Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

kottke.org posts about Giles Turnbull

A fake history of blogging

At The Morning News, Giles Turnbull offers up a fake history of blogging, er, bloggering.

Depending on who you ask, the first bloggering happened in the late 1990s, when the web was still young, and clicking links to pages where you’d click more links was cool. This was in the days when the only use for an animated GIF was to tell people you were still working on your web page. Even if you weren’t.

“I invented bloggering,” says mad old Laurence Fortey, a mad old internet guy from the old, old days. He can remember hand-coded websites. He started coding his own just weeks after Tim Berners-Lee, a tunnel engineer helping to build the STERN protein collider, discovered ancient scrolls buried in the Swiss soil that revealed the secrets of HTML.


Crazy job interview questions

CBS MoneyWatch recently posted a list of unusual questions asked in job interview at companies like Google, Facebook, and Pottery Barn. Over at The Morning News, Giles Turnbull decided to answer them all.

UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?

I’d rather get the fuck out of your office and run away very fast. What the hell are you people on? Haven’t you heard of email? Or official dispute procedures? Jesus.

Based on his answer to P&G’s “sell me an invisible pen”, I’d hire Turnbull in a second if I were selling invisible pens.


A year of learning

In 2010, Giles Turnbull learned one thing each day…here’s his list.

Jan 14. Carbon monoxide kills you by getting into your bloodstream and occupying the space inside red blood cells that would normally be filled with oxygen.

Jul 24. Every hour of every day, a billion tons of rain falls on the Earth. Much of it falls on Wales, the wettest place in Europe.

Nov 6. When your son asks “What is electricity?”, it’s wise to stop and think for a moment-or consult an encyclopedia-before launching into an answer that may grind to an unfortunate and, for the questioner, unsatisfying halt.