EW:

Set in the high-stakes world of a live sports news program, the Aaron Sorkin-scribed dramedy followed the behind-the-scenes exploits of fictional “Sports Night” coanchors Casey (Peter Krause) and Dan (Josh Charles), their brilliant producer Dana (Felicity Huffman), harried associate producer Natalie (Sabrina Lloyd), gruff executive Isaac (Robert Guillaume), and whip-smart researcher Jeremy (Josh Malina).

Such a shame this show wasn’t a hit. While set in a sports world, it wasn’t specifically about sports but about the workplace and relationships much like Sorkin’s other shows. It also had amazing actors and Sorkin’s typical great writing.

Yahoo! News:

It’s mission accomplished for little green army men.

The molded plastic must-haves for generations of pretend soldiers were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday, along with the 1980s stumper Rubik’s Cube, and soap bubbles.

Hard to argue with these choices. I loved my little green army men as a kid and still enjoy popping bubble wrap (although, I wouldn’t call it a “toy”). And even though I hated the Rubik’s Cube (I was never smart enough to solve it), it is undoubtedly a classic toy.

Open Culture:

I still remember the thrill I felt when I happened upon a set of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories at an antique store. For a mere ten dollars, I acquired handsomely bound, suitably patina-of-age-bearing editions of each and every one of the sleuth of 221B Baker Street’s adventures that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote.

These days, especially given the recent ruling (just re-affirmed by the Supreme Court) that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories “are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” you can download the complete Sherlock Holmes canon in a variety of ebook formats, from PDF to ePub to ASCII to MOBI for Kindle.

At age 11, I received the complete works as a Christmas present from my grandmother. I devoured the stories before New Years and read them over and over again for years. I’m downloading this as we speak.

Chris Hadfield:

When David Bowie wrote and recorded Space Oddity in 1969, I wonder if he ever imagined it being played in orbit? Even more so, would he have imagined (or worried about) the legal concerns of extra-planetary music?

When the original video was pulled, there was a lot of complaining and misunderstanding of the reasons. Hadfield does a great job of explaining the story.

Dan Frakes:

Here are some of my favorite iOS 8 features, in no particular order, with an emphasis on things that haven’t been exhaustively covered elsewhere. I hope you discover something new and useful.

Dan has some great tidbits here. My favourite is the SMS relay feature.

Macworld:

The latest release of AgileBits’ password manager is as good as ever—and a perfect companion for OS X Yosemite.

I can’t recommend 1Password enough. Indispensable to my computer use.

Quartz:

It didn’t take long for me to get used to Apple’s large new iPhone 6 Plus. After more than a month of everyday use, it has become even more of the pocket computer I’ve always wanted. A few thoughts.

The article hits a lot of the points I was curious about. Anyone else have similar or dissimilar stories about using their iPhone 6/6 Plus for the past month?

The Robservatory:

Dearly beloved…

On this, the occasion of its 14th birthday, we’re gathered here to mark the passing of Mac OS X Hints.

While it can be hard to tell exactly when a web site has died, the signs are fairly obvious. It’s been over 45 days since the last new hint appeared on the site. There is no way for new users to sign up for an account. There’s been one new comment posted in the last two days. A sidebar box proudly proclaims Latest Mountain Lion Hints. The site design, logo, and icons were last updated when I worked for Macworld, over four years ago. To paraphrase a Star Trek character, “it’s dead, Jim.”

While Rob, the originator of Mac OS X Hints, makes a clear case as to why the site is no longer as needed as it has been in the past, it’s dormancy is still a shame. It was a site many of us relied on in the early days of Mac OS X to try and figure out the ins and outs of the new operating system.

Outside:

As airlines pack more passengers than ever onto each plane, a single storm can reverberate through the system—leaving flyers stranded as agents scramble to find ever-rarer empty seats on later flights. But you aren’t entirely at the mercy of the airlines. Should your itinerary be delayed, cancelled, or overbooked, knowing your rights can be the difference between a $300 voucher and a long night at the airport.

As air travel gets more and more onerous, it’s important to know what you are supposed to receive when the airline makes a mistake. As always, be firm but polite with any airline agents you speak to.

NPR:

Tom Magliozzi, one of public radio’s most popular personalities, died on Monday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77 years old.

Tom and his brother, Ray, became famous as “Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers” on the weekly NPR show Car Talk. They bantered, told jokes, laughed and sometimes even gave pretty good advice to listeners who called in with their car troubles.

