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Best of LotD

3/10/13 Gil's LotD: Floating islands

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/national/06island.html?_r=0 America's dangerous floating islands.

7/28/12 Gil's LotD: Source Filmmaker

Valve has released the tool used to make its animated skits. It's already been put to good use to make the impressive Falcon punch video and a parody of Kayne West's music video for his song Power. I expect some great, high-quality videos to be made by hobbyists with this tool over the next year.

5/10/12 Gil's LotD: Katawa Crash

http://gilslotd.com/files/katawa_crash_beta_8-36.swf Katawa Crash is the spiritual successor to Nanaca Crash. There's a wiki explaining all the combos. My high score is unbeatable.

2/5/12 Gil's LotD: Alcohol

http://www.gladwell.com/2010/2010_02_15_a_drinking.html Intoxicated behavior is largely influenced by culture.

1/13/12 Gil's LotD: Horse ebooks

http://twitter.com/Horse_ebooks @horse_ebooks is a Twitter account which posts random, out of context lines from ebooks about horses. This is a collection of some of the best posts, these are comics made from its tweets and this blog has short stories made from @horse_ebooks quotes.

11/15/11 Gil's LotD: Homemade GPS

http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html Two articles on creating a homemade GPS receiver.

11/10/11 Gil's LotD: Seductive details

http://visuallearningresearch.wiki.educ.msu.edu/file/view/Harp+%26+Mayer+(1998).pdf Seductive details (unrelated, interesting facts) don't help students remember.

10/30/11 Gil's LotD: Twentieth Century Fox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUm8wtDQgTU The famous Twentieth Century Fox theme on a flute.

10/26/11 Gil's LotD: Nestorian Stele

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorian_Stele The Nestorian Stele records the ancient history of Christianity in China. It was buried in 845.

10/14/11 Gil's LotD: Software complexity

http://mjg59.livejournal.com/136274.html A rant on the desire to create "lightweight" open source software replacements. I'm linking this in particular because "To a first approximation, when someone says "Lightweight" what they mean is 'I don't understand the problems that the alternative solves'." is an excellent quote and summary of the issue.

9/30/11 Gil's LotD: ResExcellence

http://www.resexcellence.com/ The long-defunct Mac website ResExcellence has returned with its old content. Back in the day this site had all kinds of information about the workings of Macintosh systems and I personally learned quite a bit from it in grade school and junior high. It certainly set me on the path that led me to learning everything I know about software. Although the current information is very outdated and they have no plans to resurrect posting I am very glad to see the site return to the web with all of its old information intact.

9/19/11 Gil's LotD: Inventables

http://www.inventables.com/ An online store to buy all kinds of cool little materials.

9/17/11 Gil's LotD: Imaginary numbers

http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-intuitive-guide-to-imaginary-numbers/ An explanation of how imaginary numbers work as a rotation.

8/26/11 Gil's LotD: Software creation

http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ The story of a has-been mp3 player for the Mac.

8/15/11 Secret Bonus Gil's LotD: Vileplume's Place

http://dgilman.xen.prgmr.com/vp/ While digging around on an old hard drive I found my very first website. I've put it back up on the web unedited.

8/9/11 Gil's LotD: Cleveland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM Come to Cleveland!

8/8/11 Gil's LotD: Uniqlock

http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/ The Uniqlock. Stop in at the top of the hour for a special clip.

7/30/11 Gil's LotD: Star Wars economics

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2011/04/25/star-wars-death-star-economics/ A look at the motivations and economics of the Death Star.

7/21/11 Gil's LotD: Team Rocket

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNTAEnDgqpU The Team Rocket theme song from the old Pokemon TV show on a pipe organ.

7/19/11 Gil's LotD: More Urusei Yatsura

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9yeYGbugwc Urusei Yatsura - Plastic Ashtray

7/18/11 Gil's LotD: Urusei Yatsura

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwGYdhcLeKE Urusei Yatsura - Phasers On Stun. The entire album is solid.

7/13/11 Gil's LotD: Boatmurdered

http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/ Boatmurdered is the tale of a Dwarf Fortress game. Dwarf Fortress is an incredibly detailed game where you manage an underground cave fortress of dwarves and mine for treasure. This save file was handed off to several people throughout its life and the story of this fortress is amazing. You won't stop laughing.

6/25/11 Gil's LotD: Toilet paper orientation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation Wikipedia has a really, really comprehensive article on how to orient toilet paper rolls.

6/23/11 Gil's LotD: The Frank Popp Ensemble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5kRnxF6bxQ Frank Popp Ensemble – Hip Teens Don't Wear Blue Jeans

6/20/11 Gil's LotD: Woodpeckers From Space

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qo1__kbwrA Somehow this classic video was never a LotD.

6/5/11 Gil's LotD: Abelson Stole The Precious Course

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdj6deraQ6k You are not expected to understand this.

5/31/11 Gil's LotD: Stuxnet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOwMW6agpTI#t=6m50s A lecture on reverse engineering Stuxnet, a very sophisticated virus. This video is very entertaining and informative.

5/29/11 Gil's LotD: Pixel art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_art_scaling_algorithms Multiple algorithms are available to upsample pixel art (frequently found in old video games). Wikipedia's article compares several algorithms and shows some impressive results. This paper was also recently released and also gives excellent results. The supplementary material link lets you visually compare different algorithms.

5/13/11 Gil's LotD: Ducks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_LmpvjkhOE The default duck sounds in the game Minecraft replaced.

4/15/11 Gil's LotD: Dutch Oven Madness

http://dutchovenmadness.blogspot.com/ This blog is the record of a woman who cooked a meal every day in a Dutch Oven for her family.