tech@vedella

Futility Closet is a blog about surprising passages found chiefly in out-of-print books. It's one of my favorite blogs. Greg Ross, who runs it, describes it as "An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements." Mark Frauenfelder You find such wonderful material to post on Futility Closet. Where do you find it all? Greg Ross Most of [...]

[I am reading Bill's novel now and really enjoying it. Look for a review from me soon -- Mark] When John F. Kennedy was asked how he became a war hero, he’s supposed to have replied: “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” That’s how I became a self-published novelist: A large number of New [...]

PHOTO, click for larger size without mosaic: Jean-Marie Anigbishe, 45, who was attacked by Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels near Ngalima sits with gaping head wounds at hospital in Ngalima in northeastern Congo February 21, 2009. Anigbishe was fleeing LRA massacres and left for dead on the road after he and his brother were [...]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a helpful legal checklist for people participating in the "Occupy" protests (and any other form of civil disobedience likely to draw the attention of law enforcement). Read it: "Cell Phone Guide for Occupy Wall Street Protesters (and Everyone Else)."

Above, a rare letter by Walt Disney, featured on Letters of Note, a neat blog that gathers and sorts fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Shaun Usher, the guy who runs Letters of Note, wants to produce a book. A Letters of Note book. A beautifully bound, satisfyingly weighty book filled with many of [...]

Best-in-class "Read Later" app Instapaper hit version 4 today, featuring redesigned navigation and much else besides. [Marco Arment]

At Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi on right-wing efforts (yeah, including Breitbart) to turn the "Occupy Wall Street" movement into a liberal-left conspiracy. "Don't fall for it," he writes. (via Dan Gillmor)

The Guardian is mapping "Occupy" protests around the world.

French urban climber Alain Robert, also known as the French Spiderman, climbs to the top floor of a 22-story hotel building in Bucharest October 14, 2011. Robert's climb was part of an advertising campaign for a local electronics retailer. Robert first climbed a building at the age of 12 when he got locked out of [...]

Shares of beleaguered Blackberry maker Research In Motion dropped more than 5 percent today after the company tried to make up for a four-day BlackBerry outage by offering customers $100 worth of free apps and technical support. That outage was a quiet killer. But what should they have offered their loyal users? Other than an [...]

Conor Friedersdorf, an associate editor at The Atlantic, shares a strange but true story of how his words wound up on a protest sign 3,000 miles from his home: "How Occupy Wall Street Is Like the Internet." The short version: over the weekend, I blogged this snapshot taken by BB reader Ben Furnas of an [...]

[Video Link] Make: Projects has complete instructions to make a chomping pacman costume.

Last night, I saw Death Cab for Cutie perform an epic, sublime set at the Treasure Island Music Festival. I'd never caught them live before but their musicianship and the energy behind it was really quite phenomenal. Today, DCfC have released another new track from their forthcoming Keys and Codes Remix EP, a collection of [...]

In this performance from 1991, presidential candidate Herman Cain sings (splendidly) a version of Imagine in which the lyrics have been changed to be about pizza. [via Gawker]

Bennie says: "The National Radio Quiet Zone is a 13,000 square mile area located in parts of West Virginia and Virginia. Some find the silence soothing; others because they suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Whatever the personal reasons, more people are flocking here because of the lack of cellphone signals." Here's The Daily's Ashley Kindergan on [...]

[Video Link] Becky Stern says: "MAKE Volume 28 hits makers’ passion for play head-on with a 28-page special section devoted to Toys and Games, including a toy “pop-pop” steamboat made from a mint tin, an R/C helicopter eye-in-the-sky, and a classic video game console. You’ll also build a gravity-powered catapult, a plush toy that interacts [...]

Texas scientists wrote a report detailing the state of the environment in Galveston Bay. Rick Perry-appointed officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality went through the report and systematically deleted every mention of changes to Bay ecology that could be attributed to climate change. Now the scientists are rebelling. All the authors have asked [...]

This is an incredibly rare cyclops shark embryo. Sadly, this dusky shark never even had a chance to live. A fisher caught its momma in the Gulf of California and when cut her open, he found the curious creature inside. From National Geographic: Once (Interdisciplinary Center of Marine Sciences biologist Felipe) Galván-Magaña and colleague Marcela [...]

In 2008, Stefan Ramin was on a global sailing trip when he and his girlfriend landed on the remote French Polynesian island of Nuku Hiva. He was never heard from again. and ashes, believing to be his, were recently found there. For some reason, it was initially reported that cannibals probably hacked up his body, [...]

One of the cool things about LED lighting is that it provides opportunities to bring some of the benefits of big, modern infrastructures to developing countries without having to actually build the big, modern (and expensive) infrastructure. A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for ArchitecturalSSL magazine about people installing solar-powered LED streetlights [...]