Lolita at 50 - Is Nabokov's masterpiece still shocking? By Stephen Metcalf

This one's going back on my to-be-read pile. Perversity just doesn't get old. Of course this is coming from somebody who has aspired to be a dirty old man since he was Lolita's age. Getting closer every year.

Flying With Scissors and Other Airport Updates - New York Times

Presuming that our budget will sustain it, 2006 looks to be a fairly flight intensive year. Not as crazy as people who fly for their jobs, but I'm looking at at least 4 flights, 2 of them international. Cybil has tentative plans for 3 or 4 more than me.

Along with the author of this article I am very dubious about these potential new security attempts. I too could very well come out a false-positive in a lie detector test, due to my fear/hate of authority figures. Conversely, somebody I know tells small lies all the time to practice for the big ones and has in the past lied to a lie detector test without being caught.

WTF Case: This Grid-based Font

WhatTheFont to the rescue! Their tool couldn't identify this font (since the characters aren't continuous) but I got a reply from the Forum identifying the font as Amber Angled by MADtype. If you enjoy fonts take a moment to look at the samples on the MADtype site. Gothico Antiqua, Rubba, and Shifty are particularly amusing.

CSS Vertical Bar Graphs

see also: CSS FOR BAR GRAPHS.

This is excellent timing. I had just started dabbling in building a vertical bar graph for my magic deck's Mana Curves. A couple years back I had done a horizontal bar graph using some DOM scripting (Table -> Bar Graph). This time the plan was to build it in CSS, and then calculate the bar sizes dynamically using JavaScript. And now I have these two excellent examples of the CSS, which will be perfectly adequate until I have more time on my hands and can automate the sizing. There are just too many decks in the archives to do them all by hand.

Sexy Smooth Curves

I've really gotta get my shit together and learn how to use paths in photoshop. Kinduv sad that I haven't yet.

The Other I.D.

Just got new wires on my braces yesterday. Under the increased tension one of my brackets decided to pop off, the one in the very back. Now I've got a half-inch exposed wire dicing the inside of my mouth. So this article lends additional (if ironic) weight to it when I say, "MY GODDAMN BRACES HURT!".

Psychology Today: Stirring Sound of Stress

neat little article about a german study where they looked at the biology behind people's internal alarm clocks.

Browncoats : Official Serenity Fan Site : a/v room

You have to sign in or join to see it, but here is one of those scenes with Inara that was cut from the beginning of the movie. The Quicktime/Windows Media links are switched, and Joss' introduction isn't worth watching, but if you can't get enough of Inira give it a watch.

Krautwald

There's so much good natural lighting here in socal, but sometimes I do find myself trying to rig up some indoor lighting for some product shot or other. this looks like a nice trick to bust those shadows.

Fuck Christmas

It's the fucking Pagan celebration of solstice. And those "Christmas" traditions? They’re not just like Pagan rituals, they fucking are Pagan rituals.

Love me a good rant.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography

at last, it's launched!

I Will Knot!

I've got my work cut out if I ever find the time to get back to my knot book. I was thinking I would do a google maps sort of thing, with "illustrated", "photographed" and "hybrid" as three views of each knot. But now that I've seen a couple good movies of knots I can't see doing it any other way.

Perhaps I'm thinking about it the wrong way. There are a few knots that I'd like to teach, Adjustable as a superior alternative to Tautline, but since there are so many resources on how to tie knots maybe my added value comes from somewhere else. Perhaps I'll have action photos of the knots in use. Or, if I'm still stuck in LA when I get back to this project (yes, it'll be a while before this project gets going again), I'll wind up going all acedemic and writing essays/stories about the merits and uses of various knots.

Smartcar "Fortwo" on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Saw a bunch of these around England. Although they're going to be sold in the US, they'd only make any sense if you're living in Manhattan or something. Here's an article all about their US plans: Will Smart's weird cars make it here?

New shop's use of live models draws mixed reaction - Boston.com

My dad just told me about this shop front in Augusta, Maine (the town where he works). He's driven by but hasn't had a chance to stop in and chat. Here's a photo from inside the store, still haven't found a picture from the front (but from behind is the best anyway).

Captain's Mistress Game

Saw this at a special exhibit at Blenheim. It's old-school "Connect 4", which we played later that day using the giant game board out by the maze. Check out the other wooden board games mastersgames.com has. One day I'll have to pick up their Chinese Checkers and Ludo boards. I'd also like to learn how to play Tablut and Nine Mens Morris before investing in a board like one of these. Oh man, and their Cribbage boards are to die for (though I really ought to build my own for Cybil and my two player solitaire variant).

Khmerang.com - CSS-Technique: Worn Type

Ah, the cleverness that goes on while I'm away. And I've not even opened my bloglines yet. (here's another page of decorating type using CSS demos)