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Nitsuh Abebe dares to say Justin Vernon is a little boring. Reading this, I think I understand why people aren't as impressed or as moved by stuff like Bon Iver and The National as I am — it has a certain New England, autumn/winter feeling and I think a lot of its appeal is in its power to evoke that snowed-in cabin, that 2am rainy city street, that drunken goodbye that we experienced or imagined. That’s how it is for me, anyway.

“Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control spending. The one we have is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by 70 — and to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades. “To put it in budgetary terms, the deficit we imagine comes largely from discretionary spending. The one we have comes partly from discretionary spending but mostly from everything else: tax rates, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

“When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its ‘favorite’ wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to—in this case, ‘Free Public WiFi.’ Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word ‘free?’”

“Matthew McVickar decided to send a camera through the mail, these are the images it captured.”

Another link.

Another one.

Draw diagrams with ASCII tools. Drag boxes, make arrows, add text. As art or as mockup diagramming tool, this is really neat.

My first time on reddit, again about the cameramail.

“Five years ago, web designer Matthew McVickar decided to give one lucky disposable camera a free vacation, sending it through the mail from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Honolulu, Hawaii with the instructions ‘Take a photo before you pass it on!’. When he got the camera back, there were seven photographs taken by various workers in the United States Postal Service that show the cameras journey (and the inner workings of the USPS!).”

Sabrina profiles the weekly music showcase. Ross: “But Kaleidoscope may have some form of a legacy. I think it’s helped organize and increase the quality of music, to a point where I feel like a number of our bands are at a stage where they can crossover. We’ve played some role in that. And a role as well in the transformation of Chinatown. I know for absolute certain that we’ve been at the heart of some indelible moments in peoples lives. And that is a hell of a thing.”

“Photobook by Jan Kempenaers of the monuments of former Yugoslavia, with a text by Willem Jan Neutelings.”

“The Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 35 best practices divided into 7 categories.”

My cameramail project was featured again, this time on Lomography.

“i made video called “unicode”. it shows all displayable characters in the unicode range 0 – 65536 (49571 characters). one character per frame.”

Deep inspection of hasLayout, the cause of most 'IE bugs'. Last updated 2008.

“The people complaining about the loss of these "non-mainstream" categories aren't really asking for a fair distribution of categories; they're asking for patronage. They're asking for the Recording Academy to act as a booster club and preservation society — to recognize and support these traditions as a special interest. Never mind that this is a kind of support new and fragile musical traditions don't get. Never mind that people in each of these genres are more than capable of recognizing their own achievements, and probably more effectively than the Academy does.”

Dan Savage live-blogs the Weiner apology press conference. “A reporter asks if Weiner was drinking or using drugs—if he has a problem—because only a man who has a drinking problem or a drug problem could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? (And lots of women too?) This desire to pathologize behavior that isn't sick—that is, indeed, very common and human and completely and instantly understandable—is itself pathological. Weiner does not have a problem. He has a computer. The whole world has Weiner's problem: same old horniness, brand new box.”

“…analysts say more than social equity is at stake. A dearth of ideas and participation by women in the technology churn has business consequences as well.” (Also, reading about what chauvinist boys-club assholes so many venture capitalists are makes me angry every time.)

“These are some of the music and little recordings I made for Gregory Whitehead's BBC Radio Play ‘Bring Me the Head of Philip K. Dick’ from 2009. They feature the clavinet (often times feeding back like an electric guitar) and a 'nail violin' which Kelli Rudick let me borrow.”

Comic Sans’ problems explained from a typographical standpoint.

Saccharine and cliché of course, but that doesn't make it any less important. “For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five.”

An unsigned band's success story. Via TopSpin forum.

“Let’s Transform Governments With Tech and Innovation (and Save Millions of Dollars, Too)” “Government entities at all levels face substantial and similar IT challenges, but today, each must take them on independently. Why can’t they share their technology, eliminating redundancy, fostering innovation, and cutting costs? We think they can.”

Artist does concrete sculpture installations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Excellent.

Photos of all of the artwork for the deluxe Newspaper Album package.

This success story is almost entirely the result of efforts by my friend Mike Pooley, who works at Mountain Apple Company and is about to go free-lance to offer his digital marketing services to the world! “These efforts are a great example of how an artist can capitalize on viral buzz. By linking to their free-download offer from the YouTube video, Mountain Apple Company harnessed the video’s exposure to increase their fan base. Their store is beautiful & well-designed, and their marketing efforts drove direct-to-fan sales around the globe.”

The fast and profane music known as sissy bounce creates an atmosphere of sexual liberation — for women.

“I should know better than to write this sort of post, because it will inevitably come across as a peevish and whiney response to being called a Snuggie. It probably is that to some extent, and I’m already sorry about it. I am really trying to transcend that though, because I think this stuff is so important. I wouldn’t have authorized Alex to reveal the horribly embarrassing revenue number that I can’t even comfortably mention here if I didn’t think that it would, to some extent, move this conversation past the point where people equate ‘Code Monkey’ with ‘Hamster Dance’ and call it a day. I’m disappointed that it did not. And it’s not about my personal ego. OK, maybe it is a little, but I truly believe that the sooner we all acknowledge the internet is not actually killing art, the sooner we can get back to making things that are awesome.”

“As you can see, you can do some pretty bad things with JavaScript that will certainly drive your visitors away (or insane!). So why is this kind of functionality available? Some functions is actually very useful if you’re writing complex HTML5 web applications. By disabling text-selection on interface elements you can make the application easier to use, and you can re-implement the right click menu using your own options.”