The world’s best short inspirational quotes including “
The world’s best short inspirational quotes including “no great thing is created suddenly” and “well done is better than well said”.
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kottke.org posts about lists
Biography of Martin Luther King from Time
Biography of Martin Luther King from Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.
The year in cities
Following Hanna’s example, here’s my 2005 in cities:
New York, NY*
London, UK
Austin, TX
Paris, France
Boston, MA*
Blarney, Ireland
Ballylickey, Ireland
Waterville, Ireland
Dingle, Ireland
Ennis, Ireland
Etna, NH*
Los Angeles, CA
Orange, MA
Nantucket, MA*
Woodstock, VT
Rochester, VT
Las Vegas, NV
Hong Kong*
Bangkok, Thailand
Saigon, Vietnam
Waitsfield, VT*
One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Somehow, I did a lot more and a lot less traveling last year than I had anticipated. And just for fun, let’s make this a meme! Blog your list of cities and get your friends to do the same. It’ll be fun.
A list of a favorite movie moments
A list of a favorite movie moments from 2005. I need to get out to way more movies this year.
Slate’s The Year in Culture for 2005. “As
Slate’s The Year in Culture for 2005. “As infuriating and crippling as the [NYC transit] strike was for so many, I selfishly appreciated having a city that was uninviting and briefly in turmoil.”
Affirmations Google Should Consider Putting on Its
Affirmations Google Should Consider Putting on Its Search Button Other Than “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Not a great list, but “I Deserve to Google and Be Googled” should be put on a tshirt.
Update: You don’t need to wait too long around here…here’s a “I Deserve to Google and Be Googled” tshirt. (thx, rickey)
The top 10 weirdest USB drives, including drives
The top 10 weirdest USB drives, including drives that look like fried shrimp, a human thumb, and Barbie (her head pops off to reveal the plug).
Anil Dash offers a list of dos
Anil Dash offers a list of dos and don’ts for beating the iPod and iTunes.
A long list of business buzz words
A long list of business buzz words compiled from a short time on the job for a big-box retailer. If we don’t boil the ocean, concentrate on the big rocks, and avoid getting thrown under the bus, our surge to streamline is a whole other type of animal and at the end of the day, we’ll all be on the same page.
How’s this for meta: my list of 2005
How’s this for meta: my list of 2005’s best links made it onto a list of the best links to lists from a list of “best of” lists. I might have to put this link on my list of best links of 2006.
New York magazine enters the NYC dining
New York magazine enters the NYC dining fray with a listing of the best 101 restaurants in the city. Only two got their highest (5 star) rating: Masa and Le Bernardin.
Typographica’s favorite fonts of 2005, part 1. Arrival and Vista look nice.
Typographica’s favorite fonts of 2005, part 1. Arrival and Vista look nice.
BBC Magazine has compiled a list of “100
BBC Magazine has compiled a list of “100 things we didn’t know this time last year”, including this copyright tidbit: “musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a ‘public performance’”. Here’s last year’s list.
2005 favorites
If you’re like me, you’re waiting patiently for that day in early January when you can go more than 10 minutes without seeing a reference to some best of 2005 list. If you’re also like me, you love lists so much that you can’t get enough of them. So, with apologies to that first part of me, here’s a final 2005 lists from me: a few movies, weblogs, books, and musical selections that I enjoyed this past year (in no particular order).
Music (not necessarily released in 2005)
Ladytron, Witching Hour. This one grew on me a lot.
Kelly Clarkson, Since U Been Gone.
Fischerspooner, Odyssey.
Bloc Party, Silent Alarm.
Royksopp, The Understanding.
Diplo, Megatroid Mix. (download)
Boards of Canada, Campfire Headphase.
Mark Mothersbaugh (and others), The Life Aquatic soundtrack.
Stars, Set Yourself on Fire.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Kanye West, Gold Digger.
Sigur Ros, Takk.
BBC Philharmonic, Beethoven’s Symphonies.
Two disappointments: Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better and Broken Social Scene by the band of the same name. I enjoyed Franz’s debut album and You Forgot It in People so much, but the follow-ups fell flat for me. Still trying though…
Movies (not necessarily released in 2005)
Primer.
Garden State.
Crash.
Revenge of the Sith.
Sideways.
Million Dollar Baby.
Deliverance.
Cinderella Man.
King Kong.
Didn’t see a lot of movies this year, unfortunately.
Books
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami.
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen.
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson.
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke.
The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan.
Pieces for the Left Hand, J. Robert Lennon.
Freakonomics, Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner.
I read a ton of non-fiction but always enjoy the small amount of fiction I do read more.
Favorite weblogs. Compare with last year’s list.
Waxy. Despite a year-end Yahoo! slowdown/hangover, still one of the absolute best.
Collision Detection. Enthusiasm about technology without the irrational exuberance or Web 2.0ness of other tech/tech culture blogs.
del.icio.us inbox. Not technically a blog, but I love this ever-fresh flow of my friends’ favorites.
