Fri 14 Dec 2007
What great stuff do you find yourself passing on to other people? What are the things, places, ideas, &c that you’ve discovered that you most think others should know about or experience?
(Rescued from a deleted Ask Metafilter thread. Hat tip to Rock Steady.)
Posted by Josh Millard33 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
* Jambalaya (remarkably few people in the UK seem to have ever tried it)
* Perl
* Sealskinz
* Ask Metafilter
Aside from restaurants, which aren’t useful unless you’re local to my patch of flyover country? Hmm.
Don’t Make Me Think! by Steve Krug, which successfully encapsulates all the significant parts of web interface design into a very accessible book. This is one of my favorite examples of making the difficult look so easy that it’s difficult to understand why it’s difficult.
Macintoshes.
The iBob list and the Kogswell P/R bike frame. The former is for crusty old bike riders (ostensibly for Bridgestone owners, although that’s nowhere near mandatory) who believe steel is real and so on, but the temper of the community is fairly laid-back and there is a great deal of valuable wisdom about practical cycling to be had. It’s a mailing list, not a web forum, because they’re that gosh-darned crusty. The latter is one of the best practical bikes currently available – it can be loaded like a truck or raced in a track crit – and I hope to have one some day soon.
And oh yeah, Quicksilver for the Mac. It’s an outstanding tool that demonstrates the ‘It Just Works’ ethos even better than Apple’s own Spotlight.
mushrooms, marijuana, Dhalgren, love, Amsterdam, and zombo.com
Flickr, Indian food, the film American Movie, Macs.
To calm down, take a deep breath, and relax.
more RAM, openoffice, and jittery joe’s coffee.
American Science & Surplus is a good place to find cool and off-the-wall items.
Lustau East India Solera sherry is awesome.
Resale shops: St. Vincent de Paul is the best I’ve found. I’ve gotten designer suits for $2, men’s shirts for 50 cents, and a like-new London Fog trenchcoat, complete with lining, for $8. The other big chain resale shops seem to have gone up in price and down in quality.
Usually MeFi/AskMeFi is my trump card when it comes to these things, though I also have this mildly jealous possessive streak when it comes to recommending AskMe. One of the things I like about online communities is that it’s a break from the “real world”, and I use that term very disdainfully. Not that online communities aren’t real, but I don’t have to deal with them on a daily basis, there’s a bit more anonymity and a bit more freedom (Though I try my best not to succumb to the Internet Dickwad theory).
And the thing is, I have a very recognizable username – it’s the basic handle that I use for literally everything (except for Last.Fm, heh.), except with honorifics and random attachments in other places. So were my friends to flock to AskMe at my incessant gushing, I would end up posting everything as Anonymous. Plus then I’d no longer have the cool, esoteric links to show around. I tend to try and keep my online and offline life separate.
Other than that… I love Open Office, and I think it’s totally underrated.
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice series, set in Sherlock-verse, by Laurie R. King, is another one of those overlooked but marvellously written series. Warning though, grossly feminist to the point of mild hilarity.
Little Gamers is a webcomic by two guys from … Sweden, if I’m not mistaken. Terribly lazy art style, but they have this quirky way of making you go “Heh. Heheh.” and definitely as deserving of popularity as any of the big webcomics out there. (I’m definitely not a PA fan.)
Last, but not least, Mango Sorbet, dammit! Mango Sorbet is heaven. Actually, no, Pho is heaven, and it doesn’t get enough publicity. Pho followed by Mango Sorbet. Mmm. And various music artists, but let’s not get into that territory, haha..
Sorry for the novel. :P
metafilter
Gattaca
The Time Traveller’s Wife
Graham Greene
tie clips
logic
The Decemberists
walking
Ooh, Balderdash, too.
My cellphone: HTC P4000.
Linux on the desktop (for non-idiots)
Anything by Bruce Schneier
Ed Abbey
Gmail
Thrift stores
Opera
Nokia Phones (unlocked)
Earl Grey
Slippers
Dreamcast
Airset
Threesomes
Massages
Goat’s Milk
The Anchor & Hope in London. Everything a place to eat and drink should be.
Ditto massages, to the nth degree. And mangoes in all forms (hat tip to Phire). Also European train travel, MAKE, CRAFT, the NYC yarn shop School Products, Kiehl’s toiletries, caprese salad, falafel, Harry and David’s Royal Riviera pears, Robertson Davies and Pearl River Mart.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. (No, really, it’s great.) Chipotle Chili powder. Firefox. The Beatles. The importance of owning a ukulele. Terry Pratchett. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rome. Tuscany. Yellowstone. Never, ever, ever buy a four-cylinder minivan.
Yay!
