Extra Future

Author: Phil Nelson

  • U.S. Tortures Innocent Canadian Man, Gets Away With It

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    Phil Nelson
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    [This is the United States in 2010][link]: They can abduct an innocent man on false charges, keep him imprisoned for 10 months in a kennel barely big enough for a dog, torture him, release him without admitting any wrongdoing on their part, and then have the highest court in the land refuse to hear his…

  • THIS IS ORSON WELLES Audio

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Drunken Welles is good Welles][link]: >This here’s a group of autobiographical interviews Welles laid down sometime in the ’70s, issued as a companion to the Peter Bogdanovich book of the same name. Narrated by Bogdanovich, who identifies the tapes as from 1968-70. Download at the link. [link]: http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=466 “Egg City Radio » Blog Archive »…

  • The “Immortal” Jellyfish

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    Phil Nelson
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    turritopsis nutricula, a species which can “[cycle from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again][link],” may have no natural limit on it’s lifespan. Granted, it can still get beaten to death or otherwise killed through violence or stupidity. Just not old age. [link]: http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/26/the-world-s-only-immortal-animal.html “The world’s only immortal animal |…

  • A* Search Algorithm in JavaScript

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Looks like a good implementation][link], be sure to check out the [demo][demo]. Brian’s example is great for people looking for a better understanding of A* in general, and it helped me out personally, but I recently came upon [this version][other] which in my tests is faster by a wide margin, and supports multiple modes of…

  • Apple Bans Adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses from App Store

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Banned due to a scene which features a nude man diving into the ocean][link]. It isn’t even well-rendered generalia, nor is it sexual in nature. It’s just a little lump below his belly. It’s just a penis, which takes up maybe 1/64th of one panel of a comic book. I guess comic adaptations of James…

  • Steven Frank’s shutup.css Available As A Safari Extension

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Bring a zen-like calm to the comments section of sites like YouTube.][link] [link]: http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/680724930/thanks-to-the-very-nice-ricky-romero-my “Steven Frank – Thanks to the very nice Ricky Romero, my…”

  • MacUser on Safari 5’s extensions

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    Phil Nelson
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    [A little detail into the workings of Safari 5’s biggest new feature][link]. [link]: http://www.macworld.com/article/151899/2010/06/safari5_extensions.html “First look: Safari 5’s extensions | Browsers | MacUser | Macworld”

  • How To Enable Extensions For Safari 5

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    Phil Nelson
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    If you, like me, have tried to install a Safari 5 extension such as Coda Notes, and were met with the following dialog: and then spent 5 minutes looking through Safari’s Preferences window to no avail, this is how you enable Extensions on Safari 5: 1. Open **Preferences** 1. Click **Advanced** 1. Click **Show develop…

  • Coda Notes: a Safari Extension

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Unveiled by Cabel Sasser on stage at WWDC today, this is already hot shit][link]: >When you install Coda Notes, you’ll get a new button in your toolbar. Click it to see all our annotation tools, built right into Safari. Draw some notes on your favorite website. Communicate changes, ideas, concepts, or problems. Then, when you’re…

  • Liblr, The Twitter Mad Lib Machine

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    Phil Nelson
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    [Liblr][liblr] is an [Extra Future 6-hour Project][6] which takes the public Twitter stream and lets your replace one phrase with another, in the name of fun. An example, taking the phrase [‘had sex’ and replacing with ‘played scrabble’][example] gives you gems like the following: >Is it normal for a 21 year old boy to have…

  • Adam Lisagor: iPad TV

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    Phil Nelson
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    [The Sandwich has some thoughts on the iPad, TV, and the rumored new Apple TV][link]. I like what he’s thinking: >Could it be that Apple has chosen to separate our video content and store it temporarily in this ghetto because there is something new and awesome on the horizon? Here’s what I think: Soon enough,…

  • Apple – HTML5

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    Phil Nelson
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    [An Apple-sanctioned HTML5 demo site][link]. This is a good first step towards getting serious about HTML5, in the sense of actually building things. Things of note: Most of these aren’t HTML5 per-se, and they won’t work in other browsers that don’t use webkit, due to Apple only using their vendor-prefixed CSS attributes (`-webkit`). [link]: http://www.apple.com/html5/…