Bored Panda:

When the weather forecast announced unexpected cold from -9°C to -12°C last week, photographer Angela Kelly decided to take an advantage of it in one truly creative way. Together with her 7-year-old son, Kelly combined the home-based remedies – dish soap, karo syrup, and water – and went out to blow bubbles and take pictures as they freeze and melt.

-9°C is 15+°F. Or as we Canadians call it, “The month of May”.

BuzzFeed:

Like many casual fans, we assumed we could immediately pick it up and dominate. We were very wrong.

Check the article out if for no other reason that the GIFs.

And the “tip” at the end? Not gonna happen!

Bored Panda:

Nina and Gramps have been married for 61 years, however, all they’ve got from their wedding day is a single photograph. On one of the most important days of their life, the couple got stood up by their photographer. In order to fix this, their caring granddaughter, an event designer Lauren Wells, organized a beautiful anniversary photo session, inspired by the famous Pixar animation movie “Up“.

61 years of marriage. Most of us haven’t even been on the planet that long, let alone married. Congratulations to them!

TIME:

King Wenceslas didn’t start Boxing Day, but the Church of England might have.

During Advent, Anglican parishes displayed a box into which churchgoers put their monetary donations. On the day after Christmas, the boxes were broken open and their contents distributed among the poor, thus giving rise to the term Boxing Day.

Maybe.

Even though TIME doesn’t answer its own headline question, the article still might be instructive to our American friends who have heard about “this weird Canadian Holiday”.

This is cool. What a lot of work though.

BuzzFeed:

My advice to TV shoppers has evolved: Consider the off-brands. Are you building the ultimate home entertainment system to show off to your friends? Then sure, shell out for the Samsung. But if you’re not…perhaps it’s time to take a look at one of those sub-$350, 40-plus-inch TVs.

Purists will scoff but he’s not wrong. And with “good enough” TVs coming down in price, it makes it less and less likely Apple will be interested in trying to sell their own high margin sets.

As you buy and read eBooks, your eBook device collects data on your reading habits. Do you tend to buy lots of books and only finish a small percentage? Do you stick with a single author? Do you binge-read?

This family of data is useful to publishers and authors, but it sits in the virtual hands of the eReader software. Over time, the eBook companies will figure out a way to monetize that data, either by selling/renting the data itself, or by using the data to enrich the experience of their devices and to make it easier for their customers to spend more money.

Interesting article. I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a great story, via MG Siegler, who was there when it happened.

Jonathan Mann is a pretty talented musician and publisher of the “Song a Day” YouTube channel. MG Siegler is, among other things, a writer for TechCrunch. This story takes place in the summer of 2010, in the midst of Antennagate.

I had just learned that I lost a big video contest, and I was feeling pretty down. It also happened to be the eve of Apple’s “Antenna-Gate” press conference. The anti-Apple hype was at a fever pitch, and I thought the whole non-story was ridiculous. I decided to write a song defending Apple. I hoped that MG would post it, and maybe I’d get some decent traffic. I wrote the song in about 2 hours and spent another hour on the video. I posted the song, sent it to MG and went to bed.

Wonderful read (follow the headline link). Here’s the video. Enjoy.

Rolling Stone’s roundup of the twelve best metal Christmas tunes include a couple of my favorites, like Rob Halford’s “We Three Kings” and Dio’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” (with Tommy Iommi on guitar).

Steve Martin told a joke. It got mangled and misconstrued. Twitter exploded. Here’s the center of the kerfuffle, from Steve’s blog:

I was riffing on Twitter, inviting people to ask me grammar questions. I replied with what I hoped were funny answers. For example, a person might write “What’s the difference between “then” and “than?” I would say, “then” is a conjunctive preposition, and “than” is a misspelling of “thank.” I have done similar things to this on other occasions, and there is a great spirit of fun between me and the Twitters followers.

I was going along fine when someone wrote, “How do you spell “lasonia?” I wrote: “It depends if you are in an African American neighborhood or an Italian restaurant.” I knew of the name Lasonia. I did not make it up, nor do I find it funny. So to me the answer was either Lasonia (with a capital), or Lasagna, depending on what you meant. That they sounded alike in this rare and particular context struck me as funny. That was the joke. When the tweet went out, I saw some negative comments and immediately deleted the tweet and apologized. I gathered the perception was that I was making fun of African American names. Later, thinking it over, I realized the tweet was irresponsible, and made a fuller apology on Twitter.

Was he wrong? Was that apology owed? Follow the headline link and read the whole story. As Steve says, comedy is treacherous.

Jake is an incredible guitar player and one of the reasons I came to love Charvel guitars so much.

BBC News:

Erwin Perzy III knows a thing or two about making it snow – it’s the family business.

The 57-year-old Austrian is the grandson of the man widely acknowledged as the inventor of the snow globe. His grandfather, the first Erwin Perzy, came up with the idea by accident in 1900.

Mass production started in Vienna in 1905, and 108 years later, the company – Original Vienna Snow Globes – is still going strong.

