8th Grader Shows More Class Than City Councilwoman Conyers - Credit Ms. Conyers with the willingness to debate a group of short-pants-wearin students on the impact of her tirades against the City Council President, but pity her inability to own up to her bad behavior and make good. [via Craxy]
Barbarian Group Nigerian Scammer-baiting - Barbarian Nick contributes some great material to the tradition of baiting Nigerian “I want to transfer you a zillion dollars” e-mail scammers out of their hideyholes. Catch up to this multipart series: [ 1, 2, 3, 4] Aside: Barbarian Blogmaster, this stuff doesn’t seem to show up on the main scroll of articles and I think it’s some of your best material. It makes it hard to keep up as a reader.
Tin Foil Hat Couteur:
Protect yourself from the forces of evil without sacrificing dashing good looks with this jaunty beret/tin foil combo seen on the streets of New York.
The Will Smiths - A great album cover that never happened. [in case that link isn’t working, I’ve mirrored it here]
ROFLCon Hehs - From the soon-to-be-defunct Super Deluxe blog, SD’ers recollect their favorite moments from the conference, including Tron Guy’s “FAIL” and a live silent Rickroll.
Black Hearted - Papermilk uncovers an artful negative comment on a seller.
My dad had a nice mention in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about a 10 year Gestational Diabetes study he’s been working on that just published some of its results. It’s great to see the fruits of the HAPO study reach the popular press. I’ll leave it to WaPo author Serena Gordon to provide the quick version of the study’s findings: “The higher a woman’s blood sugar levels were, the more likely she was to have a C-section, to develop preeclampsia, have premature delivery and to have the delivery complication known as shoulder dystocia, the study found…Babies born to women with higher glucose levels were more likely to have high insulin levels, low blood sugar, and to have a large birth weight, all indications of exposure to high glucose levels.” Although it didn’t prescribe a specific threshold for when knowledge of these risks should play in to pregnancy treatment plans, it’s expected to spark discussions around that topic in the medical community in the upcoming weeks and months that could lead to some of those standards being modified. Congratulations to the HAPO study team, all of its authors, and everyone who contributed along the way. I still remember their brainstorming session for the all-important acronym, about a decade ago.
My dad’s WSJ quote makes a career blogger proud, making sure the reporter understands the research value of the study in its proper context and seeks to make sure its immediate impact isn’t overclaimed in the mainstream press:
“Dr. Coustan said the implications of the study are “about the future, not about the present,” adding it won’t “affect clinical practice this week or this month.”
The Washington Post also wrote up the study, as did US News And World Report, Forbes, and several other outlets. He said he did some interviews with bloggers as well, but since the medical blogosphere isn’t on my daily reads, I haven’t come across any coverage there yet.
This also represents a strange collision of my family life and the Friday Heh Lists. Yes, last night it dawned on me - my dad studies the beetis.
I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Pete Hottelet of Brawndo fame while at ROFLCon. He was giving away cans of the electrolyte-packed, thirst mutilating soft drink made famous by the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy.
Here’s a clip of a small contribution I made to the Brawndo table. I know a plant in need when I see one.:
When asked about what started his first “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” sticker campaign, Shepard Fairey tells the story that it was for an assignment that asked him to “affect the quality of the day.” I think that’s what motivates the parts of my work I’m most proud of. For ROFLCon(which was a completely amazing event that I will write more on once I’ve gotten some sleep), I got signs made that said “Heh” on one side and “Meh” on the other, in the hopes that they’d add to the character of the conference and give people something fun to do. The organizers handed them out at the 6pm “live comment thread” and they were put to extremely good use.
Last night, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid kicked it off by hosting a truly memorable Drinkup pre-party at Asgard in Cambridge.
It was great to be among so many people who appreciate a good piece of internet culture and love what they do. Everywhere you turned there was another person whose work you’ve admired from afar, and everyone was extremely approachable and friendly. Although there was some welcome overlap, it felt like an entirely different crowd from the set of people I’m used to seeing at internet conferences and unconferences. It’s really exciting to be a part of an event that’s all about content and the people who make it.
After the drinkup I ended up grabbing dinner at Central Kitchen with bestest friend and frequent heh contributor Doug from Barbarian Group, and Ben, Eric, and Kari who comprise I Can Has Cheezburger. I can’t say enough good things about the ICHC crew. They were a blast to hang out with and after a very short time with them it felt like we all came from the same strange far-off planet. It bodes well for the conference that we were all too happy to spend most of the meal discussing past, present, and future funny things on the internet. Hopefully we don’t burn out on it in the next couple of days.
