Generate your own spaceship

Michael Reeve created a handsome folklore generator, in the form of brief footnote-like references. It's inspired by The Loremen Podcast, which covers forgotten folklore and obscure local curiosities. I got the above snippet one on my third reload, and liked it because it referenced the town I lived for a few years as a kid.… READ THE REST

Shaun LeBron set out to generate legit Pac Man mazes, but it turns out their simplicity and elegance concealed unexpectedly hard work: "Generating random Pac-Man mazes is a deceptively difficult problem that I spent some months working on. It is not easy to describe clearly. I hope you are patient." For example, the underlying grid… READ THE REST

Hurricane Laura carved a swath through Gulf Coast, felling trees and destroying buildings. According to the Houston Chronicle there are 230,000 people in Louisiana and another 90,000 in East Texas who still don't have power. As of this writing, there are 15 reported deaths — but most of them weren't related to that physical destruction.… READ THE REST

Everybody loves dogs. But even the most dedicated doggy mom and pop will tell you that it really doesn't take much to keep the average pooch thoroughly entertained. Just give 'em a ball to chase or a patch of yard to run in and a dog will generally find enough to keep themselves occupied for… READ THE REST

While we can't seem to agree on much as a nation these days, there's one thing that the past year has helped us all come to terms with — laptop cameras are not very good. From low resolutions to gauzy filters to some less-than-perfect light adjustment levels, the cams built right into our devices don't… READ THE REST

Headphone people generally fall into two camps. There are the dedicated audiophile types who have no problem rocking full over-ear cups to help drink in every morsel of the sound. Then…there's the rest of us. For us, we want great sound too. We just don't want to feel like we're wearing a 5-pound helmet over… READ THE REST