What’s in a Name?

Here are a couple sites making the rounds that visualize name data. (Ooo. I love visualizing name data!) The first is the World Names Profiler. Punch your last name into the box, hit “search,” and you’ll see the distribution of folks who share your name all over the globe. Here’s mine: There you go—quite a bit U.S.-heavy, with smatterings in … 

Yearbookery.

All the cool kids on teh Intarnets seem to be yearbooking themselves today, so I thought you guys might like to join in. All you need is a few minutes to waste, and a sort of “front view” picture of yourself to upload. The site will do the rest. If you’d like a preview, here are some of my pictures.

The Red Table

I told some class I’d post this info.—I just don’t remember who. (3rd period, was that you?) Anyway, we were talking about memory techniques, and I mentioned one I’d seen for specifically memorizing numbers. Here’s the link I promised: The Red Table. Like I said in class, the basic principle is that each number from 0–9 is assigned to a … 

Online Writers, Rejoice!

All right, we’re serious this time. (I think.) Forget emailing papers to yourself due to “can I open this at school” compatibility fears. Forget the cut-and-paste dance with Google Docs to preserve formatting, proper margins, and other stuff pesky teachers require. Behold, the majesty of Buzzword, Adobe’s brand-spankin’-new Flash-based online word processor: This is the new champion, kids. It’s got … 

Protagony.

I stumbled across Protagonize today, and thought I’d mention it here, for what it’s worth. I think I remember doing this in some English class once when I was a kid— somebody starts a story on a piece of paper, folds their part down, and passes it on to someone else, who adds a paragraph, and so on, until the … 

More Hardcore

A little while ago, I plugged Dan Carlin’s excellent Hardcore History podcast. I thought I’d bring it up again because he just released a sort of “interim” episode (all too short!) in which he interviews James Burke, writer and host of a few of my all-time favorite documentary series: Connections and The Day the Universe Changed. In this interview, Burke … 

The Year in Buzzwords.

The New York Times “Week in Review” writes up its take on the state of English lingo in Buzzwords 2007: All We Are Saying. What follows is by no means a complete list of the words that took our attention this year, but rather a sampling from the thousands that endured long enough to find a place in the national … 

Christmas (Bronx)Cheer.

Sweet merciful heaven. Its— You— I mean… it’s a sort of game, see? Where you… or this guy… anyway, there’s some kind of Brussels sprouts… and I guess it’s Christmas… and… Oh, man. I’m better than this, I really am. Merry Christmas, you guys. Sorry. :xmastree:

Greetings.

Crank out holiday greetings galore with Worktank’s Holiday-O-Matic! There’s no quicker or more convenient way to pepper your friends and relations with randomly-generated sentiment. May your chestnut roasting be benign and filled with Swedish meatballs! :stocking: