Saul Williams - List of Demands video

Trent Reznor said that it was this video that encouraged him to collaborate with Saul Williams.

Traditional Japanese Ghost Story

Néojaponisme: Night Fishing
A scary Japanese ghost story from 1911 has been translated into English. Happy Halloween!

NBA's Gilbert Arenas blogs

NBA.com Blog: Gilbert Arenas
Apparently, this is the best sports superstar blog. Don't say I didn't let you know.

Saul Williams releases album online with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor

The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid

Micro-Persuasion - The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid
An opinion piece about Web 2.0 by Steve Rubel, suggesting that there is new dot-com bubble, and what got us in this situation - greed.

BusinessWeek Special Report on Mobile Phones

Business Week Special Report on Mobile Phones Killer Mobile Apps
iPhones
Touch screens
Google Phones

Profile of NBA's Steve Nash from NY Times

Not to Get Too Mystical About It - New York Times
A really good profile of Victoria, British Columbia's Steve Nash, who was the NBA's MVP two years in a row with the Phoenix Suns. This article follows Steve Nash on his tour of Beijing, China with Yao Ming, and a host of other NBA players.
Today's Link source: Kottke

Da Vinci's hi-res Last Supper

The Last Supper in Detail
As of today, Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper painting is now viewable online in a high resolution 16 billion pixel scan. It's available for free to everyone with an internet connection, even if you can't get to Milan to see it in person.

Today's Link source: Yahoo! News

Japan's ESL company NOVA goes bankrupt

Nova files for bankruptcy with debt of ¥43.9 billion



If you're thinking about going to teach English in Japan, don't even think about working for Nova anymore. I worked for them for a year and a half, in Osaka and Tokyo, and had a great experience. Unfortunately for Nova's customers and employees, the company's hardball techniques have caught up with them.

Thanks to my man in Japan, EvenMe for the link.

2007 Top Travel Destinations

Conde Nast Readers' Choice Awards 2007
While Conde Nast is more of a luxury travel magazine (I normally prefer the budget travel), their readers have spoken and made their choices for the best travel destinations of 2007.
The categories are Top Cities, Top Islands, Top Transportation, Top Hotels and Top Resorts, and are divided up by region.
Yes, Vancouver, Victoria and many of the BC Resorts rated highly in the Americas surveys.

So where are the best hostels and best cheap flights?

Play NHL 94 hockey online

NHL '94.com
Longtime fans of hockey videogames recognize that Electronic Arts' NHL 94 was the best hockey game of all time. There were all the fights, one-timers, screens, monster hits, the players' and teams' real names, not to mention some of the all time great players, like Mario and Wayne.
Now you can play NHL 94 hockey on your own computer or online in leagues against others.
This is why they created the internets!

Classic Afro-funk mixes

I try not to get tooo worked up about things, but the Voodoo Funk mp3 blog has blown my mind. Voodoo Funk's creator lives in Guinea, and picks up classic African funk vinyl records during his travels throughout Africa, then creates hour-long mixes for the blog.

I haven't listened to all 11 mixes yet, but the Cooked from Scratch mix is my favourite so far. It's brilliant, brilliant, rare, soulful, James Brown-style grooves that blow the lid off the party.


Today's Link source: Metafilter

The Ultimate DIY Guide

25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide
Some pretty hard-core tips from Popular Mechanics magazine.

Quotes from CS Lewis

C.S. Lewis Quotes
Here are some quotes from C.S. Lewis, who was most famous for writing the Chronicles of Narnia books.

10 Ways You Will Change When You Become a Parent

10 Ways You Will Change When You Become a Parent
Several of the people closest to me have had babies recently, and I just wanted to give a shout out to them. Congratulations!!

