Every Monday through Friday-ish, we post a new Monkey Bite on our frontdoor for your edification. This could be a little news item, a link to a useful site, a handy coding tip, or just some random piece of information we think might be of interest to Web developers. Expired Monkey Bites are stored right here, growing tastier and more sophisticated with each passing day.
This month's Monkey Bites:
12/31/01
Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one. HAPPY NEW YEAR! And remember: Drinking and sparklers do not mix, especially when your locks have been coated with flammable, flammable hairspray.
12/27/01
Tired of spending lonesome highway nights pouring your soul out to your TrueFlesh Car Pool Mannequin and getting nothing in return?
Dr. Dimitri Kanevsky's up-and-coming Artificial Passenger system [NYT subscription link] will keep you bright eyed and bushy tailed by telling jokes, playing word games, scanning the radio, and squirting you with water. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
12/25/01
So the twenty-year archive of Usenet is now alive and kicking, but you still feel like something's missing? Well take a gander at the Best Usenet Post You've Never Seen contest over at The Register. Funny, indeed, though not the stuff
of great holiday-party anecdotes. For that, may we suggest news of a Norwegian
groom-to-be that mistakenly ate his own engagement ring?
Scientists in England, attempting to discover just what "funny" is, have been
using a Net survey to isolate the funniest joke ever. On December 20th, their
initial winning joke was announced, with "47% of people giving it the highest
rating." If you ask us, it's just another case of academia ruining a perfectly
fine thing (we're more snackademics, ourselves).
12/20/01
Some over-zealous parent may have thwarted your dream of becoming a bona fide hacker, but that doesn't mean you can't impress friends and liked ones by at least sounding like one.
12/18/01
Now, just in time for the holidays: "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in 227 different programming languages! And those on the prowl for stocking stuffers need look no further than the dizzying assortment of 204 "Hello Worlds".
Tiny Software, the company behind the awesome, free Tiny Personal Firewall, now brings you the Tiny Trojan Trap, which protects your machine from worms, trojans, and other Homer-appropriate monsters. Good things, small packages!
12/7/01
Hey! The Monkey got mentioned in the news this week! No, it wasn't the nude rampage — the NYT described our tutorials and resources as "excellent" for the "serious student." Yay team!
12/5/01
Mac OS X users rejoice! Today's release of Final Cut Pro 3 brings serious
video-editing power to Apple's flagship OS, while Virtual PC 5 does the same
for PC emulation and cross-platform development. For those more in the mood
to complain, however, why not join the OS X Metadata petition list and
help keep the Mac better than, erm, that other OS that lifted the "X"
naming convention.
12/4/01
Musical clothing [NYT alert!] is getting a lot of play these days: Dr. Nishimoto brings you CosTune [PDF alert!], a wearable system of sensors that lets your body whistle while it works. And
Dr. Hahn is using
Dr. Bahn's wireless interactive dance system, SSpeaPer, to punctuate the puppet theater-inspired "movement vocabulary" of her Pikapika piece.
