the klog

I've started using del.icio.us to track random links I come across. Figured I'd blog a batch, since I don't have that much to say about any of these.

• We are now one step closer to power armor!
• This is one of the coolest optical illusions I've seen. I love how the green dot appears to actually erase the purple dots, even.
• Here's an article on the rise and fall of Krispy Kreme. The part I found most interesting is how the company short-sightedly put its own bottom line ahead of the interests of its franchisees (by opening too many franchises that compete with each other, for instance).
• An improv comedy troupe decided to stage a fake U2 rooftop concert. (The article's not as long as it first seems, because halfway through it turns into accounts by each of the members of the group, and their stories overlap so much you can skip most of it. The main story's worth reading, though!)
• Have you heard of George Mikan? I hadn't. He was this tall and capable basketball player in the 40s and 50s who singlehandedly caused several rule changes. He was so good at sitting next to the net and swatting all the shots away that they instituted the goal-tending rule (no blocking balls on their way down) because of him. Then some team decided the only way they could beat him was to just hold on to the ball and win a low-scoring game, and so the 24-second shot clock was put in place.
• Here's the man behind the Mac startup chime. I remember feeling really cheated when my PowerMac 7100 had a crummy tinny chime, when my old Quadra 840AV had a great one. It turns out that when Steve Jobs went back to Apple, he said, "I want that good one!" :)
• Here's someone having way too much fun with Amazon's algorithmically generated book cover tags.
• This is fascinating: Google's working on software that pores through 200 billion words of human-translated United Nations documents to automatically learn how to translate stuff. I wonder how well it'll do on more colloquial pages.
• Finally, the story behind He-Man. I guess it's not much of a surprise that he was originally based on Conan.