Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
Carl Sagan, “A Glorious Dawn” featuring Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)
The PBS show “Cosmos” was one of my favorite things to watch with my dad when I was young. This remix just makes it 100x awesomer.
Romance Reader, Unashamed
Daily Kos contributor Laura Clawson examines the myths about romance novels (many of which I held until recently; and some of which I’m still having a teensy bit of trouble disavowing, but mostly just to tweak Velma).
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 8:45 AM |
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Thursday, December 24, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Designer–Client relationships
From the awesome website Clients From Hell. Sadly, I’ve actually heard some of these things myself. This one, for example, is very similar to a situation I was experiencing quite recently.
Good: Jailbirds
A little data on the prison-industrial complex (link is a fascinating Atlantic article from 1998 by Eric Schlosser).
Sucker Love: Celebrating the naughty tentacle
Amanda Gannon answers the question, “Would you still do Antonio Banderas if he was an octopus from the waist down?” Needless to say, NSFW.
The Known Universe
This is really cool. Travel from Earth to the end of the known universe, in a scale-accurate animation.
Black Metal Cookies
How to bake the most grim and doom-laden of chocolate chip cookies. [via Jason]
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Google Earth Tour of Sierra Pacific Industries’ clearcuts in California’s forests
Do you know where the town of Arnold, CA, is? Media coverage of logging in California died down a decade ago, and most people don’t realize the clearcuts have been going on ever since. “I wake up at night at 3:30, hearing the logging trucks and knowing what’s happening,” says Arnold resident Susan Robinson. “It makes me sick...I’m the daughter of a forester myself. I am not anti-logging. SPI [Sierra Pacific Industries] should be able to log its land. But it shouldn’t have the right to obliterate everything.” [from an article in the SFBG: “The Harshest Cut”]
Okay, those first three were a little depressing, so here are a couple more light-hearted selections:
NightLife at the Cal Academy of Sciences
“Every Thursday, the Academy is transformed into a lively venue filled with music, provocative science, mingling, and cocktails, for visitors 21 and older. Activities and performers change week to week.” Tonight (September 17) features my friend Laura Stec, among others. NightLife takes place every Thursday from 6 to 10pm; tickets are $12 ($10 for Academy members).
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 4:59 AM |
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Cory Doctorow’s Makers Tor.com is serializing Corey Doctorow’s upcoming new novel before its November release, with a new installment every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.
This art is junk Literally. Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster make shadow art out of piles of trash.
NPR Road Trip station finder NPR has relaunched a redesigned site and there are lots of improvements and new features. One I like is the ability to find NPR stations for a road trip, plotting between two points. You can also find local stations and the map gives you an indication of their signal strength in the area. They haven’t redone the NPR Shop or the Music section yet, but the overhaul of rest of the site must’ve been a tremendous project and I suspect the other two sections will come in time.
“The Trooper Believer” by DJ Schmolli Austrian DJ/remixer DJ Schmolli has mashed up of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” with The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer.” [via Dave W.]
Posted by espd at 7:24 AM |
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Thursday Top 5
The origin of the “Amen Break” You’ve heard it before, probably millions of times. You just didn’t know it had a name. The “Amen Break” is a six-second drum break from a 1969 B-side by a band you likely never heard of, The Winstons. But you’ve undoubtedly heard this drum beat sampled in everything from songs (like NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton”) to DJ mixes to commercials. [18:09 min]
Views from the International Space Station While astronaut Don Pettit was living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he used some of his off-duty time to make time lapse videos of what he was seeing outside of the ISS window.
“Stand By Me” sung around the world They recorded musicians around the world singing the classic song, and mixed them all together. There’s a CD of songs and a DVD documentary. [5:27 min] Learn more at PlayingForChange.com.
Drink Pussy A strangely named energy drink from Italy. Gotta wonder what it tastes like. Hm...well it’s only €1,99...
Enter Kazoo Man Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” performed on kazoo. [3:17 min] [via Jesse K.]
Posted by espd at 1:37 AM |
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Thursday Top 5+3
Velma and I are going on a site visit to beautiful Sequioa National Park for a few days and I thought I’d be generous and post some extra distractions for those of you stuck behind desks while we’re backpacking through the redwoods. So here are three bonus links along with your normal five. Don’t say I never gave you nuthin’.
