I saw Sherlock Holmes this weekend and what the New York Times calls “intermittently diverting” I would reclassify as “wildly entertaining,” but then, I realized that perhaps I just have a fondness for literary-characters-turned-action-heroes. No, it’s not for the Holmes purist; we all know that Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes wasn’t so much for physical violence, but I can’t help but agree with Guy Ritchie that if he were, that calculating mind might not be a bad asset in a brawl.
The whole idea makes me go back to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (and I should note since I’m mentioning it fondly that I refer to the graphic novel rather than the film) where literary heroes jump off the page into proto-super-heroes. And in Sherlock Holmes we get that same kind of steampunky atmosphere in a greasy picture of Victorian London that makes it pretty visually spectacular for those of you who like that sort of thing.
Whatever geeky button this film pushes for me, I think there may be more to come. After all, Natalie Portman is going to turn Elizabeth Bennet into a zombie-slaying action heroine in the film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Some think it’s literary blasphemy, to which I say: we’re not burning books here! You can still read/enjoy/love the original – but with another Holmes beating guys up and getting caught in explosions, it’s like two for the price of one.
So what’s next in the world of literary action heroes? Lockwood as an undercover ghost hunter in Wuthering Heights? Great Expectations‘ Estella trained not just to break men’s hearts but to break their skulls? Gone with the Wind as a space opera with Scarlet as a planet-hopping black widow? The possibilities are endless!
#grid is a tiny tool, built with JavaScript & CSS, which inserts a layout grid into web pages & enables you to detect alignment issues in place.
It is activated with a hotkey (Alt+g) & can toggle between displaying the grid in the foreground or background.
By default, #grid comes with a 980-pixel-wide background image to provide the vertical grid lines (a 940-pixel-wide content area with 20px gutters). But, when working on different grids, you can create a new image for your guides.
Usage is very straightforward, just include the JavaScript file & CSS to your project.
For those who’ve always wondered how those old mechanical traffic lights work (there is still quite a few of these around btw!), check the following video out:
Yeah, we know, this one is pretty old and probably dates back from the 90s, but it explains how these things work in such a simple and interesting way that we just had to share it.
If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do.
iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users.
Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It's the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It's over.
When law firms started switching to fax machines, Fedex realized that the cash cow part of their business (100 or 1000 or more envelopes per firm per day) was over and switched fast to packages. Good for them.
If your ship is sinking, get out now. By the time the rats start packing, it's way too late.
-The 50 Worst Gadgets of the Decade
Just one more week, and we get to leave this decade behind for good. But before we do, it’s worth taking stock of the absolute worst gadgets these last ten years have given us.
-Not Photoshopped!
These pictures are mighty fine examples of what forced perspective is all about.
-Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009
We uncovered the top 10 stories for Digg in 2009. While some match top trends on Twitter, Facebook and others (e.g. Barack Obama’s election, Michael Jackson’s death), other stories were decidedly humor only Diggers can truly understand.
-Top 10 End-of-Year Office Upgrades (You Can Probably Write Off)
By this time next week, it’ll be next year—and too late to turn a great investment in your work life into a lower tax burden in April. Splurge wisely on yourself with these write-off-friendly wishlist items.
I saw Sherlock Holmes this weekend and what the New York Times calls “intermittently diverting” I would reclassify as “wildly entertaining,” but then, I realized that perhaps I just have a fondness for literary-characters-turned-action-heroes. No, it’s not for the Holmes purist; we all know that Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes wasn’t so much for physical violence, but I can’t help but agree with Guy Ritchie that if he were, that calculating mind might not be a bad asset in a brawl.
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