Robotwisdom. The original weblog was back this year after a 1.5 year hiatus. Jorn still has it.
The Morning News. Also not technically a blog, but TMN has been delivering high quality content on a daily basis for a long time now.
Flickr friends. Still the most fun on the web.
Cynical-C. Can’t remember where or when I found this one, but almost every single thing on there is something I’m interested in.
Scripting News. I skim most of his opinion stuff, disagree with 90% of the rest of what I do read, but Dave has his finger on the pulse of the part of the web I care most about. He gets links so quickly sometimes that I think he’s actually part RSS aggregator. “He’s more machine than man now.” “No, there is still good in him…”
Boing Boing. There’s stuff I don’t care about here, but the best of BB is really good.
3 Quarks Daily. The most accessible smart weblog out there.
Marginal Revolution. Quirky economics. Interesting everyday.
Goldenfiddle. I dislike celebrity gossip, but gf makes it seem interesting somehow. Damn you!
Youngna. Rationally exuberant.
You may notice that there are few “pro” blogs on this list. The best stuff out there is still being generated by interested, enthusiastic amateurs. When you’re producing media for a profit, there’s a certain vitality that’s lost, I think…a loss I’ve been struggling with on kottke.org for the past few months. kottke.org was on last year’s list but doesn’t appear this year…here’s hoping for a better year for the site in 2006.
The rest of the best (links)
In compiling the Best Links 2005 list, I initially chose over 100 links and then thought, that’s too many. These are the links that didn’t make that list but that I thought you might like to see anyway because they’re still pretty good.
Panic’s drag and drop shopping cart.
How to not get your bike stolen in New York City.
Stewart Butterfield on Flickr.
If you can’t afford bespoke… Suit options for men.
Paris through a pinhole. Some shots of Paris taken with a pinhole camera.
The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less.
Why Your Camera Does Not Matter. Maybe your gear matters less than how you use it.
CameraMail. Man sends a camera through the mail with instructions to take photos with it.
Don’t fuck with Ovid. Man helps capture thieves who stole his credit card.
Forensic types. Interview with type designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones.
A Coder in Courierland. A look at the world of bike couriers.
You Got To Cool It Down. The 30 least hot follow-ups to the 30 hottest things you can say to a naked woman.
Why it is hard to share the wealth. The science behind the super-rich in America.
UPS Store Sign. Irony.
Design Without Reach. Ghetto versions of Design Within Reach merchandise.
What do we know about tipping?
Tiger did it. Tiger’s amazing golf shot at Augusta.
Explicit Content Only… Editing the non-swears out of an NWA song.
The Omnivore. Jeffrey Steingarten learns to eat everything.
Everything You Thought You Knew About Grilling Is Wrong. How to grill.
The public choice economics of Star Wars: A Straussian reading.
Victoria Reynolds Artwork. Beautiful paintings of meat.
It’s Fun To Play at the YMCA. Comparing NBA players to those guys at the Y.
I hates Lucas! I hates it forever! Anti-George Lucas rant.
Balls Out. How to throw a no-hitter on acid, and other lessons from the career of baseball legend Dock Ellis.
How did Mad Hot Ballroom survive the copyright cartel?
The Blurb Racket. Exposing misquotes in movie ads.
Alternate covers for romance novels.
Age Maps. Two photographs of the same person from different periods of time are spliced together.
Bad to the Last Drop. On bottled water.
Why do McDonald’s customers order smaller Cokes at the drive-thru window?
Not a Word. About intentional fake words in dictionaries.
Redemption. The NY Yankees and redemption.
My Outsourced Life. A.J. Jacobs outsources his life to India.
Destination Florent. About a landmark NYC restaurant.
Lone Star Statements. One-star Amazon reviews of a list of the 100 best novels.
The Sad Tally. A graph of suicide locations from the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Best Links 2005
Compiling a list of the best links of the year was a little more difficult than last year. I put more effort this year into selecting quality links for kottke.org, so there wasn’t a lot of chaff to be found in the archives. I also posted a lot more links this year, over half again as many as in 2004. I’m not sure this year’s installment is any better than last year’s list, but if you’ve got a little time to waste at work as 2005 winds down, there’s probably something here to keep you occupied.
The Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager.
The Selling of the Last Savage. Adventure travel to view Stone Age tribes in West Papua, Indonesia.
I Ate iPod Shuffle. A poem by Scott David Herman.
McDonald’s Bathroom Attendant. Improv Everywhere stations an attendant in the bathroom of the Times Square McDonald’s.
An Interview With David Foster Wallace.
Architecture of Density. Michael Wolf photographs the buildings of Hong Kong.
parking garages. Lots of diagrams of parking garages.
Escape from the Universe. How to get out when the Big Crunch comes.
