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 March 19, 2006

March 23, 2006

Snakes On A Plane: The Reshoots

SoaP has had reshoots to make it more R-rated, and to add the line “I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane!”. I genuinely cannot wait for this movie!

Filed under : :
via |

Criticker

Interesting take on collaborative filtering — Finds you movie reviewers whose opinions match yours. Initial signs point to it being wicked fricking awesome.

The MTA Song - Wikipedia

The kind of attention to trivia that Britannica can never hope to beat. A detailed analysis of whether 1980s transit policy in Boston would have allowed Charlie to deboard the train.

Tip of the Hat: Reddit

The main problem with good UI design is that it’s transparent. People don’t notice the good stuff—they just focus on the thirty things that are broken.

So a tip of the hat to a smart UI design that I just noticed on reddit. When you’re logged in and have javascript enabled, reddit tracks all the sites you click-through to. Yes yes, evil tracking, spyware, etc.

But what’s rather charming is that when you view reddit, the links you’ve already visited are displayed in purple. You know, that webbrowser standard for a followed link. Even if you’re on a different PC. It’s such a nice touch—Links that I viewed at home this morning are purpled-out when I’m at my desk at work. And I didn’t have to learn anything—it so snuggly fitted my mental model for How The Web Works that it took me a few weeks to notice.

Compare that to digg where even on the same PC, I can’t eyeball the page and see new links.

Nice work, reddit-folk!

Schneier on Security: Airport Passenger Screening

Another good Bruce Schneier article. Worth it for the sentence “Although we should all be glad that Richard Reid wasn’t the ‘underwear bomber.’”

Filed under : : :

March 22, 2006

Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?

Another great danah boyd essay. “Hanging out on Friendster is like hanging out in a super clean police state where you can’t chew gum let alone goof around and you’re told exactly how to speak to others. Hanging out on MySpace is more like hanging out in a graffiti park with fellow goofballs while your favorite band is playing.”

Filed under : : : :
via |

Franz Ferdinand Frontman Shot By Gavrilo Princip Bassist | The Onion

I know, I know, it’s the most obvious joke possible given the band name. The execution (sic) still made me laugh.

Filed under : : :

March 21, 2006

Silver Needle in the Skype

Reverse-engineering the heavily obfuscated Skype binary and protocol.

Filed under : :
via |

BBC NEWS | French MPs vote to open up iTunes

Well, it’s the law. Apple either have to open up their DRM to other devices and music stores, or shutdown the iTunes Music Store in France. I’ll put $50 on the latter. (Update: OK, it’s not the law yet: It has to pass France’s Senate yet. Stupid multi-house parliamentary systems)

Filed under : : : :
via |

Pleasure Cards

Personal non-business business cards in cool designs. Just ordered myself a box.

Filed under : :

rrrrthats5rs.com » Don’t Shoot the Puppy

The funniest flashgame I’ve played in ages. Can you work out the secret to not shooting the puppy?

Filed under : : : :
via |

March 19, 2006

Snakes On A Plane trailer

Everything you dreamed it would be. SPOILER WARNING: There’s an aircraft, and it appears to be infested with some form of cold-blooded legless reptiles.

Filed under : : : :
via |

A ‘smooth, creamy coffeehouse classic’, apparently

A ‘smooth, creamy coffeehouse classic’, apparently

Or, alternatively, half-a-mug of piss-weak, nastily artifically-sweetened, CoffeeMate-crammed brownwater. The rather disappointing result of trying a HomeCafe "frothy cappuccino" pod.

I got the coffee machine for free from BzzAgent, but I still feel ripped-off. I'll stick with my Senseo, thanks.

Allmydata.com

Distributed P2Pish secure backups. You give up 10Gb of your hard drive, for the rights to distribute 1Gb of your files across hundreds of peers. Sadly Windows-only, and there’s no way to tweak how much *bandwidth* you’re willing to give up, but could come in handy.

Filed under : : : : :
via |

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Bootdisk that fits on a 1.44Mb floppy which securely nukes every scrap of data off of hard drives. Handy to have if you’re about to sell an old computer.

Filed under : : : :
via |

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.