Roger Ebert has a pretty active Twitter account with often interesting links. However, I noticed that links to his personal Sun Times blog sometimes have ugly or bizarre URLs. This one was especially bad, with the page being not-quite-HTML-code for four nonbreaking spaces (emphasis mine, obviously):

blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/strange-3/nbsp-nbsp-nbsp-nbsp-my.html

I wasn't sure what point I was going to make with this, other than it's bad SEO practice to have poorly-named URLs ... not to mention it's almost impossible to tell anybody that link short of of copying and pasting. So let me switch gears to what's actually on that page:

It's an interview with a hand model — and she's pretty cocky about them (almost comically so) — whose hands have never seen the light of day for 15 years. She doesn't do anything with her hands — no cooking, cleaning, sports, gardening ... not even opening windows — and she wears gloves everywhere she goes. It kind of blew my mind; check it out at Ebert's ugly-URL page.

And of course, that interview only reminds me of George Costanza's similar modeling career.

All those kids doing wheelies & skids on fixed-gear bikes need to learn better tricks. Come on, "Quicksilver" was almost 25 years ago!

So I'm sitting here — sitting! — reading kottke.org and he points to this:

Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens

"Men who spent more than 23 hours a week sitting had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting."

I guess Homer was right:

I didn't grow up with Nintendo. I played plenty of arcade games, but for some reason we picked the "wrong" home video game systems: Odyssey 2 instead of Atari 2600, Atari 7800 instead of NES. Of course I've played Super Mario Bros. but I didn't "grow up" with it the way my wife, many of my friends, and most people my age (late 30s) did.

I recently bought Super Mario Bros. on the Wii's Virtual Console so the kids can play a game that is easy to understand and control (though it isn't an "easy game"). They really like it, and I was a little surprised how much I enjoy it, too. And if I felt guilty for liking an old and silly game (I didn't) I've recently come across a couple pro-Mario articles:

Why A Man Plays Mario (Kotaku.com)
Better Late than Never? (AV Club)

I think this (from the latter article) sums it up:

Here's another thing I didn't understand about games until I played Super Mario Bros.: Games are supposed to be fun. And it is enough for games to be fun.

Just the other day I was wondering what the "Heinz 57 varieties" on the ketchup bottle was. Then out of nowhere the internet brings the answer to me via kottke.org — I didn't even have to Google it myself. Super-convenience...

Hummer Production to End (NY Times):

GM will halt Hummer production at its Louisiana plant until sale of the brand to a Chinese company is completed.

I loved this reader comment:

Can't wait to see a Chinese-made Hummer with a big ol' American flag slapped on the back window.

A merry Krampus to you and yours! Hope you're not on the naughty list...

Christoph Niemann uses leaves to illustrate ideas. (via kottke)

There's a cemetery down a street that we really enjoy visiting. It's old, picturesque, and has some great old trees. It's very peaceful and relaxing to stroll around or just hang out under them. (Sidenote: we might accidentally be raising some "odd" kids who like cemeteries: often when we drive by one, they often exclaim "We should visit that cemetery sometime!")



I've taken a lot of photos there but I have yet to capture the feeling the place has on me, and I was starting to wonder if it was possible to ever really do it. But this weekend I was playing around with Lomo effects in Photoshop, and I liked the effect it had on one of my recent cemetery photos. I'm not quite there as far as taking "the" photo yet, but I like that I'm making some headway.

When we go on vacations and getaways (especially in New England) I always like to hit up fancy chocolate shops. Turns out there's some quality handmade chocolates right nearby. If you're in the Bridgewater area and have grown loath of ordinary confections, get over to Skinner's Sugar House. Damn, that's some tasty stuff! (Made a great Father's Day gift, too.)

From an article about the revival of the exclamation mark:

"Ellipses confer gravitas on banal thoughts ..."

I actually agree with this, even though I'm quite often guilty of it. (I probably would've used an ellipsis right there, but it wouldn't have been ironic and instead I'd just be an idiot.)

Man, I really hope Frank isn't the easter bunny...

I was a huge Lego fan growing up, so Gizmodo's article about the Lego company's Memory Lane -- the secret vault with almost every Lego set ever manufactured -- really brought me back. It was actually cool seeing Space Galaxy Explorer and castle (two of my favorite sets) again...I guess the Lego nerd is still in me.

Rapha (a cycling clothing company) interviewed eight of the top custom frame builders in the U.S., including Circle A Cycles (where my brother is a builder).

Custom frame building is both a science and an art. It is an ever-evolving process of geometry, wizardry and psychology, all brought together in an effort to understand the specific wants and needs of an individual rider. Few builders get rich, few even get famous, but every builder holds a special place in the hearts of the cyclists for whom they build. Every frame is a labor of love. At it's best, it's a perfect combination of builder and rider.

Read the interview with Chris Bull and Brian Chapman here.

While looking at a slideshow on Flickr, I clicked the Options link on the page, just to see what was there. Turns out there's an option to "Embiggen small photos to fill screen," a clear reference to The Simpsons episode Lisa the Iconoclast :

Jebediah: [on film] A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Edna: Embiggens? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield
Ms. Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.

How long before this fake word becomes considered a real one?

Jeff pointed out an album cover meme that's pretty fun: Just follow these rules to create the cover. The results can be pretty bizarre, but sometimes things oddly work out, like my cover (which, if I had to guess, would probably have a 70's folk-rock sound to it):

If you're like me, you often come across an article, blog post, YouTube video, or other web page that you want to read but don't have the time at the moment. I've wanted some way to be able to mark a page to read later...something better than my current method of dragging a bookmark to a folder on my desktop.

I recently came across Instapaper, which is a very simple site that lets you mark things to read later. Add a simple bookmarklet to your browser, and whenever you're on a page you want to mark for later reading, click the bookmarklet and it adds the link to your Instapaper list.

(And if you're a NetNewsWire user like me, someone wrote a "Post to Instapaper" AppleScript.)

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will (Onion AV Club)

Paul Graham has a good article about owning too much stuff. It's good for me to read something like this every so often to inspire me to clean out a lot of things I really don't need.

Hey, they discovered Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Turns out it was underground. And in Mexico.