Through the fence...

My nookie days are over,
my pilot light is out.
What used to be my sex appeal
is now my water spout.
Time was when, on its own,
from my trousers it would spring,
but now its just a full time job
to find the fucking thing!
It used to be embarrassing
the way it would behave
for every single morning
it would stand and watch me shave.
Now as old age approaches
it sure gives me the blues
to see it hang its little head
and watch me tie my shoes.
~source

What the hell. Give a listen to La Roux 'In For the Kill' by Skrillex.

Damien Hirst, Phe-Tyr, 2004-2011. The Complete Spot Paintings is on display at the Gagosian Gallery.

You should thrive in your job, not just be content. Or so says this article in HBR. Thriving employees have more satisfaction, less burnout, and perform better. So what makes for a thriving employee? Vitality, by knowing what you do makes a difference. And learning, developing skills, continued professional growth.

I infer from this article that a good way to get software developers to document their code is to have it done as part of the preparation for a code review. Program or be programmed makes the case that Americans need to learn reading, writing, and programming. Start learning now with these 30 free programming books, from Assembly to Ruby. Or shell scripting with Bash.

Time waster of the week. Gravitas is a deceptively simple game. Just rotate the black shapes until the red square falls out.

Both Sides of the Table is a blog I recently started following. It's written by a guy who was an entrepreneur (apparently a successful one) who's now a venture capitalist. He shares a post from yet another VC blog with 10 hypotheses for technology investing. (I think that really means 10 guesses I make when deciding where to spend my money.) Here they are cuz they're kinda interesting once you get past the VC-speak.

1. "Next" Web Architecture = Hypernet + Hyperweb (no idea)
2. Enterprises Adopting Consumer Technology (I think this means companies buying iPads and stuff like that instead of customized enterprise solutions.)
3. Index Search is Peaking (no idea)
4. Apple's App Model Has Undermined Economics of HTML4 Web (I think he's saying that mobile is dominant, that purchases are small, that the cloud is important.)
5. HTML5 is a Game Changer for Publishers (This means that the web can be richer and more interactive.)
6. Tablets are Hugely Disruptive (This is about the 3rd or 4th time this has come up the last week or so. Tablets have/will become the computing device of choice for a good portion of the population. The economics of who needs a laptop/desktop versus a tablet and how many more people can use a tablet than a laptop will change pricing and access models and force changes to the mobile infrastructure.)
7. First Wave of Social Web is Over. (Look out Facebook and Twitter.)
8. Smart Phone in U.S. = Apple + 7 Dwarfs (While I get their point, the first thing that popped into my head was the role of the apple in Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. Have we been put to sleep by a poisoned apple?)
9. Wireless Infrastructure is a Competitive Threat to the U.S. (See #6)
10. Integration of TV and Internet Could be Disruptive (But it also could be like 3D TV.)

Certainly by now you've all read the news stories about the K-MAX unmanned cargo helicopter from Lockheed Martin and Kaman Aerospace.

A pub in the U.K. has a canine-friendly menu including a beer for dogs. (All my beer friends can insert their standard Bud/Miller jokes here.) Or I'll do it for them: Coors Light is the second highest selling beer in the U.S. behind Bud Light. From the same story, 4 of the top 5 U.S. beers are "light" (Bud, Coors, Miller, Natural) combining two American obsessions: alcoholism and weight loss.

Also for the drinkers, this list of 20 unique drinks to sample on your world travels includes Hirezake (crisped Fugu fin in hot sake). I know someone who had Hirezake in Tokyo and lived to tell the tale.

Authorities in Madison, Wisconsin earlier this month arrested Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop for having an incredibly stupid name. (Or for carrying a loaded handgun while on probation. Either way, it was deserved.)

What's the second most important element in writing after the title? The first sentence. (I guess I blew that this week.)

Bacon - wait for it - Jam.

When is a penny worth more than 1 cent? When it's a 1793 "chain cent" that sells at auction for $1.38 million.

NASA has setup a webb cam (see what they did there?) in the cleanroom where the James Webb Telescope is being assembled.

How many atoms does it take to store 1 bit of information? Currently about a million. But IBM has shown it can be done with as few as 12.

Not only do I like it when I find B. Kliban's cartoons online, but it's nice to also find someone else who thinks "Kliban = GENIUS."

Yawn. The American Dialect Society declares "occupy" as Word of the Year for 2011.

NME's 50 greatest guitar solos includes #49 Kansas, Carry On My Wayward Son, #47 Rage Against the Machine, Bulls on Parade, #10 Pink Floyd, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and enough other unusual picks that there's something for everyone to hate.

The Restart Page emulates restarting many different operating systems.

You'll never guess how the 4 minute animated video Operation White Widow ends.

The movie Act of Valor (due for release on 24 Feb) is about Navy SEALs and stars real active-duty SEALs.

Gamers: play your vintage games on the Retrode, a retro gaming adapter that plugs into your computer's USB port. 

SciFi geeks: how'd you like to have a 12-foot long detailed model of the Serenity spacecraft?

A Tumblr blog about optical illusions. (According to the one from 11 January, I'm color blind.)

Best of the visualization web for December 2011, Part 1 and Part 2.

Clyfford Still, 1957-D No. 1, 1957. Buffalo News reports on Denver's Still museum. image source. more images.

Try to click on this guy's nose.

...between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. ~William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, 1929.