Thoughts On Stuff

Blackle.

It sounds like a custom search that interjects ‘izzle’ where appropriate, or perhaps a custom KKK search. Or like ‘backles’, a word I learned while reading the new Miranda July book.

But it’s not. It’s a crunchy, hippie computer thing!

A high schooler showed this to me today (for me, this denotes a change in my information sources – it used to be BoingBoing and Jason, and now it’s 17-year-olds).

It’s straight-up Google, but with a black background and white text. From the about page ” Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. ‘Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.’ Roberson et al, 2002.”

This is a word geek’s secret pleasure. Yes, editing can be a drag. Proofing is editing’s ugly younger cousin from Nebraska. Distributed Proofreaders is a volunteer organization that provides proofing for Project Gutenberg.

Still, having a hand in proofing all the public domain books that are being digitized is a good, helpful thing. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to read an article for class that has a misspelling because it wasn’t proofed. We might as well work on this as the stuff comes out, instead of waiting until it’s a problem.

Come on, sign up. I’m going to, and I’m super cool.

I will be making these armwarmers. Just so you know. Thanks to Inky, I now am aware of knitty.com‘s evil twin, AntiCraft.

That’s right. I said it. From the Knitty.com fall surprise, I learned about Tit Bits, a website that provides both knitted fake boobies and support (get it – support!) for breast cancer survivors. Knitty has a free pattern for making your own tit, and although I don’t have anyone in my life who needs a new breast, I thinkI might make one anyway, just in case.

(Much like making a penguin jumper, just in case there’s another oil spill near Antartica.)

Dude, I’m actually scared of that last one.

This is my new favorite cartoon. The City Paper has like 500 of them.

Kittenwar.com is a site where you choose between two pictures of kittens. There’s a list of the winningest kittens, and the losingest kittens. I haven’t looked at losingest yet, I bet they’re mangy.