A chapter from ‘Free-Range Chickens’
Free-Range Chickens is a book by Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich. This chapter, entitled ‘A conversation between the people who hid in my closet every night when I was seven’ is one my favourites.
Articles
ExpressionEngine URLs and index.php
By default, ExpressionEngine adds ‘index.php’ into URLs before the name of any template groups.
Top 10 movies seen in 2008
I managed to get through 151 movies in 2008. Here is a list of my favourite 10.
Recommendations
Airport Mania
An incredibly fun and addictive game for the iPhone. Don’t let the cartoony appearance put you off – all ages will enjoy this and it’s a bargain at 59p.
Hybrid - Soundsystem_01
A perfect album to listen to whilst working. Hybrid seamlessly blend their own remixes of songs (including a few from movie soundtracks) into a soothing and experimental 2 hours.
Superman’s Secret Cartoon History
“The various ways the world’s first super-hero was animated, portrayed and even lampooned in the years between his comic book inception and prior to the live-action TV show of the 1950s.” Via Khoi Vinh
Emoji on iPhone
Emoji is the Japanese term for picture characters or emoticons. With this great little tip, you can enable emoji on your iPhone without jailbreaking it. Thanks to Thom White for the initial tip.
The Wrestler (2008)
Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, this movie is an emotional masterpiece. Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei fully deserve their oscar nominations, but I can’t believe the film itself has been overlooked.
kottke.org
kottke.org is the blog of Jason Kottke, a web designer from Manhattan. His posts are primarily links to funny, interesting and quite often educational content. Highly recommended.
The White House website
Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, the new website for the White House went live, and within a few hours it was heavily praised by what seems to be the entire web design / development community.
Prettify*
A great source of nice icons and desktop wallpaper provided by Garrett Murray. I’ve been waiting for someone who I know has great taste in design and photography to create a resource like this.
EE Insider
Ryan Irelan, responsible for the excellent ExpressionEngine screencasts training videos, has this year launched EE Insider, a website offering ExpressionEngine tips, tutorials and training.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
The hype and critical acclaim that this movie is receiving is completely justified. The screenplay, directing and performances by the huge cast is absolutely top class. You’ll be sucked in within the first minute and will not know where the two hours went.
Deadwood
This is one of the best TV shows ever made – it’s gritty, disturbing, witty and deeply moving. A top quality production all-round. Such a shame nobody watched it at the time (me included).