Interesting Links for 13-02-2012

• BitTorrent doesn't effect movie sales - except for delayed releases in other countries
  I could have told them that - make it available and people will buy it. Make us wait for months and it'll get sucked down the intertubes.
  (tags: bittorrent movies )
• The End of the Mainframe Era at NASA
  (tags: ibm mainframe nasa computers )
• What it's like to be Brian Cox's wife
  (tags: BrianCox relationships tv feminism gender )
• How the internet is killing magic
  (tags: internet magic )
• NHS among developed world's most efficient health systems
  (tags: efficiency uk healthcare nhs )
• Crowdtilt - a less limited version of Kickstarter
  (tags: money funding social )
• Glasgow Labour rebels forming splinter group. Interesting if it takes off up here.
  (tags: politics labour glasgow scotland )
• Why Arabic is Terrific
  (tags: grammar writing linguistics arabic language )
• Interview: Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party
  (tags: conservatives politics scotland )
• On Alan Moore's Doctor Who Work
  (tags: alanmoore drwho )
• Portraits created using police composite sketch software - from descriptions of literary characters
  (tags: fiction portrait sketches literature )
• The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive - check the "Updates" for all the awesome stuff you can get!
  (tags: kickstarter comics oots )
• Some numbers on Scotland's whether Scotland's incomings and outgoings balance
  (tags: money economics scotland )
• The British government is, unsurprisingly, not interested in harm reduction for drug-taking
  (tags: politics uk drugs )
• It's only a matter of time before Valentine-induced-anxiety is an official disorder.
  (tags: stress valentines_day funny xkcd )
• Education Gap In The USA Grows Between Rich and Poor
  (tags: usa wealth education )

The internet is the modern day circus

See a baby play table tennis!

Watch a dam explode before your very eyes, releasing raging torrents of water and a lot of black oozing mud!

Tremble as Abraham Lincoln fights vampires!

Hear Andy complain that he's spent the whole day alternating between hot and cold, and feeling very glad that he took the day off as he sits at the computer surrounded by an ever-growing pile of tissues!

Ok, I'll spare you the last of those, and merely tell you that I'm grateful to henriksdal for entertaining me with the first two.

You all have a special place in my heart - and now you can see where it is!

Thanks to nwhyte for pointing me at Gephi, which is a very spiffy graphing tool. You can use it to make a big map of your FB friends, and how they all connect.

There's a fantastic guide to how to use it here, which I carefully followed my way through, tweaking numbers until I found something that worked well. And I ended up with this:


That's the absolutely tiny 65k version. The version where you can make out people's names is here, because it's 2.5MB and I didn't want to kill your internet by embedding something that large.

Apologies to a few of you for where you ended up - it's a semi-automated process, and while I'm sure (for instance) that rosamicula will be grumpy at being lumped in with the SF fans in this case I'm afraid you are you who you know :->