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Archive for the 'Internet/Web' Category

Wordle - beautiful word clouds

Posted by Steve on June 27th, 2008

I created the “word cloud” above at Wordle.net using three and half years of blog entries from our site. The larger the word, the more frequently it has appeared on our blog. Wordle crunches the text you give it down to the top n words (n=150 for the image above) and arranges them according to [...]

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“Postcard as Diamond”

Posted by Steve on May 19th, 2008

The title of this post comes from an entry on the blog of a friend of mine from high school who blogs under the alias Sioux. He recently posted a simple request: A member of his extended family is dying of leukemia. Doctors have apparently deemed him beyond treatment, and to keep his mind off [...]

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Vote for Whale in ‘08!

Posted by Steve on April 11th, 2008

This being an election year, I’d like to encourage you to go vote. Today.
No, the candidates in this election aren’t your usual John, Barack, and Hilary. Not even close. No, on this ballot, we have the likes of “Tuxedo Travels,” “Post Secret,” “UFO Hoax,”… and “The Exploding Whale”!
“Huh?” you ask. Here’s the deal: CNN’s News [...]

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You do listen to Radiolab, don’t you?

Posted by Steve on February 20th, 2008

I’m very excited. A new season of Radiolab starts this Friday, February 22!
If you’ve not experienced Radiolab, you’re really missing out on one of the best produced and most interesting radio shows out there. Here’s a little blurb about the show from their website:
Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound [...]

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Super Bowl ads

Posted by Steve on February 4th, 2008

I think for possibly the first year ever, we actually did not watch a single moment of this year’s Super Bowl. Now, lest you get the wrong idea, we are most definitely not avid football fans, so this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Jen does play in her brother’s fantasy league with several other [...]

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New name, updated theme

Posted by Steve on December 8th, 2007

As you may have noticed, we’ve partially updated the theme on our site and renamed our blog.

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Steve in the spotlight

Posted by Jen on August 24th, 2006

Steve and his exploding whale website are featured in the University of Oregon’s Computer and Information Science alumni newspaper (Summer 2006). You can read the article on The Exploding Whale website.

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Now with CAPTCHAs!

Posted by Steve on May 28th, 2006

Even though certain people will undoubtedly find this post as boring as my previous post, I am nonetheless pleased to announce that I’ve finally implemented CAPTCHAs on our blog. CAPTCHAs are those small images of distorted words, random letters, or numbers that, among other things, reduce blog comment spam by verifying that a human being [...]

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Which Jane Austen Character Am I?

Posted by Jen on May 21st, 2006

On Kim’s blog, I saw this fun quiz and decided to take it. Here are my results:

You scored as Elizabeth Bennet. As one of Austen’s most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet represents what most women would like to become: strong, independent, and loyal. Of course, she has her faults including a stubborn will of iron [...]

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Akismet stops blog spam in its tracks!

Posted by Steve on March 22nd, 2006

I just need to make a quick endorsement for a tool I’ve been using on this blog for the past several months. The product, Akismet, is an add-on to WordPress that blocks comment and trackback spam. If the sign of an effective spam-blocking tool is that you can install it and then forget about it, [...]

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