Interview with Vancouver's SF author William Gibson

William Gibson Hates Futurists : tyeebooks.ca
An interview with Vancouver's own writer William Gibson about Vancouver, futurists, terrorism and his new book, Spook Country from The Tyee.
Today's Link source: Boing Boing

Legal victory for Fantasy Sports fans

Appeals court rules in favor of fantasy baseball company
The courts came through with a ruling against Major League Baseball, that Fantasy Sports companies can publish players' statistics and names as facts, without permission. Thank you for letting common sense prevail this time (pdf). Analysis here.

Today's Link source: Boing Boing

Convincing Video

Pretty solid logical argument.

Thanks to Silver Donald Cameron for the YouTube link

www.silverdonaldcameron.ca

Best cell phone news source

Engadget Mobile

I'm in the market for a new cellular phone. I love my old phone to bits, but the buttons don't work so well any more.

While there are some exciting phones that are available (and some that are not available), unfortunately Canadian wireless companies seem to be working together, because they all seem to offer expensive voice plans, overly long contracts, high cancellation charges, high fees, low-featured phones and/ or ridiculously high data download rates.

Engadget Mobile seems to have the latest and best news on North American mobile phones, and that includes Canada. So if and when the situation changes, and Canada gets the iPhone and/or reasonable data rates, I'll be ready to pounce.

Blogging R.E.M. songs

Pop Songs 07 - I’ll write about every R.E.M. song, eventually
R.E.M. was a seminal band of the eighties and nineties, and now the Pop Songs 07 blog is reviewing each song from their catalogue one-by-one. Some of the entries have links to free mp3 links of cover versions.
Cool concept.

What are the costs of reducing climate change? What has the biggest impact?

For Blog Action Day, Vattenfall's Climate Map (pdf) - Vattenfall's mission is to get rid of 26.7 billion tonnes of emission by 2030. Read about their 27 ways to cut emissions.

You'll be really surprised to see so many emission reducing solutions that actually save money on page 21.

Blog Action Day for the environment

October 15 is Blog Action Day; one day when blogs focus on ways to address climate change and the environment. Here are some of the best ones that I've come across.

Lifehacker: 10 Easy Ways to Live Greener

Instigator Blog: How Entrepreneurs Can Help Save the Environment

Freelance Switch - 29 Simple Ways to Become a More Environmentally Friendly Freelancer (+ Help Us Donate $500 to Charity!)

Chris Walks in the Bucket truck

Chris Walks in the Bucket truck
Originally uploaded by Christopher Walks

Uh, yeah. That's me pretending to do real work on power lines. Watch what happens when I stick my tongue on the wire. Safety first.

Best sites for streaming television

http://www11.alluc.org/alluc/tv-shows/
http://tv-links.co.uk (taken down Oct 19, 2007)

My friend Rhianfa recommended these excellent sites as the best ones for
complete seasons of a huge variety of tv shows. Brilliant!

Nobel Prizes - The Best of the Best

Nobel Peace Prize 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded today to 2 winners, Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Find out the other winners in Medicine, Economics, Literature, Physics, Chemistry and Peace through the history of the Nobel Prize.

Non-Toxic Cleaners

Alternative Cleaners and Recipes
Common household cleaners are often made with extremely toxic chemicals. Help your household get clean and go green with these easy to make, environmentally friendly cleaners.

Video of "The Band" in their final concert

Metafilter: "We gave our final concert, The Band's final concert. We called it The Last Waltz."

Thanks to YouTube, we can all watch The Band's final concert from San Francisco in 1976, filmed by Martin Scorsese. Epic live performances.

The list of tracks, with direct video links is here:
Don't Do It, Theme from The Last Waltz, Up on Cripple Creek, The Shape I'm In, Who Do You Love, It Makes No Difference, Such a Night, Helpless, Stage Fright, The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Dry Your Eyes, Coyote, Mystery Train, Mannish Boy, Further on up the Road, Evangeline, Ophelia, Caravan, Forever Young, Baby Let Me Follow You Down, and I Shall Be Released with a ton of guests.

