A poet is a nightingale...

Today's soundtrack is Moon EP by Lights Dim, a little retro-space ambience for the Apollo missions.

Science can tell us things about music. "We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical  discourse." In other words, pop music all sounds the same. Now turn that shit DOWN and do your homework!

All my Cleveland-area friends should head over to Toledo for a retrospective of Jules Olitski's paintings such as With Love and Disregard: Rapture (2002) at the Toledo Museum of Art through 26 August.

The 50 greatest films of all time. As you may have heard, Vertigo has taken the #1 spot away from Citizen Kane. (Amazingly, I've seen both, 9 of the 50 in total.)

Someone else I didn't think you could see on film: Mark Twain from 1909.

Even old science is good science. From 1733, a robot duck that poops!

Sometimes you just want to know the fucking weather.

The programmer's corner:

• Comparing C# and Java
• Test your knowledge of C++ basics
• Software design using C++

What if Shakespeare wrote Javascript?

  //ACT II: a LOOP in which the final TWO NUMBERS are QUEREED and SUMM'D

  //[ENTER: theCounter]

  //Commence at one and venture o'er the numbers
  for (theCounter = 1; theCounter < theSize; theCounter++) {
    //By divination set adjoining members
    theResult[theCounter] = (theResult[theCounter-1]||1) + theResult[Math.max(0, theCounter-2)];
  }

  //'Tis done, and here's the answer.
  return theResult;

  //[Exuent]

Use Color Palette Generator to find a color scheme that matches your favorite image.

Take Google's street view, add a little WebGL and see the whole thing as ASCII art - it's ASCII Street View.

Here's a handy tool for anyone creating a software user interface, web-based or otherwise. Enter a search term and Icon Finder shows you what's available for icons.

It's been a long time since I saw one of these alphabets worth posting. But seeing as I've enjoyed a bowl of everything represented by these breakfast cereal mascots I figured it's worth it.

At a loss for words? Draw from this list of significant phrases. "Spicy and pungent"

HBR lists several bad habits you learn in school. Emphasis on authority and hierarchy. The reliance on static information. Fear of mistakes.

WARNING! This is billed as the weirdest video you will ever see and I think they're right. It's from Japan and looks like their version of  a Sy Fy network movie. But crazier. You've been warned.

Do you still have some vinyl LPs? You might want to checkout Pop Spike to see if they're worth anything. For example, it says my picture disc of Styx's Pieces of Eight (no comments please) is worth $350.

First it was the gas cap thing and now this. Sometimes I think I'm the last to know everything. source

Sleep is something so basic yet sometimes so problematic. Did you know that we humans used to sleep in two shifts - first sleep from sundown to midnight, wake for an hour or so, then second sleep until dawn?

When a college student-oriented website lists beers to avoid you know they must be bad. I'm glad to see Schaefer at the top of the list.  It's all downhill from its slogan: "The beer to have when you're having more than one." In other words, if all you're interested in is getting drunk why waste your money on good beer? My father's regular beer was Carling Black Label (#7). Genesee Cream Ale (#21) was the bane of my freshman year of college.

And now back to something a bit more palatable, the 50 states of best American beers. From Texas: Saint Arnold's Fancy Lawnmower.

Beer and animation have more in common than you might think. For example, Dr. Seuss had to pay the bills and did a lot of work in the advertising biz. You must take a look if only for his ad for Schaefer beer.

Send an email to your future self. 

IMO, the most impressive image to come from Curiosity's descent to the Martian surface. The HiRISE orbiter was able to snap this photo of Curiosity with its chute deployed.

Perhaps your tastes in space run more retro. With We Choose the Moon you can relive the entire Apollo 11 mission.

The first photo from space, taken from 65 miles up on 24 Oct 1946.

Yet another music website: uWall.tv.

You've gotta try BridgeURL.  Give it a bunch of URLs and it'll make a slideshow out of those websites. For example, here are some of my favorites from this week.

Someone takes some of the sheen off data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

Is that a snake in your rainforest or are you just happy to see me? Recently discovered Atretochoana eiselti is not actually a snake (despite being nicknamed Man-aconda) but is in fact an amphibian. But dang, it sure does look like a... snake.

Remember QWOP? You might find CLOP easier, especially if you like unicorns.

...who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet  sounds. ~Percy Shelley