“Barney Miller” on Hulu I loved this classic sitcom from the ’70s and ’80s, so I was pleased to see Hulu has added every episode. I’ve watched several so far, reliving my childhood with pre-adolescent glee. Plus the show had one of the all-time raddest theme songs (I can say “rad,” it was the ’80s!), and I found a free MP3 at TelevisionTunes.com. Now I just need to find all the episodes of “Taxi” somewhere online.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Mac 101 series I’ve been a Mac user for almost 25 years now (*whew*) so it’s not surprising that I’ve picked up a lot of power-user tips over the years. But even I learn something new once in a while. For PC-to-Mac switchers, novices, and even old timers, the Mac 101 series on TUAW is a great way to pick up quick and easy tips that will make you more productive and save time and effort. I perused the entire series a few nights ago and there are some great shortcuts and tips that will undoubtedly leave most Mac users thinking, “Aha! That’s how you do that!”
Brute force Hubble fix saves the day — again Play-by-play description of the second time spacewalking astronauts had to resort to brute force to repair part of Hubble on this latest, and so far very successful, trip. Some other interesting play-by-play descriptions of the recent trip are available in other posts on CNET News’s Space Shot blog.
What Would Penis Do? The artist of these shorts has a new book.
“Space Oddity: Steve Lamacq Live’s guide to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” I recently found this broadcast from BBC Radio 1 about the history of the Hitchhiker’s phenomenon, produced to introduce the 2005 movie. Features interview snippets with Douglas Adams, Simon Jones, Stephen Fry, actors from the original BBC TV series and radio shows, fans, and a bunch of people involved with the movie. Oh, and it’s hosted by the original Marvin, in character of course. It’s actually quite a good show, regardless of the movie being rather a let-down. [31:24 min, RealPlayer stream]
Posted by espd at 7:10 AM |
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Carolyn Davis Catering My friend Carolyn Davis (née Peters) has a new website, and although I didn’t design it, I heartily approve of its design: it’s great. Carolyn’s a fantastic chef, I’ve seen her at work at events she was catering and I can attest to her team’s excellence and her culinary brilliance as well. Hire her!
A Glimpse Ahead Courtesy of Microsoft Labs. A lot of these technologies and interfaces are actually already in development and there are even some real-world working examples of some of them. I expect we’ll see quite a few of these in the next five to ten years. [1:54 min]
Posted by espd at 6:42 AM |
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Thursday, April 02, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Youngme Nowme A thread full of photos of people posed the same way, then and now.
Think Taste — Not Waste! My friend Laura Stec is featured on MSN’s Health & Fitness channel in this article and short video. She shows a quick tip for making soup stock from the detritus of your cooking chores, using mushroom stalks, pepper “skeletons,” carrot peelings, and more. This “food waste,” which you might otherwise throw in the garbage, causes our nation’s landfills to output more harmful methane (a climate-disruptive greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide) than all the livestock in the U.S. Buy Laura Stec’s book, it’s great!
San Francisco Bay Model Velma and I were thinking of going to see this last weekend since we were going to explore Sausalito a bit, but it’s only open until 4pm on Saturdays, so it’ll have to be another trip. The walk-through hydraulic model takes up two buildings and is apparently the size of two football fields. According to the guy in the video, it was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to test an idea they had to dam the bay. I once saw an old map of another Army Corps concept they had in the ’50s or ’60s, to fill the entire bay with landfill except for a narrow shipping channel. Communities could then build all the way into the middle of the bay. I shudder to think of the Bay Area we would live in today if that had been allowed to happen. [3:51min] More about the Bay Model (yes, their site is awful).
Interview with sci-fi author John Scalzi I really enjoyed his book The Ghost Brigades, and I really enjoyed this interview too. It starts with this intro by interviewer Jason Henninger: “John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War took me by surprise. I picked up the book because I’d heard a lot of good things about him and decided I’d give it a one-page tryout. Either he’d grip me right away or I’d drop it. Twenty pages later I realized I hadn’t moved from the spot. OK, John. Grip achieved.”
The Boston Globe’s 2009 in Photos on The Big Picture
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po