Unusual articles to keep you reading for Thanksgiving Weekend

Wikipedia: Unusual articles

Someone has taken the time to compile a massive list of the weird and wonderful articles on Wikipedia.

Such as what?
For starters, how about:

Traditions and anecdotes associated with the Stanley Cup	An ice hockey trophy with a long history of abuse, superstition, and tests of buoyancy.
Snail racing	Ready, steady, slow!
Squirrel fishing	A sport of skill and patience.
Teddy bear toss	A Christmas tradition in minor league hockey.

Bovine bingo	A different way to play bingo.
Bummer and Lazarus	Two stray dogs that roamed the streets of San Francisco, California, in the early 1860s and were exempted from local ordinances.
Chicken hypnotism	Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not?
Chicken sexer	A person who has been specially trained to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings.

Gef the talking mongoose	A poltergeist-like creature which claimed to have been an 80-year-old Indian mongoose, alleged to have haunted a Manx cottage during the 1930s.
Jackalope	A cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope.
Jersey Devil	A mythological creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Emerald Cockroach Wasp	A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too.
Exploding head syndrome	Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two.
Fatal hilarity	Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter?
Female hysteria	A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm.

Can't sleep, clown will eat me	A stock phrase that's become a popular joke-explanation for insomnia.
Cartoon physics	An explanation of the laws of physics as they have come to be (mis)represented in cartoons.
Cuteness in Japanese culture	It's not just Hello Kitty

Gimli Glider	Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider.
Guided rat	Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand."
David Hahn	A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.

Now these are just a few of these strange Wikipedia articles, but rest assured there are plenty more. Have a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving weekend everyone!

Thank you again for your great links, Kottke.

XO laptop is a total kid magnet!

The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in limited tests by the NY Times, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.Designed as a low cost, scalable option for children in Third World countries, it's a breakthrough in education, computing, and hopefully, economic development. In November, you'll be able to purchase your own XO for $400, which includes 1 XO for you and 1 XO for a child in a developing country.
http://laptop.org/
http://www.xogiving.org/

read more digg story

Missing an old friend

I found a neat link today where someone makes some thoughtful, well written predictions about the future of web startups. I've got a bit of a soft spot for projections and futurism, and it's been a while since I'd seen much internet "futurist stuff".
I thought I'd give a "shout-out" link to an old friend of mine who is a futurist, and an important person in my wife's life, Tod Maffin. Incoming links are always appreciated, right?

A few days ago, I read an article of Tod's on The Tyee, and today I stopped by Tod Maffin's todbits blog for the first time in a while, and read that he's had a lot of struggles recently with depression. Yesterday marked an important day as he went public with his illness, and marks a turning point in his battle against depression.

Tod, we haven't seen you in a while and it's been far too long, but our prayers are with you.

Raise a Reader

Vancouver Sun - Raise a Reader

In yet another sign that it's hockey time in Vancouver, Henrik Sedin was
standing at the corner of Burrard and Georgia for the Raise a Reader
program.
Get going with your hockey pools!

Radiohead's new album - Charging “Whatever You Want To Pay”

Radiohead. Charging “Whatever You Want To Pay” For New Album
Fans Pay Whatever They Want for Radiohead's Upcoming Album

Brilliant marketing ploy by Radiohead for their In Rainbows album.

Remembering your first concert

First concerts: Thanks for the mezzanines (MSNBC)
Begging your mom to let you go, and rocking your first concert T-shirt

My first concert was Grapes of Wrath at the PNE in about 1990. I waited in line for hours to get into the free show, and ended up in the front row, crushed against the barrier to see this melodic, Canadian shoegazer band. Fantastic.

Are the mobile phone companies about to get knocked off?

A Cellphone Without Borders - New York Times
A company called Cubic Telecom is releasing a mobile phone that has the potential to take down the big mobile phone companies by targeting their ridiculous international rates, using a combination of VOIP and wifi. Brilliant. It's about time.