Waxy.org
Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, a journalist/programmer living in Portland, Oregon. I'm the CTO of Kickstarter, created Upcoming.org, and some other stuff too.

Contact Me: log@waxy.org or waxpancake on AIM
« January 2009 | February 2009 Archives | March 2009 »

Translating "The Economist" Behind China's Great Firewall

Posted Feb 26, 2009 (Updated Mar 5, 2009)

While researching Oscar screeners last month, I stumbled on a remarkable example of online collaboration in China that's completely undiscovered here. In short, a group of dedicated fans of The Economist newsmagazine are translating each weekly issue cover-to-cover, splitting up the work among a team of volunteers, and redistributing the finished translations as complete PDFs for a Chinese audience.

It reminds me of the scanlation movement, in which groups of fans scan, translate, and redistribute manga into another language. But I've never seen it applied to a newspaper or magazine, especially one as high-minded as The Economist.

It's an impressive example of online collaboration with simple tools, a completely non-commercial effort by volunteers interested in spreading knowledge while improving their English skills. In the process, they're taking a political risk in translating controversial articles about their homeland behind the Great Firewall.

Continue reading (1248 more words)...
24 comments

John Hodgman on "meh"

Posted Feb 24, 2009

I enjoyed this exchange with John Hodgman on Twitter yesterday, reminiscent of my own rant on "FAIL."

hodgman: Did I ever tell you people how much I hate the word "meh"? Nothing announces "I have missed the point" more than that word.

hodgman: It is the essence of blinkered Internet malcontentism. And a rejection of joy. Also: 12 hive mehs in the replies SO FAR

hodgman: By definition, it may mean disinterest (although simple silence would be a more damning and sincere response, in that case)

hodgman: But in use, it almost universally seems to signal: I am just interested enough to make one last joyless, nitpicky swipe and then disappear

wordwill: @hodgman Isn't rejecting joy how one traditionally demonstrates one's superior cool? Though, at the same time, to hell with that.

hodgman: @wordwill yes. It's part of the toxic Internet art of constant callous one upsmanship. And it is a sort of art, but not for me.

69 comments

Robin Hood's "Oo De Lally," Translated Into 14 Languages

Posted Feb 5, 2009 (Updated Apr 8, 2009)

There's something enchanting about these localized versions of Roger Miller's "Oo De Lally" from Disney's Robin Hood from 1973. While all of these videos were found on YouTube, each was created by a different person around the world. (Bonus points if you can find the Japanese, Chinese, and Norwegian versions. Got 'em all! Thanks, everyone.) April 7: Added Hebrew, but YouTube removed the Arabic version... Anyone have it?

Original in English

Portuguese, "O-La-Ri-Lo-Le"

Italian, "Urca Tirulero"

Continue reading (278 more words)...
43 comments
« January 2009 | February 2009 Archives | March 2009 »
Waxy Links
Ads via The Deck
November 7, 2009
NYT visualizes the unemployment rate for different demographics — 48.5% of young black men without a high school degree; 3.6% of college-educated white women over 25
November 6, 2009
Another World level ported to Javascript — in other emulation news, a NES and Gameboy emulator in JS and SNES9x ported to Flash (via)
Blocktronics' ANSI art tribute to RaDMaN — powered by Viewtronics, Peter Nitsch's gorgeous new Flash 10 ANSI viewer (via)
Aaron Straup-Cope leaves Flickr, joins Stamen Design — one of my favorite geeks joins one of my favorite companies
Unreal Engine 3 development kit now free for non-commercial use — huge announcement, along with the recent free release of Unity Indie
The Big Picture's series on Martian landscapes — Kai's Power Tools in real-life (via)
November 5, 2009
Preview of McSweeney's Panorama, their one-shot newspaper — as expected, looks incredibly great (via)
The Grant-Pattishall Award — congrats, Kellan! (via)
Birdhouse for Your Soul — Greg Knauss finds one small piece of the historical web
Google open-sources Closure Tools — JS compiler, along with Google's huge widget library (via)
Video montage of actors speaking the movie's title — great comments with some missed opportunities; "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to The Taxi Driver?"
The Morning News' Cloud of Atlases — impossible to guess, but look at all the pretty colors
American Airlines fires UX designer for explaining why their UX isn't great — a lapse of judgment from both American Airlines and an employee who cared too much
November 4, 2009
Overheating, photo series of gadgets thrown through walls — from issue 6 of Amusement, the incredible French gaming culture magazine (via)
Ricardo Autobahn's The Golden Age of Video — insane pop culture video mashup
November 3, 2009
The Last Days of Gourmet — sad photo series, reminds me of the dot-com carnage photos
Put This On — first episode of Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor's Kickstarter-funded video series on clothing
Jono Bacon's The Art of Community released for free download under CC license — looks fantastic and worth buying (via)
Eric Testroete's papercraft portrait Halloween costume — incredibly creepy, like videogames leaking into the real world (via)
November 2, 2009
Mark Pilgrim's history of the IMG element — told through annotated conversations from 1993 (via)
Every vandalism edit to Nickelback's Wikipedia page — I wonder which edits managed to stay in the longest without detection
November 1, 2009
Mike Pusateri's Halloween costume data collection — for the fifth year, he's collected every costume name; this year, "nothing" spiked to #2
XKCD's movie narrative charts — here's a more serious attempt at Primer's timeline
October 30, 2009
GameCity Squared's 15-Pixel Megamix — extremely minimalist interpretations of 12 different games
October 29, 2009
Lauren McCarthy's Happiness Hat — it measures your smile and stabs you if you're not smiling sufficiently (via)
October 28, 2009
Auto Tune de Nieuws — needs an angry Dutch gorilla
Facebook prank memorializes living person — the Facebook team should allow an email veto, or at least require better documentation (via)
2D Boy's pay-what-you-like World of Goo results wrapup — don't miss the breakdown by OS and country (via)
FreeForm's short film on the Open Internet — impressive set of interviewees, directed by Jesse Dylan of Yes We Can fame
Using Flickr as a paintbrush — coloring overhead maps based on the dominant colors of photos taken on the ground (via)

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