the Professor, Zoidberg, and Zap Branigan, sometimes one right after the other. Also, John DiMaggio, who voices Bender, is 100-feet tall, and breathes fire.

Futurama is one of the only TV shows ever to feature real math and science, as well as multiple alien language alphabets (one a substitution, the other a code), and other supergeekery.

The show hasn't been canceled. This was the last of the current order of episodes by Cartoon Network, but Futurama has rebirthed itself before.

Brain Slug Cupcakes on Flickr


And here's a really cute photo of Glenn with pals on the set, including the aforementioned Messrs. Cohen and Groening.


You can pick up DVDs of past seasons here: Amazon link.
(Thanks, Glenn!)



 
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Brain Slug Cupcakes at Final Futurama Script Reading

15 Jul

Glenn Fleishman shares a treat with us:

I was lucky enough to attend the last scheduled table reading (where a script is read by the voice actors) for Futurama, the animated cartoon show revived twice now after Fox's broadcast network failed to kill the show. Featured at the reading were piles of delicious brain slug cupcakes. I LOVE THE BRAIN SLUG CUPCAKES, TRY ONE.

The final script is quite hilarious, naturally, and it was a pleasure not just to hear it read in person by the actors, but to watch how much of a family the show is, cast, crew, and their friends and families. That feeling comes through in the show, which was created by Matt Groening and David "X" Cohen, through whose good offices (and my dear friend, his sister) I garnered an invite.

It was especially neat to watch Billy West talk to himself, cycling through Fry, the Professor, Zoidberg, and Zap Branigan, sometimes one right after the other. Also, John DiMaggio, who voices Bender, is 100-feet tall, and breathes fire.

Futurama is one of the only TV shows ever to feature real math and science, as well as multiple alien language alphabets (one a substitution, the other a code), and other supergeekery.

The show hasn't been canceled. This was the last of the current order of episodes by Cartoon Network, but Futurama has rebirthed itself before.

Brain Slug Cupcakes on Flickr


And here's a really cute photo of Glenn with pals on the set, including the aforementioned Messrs. Cohen and Groening.


You can pick up DVDs of past seasons here: Amazon link.
(Thanks, Glenn!)



 
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Your Superhuman Brain

15 Jul

Jess Bachman has a cool new infographic out -- it's all about the human brain. Specifically....

It's about super savants, you know, like Rain Man. But they are not always handicapped like that. In fact, the ability might be in all of us. It's also amazing how fundamentally our brains are connected to, and adapted to, music.
Superhuman: The Incredible Savant Brain

 
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Swedish Chef sings “Popcorn” (shrimp!)

15 Jul

Some of the best neomuppetry I've seen in recent years: The Swedish Chef performs the pioneering electronica classic "Popcorn."

The Muppets: Pöpcørn



 
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How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made

14 Jul

oldspice2How do you take the social web by storm in a day, winning over even the coldest of hearts and gaining international acclaim - with commercials?

A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that's just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here's how it's going down.

Sponsor

Setting the Stage

Old Spice, marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy and actor Isaiah Mustafa are collaborating on the project. The group seeded various social networks with an invitation to ask questions of Mustafa's character, a dashing shirtless man with over-the-top humor and bravado. Then all the responses were tracked and users who contributed interesting questions and/or were high-profile people on social networks are being responded to directly and by name in short, funny YouTube videos. The group has made videos in response to Digg founder Kevin Rose, TV star Alyssa Milano (now big on Twitter) and many more people, famous and not.

It is well done and it appeals to peoples' egos - but there is something more, too. It feels very personalized, even if it wasn't directed at you. Those people that got responses, and many people who didn't, have Tweeted, Facebooked and otherwise shared links to the videos back out across their social networks.

Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden, is leading the effort. "In a way there's nothing magical that we've done here," he explained by phone this afternoon. "We just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day. But we've also taken a loved character and created new episodic content in real time."

How They Are Doing It

Tait says that the primary differentiator between this campaign and others is how closely technical and social media specialists are working with the creative team. "We brought social media experts right into the creative process," he told me. Tell that to the next person who claims that all so-called social media experts are just hot-air. Tait's own savvy no doubt played a large role in the success of the campaign as well. He's just been at Wieden for 3 months, after leaving a UK agency he co-founded 8 years ago. He was voted the Most Influential Person in the UK's New Media Age Top 100 Interactive Agencies Guide last year.

oldspice"In the room there are two social media guys and a tech guy who built a system pulling in comments from around the web all together in real time," Tait says. (Right: Inside the studio, around noon today.)

"We're looking at who's written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we're editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web...in real time."

The videos aren't being posted in chronological order immediately after the Tweets and comments they are in reply to. They get moved up and down a queue in a deliberate, orchestrated, if very fast way.

Tait: "Those people are having more fun than I've ever seen anyone have in a shoot like this. That's part of why it's doing so well. It's genuinely infectious, it transmits itself through the internet in a massive way."

How loved has the new campaign proven to be? 4Chan, the anonymous nihilist obscene messageboard from whence sprang memes like LOLCats and RickRolling, was the subject of what's now the 3rd most-watched of the Old Spice videos made yesterday, after the ones made for Perez Hilton and Kevin Rose. 4channers hate everything, especially people who talk about 4chan - which this savvy man in a towel did not do. But 200,000 views later, that absurd video response to "Anonymous" has received more than 4000 thumbs up from viewers and less than 100 thumbs down.

Freedom

Tait says that Old Spice's parent company Proctor & Gamble exhibited incredible bravery in allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision.

"There is such great trust [between the companies]," he said. "But we are being very responsible. They have given us a set of guidelines and if we get close to the edges we contact them."

That trust is all the more necessary because of how new this really is, in some ways. "If the message that comes out of this is that you can make TV commercials in 30 minutes, then we're all out of a job," Tait jokes. "This is something new. We're operating on Internet time but with a level of quality you'd get on a TV slot. That combination was what really got many peoples' attention."

Old Spice continues to post new, personalized videos to its YouTube channel. How long can they go? No one knows, but Mustafa's sure to smile seductively and make a goofy-macho joke about it once the team is done.

The campaign itself is unlikely to end even then, though. You can already get an Old Spice Man voicemail message generated for your phone. The coolest thing about that? That system wasn't even created by Old Spice or Wieden - it was built by a crowd of users at social news site Reddit this afternoon.

Update: At midnight Wednesday night, a very tired looking Mustafa posted the following conclusion.

Double Update: Now Alysa Millano has donned a towel her bathroom and challenged Mustafa to make a $100,000 donation to support wildlife restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. Well done.


Disclosure: Wieden + Kennedy is an occasional consulting client of the author's. But this story was too cool to abstain from telling just because of that.

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