Entertainment: Nintendo Wii
Book: Monster Blood Tattoo by DM Cornish
Car: Toyota Matrix
TiFaux: Comcast DVR
Music: Catie Curtis
TV: The Amazing Race
TV: Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends
TV/Homeworld: Planet Earth
Software: Google Earth
Software: AVG Anti-virus
Web: USA Today “Pop Candy” blog
Web: ESPN’s The Sports Guy
Supermarket: Trader Joe’s
Shoes: Merrell JungleMoc
Shoes: Crocs
Banking: Bank of America’s Keep The Change
The Dauphine Hotel in New Orleans. I lived in the city for awhile, so people always expect me to be able to recommend a great hotel near the quarter. This one is sort of on the outskirts, but a very quick walk. The rooms just have this airy but cozy feel to them and the beds are deliciously soft and comfortable. Honestly, I could live there. Beautiful courtyard and a really charming hotel bar. Like so many things in that area, it has haunting claims, which is entertaining if you believe that sort of thing, I suppose. Everybody there has always been incredibly gracious, too.
DevonThink for Mac, which is an amazing way to organize research of just bits and pieces of random information.
Evidence of Things Unseen, by Marianne Wiggins. It’s a haunting, heartbreaking, lyrical novel. One Amazon reviewer says it’s about light, love and loss. That seems just about right.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab for fantastic perfume oils. First I thought perfume oil was just too hippy dippy then I thought the site was too goth, then I got sucked in. I don’t overdouse myself or anything, but I get an insane number of compliments on their scents. I especially love Bordello, Zephyr, Snow White and The Lion. They have a ridiculously huge catalog, but samples are cheap and there’s a very active board for getting recommendations & swapping scents.
Black Honey lipgloss or lipstick, by Clinique. This stuff looks good on every single one of my friends. For red lipstick, there is nothing in the world like Queen’s Sin by Mac. I keep having to re-purchase it because people steal it.
Tweezerman tweezers. Yes, they’re overpriced but yes, they are worth it.
Villainess Gingersnapped Smooch is the reason I can’t stop touching myself. No other body scrub, exfoliator, blah blah whatever, even comes close.
Airfarewatchdog, which I found on AskMe.
I *was* recommending L’Occitane lavender linen water, but apparently nobody was listening to me because they just discontinued it. Spraying this stuff on my sheets is better than any sleeping pill ever.
Damn, that’s a lot of stuff. I guess I’m just really bossy and like to tell people what they need.
Are those crocs actually comfortable? Walking in them better give you toe orgasms because they’re ugly as hell.
The novels of Joseph Wambaugh, particularly The Choirboys and Finnegan’s Week.
Tabasco’s chipotle hot sauce. Tabasco’s regular and green are so-so in my opinion, but the chipotle is genuinely outstanding.
Leatherman Supertool.
To Live and Die in LA
YouTube: Dramatic Prairie Dog (the best 5 second video on the Internet), Maraka (near-perfect Dora the Explorer parody), amazing acoustic guitarist Isaac Guillory live in Berkeley, the brilliant Doctor And Ice Cream Tester sketch from Mitchell and Webb.
I recommend LaTeX fairly regularly, but definitely not to everyone.
Ideas: Ian Stewart’s books about biological self-organization and symmetry breaking etc. changed the way I think about a lot of things. The basics of dynamical systems are also very interesting and useful. I am crazy about the Synaptic Homeostasis Hypothesis [PDF], and very attracted to the Ultimate Ensemble Theory.
Also, I believe that the world would be a more peaceful, caring, and forgiving better place if we all gave up the idea of free will and accepted that human behavior is a mixture of cause and effect and randomness, the same as absolutely everything else, and I have pushed this idea a few times in Metafilter discussions.
Knitting.
Terminal Verbosity > as to the comfortableness of Crocs, I once wore them while walking around Washington DC for about ten hours. While my sister was bemoaning her blisters, my feet felt perfectly fine.
The .357 magnum. It’s a beautiful round, in that it bridges the gap between really high power and comfort when shooting.
Danner boots. Specifically Ft. Lewis Go Devils. Amazingly warm and versatile.
The movie Death Machine. Stephen Norrington’s first real film, and a great and very fun ‘B’ flick.
Siamese cats. They are noisy and only like one person in any given house. But it’s all worth while if you happen to be that one person.
The book Good Omens: Pratchett and Gaiman working together to create a masterpiece of humor. It’s about what would happen if the Antichrist was raised by a nice British family.
LED flashlights, they run longer and cooler than anything else on the market. And with some of the new ones, they are actually brighter than their xenon competition.
And Jack Daniels; it makes the weekend worth waiting for.
Dodge Caravan
Textpad
Settlers of Catan
Schlock Mercenary
Hardwood Floors
1. Bone
2. Chimay
3. Bioshock
4. Brazil
Yoga
AskMetafilter
Zipcar
Vosges chocolates
Editpad
Irfanview
Filezilla
Flickr’s creative commons search
Buffy Season 8
Firefly
saag paneer
papadam and the green chutneys
walking more
taking the bus
farmer’s market and Co-op
thrift stores
cooking for yourself
Death By PowerPoint
Oooh, ooh, two more: The Wire and bullshit bingo.
Thinking about my past recommendations on Ask MetaFilter….
Saving and investing.
Time management.
Dating advice for newbies.
Parenting.
Putting hearts of palm in your green salad. Trust me on this.
Bicycling.
Burning Man.
Ecstasy.
French electro.
French Market Cafe, Venice, CA.
Living alone.
Shits & Giggles.
Shortwave radio.
Trader Joe’s Sweet & Savory Trail Mix.