Stuff from February, 2005
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2005.
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2005.
Yes, Food at the Binz has taken a very very long hiatus from regularly scheduled viewing, I hope to bring it back with this special edition. In fact, this edition is so special that we feature food not from the Binz Refectory, but from the North Campus Cafeteria. Anyhow, I learned it was theme night for eating there, and that the theme was “Cabin Fever Reliever.” Markoe speculated that we would eat bamboo shoots, which we all concluded would be high in fiber and good overall.
I started a post here sometime ago that said this: “I wish I were better at life.” I will spare myself the indulgence of self-criticism and instead stick with something more uplifting. After all, I can attribute this Funk to a variety of things, none of which will not get better, and none of which are insurmountable. We all know those times, when suddenly, for no good reason at all, you feel some unseen weight pushing you down into the depths of sadness. Patiently waiting for the passing of this burden is the best thing to do, but hard sometimes. Not to say I encourage pacifism when it comes to self-help, but I do condone an acknowledgement of an ultimate limit of what we can do to make things go how we wish. I would much rather spend energy on trying to be who I want to be: an ounce of prevention.
I have said very little about this new design (it was whipped up in a frenzy of about one month), but I have received very positive and constructive opinions on it. It was a decently large pile of work and I have a few small things left to tweak (namely, making QuickMail scroll better) until I rest for an extended time from designing anything online. Nevertheless, to continue in the current feedback-from-readers vein, I wish to post this note from my girlfriend.
LOTR - Catapult? - Thanks, Matt.
Super Bowl 2005 Commercials - The best two are P-Diddy driving a Pepsi truck AND do not forget the Olympus dancing groove. Watch those.
Giraffe Manor - Feed a giraffe from your second floor window.
Second Look at Talby Hand - Now that I see you can get black buttons - that’s an awesome phone.
Headphone MP3 Player - If I did not care about sound quality, these would be it. All things considered, it is a really well-executed idea.
Gizoogle tumbledry - Tumbledry gets jiggy. Consider this excerpt: “Nevertheless, ta continue in tha current brotha vein, I wizzle ta pizzy this note frizzay mah girlfriend cuz I put gangsta rap on tha map.”
Wow. You guys managed to set the all-time record for most comments in one post on that last one. Looks like my site is soaked in sexual inuendo, and I did not even know it! In the next few weeks, I will work on a replacement, decidedly non-spermy graphic to punctuate the end of that horizontal rope divider at the top of each page. Everyone weighed in with some absolutely hilarious pieces of text, including the first ever link posted to the comments, by Richard Roche: an awesome graphic depicting the red end caps to be ovaries in addition to other graphical illustrations. Incidentally, this was strikingly similar to another image used by Mykala to illustrate a similar point.
The problem is this: I keep hoping that if I grow out my hair a little longer, something will happen that will give it some style until I cut it off for spring and summer, as I love to have short hair during the summer weather. In the meantime, I am losing hope for my hair. It is most certainly not “feathered and dangerous” as in Dodgeball … heck it looks like a bird’s nest on top of my head (part of the reason for cutting it before the spring nesting season). So, here I am, trying to decide what to do when it looks a bit like Mel Gibson’s hair back in the day - not quite as long, but it certainly has the weird out of controlness behind the ears. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not saying I look like Mel Gibson - because that’s weird and not what I am striving for.
Mark my words. I will tell you one more time - mark my words, this is what will be coming out so very soon I can taste it. Now, I have heard no industry rumblings about this idea, but one thing I have been inspired by was a wonderfully funny Do-It-Yourself Oakley Thump using the iPod Shuffle. Consider this, the iPod Shuffle is unbelievably small and light (and yes, it is just a glorified USB flash drive … but stay with me here), so this allows it to be used in ways music players have not been used before. People need to think outside of their “box” here (to borrow a corporate clichÉ). You see, the music player no longer has to hook to your headphones via a long, cumbersome cable that twists and turns its way up through every piece of clothing you are wearing - no, the music player can be your headphones now. Before we get to that, I must share my favorite two comments from that DIY Oakley thread I mentioned above.
Man Tends Times Square McDonald - In a tuxedo, to boot. What a great article. He met the CFO of Hitachi, too. New York must be great.
Auto Blog: The New Mustang - Currently gobbling up news, tidbits, factoids. This is the only Ford I would consider buying.
Celica gone in 2006 - There goes my favorite car in the sub-50 grand price range.
Umm … exhuast flame-thrower kit? - I do not know how to react.
Sometimes, collegiate level labs do not work. In some ways, this can be funny, and in others, not quite funny. Simply put, you do not get the results you needed, wanted, or hoped for, and therefore you lose some credit for doing the lab. In fact, at the Universtiy of Minnesota (and probably most places), the TA’s are given a range of acceptable lab result values that will result in full credit. If the numbers are outside of this range, you do not get full credit. Some way to review the “scientific method.” They encourage us to use scientific reasoning and ignore “right and wrong” while we grapple with finding a solution, and then turn around and grade result accuracy. I have yet to see if this applies to my Animal Behavior lab, in which we visited the zoo and observed Japanese snow monkeys. We accessed primary source literature (a lot of Japanese people study the Japanese snow monkeys, believe it or not), formulated a partial ethogram, and then promptly watched our experiment crash and burn.