You can follow the conference through the official blog where I will be contributing if I have time, the Flickr pool, and on Twitter at @roflcon.
I prepared a special Extraface surprise for the ROFLCon goodie bags and can’t wait to share it with you once I see it in the flesh and can get some pictures of it. I’ll also be posting a way you can make your own and play along from wherever you are. I hope to publish some heh today, but if I don’t get the chance rest assured I’m engaged in celebrating heh all weekend.
I’m in Rhode Island all this week, enjoying a change of scenery as I work remotely from here and then attend ROFLCon in Cambridge, MA at the end of the week. One of my favorite things to do here is hit up Savers, a thrift superstore with locations throughout the country(except in Atlanta). I always find something interesting at the Warwick, RI location. Yesterday, as if in anticipation of Roflcon, I found this ancient gem:
The copyright date is 2002, but I imagine the plan for this board game about IM-speak was in development well before then and was released a bit behind schedule.
In honor of ROFLCon, all this week Extraface will feature game cards from the set. Feel free to play along at home; I’ll keep the spoilers behind links.
One way I look to use blogs is to get glimpses of places I’m not, and to keep tabs on where I am.
My friend Ken recently started Live For Buzz which represents a really interesting idea for how to tie blogs and message boards together. EAVBuzz is a message board many East Atlanta residents use to share news and information, gossip, kvetch, have off-topic discussions, share public safety reports, organize get-togethers, and solve problems. Live For Buzz is a blog front-end for the message board, that pulls out discussions that might be of interest to the larger community or to people who don’t live in the immediate area. The Buzz is such an active forum that it’s become difficult to keep up with the volume of new posts that go up, and Live For Buzz addresses that problem by creating a more distilled information source for people who only have time to watch the most significant discussions. Ken distills the discussions into a several paragraph blog entry, and then also always offers links straight into the board, for anyone who might decide they’re interested enough to roll up their sleeves and enter the fray. I think more message boards should think this way, and use a blog as a more accessible point of entry for outsiders. There’s a lot of information on message boards that doesn’t bubble up to the surface because it takes so much effort to wade through it all, especially if you’re not a member.
On the other side of the country, for the past several months I’ve been reading Tony Pierce’s Busblog, thanks to a pointer from my friends Gregg and Josh Lucas at LA Times Interactive. Tony’s personal vignettes about his life and what he sees around LA are great reads, and he also writes about the rapidly evolving blogging program he runs at LA Times. Because he also has access to the LA Times writing and editorial staff, he does some great work digging deeper on stories that come through the paper and offering his own unique perspective about what’s happening there.
His writing style is inspiring, and i find that when my own head is filled with cobwebs, reading the Busblog helps me knock them loose sometimes. I especially like how his titles often grab me and pull me in to his subject matter without having to scan any of the entry. And they almost always deliver what they promise. He also polls his readers often, highlights friends, acquaintences, and strangers doing good work online, and manages to balance what’s important to him about writing and what’s important to his audience in reading him.
Uwe Boll Will Not Stand Down, Sir - Movie/Game/Entertainment fans who think Uwe Boll sucks have a petition online that says if the get enough signatures, Uwe should agree never to make another movie. 178,000+ signatures later, embedded below is Uwe’s YouTubed reply. He wants everyone to know that in his humble opinion he’s far superior to Michael Bay and horror director “Ellie Ross”[sic]. [via Crvs]
N.B.: Uwe drops F-bombs
Pisa’s Prison Restaurant - “Under the watchful eye of armed prison warders, a 20-strong team of chefs, kitchen hands and waiters prepares 120 covers for diners who have all undergone strict security checks. Tables are booked up weeks in advance.” [via Jeff]
A Flickr Primal Scream - Jzawodn described this in del.icio.us as “a video of what flickr will do if sold to microsoft”:
Blank Sheet Of Paper! - “BlankSheetofPaper.com is a free online utility to allow you to print a blank sheet of paper from your printer in case you need a clean white, blank sheet of paper to write on. No download required.”
YouTube CSS Comments - Darrell stumbles on some funny editorial comment artifacts in the new UI changes to YouTube.com. As of right now, it’s still there.
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