I don’t know a thing about cars but listened to the show simply because Tom and Ray were so entertaining.

Pop Chart Lab:

Newly refreshed with a bevy of recent Apple products including the iPad Air 2, iMac with 5K Display, iPhone 6, and even next year’s Apple Watch, the world’s most comprehensive mapping of Apple products is back.

This classic gallery of proprietary gadgets displays every computer, handheld, peripheral, software, and operating system released by Apple from 1976 onward. Over 500 items in all, chronicling how Apple has invented—and reinvented—insanely great products.

We’ve mentioned this before but the update makes it even better. If you know “A True Apple Believer”, this would make a great Christmas gift!

Wired:

The Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant put out a call for “extreme spider” help in 2009, when a giant spiderweb covered almost 4 acres of their facility. Scientists eventually estimated over 107 million spiders were living in the structure, with densities of 35,176 spiders per m³ in spots.

In honour of Halloween, I’m going to leave this right here for you. Thanks to Brian Webster for the link.

Wall Street Journal:

Ive told an audience at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Thursday night that designing the smartwatch posed more challenges than the iPhone because of societal expectations around a wristwatch. The wrist, he said, is an ideal place for “lightweight interactions” and “casual glancing,” but not for heavy reading.

“Even though Apple Watch does so many things, there are cultural, historical implications and expectations,” Ive said. “That’s why it’s been such a difficult and humbling program.”

It’s obvious Apple has thought long and hard about that last sentence and maybe that’s why the Apple Watch will be more successful (although, that’s damning with faint praise) than other company’s offerings.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2014 – Timelapse Short Film from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Vimeo:

Every year the city of Albuquerque host the largest hot air balloon event in the world, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

This festival is on my “Great Places to Shoot Photos” bucket list.

Ars Technica:

Last week three men filed a class action lawsuit in Northern California District Court alleging that Apple’s 2011 MacBook Pro laptops were defective and that Apple did not take proper steps to compensate customers whose hardware broke.

The lawsuit specifically addresses 15” and 17” MacBook Pros from 2011, which the plaintiffs claim suffered from “random bouts of graphical distortion, system instability, and system failures.” The plaintiffs also assert that the problem is widespread, with an online survey conducted by the plaintiffs receiving over 3,000 responses from 2011 MacBook Pro owners in a single week.

As someone who has one of these affected machines and has already had one logic board failure attributed to it, I’m going to follow this closely.

Bon Appetit:

Think about your usual supermarket routine. Chances are, if your market is designed like the majority in the U.S., you start shopping at the right side of the store and work your way around the outer rim of the supermarket—with occasional forays into certain aisles, but generally sticking to a counterclockwise route till you get to the register.

Now you may wonder, Why do I always choose to go that way?

The answer is, you don’t.

These stories of how we are subtly (and sometimes, not subtly) manipulated in these situations are always fascinating to me. Similar psychology is going on in casinos, too.

iMore:

Just as quickly as CurrentC popped into the limelight, questions arose around the companies intentions. Even though I don’t have an invite for CurrentC’s invite-only mobile payments and loyalty rewards system, I decided to take a look. I posted some initial findings on Twitter and a brief summary on iMore, but wanted to do a more in-depth technical post for anybody who was curious.

Hard to believe this is going to actually go anywhere even if it does get released as expected next year.

Vimeo:

Paris & NY, like many large cities, have a lot in common ; transport, infrastructure, national monuments. I wanted to explore not only these comparisons but also the differences, in order to expose the beauty and individuality of each. What you cannot deny is the vibrancy and explosion of character each city has and I thought split-screen with timelapse would be a good way to help convey this.

Turns out, it’s an ad for British Airways but it’s still a fun thing to watch especially when you consider the effort that had to go into pre- and post-production.

But does he cheat a little bit at the end with the “LOVE” sculpture? Isn’t that in Philadelphia?

This is Colossal:

Hikers exploring England’s Derbyshire Peak District earlier this week stumbled onto a rare phenomenon caused by extreme winds.

Really wild looking video but, if it’s that windy, maybe you should be careful about walking on the slippery rocks.

Ars Technica:

Sometimes the end of funding is the beginning of a slide into radio silence, which ultimately turns into few or no backer orders fulfilled, and no satisfactory explanation for why the project didn’t pan out according to the orderly delivery schedule the creators promised.

