Netflix's War on Mass Culture
source: New Republic

Online, people are far more loyal to their interests and obsessions than an externally imposed schedule. While they may end up seeing the same stuff as other viewers, it happens incrementally, through recommendation algorithms and personal endorsements relayed over Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and e-mails. New content is like snowfall, some of it melting away, some of it sticking and gradually accumulating.

Lessons from journalism startup Matter: Paywalls make growing readership difficult
source:

Out of step with the rhythms of the web

Johnson said the paywall also reduced Matter’s visibility on the web, and hence its ability to attract new readers, because few places wanted to link to or syndicate content that was going to be behind a hard paywall. As he described it: "It turns out that other outlets — from major news outlets to solo expert bloggers, and everywhere in between — are pretty reticent to write about, syndicate, or even link to, paywalled material."

Its A Wonderful Life, For A Few Of Us
source: TechCrunch

This is not just a matter of having insecure employment, of being in jobs of limited duration and with minimal labour protection, although all this is widespread. It is being in a status that offers no sense of career, no sense of secure occupational identity and few, if any, entitlements to the state and enterprise benefits that several generations … had come to expect as their due.

Why I like something as dumb and meaningless as professional sports
source: raptitude

Douglas Rushkoff - Blog - CNN: Google Sees No Evil
source:

Google motto 2004: Don't be evil
Google motto 2010: Evil is tricky to define
Google motto 2013: We make military robots

KUNG FURY Official Trailer [HD]
source: YouTube

This is fantastic.

Time Machines: Casio gets smart at CES 2000
source: Engadget

Wow has it been 14 years already? I had (have) one of these.

Don't Blink

Above are two great shots Jennifer took of a great Doctor Who Weeping Angel I downloaded from Thingiverse. I 3D printed two of them and they came out pretty cool.

Below is my shot of the finals:

The Five Most Important 3D Printing Tips You Must Know
source: Fabbaloo

"Regeneration Carol" A Doctor Who Christmas parody by Not Literally Productions
source: YouTube

Philips Flattens the Light Bulb
source: Mashable

Interesting

Dell Venue 8 Pro review: a good Windows tablet, but wait for the bug fixes
source: Engadget

Jennifer surprised me with one of these for Christmas. I'm digging it so far. Probably my own thoughts in an upcoming post soon.

Hipster Santa Was Into Christmas Before It Was Cool
source: Neatorama

Someone is finally going to make 6-inch Firefly action figures
source: iO9

Shiny.

Orange-American John Boehner rents apartment from tanning industry lobbyist
source: Boing Boing

That's a great headline.

Powered UP!
source: Youtube

Find The Thing You're Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life
source: The Onion

I can’t stress this enough: Do what you love…in between work commitments, and family commitments, and commitments that tend to pop up and take immediate precedence over doing the thing you love. Because the bottom line is that life is short, and you owe it to yourself to spend the majority of it giving yourself wholly and completely to something you absolutely hate, and 20 minutes here and there doing what you feel you were put on this earth to do.

SolidSmack.comReview: Wacom's 'Go-Anywhere' Cintiq Companion Windows 8 Tablet for Today's Nomadic Designer
source: SolidSmack.com

This Chromium experiment takes the URL out of the address bar, because why not?
source: Engadget

Hmm... probably not a good thing. While browsers have all sorts of sharing features built in now, there's still tremendous flexibility and functionality in being able to grab and manually adjust an url fully printed in full text.

I could see why somecorp like Google would want to obscure that functionality and more prominently display search in the "url bar" instead though.

Facebook can see what users type even if status is not posted
source: latimes.com

And that's some creepy sh!t right there. Tracking what you decide not to say.

12 things that show how small the Mac Pro really is
source: Macworld

Wow. That thing is tiny.

Build a Easy Scrap Wood Crayon or Pencil Block Holder | Free and Easy DIY Project and Furniture Plans
source: Ana White

Make Windows 8.1 Apps Without Breaking A Sweat With Microsoft's Project Siena
source: Makeuseof

Holograms With The New Kinect
source: hackaday

Not a hologram, but still very cool.

His Noodliness

Earlier in the month, Jennifer made a Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament for our Tree. It turned out great.

More on Jennifer's Blog

How much can you charge for your time, labor or knowledge.

Or how much can you collect for the use or lease of your resources.

Or how much can you collect simply for your agreed upon place within an organized system of redistribution.

Or how much can you collect as a payment for a previous contibution or position.

Or how much can you carry at a dead run.

Or how much can you acquire by force or coercision.

