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Introducing Kreskin, A Band/Album Generator

[Kreskin is an album generator][kreskin], which essentially automates the Wikipedia Band Name Game. To wit:

[kreskin]: http://kreskin.extrafuture.com “Kreskin”

1. Go to the [Random article page][wiki] on Wikipedia. The page it goes to is your band name.
2. Go to [Flickr’s most interesting photos for the last 7 days][flickr]. Find the third image. That is your band’s album cover.
3. Go to the quotations page and pick the last quote on the [Random Quotes page][quotes]. The last three words of this quote is the title of your album.

[wiki]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random “Random Wikipedia Page”
[flickr]: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ “Flickr: Explore interesting photos from the last 7 days”
[quotes]: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 “Random Quotes”

You have likely played this game on a grey workday afternoon, but Kreskin makes the process much easier. Using the sources above, Kreskin grabs the needed information and presents you with a lovely image with a permalink that you can pass around, no manual labor needed. Kreskin also picks from a random assortment of freely-licensed web fonts to snazz up your album covers.

Kreskin is an [Extra Future 6-hour Project][6].

[6]: http://extrafuture.com/tag/6-hour-projects “Six-Hour Projects”

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Wikipedia Is Broken In Dictionary.app

I’m not sure if this is due to [Wikipedia’s new skin][skin] (with the “usability” enhancements), some other MediaWiki update, or if the problem is on Apple’s end (*Update*: [It is a problem with Wikipedia’s new skin][fix]), but this is another good example of why Apple doesn’t want to rely on third-party vendors for anything.

[skin]: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/ “Blog post on wikipedia’s new skin”

The image above is what I get when looking up the word “Dictionary” in Snow Leopard’s built-in Dictionary application, and clicking Wikipedia. The Wikipedia page is very long, and should have vertical scrollbars, but there are none.

*Update:* [Mac OS X Hints has information on how a “fix”][fix] which involves logging in to Wikipedia and setting your skin to use the previous one.

Hat tip to [Shawn Medero][shawn].

[shawn]: http://shawn.medero.net “Shawn Medero”
[fix]: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20100525215150144 “Mac OS X hints fix”

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Wikipedia’s New Look

[ I don’t see a big visual improvement][link], but the overall simplification of the UI and reworking the previously atrocious underlying HTML code is a step forward.

Not sure why they went with an XHTML 1.0 Transitional DOCTYPE instead of, say, HTML5, which is practically tailor-made for a website like Wikipedia. I’m assuming that the new layout has been in the works for so long that HTML5 didn’t seem like a viable option at the outset.

[link]: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/05/13/a-new-look-for-wikipedia/ “A new look for Wikipedia”

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Rob Matthews’s Hardback Copy of Wikipedia Features Articles

[Neat. Looks to be several feet high][link].

[link]: http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ “Wikipedia : Rob Matthews”