If, like me, you weren't at IxDA Interaction '08 in Savannah, you might enjoy this collection of videos from the conference. I've only watched a few so far, and though some skip the slides at seemingly important parts, many are really interesting. I especially liked Doug Bolin of Avenue A | Razorfish's presentation on making the complex help system for Microsoft's Sync, but maybe that's because we've been working on a help system recently as well. [via Thomas Baekdal]

Haven't blogged much lately. Too busy either working, playing music, or just dicking around in the semi-real world to dick around on the intertubes. So here's a few fun things I've looked at lately.

The decapitator. Check this mess out. A guy goes around London and replicates street ads then gruesomely removes their heads. Awesome and crazy street art.

Multi-touch whiteboard on the cheap. In case you don't follow my del.icio.us links (see sidebar) - This guy (not too surprisingly, from Carnegie Mellon) created a "whiteboard" with multi-touch capability that you can put anywhere as long as you have a projector or LCD screen and a Wii Remote, of all things. Surface what? Amazing stuff, and frankly I kind of want to try it. Also check out his rad 3D display.

Gary, Indiana: Ghost Town. I've lived here for how many years now and only recently went on my first urban exploration trip (Fisher Body Plant 21), but I've always assumed that Detroit was the King of Blight. Turns out, Gary Indiana isn't just that really smelly town on the way to Chicago, it's a nearly-abandoned empty shell. Much smaller place than here, but apparently much more complete devastation. Pictures of this kind of subject matter are a dime a dozen in Detroit, but the quality of these is really fantastic.

And finally, my new heroes, DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei (ages 8 and 5). I got nothing to say to this. Via Eliot's Twitter.

Everyone's probably been waiting with bated breath to hear about my glamorous adventure to Hawaii. It was quite exciting as well as relaxing, I assure you. But that's not what I'm here for today. I'm here to talk about sausage. I know what the Viceroy contingent will surely be saying, it's all in good fun until Mike ends up with the sausage in the mouth, but this is more along the lines of Gavin's ongoing series recounting the Horrors of Food.

Apparently some guy thought it would be a great idea to use his macro lens – the same kind that Judith often uses to bring us amazing pictures of birds, bugs, and flowers – to photograph something she probably wouldn't chomp even with your teeth: processed meats.

Did you think it'd be nasty? Have a look. It is.

Aside from a little self-importance on the Washington Post's part, this is a really great article about the tree in the woods, the average person's appreciation for art, Koyaanisqatsi, and the a bunch of people ignoring the crap out of the world's greatest living a violinist. With video. [via Photo Matt]

Update: You ask a question about an important and horrible Illustrator bug on a blog by a web designer, and no one answers. You mention some (apparently asshole) violinist, and the world is in your comments box. I'm re-opening comments, and commenting as an "open letter" to my angry friend who sent me a contact message with an invalid email. I spent some time writing my reply, so I could at least force everyone else to read it if he won't.

Just some links. I've been stockpiling them for a while, time to clean house.

• Malaysian Women Warned of 'Sexy' Attire. Not sure what I think about that. I guess I really hadn't thought of Malaysia as being a Muslim country, shows you what I know. An interesting story of culture clash... conservative Muslims and tight-pants-wearing, navel-baring Chinese women face off.
• White Hat: Is Ajax inherently insecure? Uh, no. Bad software is bad software... lack of security is lack of security. Thankfully, this made it to Slashdot, where tons of programmers are currently hitting F5 and saying "this ajax crap will never last."
• 61-year-old woman sells pot to pay for bingo habit. I hope my mom reads this. She's into dominoes, which I'm pretty sure is a gateway game.
• NYC cracks down on mystery meat. There's a fine line between protecting the public and being culturally sensitive. Apparently, selling frogs without an invoice crosses that line.
• A Web 2.0 tour for the Enterprise. Or for your grandma. Anyone who's out of touch, really. Not sure what "the enterprise" would want to do with Rails (repeat after Gavin: it'll never scale)... and you definitely don't want to put company plans into ta-da lists.
• And finally... Zeldman is a friend of Brian's and one of the most well-known names in web design and development. He also introduced a bunch of people to the notion that a practical mind, reasonable HTML code, and a bit of compromise are more important than having your design look exactly right across every single browser. So why is he demonstrating an old-media mindset by questioning the viability of our only true cross-platform browser just because he doesn't like the way it renders type on one OS? And more importantly, considering his influence, who's coming with him? Looks like about 150 people in the comments alone. Safari seems like an incomplete program to me, and frankly after years of looking at Windows 95-2000 type, the hyphenation of Firefox is the least of my worries. How about being able to style form controls?

As the entire universe knows now, Jason is leaving AOL. This is met with mixed reactions, of course. I don't know a lot about what was going on, but I'm sure people smelled it. He's got serious ADD, not to mention he probably doesn't belong in the corporate world. He's got ideas coming out his ears, and I'm pretty sure only he can keep up. Everyone's right about one thing: he's polarizing. I find it maybe just a bit weird that I have a strong urge to defend him, since we had... "difficulties" ... but in the end, he and Brian did a great job with this thing. I'm sure he'll do great in his next venture.

• The New York Times, electing to stay out of the "inventing new terminology" game, interviews "Ask A Ninja" and Ze Frank.
• The UCLA student who was tasered is, like so many things, duplicated about 8,000 times on YouTube. Google should figure out some way to detect dupes, it'd save terrabytes. You know what bugs me about this? Those historical rabble-rousers and troublemakers, college students, are doing nothing. I'm glad someone got it on his camera phone (sorta), but even he could have gotten closer. Hey man, stop that. Oh wait, you'll taser me too? What if I pee? Dear lord. I'd take a taser or two for something I believed was right. It's not like it's a bullet. Plus, these kids had the numbers. Three cops? Come on. They feel pretty big with only one irate troublemaker, but a computer lab full of angry kids bum-rushing them? "Command presence" becomes just a term in the police manual.
• Om Malik called for a week-long boycott of Universal. You think anyone did it? You bet. I did. In what other business are CEOs allowed to insult their customers while moaning about how they (not even the artists they supposedly represent) need to "get paid?" Un-freaking-thinkable, the steel cajones on these guys.
  
• An old email newsletter called its deadpool segment (think F'ed Company) "Operation Falco," and met reports of demises of dotcoms with cries of "Falco!" Oh God.
• People are trying to kill each other over PlayStations. Check out the fighting in Fresno. Fighting for their right to forgo walks with the dog, TV, creative outlets, sex, dinner, a job, a tan, your own apartment, you name it. You know what I'm getting at... no matter who wins the PS3, you're all incredible losers.