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ulken.com · Eric Ulken’s adventures in online journalism

The audacity of meme

Whether or not you believe Barack Obama is Mr. Wonderful, this percolating politics meme is kind of a hoot: Jason Kottke is aggregating tweets that start with "When Obama wins"...

Bringing “dudical!” back

Dudical! is an expression I remember hearing in elementary school. A clever combination of "dude!" and "radical!", it clearly suffered an untimely demise, because a Google search on it returns a paltry 523 results. I consider it my duty to rescue this '80s linguistic gem from obscurity. ...

Sudoku solver

Use this clever program to solve that sudoku that's got you stumped. Or, with some trial and error, use it to create your own. Here's my first attempt (click to enlarge and print):

How to make ice cream from Pepto-Bismol

Wow. (Via Boing Boing.)

Your personal annual report

Wow. This guy made an annual report, à la some Fortune 500 company, except it's an annual report of his life. Scary, but it got me thinking: A lot of the data he uses to compile this is stuff we all amass — through airline tickets, credit card ...

So long, Clare!

On Thursday we bid our art director a proper farewell (and by proper I mean tequila-infused). Add your congrats and good wishes below. a photo gallery... ...and a short video

Peru photos online!

Yes, I've finally posted the photos from my Peru trip back in May. Check out the photo gallery. (No Machu Picchu pics, because my camera ran out of juice before we got there.)

Alternatives to lawyering

So, I get an e-mail from my friend Adele the other day. We've known each other since high school, when we were co-editors of the student newspaper. She recently finished law school, and now she tells me she isn't so keen on the idea of being an attorney ...

I’m all in

I have never been much of a gambler. In Vegas last year I clung to the nickel slots while Neil went high-rolling at the craps tables. But on a trip to Kansas City over the weekend, I was coaxed into joining a poker match at the home of ...

Eric and Neil crash ‘The Tonight Show’

My friend Neil and I managed to see a taping of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" at NBC studios in Burbank. Jay's guests were actor Mark Wahlberg, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and one of my all-time favorite musicians, Sarah McLachlan. This is something I suppose everyone who lives ...

January 25th 2011
Category: News No Comments

Back to the newsroom, off to Seattle

When I left the Los Angeles Times in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis -- a time when the newspaper industry's future looked particularly bleak -- I wondered wistfully if I was walking away from my last newspaper job. I'd worked for newspaper companies my entire career, and despite ...
January 23rd 2011
Category: Views One Comment

Libraries: An appreciation

If I couldn't be a journalist, I think I'd be a librarian. I decided this after spending a lot of time in libraries in the last couple of years and interacting with some very smart (and completely unstuffy) librarians. Maybe it's because, as it turns out, journalists and librarians have a ...
August 20th 2010
Category: Idea file 3 Comments

Flash in the pan?

I am an ex-Flash user. I uninstalled the Flash plug-in on my primary browser about a month ago, and I haven't looked back. Here's how it happened: Back when Apple announced that its forthcoming iPad would lack Flash support, it sounded to me like a boneheaded move. If a device built ...
March 21st 2010
Category: Events No Comments

Continue the discussion here

Thanks to all who turned out today at UBC Robson Square for my workshop on online tools and techniques for journalists. I'm creating this post as a way to continue the discussion online. If you have questions or comments on the topics we discussed, please share them in the comments, ...
March 6th 2010
Category: News No Comments

Checking in from Canada

In the four months since my last post — yes, I'm a terrible blogger — I've moved to Vancouver and started teaching at the University of British Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Among other things, I'm coordinating the school's Integrated Journalism course, required of all first-year students, and advising some ...