buncha random links for fall

08 Nov 2006

Time to flush out the lists:

Beat to Death with a Rosetta Stone

A great rant about JavaScript from jr conklin:

You see, while Javascript, the language is nice and easy, it requires tying into a beast called the Document Object Model. That model is provided by the browser vendor, who hates you. Trying to get the browser to do anything is akin to trying to get an elephant to swan dive. Using only verbal commands. Consisting of vowels. That change depending on which direction you’re looking at the elephant from.

Yes? No? OK? WTF?

This dialog cracks me the hell up every time I see it. It was part of Pop-Up Potpourri on The Daily WTF.

What kind of Genius Are You?

Interesting Wired article about how brilliant creativity comes in two types:

What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

MySpace, Now With Random Crap

Commentary (archived) also from Wired by a very funny guy named Lore Sjöberg. It is about damn time they got a sense of humor at Wired. See also this list of articles (archived) by the same guy, all of which are great. Dear Mr Sjöberg, I luv you.

What’s Inside: Squirt-on Cheese

Sorry. Still not done with Wired. This bit from Patrick Di Justo, also an extremely funny guy (I luv him too), describes in detail the contents of Easy Cheese (none of which are cheese).

Iggy Pop Concert Rider

18 pages worth from the smoking gun. All worth reading for the random stream-of-consciousness bizarro-insight-into-world-of-rock band-funness. I especially like the rant about lighting.