A project can go off the rails and fail even after its funding succeeds for a number of reasons. There can be unforeseen costs, or design problems, or a team member quits or fails to deliver their part of the project. Often, when a project skids to a halt, the final updates are obscured from the public and sent only to backers, which may be part of the reason failures are often not well-publicized. Occasionally, backers who receive them pass them on or post them publicly on forums, which is as good as it gets in terms of letting the outside world know a project did not ultimately pan out.

I’ve been burned by a few Kickstarter-type campaigns. Rule of thumb is to assume the money you are handing over is a donation – if you get something in return, great but don’t hold out a lot of hope. Granted, the majority of Kickstarters complete successfully but there are still plenty that don’t. Caveat Emptor.

Mosaic Science:

Meet the donors, patients, doctors and scientists involved in the complex global network of rare – and very rare – blood. In 50 years, researchers have turned up only 40 or so other people on the planet with the same precious, life-saving blood in their veins.

Fascinating story of how rare blood develops and the issues involved in having such an incredibly rare blood type.

The Verge:

a significant number of merchants, including heavyweights like Walmart, Kmart, 7-Eleven, and Best Buy, are in outright competition with Apple Pay. The retailers, through a joint venture formed in 2012, are building their own mobile payment app, called CurrentC. It’s expected to launch next year. In the meantime, these retailers have no intention to support Apple Pay.

There may be a lot of good reasons to not support Apple Pay and there may be good alternatives available now and in the future but CurrentC – which needs access to your checking account – and QR codes is not either of those things.

PetaPixel:

Normally Camera+ would set you back $3 in the app store, but right now there’s a lesser-known promotional offering from Apple that lets you download a copy for free. You just need to know where to look.

While some of the folks behind the scenes at Camera+’s developer, TapTapTap, are unsavoury, the app itself is pretty cool and you can’t beat free. Well worth jumping through some hoops to get it.

Huffington Post:

Manganese black. Yellow ocher. Vermilion. Ultramarine. These pigments sound delicious. Their names are so sharp and elegant, it’s as if the terms emote more meaning than just color. We can smell logwood, taste cochineal, touch mummy brown. There is just something (quite scientifically) alluring about a perfectly saturated glob of paint or an electric mound of powdered hues, especially when its name is so tantalizing.

The uniqueness of the names undoubtedly prompts those amongst us, who obsess over the various pink, purples and blues, to wonder where the terms come from. We learn the origin stories of famous paintings in art history course after art history course, but it’s rare to read about the birth of Madder red or mauve. How did the colors in Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” or J.M.W. Turner’s “Modern Rome” come to be?

I never really thought about it but of course it’s true; these artists had to make their own paint and would of course create their own colors too.

Air New Zealand: As the official airline of Middle-earth, Air New Zealand has gone all out to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies It very well may … Continued

Thanks to my friend Sly for sending me this video and thanks to the American hockey fans who honoured all Canadians by singing our National Anthem and showing their respect on this awful day. Tears and chills.

Digg:

A nicely crafted beer is a thing of beauty, but if you’re pouring it into just any old grimy pint glass, you’re not letting that brew reach its true potential. The right glass is key to getting every last boozy drop of pleasure.​

A lot of people don’t realize that the shape of the glass you drink your beer out of can affect the way it tastes. In general, beer glasses are designed to enhance the kinds of beers inside. Always drives me nuts when I go to a bar and ask for a specialized beer and it comes in the “wrong” glass.

David Smith:

Since getting my iPhone 6 a few weeks ago I’ve been continuously trying to optimize the configuration of my home screen. The larger screen means that I now have an extra row of icons to fit onto the screen, but the physical size of device means that I can’t actually comfortably reach them.

Since you can’t arbitrarily place icons on your home screen this means the situation is actually worse. I now have to fill in the top row of icons with ‘stuff’ just so that I can easily reach my main icons without stretching.

I poked around at finding a better way and this was my solution. No weird hacks or jailbreak required.

An easy to do “hack” for those who have an issue with getting to the top row of icons on your iPhone 6 Plus.

Apple:

OS X Yosemite introduces a beautiful new design, useful new connections between your Mac and iOS devices, and amazing new features for the apps you use most.

Lots of things to dig in to and discover if you have a Mac compatible with the required features.

Macworld:

Before you go blowing your entire paycheck on everything from big handbags to Big Macs, there are a few things to keep in mind about the platform. Read on to learn more about how Apple Pay works, how to get your iPhone ready for it, and most importantly, where you can go test it out yourself.

If you are lucky enough to have an new iPhone and live in the US, you can now buy stuff as if you lived in the future.