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You Swallow These Invisible Shrimp With Every Gulp of NYC Tap Water [Science!]

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GROSS

New York's water is delicious—and filled with tiny crustaceans called "copepods". (Making it possibly not kosher.) H&E stain the water and put it under a microscope and you'll find these little guys. Crunchy closeup after the jump. More »

August 26, 2010

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Marty made a major update to his most popular app. More importantly, there's an AWESOME VIDEO.

Watch Egg Meet Mousetrap, and Other Slo-Mo Calamities [Slow Beauty]

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First come the bullets charging through the jello. Then the hand crashing down on the stack of cement. And by the time you get to lighters in a blender, you realize that life is so much better in slow motion. More »

Learning About Cool

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The Rest of the Numbered Pencil Family [Officesupplies]

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Gotta get me a No. 7

We all know and love the No. 2 Pencil, but what about Messrs. No. 1 - No. 12? Artist Nathan W. Pyle has dutifully cataloged those lesser-known writing implements, which you can buy as a t-shirt on Woot. [Laughing Squid] More »

Animated GIFs of Complex Mechanisms in Action Are Hypnotizing and Educational [How Things Work]

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Do you know how the second hand works in your watch? How about a constant velocity joint? Well, let these awesome GIFs teach you a thing or two. More »

Don’t Build from Scratch. You Now Have an HTML5 Boilerplate to Work With

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The HTML5 love continues to be doled out by Paul Irish. First, he offered up Modernizr and now, he’s teamed up with Divya Manian to create an HTML5 boilerplate which leverages best practices to get your started.

It’s essentially a good starting template of html and css and a folder structure that works. But baked into it is years of best practices from front-end development professionals. Take a peek through the source to get a feel of what’s inside. And if you think there’s too much? Delete key that badboy.

Straight from the site, here are some of the features that make this very cool:

• Cross-browser compatible (IE6, yeah we got that.)
• HTML5 ready. Use the new tags with certainty.
• Optimal caching and compression rules for grade-A performance
• Best practice site configuration defaults
• Mobile browser optimizations
• Progressive enhancement graceful degradation … yeah yeah we got that
• IE specific classes for maximum cross-browser control
• Handy .no-js and .js classes to style based on capability
• Want to write unit tests but lazy? A full, hooked up test suite is waiting for you.
• Javascript profiling…in IE6 and IE7? Sure, no problem.
• Console.log nerfing so you won’t break anyone by mistake.
• Never go wrong with your doctype or markup!
• An optimal print stylesheet, performance optimized
• iOS, Android, Opera Mobile-adaptable markup and CSS skeleton.
• IE6 pngfix baked in.
• .clearfix, .visuallyhidden classes to style things wisely and accessibly.
• .htaccess file that allows proper use of HTML5 features and faster page load
• CDN hosted jQuery with local fallback failsafe.
• Think there’s too much? The HTML5 Boilerplate is delete-key friendly.

I’ve heard several people mention about getting some sort of HTML5 template to work from setup so it’s nice to see one completed and out in the wild. This should be a big help.

The project uses everyone’s favorite source control system Github so you can grab it from there or download a zipped up file from the site.

The Only Facebook Button I’d Ever Need [Facebook]

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There's been some talk of whether Facebook needs a "thumbs down" option, but honestly that won't be necessary. At least, not if the "Meh" button ever comes to fruition, since that's how I feel about pretty much every newsfeed update. More »

Watch a School Bus Go 367 MPH On Fiery Rocket Power [Mad Science]

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What happens when you strap the jet engine from a Phantom fighter plane to the back of a yellow school bus? The awesomest fire-propelled death ride around. And yes, there is a video. More »

Why Captain Higgins is my favorite parasitic flatworm

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Dicrocoelium dendriticum, I salute you.

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