If you didn't know Douglas is the amazing talent behind Ask a Ninja and the The Ninja Handbook .

I'm trying this tonight!

How to Build an Upside-Down Fire: The Only Fireplace Method You’ll Ever Need

James Strachan's Blog: How Sun could fix Swing and promote innovation and unification in the UI space: this is a great idea!

This is the direction web development should be moving in. Standards compliance and no plugins. Now we're talking.

(Via Reddit.)

The Omnomicon: how to make a rainbow cake!

(Via Reddit)

I really hope this is the future of web development. Smalltalk and Seaside have been secret loves of mine (Smalltalk since 1988, Seaside somewhat more recently) that I had been afraid I'd never be able to publicly acknowledge.

Wow. Who would have thought it. Wil Wheaton can actually sing pretty well. And can let go and disappear into a game of Rock Band 2 in front of a live audience at a con.

(Vial Wil)

You absolutely need to see the first one (at least) of these videos. And yes, the video will explain the title of this post.

(Via Neil Gaiman.)

OK, this is a great job of spotting a movie-recyle:

johnaugust.com » The Remnants, in full

(Via Gruber.)

The Joel on Software Discussion Group - Why I Hate Frameworks:

The factory factory factory will produce only the tool factory factories that you actually need.

I can't tell you how closely this matches my recent experiences.

(Via rands.)

Maxing out your Triangle — jackcheng.com

Some people might ascribe to the philosophy that it’s okay to be at a well-paid-yet-crappy day job and use the remaining time and money enjoying your hobbies. I disagree.

(Via Merlin Mann.)

Smile and Your Social Network Smiles With You:

Every wonder about how you affect your friends in online networks, or how you are impacted by them? Check out this article from Edge:

Edge: SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HAPPINESS By By Nicholas A. Christakis & James Fowler

We found that social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.

(Via Unquiet Desperation.)

If you’re a developer and you’re about to ask another developer a technical question (on a forum, via email, on a chat channel, or in person), you’d better be ready to answer the question ‘What have you tried?’

Sounds like I'm not alone.

Apple Has Learned The Importance of Play. We Should Too.

I have to agree.

children's songs for adults:

Laura wrote and wanted a song to remind her to chill out when she got anxious. I asked people to send me vocals so that I could have a chorus behind me...(special thanks to everyone that sent in audio)here's the result :: wear headphones, it ain't mixed so great

(Via ze's page :: zefrank.com.)

Microsoft Ads Are Genius: "The very fact that Microsoft can dance at all will be enough to sell them as belle of the ball to most who look on."

(Via Red Sweater Blog.)

★ Memoranda: "Apple and Microsoft, as ever, offer a study in contrasts. Take, for example, two recent company-wide memos from CEOs Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer."

(Via Daring Fireball.)