Screenshot: A Weblog

There are a lot of "know your rights"/"how to deal with the police" videos floating around the internet, some of which are entertainingly cheesy with enactments of possible scenes. While a bit longer and less dramatic, Boing Boing recently linked to a nice team lecture by a law professor and a cop about why you should never talk to the police, even if you are innocent. The law lecture component has nice historical and legal context about the fifth amendment, but also a really nice explanation of why you should take advantage of your fifth amendment rights even if, or especially if, you are innocent. Both speakers are entertaining as lecturers. The cop shares some nice anecdotes of the legal but misleading methods that he would use during interviews to encourage self incrimination. It's definitely worth checking out if you've never watching one of these - it is a nice debunking of the belief that the only people who invoke the 5th are people who have something to hide. It would be lovely if it had included some advice on how to refuse to talk, though I'm pretty sure a polite "I'm sorry but I need to talk to my lawyer" repeated as necessary will work.

Posted by Amanda at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everybody knows that Minesweeper is addictive, but I don't know how it took so long for somebody to create multiplayer Minesweeper. It's a standard online Flash game with rooms to play in a chat windows alongside your standard Minesweeper grid. It works exactly as you would think - you and a handful of other players work to clear the grid. The interface is pretty nice - you can see the shadow of other players' pointers so you can avoid clearing the same cells. If you click a bomb, you are given a penalty - a timeout during which you cannot click. The penalty starts small but grows as you make mistakes, and shrinks again as you play without mistakes. Even with such a minimal interface, there are interesting social dynamics that play out. If you get to the point that there are two cells left to clear, one flag, and a 50/50 shot of being right, you can see people wait and let the person who was most recently working in that area make their guess, and it seems to be an unspoken rule that if you're that person you step up and guess and take the risk of a penalty. Sure there is the frustration of working along and someone else blowing up the map, but the penalty system actually helps make sure that nobody totally trashes the game. For such a simple thing, it's really nicely done.

Posted by Amanda at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I did not do as well in Sock Wars as I would have liked, in large part due to its unfortunate timing in the midst of finals (what time I gained in knitting while proctoring I lost working against the deadline for final grades). So I was excited to see that there is also a Hat Attack competition, which conveniently starts September 16th, which tends to be as much of a slow spot in the academic semester as you are going to find. Plus, hats are way quicker to knit than socks.And in this competition last knitter standing wins $500 worth of yarn! I'm all signed up and excited to go through my stash to find a good yarn to use - unlike in sock wars the required gauge is already up so you can swatch right away. Here's to hoping I make it to the second round this time!

Posted by Amanda at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ten years ago today, back in 1998, I decided to legitimize my procrastinary websurfing with a "web journal" chronicling the interesting things that I came across online. At the time I'd never heard the term weblog and to the degree that I was aware of any community, it was the online journaling community. Since then, I've enjoyed getting to know and be part of an exploding weblogging (or, I guess I can finally, begrudgingly, give in and call it blogging) community. While sadly a combination of work and personal commitments have caused my posting to be sporadic, I've never seriously considered stopping Screenshot. For those of you who have been reading along, either from the beginning or starting more recently - thank you! I'm planning to be here another decade and I hope you'll stick around with me for it.

Posted by Amanda at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My goal for the summer is to end it with fewer projects, not more, but there are so many cute crafty projects out there that I keep running across. You can never have too many fun summer dresses, and I really like the shape on this jersey swing dress. The pattern is a bit vague though - I need to print it out and think about it before I try it. I like patterns that are more guidelines in theory, but there is something nice about the pin and cut on the lines types.

If you aren't the sewing type, maybe you're intrigued by the Altoids tin emergency candle. I have been collecting those tins for years but have pretty much exhausted my uses for them. This looks like a fun easy project.

What I would love to tackle is one of these patterns based on mathematical patterns. Some of the tessellations and fractal based ones are prettiest, but when you start reading the descriptions others like Counting Pane starting looking really interesting.

Most likely, I will put this adaption of Zimmerman's baby sweater into adult size on the queue. I've had really mixed results with the sweaters that I have tried, but Zimmerman's patterns are always very good, and the end result is super cute. I'm just trying to decide whether it would look good in a variegated yarn instead of a solid....

Posted by Amanda at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)