The semi-annual link clearance is here!

• Windows 8 comes with a data compression API. I was going to write a Little Program to demonstrate it, but it turns out the MSDN sample pretty much covers it, so I’ll just incorporate it by reference.
• James Mickens says, “Life is terrible: Let’s talk about the Web“. (Mickens appears to be making fun of Sweden in this talk. The candles on the head are a tradition from St. Lucy’s Day.)
• Tony Zhou explains why Jackie Chan is the master of action comedy.
• The formula for an episode of Murder: She Wrote
• I’m Not Russell Wilson, But I Play Him on TV: The story of the people who play football in commercials, movies, and TV shows.
• The show is on past my bedtime, but I was intriguged by how they created the SNL title sequence. Favorite part: bokeh. TL;DR: They used a variety of in-camera techinques.
• I am fascinated by the processes that operate behind the scenes. Floating Feasts describes what it takes to feed an entire cruise ship, specifically Royal Caribbean’s Oasis. A dozen pillow-sized bags of uncooked French fries? “That’s about five minutes’ worth.” The passengers “eat a metric ton of lobster during a typical seven-day cruise.” Also fascinating is how food consumption varies with the type of passengers.
• Wander around the Allure of the Seas, courtesy of Google Street View. (The Allure of the Seas is the sister ship of the Oasis.)
• Because Japan: Bijin-tokei, the “beauty clock”. Operated by the Japanese modeling agency Bijin.
• Because Japan: Another Japanese clock (warning: strange music), this one run by Japanese casual-clothing company Uniqlo. I can’t describe this one except to say that it’s from Japan. (They also have a calendar consisting of tilt-shift time-lapse movies.)
• 6502 flashback: Steve Wozniak’s Sweet 16 interpreter for the 6502. It’s been quipped that the 6502 is really a RISC chip with 256 registers (the zero page), with the caveat that you have to write your program in microcode. Woz does it in 300 bytes. Because he’s Woz.
• 6502 flashback: Floating point routines for the 6502, by Roy Rankin and Steve Wozniak. This, my friends, is how real programmers do it.
• And the last double of the day: Star Trek Continues, Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II. (Bonus reading: Getting every set detail down.)