onfocus

The history of Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, etc.

This iconic, cliched, overused Apollo 8 picture of the Earth from the Moon is still incredible.

Is there anything better than engravings of alchemists' laboratories?

"...future versions of Firefox plan on supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for Web sites to request, and you to optionally grant access to, your location." [via veen]

"The Federal Government now controls what were -- up until last month -- vast private assets. These are extreme -- truly radical -- changes to how our society functions. Does anyone have any disagreement with any of it or is anyone alarmed by what the consequences are -- not the economic consequences but the consequences of so radically changing how things function so fundamentally and so quickly?"

Lawrence Lessig gives one of his trademark presentations about Palin's experience compared with past Vice Presidents.

A startup that wants to help people raise money for their projects. (via Waxy, who's on the board.)

Oregon's Peter Defazio on the bailout.

Robert Reich rants about the bailout. And he's right.

Representative Marcy Kaptur from Ohio on the bailout: "Real reform now, or nothing."

Cumputing Division, Computing Section. Wonderful/awful vintage photograph.

[via kottke]

Texas highway department: "roads simply don't pay for themselves." [via migurski]

Fantastic post about subterranean tunnels and the Federal Writers' Project that exposes some darker parts of the American West psyche.

looks like a good way to jump start a CF facebook app.

"...this moving skyscape features Jupiter above the southeastern horizon and the marbled streets of the ancient port city of Ephesus, located in modern day Turkey."

This animated gif shows the change from the Greek alphabet to the Latin alphabet over time.

Nice sampling of the illustrator's work. Wikipedia: Edward Bawden.

Fantastic, fantastic story about the life of field recorder Tony Schwartz. Listen to this right now!

Neighborhood data for geo-aware applications under a CC license. [via joshua]

"A blogger named Violet Blue noticed that we unpublished some posts related to her." BoingBoing comments on posts missing from their archive. Glad they explained, but unpublished has an unfortunate Orwellian ring to it.

Examples of pictures from dozens of vintage cameras. [via A Photo Editor]

Make any photo look like it was taken during Japan's Edo period. [via MeFi] Here's what one of my photos looks like after being sent back in time:

"Figure out how much each Netflix rental is costing you." I don't want to know.

Nice photo of rain in Pittsburgh.

Short-wave radio is still around and growing. Funny that China still expends effort blocking short-wave signals.

The soviet photos and false intro are heavy handed, but archive integrity is an important subject. They quote Rebecca Blood's Weblog Ethics:

History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on.

[via Fimoculous]