Macbook holder

Another 3D printer project. Something I printed a couple weeks ago. Found this Macbook holder on Thingiverse. I've been using it to store my work mac vertically behind my monitor at work.

Plastic this and that

Jennifer got this cookie spritzer thing as a gift. It came with a bunch of different inserts. I showed her Tinkercad and she made this little canister/container to hold the inserts in.

This is the sortof simple little project that works really well for today's 3D printers.

Surfs Up

1960s TV Series Batman with surf board and board shorts, in a Brookstone "Sand Box".

Fun.

The Fascinating Story of Why U.S. Parks Are Full of Squirrels
source: Gizmodo

3D Printering: Making A Thing With OpenSCAD
source: Hack-a-Day

WHOLOCK - Sherlock meets The Doctor!
source: Youtube

Red Lantern Razer -- Sortof

Took another try at creating a Red Lantern Razer custom today.

I sculpted a head from scratch (the second time I've tried this) in Sculptris, ouputted to an .obj file, brought it into Netfab and scaled and "fixed" the mesh issues.

Then I printed it on the 3D printer (face up) with brim and support.

One nice thing about the quality of the 3D printer, I didn't have to have too much detail to sortof pull him off after painting.

I used a dremel to drill out his neck hole and placed him on an un-modified DC Classics Red Lantern Nite-Lik body with Skallox's hands

Then painted him.

He's not terribly accurate to the animated series, (Nite-Lik's turtleneck makes him a bit beefy) but he's close enough that a fan of the character would probably recognize him. And he'll work for now to fill out my Red Lantern group on my figure shelf, until eventually either a real figure gets produced, or I take another stab at it.

I'm pretty happy with it as a first attempt at creating a custom action figure piece from scratch with Sculptris/3D Printer.

I'm definitely interested to see what people start to do along these lines as more action figure customizers get a hold of these printers.

Select from one of the following choices.

Does your need not fit into one of the following choices?

We're sorry.

Select from one of the following choices.

Does your need not fit into one of the following choices?

We're sorry.

Select from one of the following choices. Most needs fit into one of the following choices.

Should this series of choices not address your need, a customer service representative can be contacted to help you select one of these choices.

The customer service representative can only help you categorize your need into one of the following choices.

Please remember this is an incomprehensively large company and the people at the top are completely insulated from your concern by layer upon layer of automated systems and offshore Customer Service Representatives from a completely different culture who are largely only familiar with your culture and language based on old episodes of the 90s TV Show "Friends" that they have watched. They would however love to help you...

Select from one of the following choices.

Does your need not fit into one of the following choices?

We're sorry.

Select from one of the following choices.

Young Justice, A Real Teen Drama TV Series For The CW - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors
source: Bleeding Cool.

Sounds like a terrible idea.

Facebook Admits Organic Reach of Brand Posts Is Dipping | Digital - Advertising Age
source: AdAge

In other words, the main reason to acquire fans isn't to build a free distribution channel for content; it's to make future Facebook ads work better.

"We're getting to a place where because more people are sharing more things, the best way to get your stuff seen if you're a business is to pay for it,"

Simplifiers and Optimizers, by Dilbert creator Scott Adams
source: Boing Boing

Interesting article. Plus also an audio interview.

Don't Start a Company, Kid
source: Big Nerd Ranch Blog

When you have Enough, the extra money means very little. I’ve been broke, and being broke sucks balls. Having Enough is awesome. How would I define “Enough”? Enough means that you can take a friend out to a nice lunch and not have to worry about how much it costs. I have hung out with a couple of billionaires—my experiences indicate that being a billionaire is just incrementally better than Enough.

Thus, as you look at your future, the question should not be, “How can I become a billionaire?” You should ask, “Where can I get Enough?”

Microsoft, You're Embarrassing Yourself. Please Stop. [Opinion]
source: Makeuseof

Google Puts Money on Robots, Using the Man Behind Android
source: NYTimes.com

"The opportunity is massive,” said Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business. “There are still people who walk around in factories and pick things up in distribution centers and work in the back rooms of grocery stores."

Applebee's Restaurant Chain Getting Tablets in Every Location, at Every Table
source: Tablet News

First they came for my waitress, and yet I said nothing...

Lightpaper - The Markdown editor for Mac

Interesting.

ThinkGeek :: Building Brick Light Switch Plate
source: thinkgeek

Interesting, while I don't think I'd build a little scene as shown. It could be and interesting way to mount little colored blocks that represent "something" as a reminder by the door.

How NOOBS For Raspberry Pi Can Help First Time Users
source: Makeuseof