you're an urge that can never be cured

It's that time again: too many tabs open with things I wanted to share. So here goes, in no particular order.

Michael Zoellner spent an evening tracing--by hand--the PSR B1919+21 waveforms from the cover of a Joy Division album, then 3D-printed them. That's all kinds of cool.

Anyone besides me like to go camping? BuzzFeed posted a semi-brilliant list of camping hacks, some of which I'd never heard of before.

(Oh, and there's a real easy dodge that entry didn't think of--one can also buy two one-person sleeping bags, and zip them together for a two-person bag. If both of them are rectangular, and not the 'mummy' style, it works like a dream.)

For other hacks, wander over to LifeHacker for a brief history of mechanical keyboards, and why you want one. I know I want one, because at less than six months in on the new comp, I've already typed off the L, the >, and the ? from the keyboard I'm using.

If you make machinima, or just need background music for a project, do consider Incompetech. Everything Mr. MacLeod releases is royalty-free; he only asks that you credit him back for any project usage. He also recommends AudioMicro.com, as another excellent resource for royalty-free music. (Both sites offer low prices for commercial use, no prices for personal use, and exist solely to help folks out. I do like to encourage this, as it makes everyone happy in the end.

An avatar known as Brilliant Scientist (great name!) refitted Maestro Linden's linkset script, with some assistance from Ann O'Toole, and launched it on the wiki. If you need one of those, try that one--it creates far less lag than its predecessor.

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
Vladimir Nabokov, cited in A Field Guide to Melancholy by Jacky Bowring

Some days, everything has tentacles.

There's a bit of controversy raging around the Hawkeye Initiative currently. Blogger Natalie Reed explains it further. I get what everyone's saying, but I also think that several of these women are missing the point of both the Hawkeye Initiative, and the Escher Girls blog in the first place.

(Though I'd also single out this post, because it makes a damned good point.)

Also, at least according to one Jewish paper, women didn't exist during the Holocaust. This is a nigh-perfect case of good motivation leading to bad outcome. We know why they're trying to erase women from these photographs; but many of us are not comfortable with that conclusion. In addition, it's too closely kin to censorship, so it's disturbing on that level as well.

Moving in another direction entirely, go peruse the Rag & Bone blog. Much tasty literary eye candy--and paper-based art--there.

Finally, if you're like me, you have far more anti-skills than you have skills. But even if you're not, it's good to read through, because that article provides an excellent working understanding of the difference between life skills/coping skills and anti-skills. (Just an FYI: anti-skills are the bad ones. Anti-skills are the ones we have that are habitually responsible for holding us back, keeping us trapped, and keeping us wary and fearful. It's not easy to ditch them, either, but accepting that we have them is a great first step.)