What did you think I meant?
David Pescovitz: 
This beautiful video morphs through 500 years of female portraits in western art.
Link
A couple must-see YouTube vids.
First, a trailer for an upcoming movie about a very special date: 5-25-77
if you’re not geek enough to get it, it’s the day that Star Wars premiered. Looks awesome.
And for a few laughs, here’s a fantastic compilation of some of the worst movie scenes ever. I think I’ve seen every one of them, and I’m not sure how I should feel about that…
I’ve always been proud of my linguistic abilities, but there are a couple here that I’m completely clueless about. How’d you do?
According to the folks at Houghton Mifflin, every high school grad should be familiar with the words in the list below. I’m not surprised that I was unfamiliar with the word abstemious given its meaning, and moiety is now part of my vocabulary.
If you’re a Simpsons fan, the word chicanery should be familiar to you (“Oh, Mr. Homer…What has reduced you to such cheap chicanery?”). If you remember your Phil Hartman-era SNL, you might recall his use of the word jejune (“Compulsion” by Calvin Kleen). Monty Python fans will have run into a form of expurgate (the bookstore skit), lugubrious appears in both Lou Reed lyrics (The Original Wrapper) and an old Zippy the Pinhead comic strip and I recall the word sanguine being used in an 80′s-era X-Men comic.
From a pure geek perspective, I gotta try this stuff. Not that I really need an excuse to drink more pop, but hey, now I can take a little pride in it!
Cory Doctorow: Wiki-How has a page up today on making OpenCola, a freely licensed soft-drink. I helped found the company that developed and released the OpenCola drink, and it was developed by Amanda Foubister in our kitchen. It tastes excellent, but it also highlighted for me just how much sugar there is in this stuff — a lot. When you make cola, you basically end up filling a glass with sugar and then adding just enough water and ancillary ingredients to get it to dissolve.
Flavoring
* 3.50 ml orange oil
* 1.00 ml lemon oil
* 1.00 ml nutmeg oil
* 1.25 ml cassia oil
* 0.25 ml coriander oil
* 0.25 ml neroli oil
* 2.75 ml lime oil
* 0.25 ml lavender oil
* 10.0 g gum arabic
* 3.00 ml water
Link (Thanks, Joe!)
There’s something cool about reading a book and being able to identify the setting… of knowing exactly what the place they’re talking about looks like because you’ve been there. It puts you in the story on another level. And one of my favourite cities on the planet (one that I’ve spent a bit of time in) happens to feature in quite a few fun stories…
Cory Doctorow: 
Fantastic Toronto is Karen Bennet’s massive, wide-ranging bibliography of science fiction, fantasy and horror works with some or all of the action set in Toronto. I LOVE reading stuff written in my hometown — and I’ve even written a bunch of it. Link
I noticed a couple interesting “How-To” type links today, one on starting a book club, something that Dreamgirl and I have been talking about (it’s tough coming back to the city you grew up in, suddenly all your friends that you assumed would be right there like old times are gone or married!). Figured it’d be a cool way to meet some halfway interesting people. Or a total PITA. Either way.
Along a similar mindset was a rough guide to self-publishing a magazine. Now I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a couple books, but doing a tiny zine could be another fun excuse to meet people, practise writing, maybe even make a few bucks. I’d love to use it as an excuse to get the girly to start taking more pictures too!
Now that Susie’s OS is all clean, shiny, and new, it’s time to see what new and wonderful things I can do with her! As I said before, I’m being very picky about what goes in here now, but lists like the one below are good places to start.
It’s not always the full-blown software applications that make the biggest difference on your computer; often it’s the small do-one-thing-well utilities that enhance our computing experience that much more.
Today’s top 10 covers the system utilities that add a extra polish and convenience to your Mac’s working environment. Most (but not all) of these little suckers are free, many live in your Mac’s System Preferences pane and on the menubar, and all of them greatly enhance your overall Mac experience.
10. MagiCal (calendar)
9. MenuMeters (system monitor)
8. Ejector (disk dismounter)
7. AppDelete (software uninstaller)
6. RCDefaultApp (file associations)
5. Hazel (autmated folder actions)
4. GeekTool (desktop overlay)
3. Growl (system notifications)
2. Text Expander (text substitution)
1. Quicksilver (keyboard interface)Honorable mentions include InstantShot, Nocturne, Google Desktop, Do Something When, smcFanControl, MacFUSE , and VirtueDesktops.
I know that Microsoft finally started catching up to the stuff that Firefox was doing years ago, but they still suck at it. Give Firefox a try, not only is it a heck of a lot safer, but all the addons and extensions they have, not to mention the little tricks mentioned below, make it so worth it. I know I’m preaching to the converted for you techies out there, but even for the casual user, you’ll be a lot happier.
Lifehack.org has come up with a list of fifteen cool Firefox tricks, from smart keywords to how to limit RAM usage.
We certainly do love our Firefox here at Lifehacker, and this list of tips and tweaks is a super addition to our treasure trove of foxy love. This is a pretty good list, but do you see anything missing that you’ve just gotta add? Come on – you know what to do. — Wendy Boswell
This is sheer genius… the best explanation of how copyright laws work that I’ve ever seen. And the way this guy did it. Wow. You have to see this.
Cory Doctorow: 
Bucknell prof Eric Faden has produced the most amazing video mashup I’ve ever seen: “A Fair(y) Use Tale” cuts together thousands of extremely short clips from dozens of Disney cartoons, lifting indivudal words and short phrases to spell out an articulate, funny, and thoroughly educational lesson on how copyright works. This is the most subversive and hilarious use of Disney material I’ve ever seen — and there’s even a really smart chapter about why Faden used Disney material to make his film. This should be required viewing in every K-12 classroom in the country. Coral Cache link to MP4 download, Link to Stanford page for the film (Thanks, Church!)
Update: Here’s the YouTube version — thanks, Pawel!
Update 2: Here’s another mirror, courtesy of Alan
With my dear iBook (Susie) getting a tad… mature… I’m looking for every little boost and optimization I can give her.
Mac OS X is a great operating system out of the box, but a few simple customizations can make it even better. OS X ships with some odd and sometimes inconvenient default settings, and it’s got a few nifty little perks for power users who enable them, no third-party software required.
After the jump, check out our top 10 favorite Mac OS X tweaks for making your Mac experience even more personalized, customized and convenient.
Note: due to a bug in our photo galleries which we’re working out now, to get to the next photo click on the NEXT>> text link in each photo’s caption. Our apologies for the inconvenience.
10. Add folders or drives to the Dock
9. Add Application shortcuts to Finder’s toolbar
8. Set your default browser
7. Activate screen corners
6. Add the Path button to Finder’s toolbar
5. Display folder and drive details
4. Remove Dashboard from the Dock
3. Enable the Tab key
2. Manage programs that start automatically
1. Assign custom hard drive iconsWhat are the first OS X settings you change when you get a new Mac? Let us know in the comments. —Gina Trapani
While we all wait for Leopard to get released, here are 52 Ways to Speed Up OS X. [via OS X Hacker]
Listening to…
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