Friday, July 28, 2006

Your E-Mail and Links

Great stuff from you guys, as always. Here's a very eccentric collection of links.

First, from Jason Price of www.talkstrategy.com, a link to a program called "My Heritage." Basically, you upload a photograph of a face and the program can can a celebrity database over over three thousand photos and find the one with the highest degree of resemblance. There are other features, but that's what you can do in the demo. It's here. And if you want to see which celebrity Eli 4.11 most resembles, go here (you might have to click on the "Celebrity Matches" button at that location).

And the crazy thing is, Eli 4.11 really does sort of look like that guy.

Next, Ryan Mattson sent in a terrific link related to the Montana child-naming post from last week. The Social Security Administration has a names database (all the way back to 1937) called "Popular Baby Names" where you can do all kinds of interesting queries. You can put in a name and find out where it ranks in popularity either for a single year or over time, or you can just view different lists of names based on popularity. It's a totally entertaining time waster, and you can find it here.

Ryan also included a link to an article from the New York Times Magazine titled "Where Have All the Lisas Gone?" which discusses how popular names have changed over the years. Very interesting read, and you can find it here.

So where have all the Lisa's gone? In the 1960's, "Lisa" was either the most popular or second most popular name for baby girls every single year. By the end of the 1970's, it had dropped to 16th. Last year? 493.

Josh Catania sent in a link to a new Guitar Hero clone for the PC called, surprisingly enough, "PC Clone Guitar Hero." It works in conjunction with the Freetar Hero Editor and you can use your Guitar Hero controller if you have a PS2 to USB converter. The site is here.

From Chris Kessel comes the new that "The Tick," one of my old cartoon favorites (and one of Eli 4.11's current favorites), is finally coming out on DVD. The initial release of the first season (strangely, missing one episode) will be available on August 29.

Site Meter