Banksy Hits New York’s Most Famous Museums. The installation of unauthorized art into some of the top museums in NYC.
Dot-Con Job. A Seattle Times investigation into InfoSpace, a high-flying dot com that bilked investors out of millions.
13 things that do not make sense. A list of open scientific questions.
Life on the Scales. About the quarter-power scaling laws.
eFile for free! Free version of TurboTax Online.
Transformational geometry and iteration in cornrow hairstyles.
Stand clear of the closing doors. Lots of links about the London Tube.
Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop With Garry Winogrand. Photography how-to.
Rocky, recreated. Hilarious.
Swim boy, Swim! Man buys fish from Chinese market, sets him free in the river.
The Long Emergency. What’s going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?
How to destroy the Earth and How to move the Earth.
I was going to link to Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent series on global warming from the New Yorker, but the articles have been removed from the New Yorker site. Kolbert is working on a book maybe?
Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes.
God is Great, by which I mean, Very Very Large. Calculating the size of Jesus based on the quantities of Communion wine and wafers consumed.
Absolutely, Power Corrupts. Michael Lewis explores how power hitting has changed the game of baseball.
Capturing the Unicorn. Mathematicians help the Met restore a precious tapestry.
The Choirboy. Larry Lessig confronts a childhood abuser.
A photo of a tuxedoed man holding a sewing machine in front of a crashed UPS truck.
The Big Fish. Ten years later, the story of Suck.com, the first great website.
Why I Am Not A Christian. By Bertrand Russell.
Open letter of the Kansas School Board. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
Transcript of Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University.
How To Avoid The Exhausting Planning And Preparation That Goes Into Making A Second Date.
Devolution. Why intelligent design isn’t.
Why Are Movies So Bad? or, The Numbers
40 Things That Only Happen In Movies.
The Candy Man. Why children love Roald Dahl’s stories — and many adults don’t.
Photography of Edward Burtynsky.
A Rocket To Nowhere. On NASA and the Shuttle program.
Tipped Off. A call for the abolishment of tipping in restaurants.
Film Titles Designed by Saul Bass.
One side can be wrong. Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne on intelligent design.
7 Habits of Highly Successful People.
Minimiam. Food photos with little people on them.
May We Tell You Our Specials This Evening?
Kdunk on pink blanket. Wonderful photography.
Chip Kidd talks with Milton Glaser
Hello, My Name Is… Celebrity signature art project.
Panoramic photograph of suburban sprawl near San Ramon, California.
Star Wars: Episodes I-VI. The greatest postmodern art film ever.
Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep. Profile of Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach.
Interactive Transit Map. For commuting in NYC.
Mark Foo’s Last Ride. The death of a big wave surfer.
PARK(ing). A temporary urban park.
What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future. An interview with the author.
The Food Detective. Interview with Michael Pollan.
David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech at Kenyon College.
The Moral-Hazard Myth. About the US healthcare system.
A list of what restaurant professionals want
A list of what restaurant professionals want to see more and less of in 2006. Anthony Bourdain wants less “Truffle oil. ‘Fusion.’ Water sommeliers. Overdesigned dining rooms. Mayonnaise on sushi. ‘Concept’ restaurants. Novelty martinis.” (via eater)
Chronological list of outrageous firsts in television
Chronological list of outrageous firsts in television history. Leave It to Beaver featured the first toilet on television in 1957. (thx, malatron)
The 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years.
The 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years. The original Nintendo Entertainment System should really be on here…it singlehandedly made video games popular again in the US. (via rw)
NY Times movie critics A.O. Scott,
NY Times movie critics A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, and Stephen Holden offer lists of their favorite films of 2005. Dargis asks, “was this a good year for the movies or what?”
In-progress ideas for New Yorker cartoons. “Or
In-progress ideas for New Yorker cartoons. “Or some other recent culture reference. Or something involving wine, or Europe.”
Pictures of the Year 2005 from Reuters and
Pictures of the Year 2005 from Reuters and best photos of the year 2005 from Time. (thx, indrek)
Popular toys of the last 100 years. Candy
Popular toys of the last 100 years. Candy Land was the most popular toy sold from 1940-1949.
Ebert’s best movies of 2005. Crash tops the
Ebert’s best movies of 2005. Crash tops the list, which was probably my favorite from 2005 as well.
A seemingly exhaustive list of the best
A seemingly exhaustive list of the best music of 2005. I think I strained my scrolling muscle.
The SF Chronicle has a list of
The SF Chronicle has a list of the top 100 wines of 2005.
Update: This list covers only wines from CA, WA, OR, and ID, not from the whole US or world. (thx, rich)
Crunks ‘05: The Year in Media Errors
Crunks ‘05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections (and plagiarists). My favorite: “Norma Adams-Wade’s June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite.”
Top 10 nitpicked movies of all time. Titanic
Top 10 nitpicked movies of all time. Titanic and Jurassic Park top the list.
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