There’s something a little bit magical about a well done, well made snow globe.

Every year, thousands of people resolve to get organized in the new year. If you’re one of them, let Benjamin help. Benjamin is a task manager for iOS based on the FranklinCovey system of time management. Built specifically for those who love the Franklin Planner, Benjamin stores all your tasks, projects, and notes so they’re always at your fingertips. Best of all, Benjamin lets you sync your information between iPhone and iPad so that it’s conveniently available whether you’re at your desk or on the go.

Give yourself the tools you need to succeed in 2014. Give yourself Benjamin on the iPhone and iPad.

Here’s the text of the email. It’s been a great year for Apple.

Team,

This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work. As many of us prepare to celebrate the holidays with our loved ones, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved together over the past year.

First and foremost, we introduced industry-leading products in each of our major categories in 2013, showing the breadth and depth of innovation at Apple. We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. We also marked our 50 billionth download on the App Store – a milestone no one could have predicted we would reach so quickly.

Together we’ve shown the world that innovation at Apple goes beyond our products to the way we do business and how we give back to our community. This year, Apple raised and donated tens of millions of dollars for important charities and relief efforts like Red Cross aid to typhoon victims in the Philippines, and we continue to be the largest contributor to (PRODUCT)RED, supporting the Global Fund in its fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa. Just a few weeks ago, Jony Ive led an unprecedented effort that brought money and awareness to eliminating the transmission of AIDS from mother to child.

And finally, Apple is standing up for what we believe is right. We know that equality and diversity make our company and our society stronger, so we’ve urged the U.S. Congress to support workplace protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We are also laser focused on our contribution to several environmental initiatives and we will increase our efforts even more in this area in the future.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love. I am extremely proud to stand alongside you as we put innovation to work serving humankind’s deepest values and highest aspirations. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world for the opportunity to work at this amazing company with all of you.

Happy Holidays,

Tim

Marcus “The Magnificant” Malone was a member of the original Santana lineup and played percussion on the first Santana album, released in 1969. Marcus fell on hard times, doing three years in San Quentin prison and ending up homeless on the streets of Oakland, California.

Watch the video. I hope Marcus gets back on his feet.

Apple and China Mobile today announced they have entered into a multi-year agreement to bring iPhone to the world’s largest mobile network. As part of the agreement, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be available from China Mobile’s expansive network of retail stores as well as Apple retail stores across mainland China beginning on Friday, January 17, 2014. iPhone 5s, the most forward-thinking smartphone in the world and iPhone 5c, the most colorful iPhone yet, will be available for pre-registration from China Mobile’s official website (www.10086.cn) and customer service hotline “10086” beginning on Wednesday, December 25, 2013.

China Mobile now has over 1.2 million 2G/GSM, 3G/TD-SCDMA, 4G/TD-LTE base stations and over 4.2 million Wi-Fi access points, providing broad coverage to quality networks for iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c customers. China Mobile is rolling out the world’s largest 4G network. By the end of 2013, China Mobile’s 4G services will be available in 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. By the end of 2014, China Mobile plans to complete the rollout of more than 500,000 4G base stations, which will cover more than 340 cities with 4G service. The collaboration between Apple and China Mobile will give a big boost to the development of China’s homegrown 4G/TD-LTE technology. iPhone on China Mobile supports major cellular network standards, making a global phone a reality for China Mobile customers.

This is a huge deal for Apple—this is the one people have been watching.

NBC World News:

Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church.

It’s easy for some of us to dismiss this as silly but the story has a great quote in it from an Icelander. He says, “I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common.” So who are we to say Icelandic Elves don’t deserve protections?

Nasa:

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

It can be argued the picture, “Earthrise”, was the one photo that changed the earth the most. It expanded our understanding and concern for the planet we live on.

Simply incredible.

A week ago, Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada unveiled his latest public land-art project, “Wish,” as part of the Belfast Festival. “Wish” depicts a portrait of an anonymous girl spanning 11 acres of land that can only be seen from the highest points in Belfast or, for the best view, from an airplane. The face is formed from organic materials like sand, grass and soil, all of which were donated by local businesses.

This project took several years for Gerada to finish. He used satellite technology and manually placed 30,000 wooden pegs on the field, finally “drawing” the face with nearly 8 million pounds of soil, sand and rock.

Fascinating article on how your stolen credit or debit card info makes its way through the digital underground.

If you’ve used your debit or credit card at Target between November 27 and December 15, read this article. The most important takeaway:

Debit card holders: call your bank immediately. Debit card users should be especially vigilant. Credit card users won’t be out of pocket if they suffer fraud and contest the charges, but the opposite is true for debit card holders since fraudulent transactions may take their bank balance to zero.

Accordingly, Velasquez recommended that any debit card users who might have been Target breach victims immediately contact their card issuers and ask for advice. “Tell them you’re a victim of the Target breach,” she said. To help combat fraud, different institutions offer different options, such as putting passwords on accounts or changing PIN codes. “But alerting your specific financial institution is really the way to go, because they all have different rules,” she said.