Parade of Awesomeness

I’ve mentioned before how much I love playing Team Fortress 2. Before, I had been using a headset mike to coordinate with other players, which worked OK. Unfortunately, using a headset meant that I had loud explosions going off in my ears all the time, so I couldn’t hear family members in other rooms or the telephone. It also meant that I couldn’t use my computer’s surround sound system.

So I went to Best Buy looking for a cheap desktop mike, and found this RocketFish brand microphone for $25. It works remarkably well; I don’t have to get all that close to the mike for it to pick up my voice, and I haven’t had any problems with other players not being able to hear me.

Also, it’s dead simple to set up. Plug it in to a USB port and push the on button. If necessary, adjust the mike volume in the Windows volume control. That’s it.

It’s cheap, effective, and simple—everything I like in a tool.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 12 - Constantly Reminded »

Today we hear the song Constantly Reminded from Ben Godwin’s CD Skin and Bone, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network. Every song on this CD is really good, ranging from the soulful sound you hear on this song and Hook of Time to the high-energy sound of Drinking Gasoline and New World City. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper =AT= gmail =~DOT~= com. Thanks for listening!

Christiana's Shallow Thoughts »

Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts is a short daily podcast of “serene surrealism.”

The host, Christiana Ellis, usually starts with some observation—say, about hotel carpets or an interesting error message on her laptop—which she reads calmly over peaceful new-age music. Then she gives the observation a bizarre and amusing left turn.

I can’t give any examples without ruining the experience, but episodes rarely last more than three minutes. Just go listen and enjoy.

Dresden Codak is an excellent webcomic written by Aaron S. Diaz. It blends beautiful artwork with science and surrealism.

The comic hits its stride with the start of the Hob storyline, which is where I’d recommend that you start reading if you’re interested in the comic. The story is about Kimiko Ross, a young transhumanist who runs a shop that sells nostalgia and who encounters a robot from the future.

The artwork is absolutely stunning and subtle; each page is rich in detail and nuance. It’s not the Sunday funnies; you have to pay attention to catch all the plot threads. My only complaint: it takes a long time to draw that kind of detail, so it’s usually at least a couple weeks between episodes. But it’s always worth the wait.

Slow Motion Punches to the Face »

Production company Action Figure recorded thirteen people getting punched in the face at 10,000 frames per second. (Background)

The site is having some trouble keeping up with the load of a bunch of people going to see this awesomeness at once, but keep trying. It’s worth it to see the people’s faces deform in bizarre ways in slow motion.

Mario Kart Wii is the latest incarnation of the insanely popular Mario Kart series. As in the previous versions of the game, you race go-karts around different parts of Mushroom Kingdom against characters like Mario, Bowser, and Princess Peach.

This version of the game adds new items to play with, like the Giant Mushroom which makes you so huge that you can run over other karts, flattening them, and Bullet Bill which transforms your kart into a giant auto-steering rocket.

You can also ride around on motorcycles instead of go-karts, and (after unlocking this feature by beating a certain level) you can also race as your Mii.

This is the most fun version of the game since Mario Kart 64, which was released 11 years ago. The GameCube edition of the game, Mario Kart Double Dash, was significantly more difficult and less fun; the Wii version brings Mario Kart back to its roots as a simple, fun racing game.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 11 - The Future Soon »

Episode #11 brings us The Future Soon by Jonathan Coulton. Coulton releases all of his music (except for covers from other artists) on a Creative Commons license, so anyone can remix his music or use it in their own work legally as long as they don’t try to sell it.

He’s released a lot of stuff, including dozens of songs from his year-long Thing-a-Week podcast and the song Still Alive from the end credits of the video game Portal.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper =AT= gmail =~DOT~= com. Thanks for listening!

I love good design, whether we’re discussing a magazine spread, a piece of software, or a refrigerator. A well-crafted electronic device can be as beautiful and as elegant as a painting, song, or piece of pottery.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 is excellently designed, in both form and function. It is small, taking up less real estate on the desk than a piece of paper, and it is extraordinarily simple to use: Load the paper in the tray and push the big green button. The scanner pulls in each page, scanning both sides at the same time, and converts the pages to searchable PDF files.

It is, at long last, the perfect tool for the “paperless” office. You can easily enjoy both the benefits of paper—portability, ease of markup, and readability—and the benefits of digital archival—searchability, ease of transmission, and an uncluttered workspace.

If you’re interested in learning more about getting rid of paper, you can’t go wrong with this article from 43 Folders or with the ScanSnap S510.

(As a reminder: I am not paid for any reviews)

This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money »

This American Life, a generally awesome hour long story-telling show from Chicago Public Radio, recently partnered with NPR’s All Things Considered to produce an excellent piece on the credit crunch.

Alex Blumberg, Adam Davidson, and Ira Glass clearly explain what happened and what everyone was thinking during the rise and fall of the housing bubble, and what we can expect from the economy next.

It’s no small trick to explain something as complex and obfuscated as the credit crunch, especially without demonizing anyone along the chain of events that led to this problem. But that’s exactly what This American Life did: provided clarity without the fiery condemnations you might get from talk radio or the 24-hour news networks.

If you want to understand what’s going on right now in the economy, I can think of no better way than downloading and listening to this episode of This American Life.

TimeTube is a neat service that takes a search for YouTube clips and puts them onto a timeline according to when they were uploaded.

It’s almost like a video history lesson: In the Barack Obama timeline above, you can start watching from the “I inhaled frequently” video in 2006 through the famous “Yes We Can video” to a recent video of Obama playing 3-on-3 basketball in Kokomo, IN.

You can track video memes back to their original source videos. So, for example, do a search for Dramatic Chipmunk, and you’ll find, first, an educational video of Japanese girls looking at a prairie dog, then the clip from that video with dramatic music that everyone was passing around about a year ago. Then you can see the meme evolve, with the “Curses!” video and other remixes, and then see the meme slowly fade out over time.

It’s a neat little web toy that might even be a useful research tool. (Via Lifehacker)