Since I switched from Bloglines to a local install of reBlog (see the Lifehacker post by Mathowie), I’ve been using it to save links to stuff that I find interesting, but don’t feel are quite important enough to post as individual things here. So I’ll probably start doing something like what Khatt’s been doing: occasional link dumps. Here’s four things I’ve enjoyed lately from Make Magazine’s great blog:

• DIY reverse lens mount for macro photography - Cheap, effective, and DIY. Basically that's my photography mantra lately. And I've been interested in trying some macro photography, especially with spring quickly approaching.
• Parking meter keychain - Invaluable for city dwellers with cars. It's got a timer built-in! Amazing!
• How to make an upside down planter - Hm, I seem to already be shifting into a living-in-a-city mindset.
• MAME + iMac - I'm considering doing something like this with M's grandpa's unclaimed first-generation iMac.

Almost all digital cameras (with the notable exception of all but the newest camera phones) support a JPG comment format called Exchangable Image File Format (EXIF). When you take a photo, a lot of nice details about shutter speed and aperture are saved along with the image (and a lot of confusing and technical data, too). Unfortunately, if you take photos with a film camera and scan in the photos, the data is all missing.

Luckily, there are a number of tools made exactly for such a situation. Exifer is a good freeware option, but there’s also MaPiVi, which is open-source and cross-platform. There are a ton of them out there, if you ask the right people.

It’s a little-known fact that with a library card in the state of Connecticut, you can take out books from any public library in the state. You also don’t even need to go to a library other than your local one to do it, and even then you don’t have to go until your book is in. Visit the Bibliomation global catalog and search for the book. If it’s in any of about fifty participating libraries, it’ll come up. Click the “Request Item” button to the right of your result and put in your library card bar code number.

It generally takes less than a week for your local library to get the book. They call the phone number associated with your account when they get it in, and you borrow the book for the lending library’s standard period (usually 2-3 weeks). I’ve got three different books out on inter-library loan right now. It’s easy, useful, and it increases the pool of available library books immensely.

(Note, also, that many libraries carry movies on VHS and DVD. Bibliomation includes these, but it’s sometimes difficult to tell what format the video is in.)

• FM radio station search
  I thought it'd be neat to make a radio station search engine. It turns out the FCC's is already pretty feature rich.
  (categories: fm radio search)

• Pokemon Protein Implicated in Cancer Development
  Researcher names a protein after a popular children's video game. Hilarious!
  (categories: cancer pokemon via:waxy.org/links)

• Blake Ross on Firefox silliness
  A great overview of a lot of behind-the-scenes silly things from the Firefox team.
  (categories: blakeross firefox humor)

• OpenSolaris.org
  Sun is really serious. They kicked off their opensource Solaris initiative by releasing the source for dtrace.
  (categories: sun solaris opensource dtrace)
• Running Windows viruses with Wine
  (categories: windows linux viruses wine humor)

• Flickr coincidence
  A guy from Scotland goes to Tokyo and takes a picture of a girl taking a picture. He posts the picture he took on a Flickr and within 6 weeks the girl in the photo finds it and posts the picture she was taking at the time.
  (categories: flickr photography coincidence via:waxy.org/links)

• Police hunt poo protesters

  “Legal experts say there is no law against using faeces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue."

  (categories: anti-bush poop politics protest via:boingboing.net)
• 2005 Bloggies nominees
  Cooking for Engineers, Where is Raed, and Engadget are among the nominees
  (categories: blog Bloggies awards via:waxy.org/links)
• DRIVEY: a road slightly less travelled
  A non-photo realistic driving game
  (categories: racing games graphics)
• Google Video Search
  Search the closed captioning text of television shows
  (categories: google video search via:metafilter.com)

• Don't Get Traffic To Your Blog
  I'm going to have to stop doing this.
  (categories: blog advice)
• The dirt on Nintendo's next-gen Revolution console?
  Some great Revolution rumors, and some less-great ones. No DS connectivity? Are they crazy?
  (categories: nintendo games console)
• Metafilter's top 150 tags
  Sorted and sized by popularity
  (categories: metafilter tags)
• Estimating the number of pages in Google's index
  > 9.1 x 10^9
  (categories: google math via:blog.outer-court.com)

Ask MetaFilter comes to the rescue, finding the answer to something that’s bugged me for two and a half years. Simply phenomenal.

Somehow, I think Vlad’s idea in today’s Achewood would really be popular (in an ironic pop-culture Subservient chicken-esque sorta way). With a free afternoon, a few sandwiches and fixins, and a hungry woman, we could probably fake it.

Update: Is this somehow related?

Gizmodo has a photo of some pretty damn cool keychains: miniature terrariums with cacti inside. One of those and a blue tritium-filled keychain would make me happy.

Interweb personality trivia: Andy Baio sat behind Sean Astin in Anthropology 101 at LAVC.

Dissecting the iPod shuffle

“Satirize a Goofus and Gallant strip” Fark Photoshop contest. Possibly one of the best ever.

An offhand reference in The Golden Ratio led me to research Archimedean solids, which led me to a page with Paper Models of Polyhedra. Fun!

Note: I wrote this post back in November, and accidentally saved it as “draft” instead of “publish”. So it never got posted. The federal government has given official approval to use a new font for highway signs. A few states and regions are already using ClearviewHwy, which was designed (and heavily tested) for improved visibility.

The official site is really neat and has a surprising amount about the development of the font.

Christo’s newest “masterpiece” has started being assembled in Central Park. (The first photo in that article strikes me as Goldsworthy-esque, yet artificial.) Chris, we’re depending on you to get us some better photos.

Update 1-5: Oh, I get it. The first picture isn't the artwork, it's just piles of metal platforms the over-the-top arches are going to be resting on top of, so that it doesn't damage the ground.

I installed The Sims for M last week and she spent the rest of the day playing it. In what would seem entirely unrelated news, she’s also peppered our entire apartment with little labels that have spanish translations for the objects: el piso, the floor; la estufa, the stove; el marido obsesivo-obligatorio, the obsessive-compulsive husband; etc. Well, apparently there are ways to combine these two desires to allow her to learn a foreign language while playing The Sims.

You know I love statistics/numbers/trivia. Last night in the gym, the UConn football game was on, and it’s got me in the mood for Superbowl XXXIX. Clicking around, reading about some football stuff, led me to a fantastic list of Peyton Manning’s amazing season. He broke the record for most touchdown passes in a season; but read the article. He’s broken all kinds of records in stupendous fashion, and has been an amazing Quarterback his whole career.

"So far this year, Manning has more touchdown passes than the Giants, Ravens, Bears, and Cardinals combined (44). He has more TD passes in 15 games this season than the Giants have in their last 50 games (48). If you split Manning up into two quarterbacks, he would rank third and fourth in touchdown passes among AFC quarterbacks with 25 and 24."

The Torino Impact Hazard Scale was created in 1995 to categorize near-Earth object impact hazards. Until last week, no object had been scored higher than a 1 (out of 10). The asteroid 2004 MN⁴ has been given a 4. NASA is reporting that there is a 1 in 37 (2.7 percent) chance that the 390-meter rock will hit the Earth on Friday 13 April 2029. More at Wikipedia.

Walking every block of Manhattan. Somehow, I’m always captivated by obsessive projects like this. Check out his web page, too.

Do not buy a portable breathalyzer and bring it with you on a night on the town. It will be your undoing.

When typos go wrong