Monday Links from the Tenterhook vol. LVI

[d000hg]

Don't you hate it when you're left hanging around after a phone interview waiting to hear if you got the gig or not?

I don't. It is like the period between getting up on Xmas day and finally being allowed to open ones presents a few hours later. It s a delicious feeling of anticipation and hope.

At Christmas you can see there are presents, you just don't know what they are. An interview is more like waiting to see if someone remembered your birthday/anniversary

[Old Greg]

And on the hardcore thing, much like CB radio, hetero anal became so much less interesting once it was made legal.

Same with murder.

[AlfredJPruffock]

There one was a poet called Alfred.
Who declared that rhyming was now dead.

To encourage the barder
To try a bit harder:

Some CUK doggerel by Dick Head.

Aye RC

That wiz pretty good you know - perhaps you could lead the Poetry Corner Revival ?

As for moi - I was even invited to a Robert Burns do on Saturday night- its a shame I did adore Burns - alas the World has had its weary way with me ... the passion is gone - I dont think I will bother attending.

Heard the song of the Poet
That died in the gutter

Heard Ten Thousand Drummers
Their hands were a-blazing

And its a hard - and its a hard -
Its a hard rains a gonna fall.

[RichardCranium]

I was momentarily inspired to consider bringing back the Friday Poetry Corner - but in this post 2010 apocalyptical year perhaps it is indeed - the End of Poetry as we know it,

Out of my way - its a busy day
Got things on my mind
For the want of a price of tea and a slice
The Poor Poet Died

There one was a poet called Alfred.
Who declared that rhyming was now dead.

To encourage the barder
To try a bit harder:

Some CUK doggerel by Dick Head.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Thanks Nik - easily the best weekly post here nowadays - I did enjoy the Clavius Moon article - good stuff.

I was momentarily inspired to consider bringing back the Friday Poetry Corner - but in this post 2010 apocalyptical year perhaps it is indeed - the End of Poetry as we know it,

Out of my way - its a busy day
Got things on my mind
For the want of a price of tea and a slice
The Poor Poet Died

[Zippy]

Thanks Nick. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed studying the logic of computer circuits. I thought it was three transistors for an AND gate - doh!

[RichardCranium]

Don't you hate it when you're left hanging around after a phone interview waiting to hear if you got the gig or not?

I don't. It is like the period between getting up on Xmas day and finally being allowed to open ones presents a few hours later. It s a delicious feeling of anticipation and hope.

Moon Base Clavius - "Moon Base Clavius is an organization of amateurs and professionals devoted to the Apollo program and its manned exploration of the moon. Our special mission is to debunk the so-called conspiracy theories that state such a landing may never have occurred."

Not another bunch of cranks or NASA lackeys trying to convince us people went to the moon? They just won't let up, will they? I can't believe there's still people trying to make us fall for that. This Internet, and the rubbish they put on it, eh? (FFS of course I know it really happened.)

[NickFitz]

Don't you hate it when you're left hanging around after a phone interview waiting to hear if you got the gig or not? If only I hadn't already read this lot, I'd have a way to pass the time. As it is, you lot get all the fun and I get to drum my fingers

• Horoscoped - "Do horoscopes really all just say the same thing? We scraped & analysed 22,000 to see." Entertaining analysis by David McCandless and friends, culminating in a meta-prediction that applies to all star signs, every day
  
  
• Indie Games: Designing to Succeed - "The discipline of game design is changing. More accurately, what the world has come to expect from game designers is changing. Games are becoming ubiquitous, the industry has grown by billions of dollars, distribution is no longer a barrier to entry, and the tools exist to not only for indie designers to make games with passion, but to make games with profit." Tony Downey presents an exhaustive body of advice on how to create a game that plays well and sells well.
  
  
• Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising:
  
  
  
  
  
• 4-Bit Computer - "If you’ve ever wondered how electronic devices like computers can count, this article gives a simple introduction to binary and logic and shows how they are tied together with electronics to make both simple and complex computers." Binary, constructing logic gates from transistors, and building a 4-bit adder, all explained in simple terms. There's a link to the schematics and the PCB artwork at the end - you too can be Zeity
  
  
• LBJ Buys Pants - "In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President. We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana."
  
  
• Five Emotions Invented By The Internet - "The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation. During this time the individual will have several windows open, generally several browser ‘tabs,’ a Microsoft Word document in some state of incompletion, the individual’s own Facebook page as well as that of another randomly-selected individual who may or may not be on the ‘friends’ list, 2-5 Gchat conversations that are no longer immediately active, possibly iTunes and a ‘client’ for Twitter. The individual will switch between the open applications/tabs in a fashion that appears organized but is functionally aimless, will return to reading some kind of ‘blog post’ in one browser tab and become distracted at the third paragraph for the third time before switching to the Gmail inbox and refreshing it again." Admit it, you're doing this right now.
  
  
• Hard Core - "As recently as 15 years ago, if somebody wanted vivid depictions of, say, two men simultaneously performing anal penetration on the same woman, securing such a delicacy would require substantial effort because the pornographic repertoire was still limited by the costs and imprecision of distribution. Leaving aside matters of taste and propriety, just how big an audience of horny derelicts or hurried businessmen would wriggle into a Pussycat Theater, with its sticky floors, and, in the company of others, watch a double-anal double feature? Most likely, the producers were more comfortable knowing they could aggregate a much larger audience with an hour of good old-fashioned blow jobs and randy nurses." Natasha Vargas-Cooper looks at how the Internet has changed pornography.
  
  
• Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange: An interview with Michel Ciment - The director discusses his most notorious work. "Modern science seems to be very dangerous because it has given us the power to destroy ourselves before we know how to handle it. On the other hand, it is foolish to blame science for its discoveries, and in any case, we cannot control science. Who would do it, anyway? Politicians are certainly not qualified to make the necessary technical decisions."
  
  
• Moon Base Clavius - "Moon Base Clavius is an organization of amateurs and professionals devoted to the Apollo program and its manned exploration of the moon. Our special mission is to debunk the so-called conspiracy theories that state such a landing may never have occurred."
  
  
• New Toons on the Blog - BECKintl draws cartoons inspired by other people's posts on Twitter:
  
  Edit: which can't be deep-linked, it appears.

Happy invoicing!