Sometimes you only need three frames.

This site may hurt your brain.  I make no promises.

- Dave

Have you ever wondered what is lost or gained in automated translation services?  Have you ever used a web-based language translation tool like Google Translator or BabelFish and gotten a bizarre result?

An amusing site called Blahblah Fish translates your words into the language of your choice and then back out again into english.  Hilarity ensues.  For fun, I entered some famous lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd:

(Original)

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you

Translated to Russian and back to English:

Sweet domestic Alabama
where the skies is so blue
sweet domestic Alabama lord,
I’m coming home to you

Translated from Spanish and back to English:

Sweet homemade Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet homemade Alabama Gentleman,
I’m that returns to house to you

And my very favorite – Translated to Japanese and back to English:

At the point where the Alabama sky of the sweet house is very blue
Alabama main thing and I’m of the sweet house; where it returns to the house in you.

I think the Japanese translation sounds like a beautiful haiku…maybe better than the original lyrics.

Try it out yourself.

Link to Blahblah Fish (via Neat-o-rama)

- Dave

I  was recently shown a really cool site called Wordle that takes any text and converts it into a word cloud, giving more frequently used words more prominence on the page.

This is where writing and art collide.  It’s both beautiful and interesting at the same time.

Link to a larger graphic above.

-Dave

No, this is not a pill or a new type of underwear, it is a website that tracks the price of gas by county across the United States.  Green is good.  Red is bad.

Check out Gas Buddy here.

- Dave

MuxTape is a simple site that lets you create digital mix tapes.  You simply create an account with an email address and password and then upload up to 12 songs (mp3 format) for your mix.

MuxTape creates a special page for you with your songs on it.  Just click on a song to play it.

You can listen to my page here: http://aether23.muxtape.com

Let me know what you think and then go create your own MuxTape and post the link in the comments below so we can all listen.

- Dave

I’m back after a brief hiatus in Austin at the awesome South by Southwest Interactive conference.  I recommend the experience to everyone.

My gift to you, upon my most righteous return to Houston, is the fantastic photo above of what my imaginary son would act like.

He’s pulling out the double guns and saluting the world in the best possible manner.

- Dave

My favorite internet radio station has posted its seasonal holiday channel.  You can now listen to some quality Christmas music online while you push the pixels around the interweb.

SomaFM holiday channel

-Dave

P.S. – if you like that, you might consider checking out theri other channels.  I happen to LOVE the Secret Agent channel.  If you are an iTunes user, you can find the station in the Radio tab under the genre specific to that station (Secret Agent is under the “Electronic” genre).

Enter the title and author into this search and the online book database will compare what other readers (who have read your book) have also enjoyed. Give it a whirl. It’s pretty neat.

Link (via Lifehacker)

The bad: It’s a fucking disaster if you are using a Mac.  I fiddled with it for 2+ hours this evening and managed to crash Mac Mail at least a dozen times and download over 200+ spams to my Blackberry (I’m just lucky I didnt’ have more than 200+ emails in my Gmail account at the time.  Normally I have over a thousand, but cleaned it out recently).  Do you know how long it takes to delete 200+ emails on a Blackberry?  Well, I do.

The ugly:  I am back to POP3 access.  It works fine and with the right filters in Gmail, does exactly what I need it to do.  Unfortunalely, it’s not nearly as useful as IMAP could be.

At least I’m not the only person having these problems.

-Dave

Not sure how accurate this clock is, but it is filled with very disturbing information.  I think the injuries counter should move much faster…especially in movies and sitcoms.  I mean, “falls” should be flying right?

Link (via Download Squad)