I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!
This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.
It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.
Entries for week beginning October 12, 2008
➠ October 18, 2008
The Things He Carried
Great piece on the “security theatre” at airports that inconvenience travellers, but do nothing to improve security. Particularly enjoy the author going through screening wearing a “beer belly”, but having his bottle of water confiscated.
How to Get an Official Nintendo Seal of Quality
“Works extra good when blown-on”
➠ October 16, 2008
Everything your grandparents need to know about the analog/digital switchover
Courtesy of “Talkshow with Spike Feresten”, which is apparently still on the air. Who knew?
Lexical Analysis of 2008 US Presidential and Vice-Presidiential Debates - Who's the Windbag?
All manner of interesting statistics and visualizations drawn out of the presidential debate transcripts.
➠ October 15, 2008
How Nate Silver Went From Forecasting Baseball Games to Forecasting Elections
Great profile in New York Magazine of Nate Silver and the sterling work he’s been doing at fivethirtyeight.com. Got to love anyone who can make a living from a combination of baseball, politics and obsessive number-crunching.
➠ October 14, 2008
Tooths
The x-rays of my teeth, displayed on the hyper-fancy computerised x-ray-o-matic software at my new dentist's office. This monitor is expressly positioned above the chair so patients can see what's going on.
Tarvuism - The official international internet website for the Tarvuist faith
Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper’s follow-up project to “Look Around You”, a religion and series of religious shows for Adult Swim. Say Hebbo to Tarvuism.
2D Boy: World of Goo
Stonking little indie game, finally officially released. Filled with bizarreness and imagination, I’ve been having a blast with it.
➠ October 13, 2008
1st and 3rd
The parking restrictions in our neighbourhood have changed from every week to the 1st & 3rd weeks of the month. I think this is a good thing and will make it easier to park, though I am cautious of getting more parking tickets through mixing up weeks.
➠ October 12, 2008
PayPal phishes itself
A genuine email I received from PayPal directs the user to "SECURE.UNINITIALIZED.REAL.ERROR.COM", an apparently common problem.
Oh, if I were only less scrupulous, I'm sure I could get the funding to purchase error.com
Antisocial: a Javascript demo
Amazing bit of JavaScript hackery. The demo itself is cute and funny, but make sure to play with the demotool.
Is Sarah Palin as racist as her supporters?
Unashamed racist waiting in line outside a Sarah Palin rally. McCain/Palin may not be being outwardly racist themselves, but they’re certainly creating an atmosphere where racists feel comfortable sharing their abhorent views.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Beautiful animation of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
a912rtag9?
Since breaking the search box on groovymother a couple of weeks ago, I’ve spotted a lot of XSS attempts in my logs. The phrase “a912rtag9” in particular seems to appear a lot, and it looks like it’s a bot spidering search boxes across the internet. Anyone know its origin? UPDATED TO ADD: Looks like it’s Yahoo’s Slurp Bot making these requests! Also, the Googlebot is searching for “a912rtag6”. (And yes, I’ve verified the IP addresses) How odd!
About This Site
This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.
I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.