Meego online

Here's an apparently free way to watch TV online, ads and all (though pretty low-rez). (Here in Europe we don't have Hulu and Netflix.)

I found it while trying to see if "Meego" was ever put on DVD. I remembered this sitcom from the late nineties. The writing was never better than OK, but it does have three good actors: Bronson Pinchot, "Serge" from Beverly Hills Cop (the hilarious art gallery clerk), Michelle Trachtenberg who later played Buffy's (Vampire Slayer) sister, and the little Jon Lipnicki, the kid from Jerry Maguire.

The show was cancelled after a half season, no great loss, but I do think that Pinchot and Trachtenberg are amongst the many sadly under-used actors.

Design an Ambigram

Design an Ambigram, article.
An ambigram reads the same upside down. Making one usually takes quite some skill and time!

Some of them I really like, though, take for example these two very different ones. They are good looking and eminently readable, something you can't say about all ambigrams.

Video: Hot Girl Pole Skills

Video: Hot Girl Pole Skills.
What bod control!
(Oddly, one time Firefox downloaded the file, and that video was a completely different one! I thought it was a "rickrolling" kind of joke, but then next time I loaded the page, I actually got the right one.)

Jacek Yerka art

Jacek Yerka art.

Tablet surprise

There's a lot of interesting stuff happening with tablets which nobody saw coming.

Quilling – The Art of Turning Paper Strips into Intricate Artworks

Quilling – The Art of Turning Paper Strips into Intricate Artworks.
These are surprisingly kewl.

I like that the hand one is less shaped like a hand and more like a hand-print.

Playing with the moon, photos

Playing with the moon, photos by Laurent Laveder.

End-o-week quotes

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
           -- Michael Crichton


The highest result of education is tolerance. 
             --  Helen Keller




Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
           -- Eric Hoffer

So you’re MAD about something on the Internet…

Bypassing the leap

Bypassing the leap, Seth Godin post.
It's not enough to be aware of the domain you're working in, you need to understand it. Noticing things and being curious about how they work is the single most common trait I see in creative people. Once you can break the components down, you can put them back together into something brand new.

Nespresso Pixie Espresso Maker

I recommend the Nespresso Pixie Espresso Maker.

Very simple: due to the hermetically sealed little alu pods, it delivers the same quality as a real cappuccino machine (I think it's better than most coffeehouse coffee actually), but it's super-compact, and there's much, much less mess to deal with. And it's fast. If you just want an expresso, it's less than a minute from turning it on til you have your coffee!
Couldn't be simpler and quicker.

If you want milk, there's a few more steps. A steamer is pretty ridic for a home, so I just heat the milk in the microwave, and then froth it with a simple little frother.
It's recommended to pre-heat the cup also, with hot water.

I'f you're used to "a cup of coffee" being like half a liter, maybe this machine is not for you, it makes pretty small cups. But there are two sizes, and I guess one could use two capsules in one go for a double cup.

The capsules by the way, are expensive many places, 70 pence (a buck) per shot. But I buy directly from Nespresso.com, that's half price, much more in line of what home-brewing oughta cost.

Quitting phone calls

I'm Quitting Phone Calls, article.

... For business at least.
I wrote a similar post a while ago. I just found that every time I let myself be talked into taking a phone call, it lasted over an hour, and didn't convey more data than I could have absorbed in 3 minutes from an email.

What's on a dollar bill?

A kinds of symbolism, including masonic.