Stuff from May, 2006
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on May, 2006.
All Together, Now
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on May, 2006.
If you place your chin on a windowsill and contemplate the land stretching out from you and the sky curving down to meet it, you’ll notice things you never noticed before. This slow down in your frenetic pace illustrates planes making white pencils in the sky and the clouds drifting past. It’s during times such as these that I realize my ability to occupy my time with the most simple of activities is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. I find myself running away from my perfectionism into a purgatory of still meditation. My problem is that a job half-started is a job not completed to my standards. While this means I never stop a project in the middle, it prevents me from taking breaks along the way or even starting. It’s all or nothing for my mind, a tendency I would desperately like to overcome. I’d like to study for an hour and break for 15 minutes early in the day, rather than study for three hours straight at the end.
Girlspeak to English Dictionary - Some of these aren’t the greatest, but there are some real gems in here.
My Favorite Natalie Dee cartoon yet - The tree looks so sad.
Americans Are Not Healthy - This study found that Americans are quite sick, when compared to other industrialized nations. Now, I was doubtful, but check out all the variables they statistically corrected for: “when you compare like groups in the US and the UK, people in the US are considerably sicker than their counterparts in the UK. This is after factors such as age, race, income, education and gender were taken into consideration. The most startling conclusion was that although the richest Americans were better off than the poorest Americans, they did no better (health-wise) than the poorest of the English.”
Every once and a while, though far too often for it to be acceptable, I walk into the fourth floor elevator in the Owens Science Building on campus and punch the Floor 4 button. Then I hit it a couple more times and impatiently wonder why the door shut and the elevator is not moving.
Then I realize that, if I want to travel downwards, perhaps I should select a floor that is below the one I am on.
Awesome cell phone attachment - Ok, it looks like a rotary phone receiver, with a curly cord and everything, but then it plugs into your cell phone. So basically, you are talking into a phone receiver with the cord running into your pocket.
This gun launches pink teddy bears - Don’t worry, the attached parachute opens at the apex of the bear’s flight, preventing any injury. Apparently this is for weddings.
Why the Internet Is Threatened aka - Ok, stay with me on this one: in this link, Tim Berners-Lee (commonly known as the inventor of the internet), writes an article about why the Internet as we know it is threatened. The problem, in my inadequate nutshell, is this: companies in the US are tending to put preference to one type of traffic over another, which could eventually extend to, say, Comcast making your connection to Barnes and Noble Booksellers’ website much faster than Amazon in exchange for payment from Barnes and Noble. This is a serious problem as it undermines the nature of the Internet.
A Prarie Home Companion - The movie had it’s Twin Cities premiere here tonight complete with horse drawn carriages, a parade, a screening at the Fitzgerald Theater, and a party at the Landmark Center.
LeBron James On Pace To Become Youngest Player To Turn 22 - The Onion satire - how you put others to shame with your brilliance.
This is the Bigger Faster Stronger store - I have to keep these guys in mind for when I build a Home Gym®™©. First, though, I have to live about another 10 years, get a home, and get a job. Thank goodness I have tags on this website to look this stuff up!
Paintball in Hudson Wisconsin - Guess what we are doing this summer? I’ll be taking preliminary sign-ups in the comments to this link.
Word of the Day: glomp - “… in the grey area between a caring embrace, and a flying leap to tackle someone.” Now, glomp is certainly a good word, and I will use it more in the future. However, the word “spudger” also came to my attention tonight. It doesn’t scratch plastic or metal, so you can pry apart really awesome computers with it.
Church Sign Generator - Well, this is genius. “Ever seen those signs in front of churches with the moveable letters? Ever wanted to rearrange the letters to make your own church sign? Well, now you can.”
I had this fantastic shot of lightening, but it got overexposed so all you see is this purple flash of light. This is the next best one, unfortunately.
This poor guys car got stuck as a Papa John’s delivery car.
“The fastest and most expensive production car ever”: the Bugatti Veyron - What amazes me is how cool looking this vehicle is. It looks like it took the styling of the Audi/Volkswagen cars (especially in the headlights and dorsal bumps) and injected some serious steroids. I guess this would make sense, since Bugatti is in the Volkswagen group.
I recently developed an interest in very tall structures when I found out that the tallest supported structure in the world is not far from me: it’s in North Dakota. This structure is not freestanding, it is a guyed radio tower called the KVLY-TV mast that broadcasts to an area of 22,686 square miles (for comparison, this is more than two states of Massachusetts). For further comparison, the mast is 628.8m high: compare to the current tallest building in the world, Tapei 101, at 508m. That said, since I was overdue for a hair-brained idea, I’ve decided to drive over and see this thing up close this summer (and photograph it). We’ll put somone tall next to it for scale … even though it looks like you have to get literally about a mile away to get the entire mast in your camera viewfinder. Before I leave this topic and move on to the tangential research it inspired, I must note an interesting tidbit about the tower: the top is, apparently, accessible by “service elevator or ladder.” Is it just me, or does it seem like a really bad idea to climb a ladder that is 2,063 (4 tenths of a mile) high? Goodness.
Network attached storage - This is a note to future me. I finally found out what NAS stands for - basically, it’s a rack of hard drives that allows your computers to talk to a chunk of managed hard drives for redundant networked data storage. This is exactly what I have been thinking would be appropriate for the digital person that I tend to be: a central place for photos, video, and data.
The ugliest dog in the world … until he died last year - Oh. My. God.
As an antidote to that previous link - Some adorable baby birds - the one on the left has amazingly vivid colors.
And now, tumbledry presents things I have seen in the past couple of days. Thing 1: I saw Conan O’Brien doing his opening show of the week in Chicago. The audience was huge and almost out of control. It was like a rock concert sometimes. Mr. T gave Conan a tour of the city and other hijinks ensued. Late Night is such great television. I watched the show for longer than I had intended to, but the time was well spent. You may ask the question “why does a show go on the road” but I would counter with … why not?
Women are surprisingly effective at reading personality from a face - Women are better than expected at determining if a man is good for short term or long-term relationship … simply by reading their face.
Best wedding photography I have ever seen - Check out this, this, this, and this. Unbelievable.
Visiting the vet - A comedy sketch featuring Hugh Laurie of House, M.D.! Thank you for the link, Ryan. Where have I seen the other guy in the scene? Somebody has to know this.
Tom Cruise nearly fails to open a door - On the fastest production car in the world … I think you’ll remember which one that is (hint: I linked to it recently).
We’ve completed another step on the journey to a better commenting system at tumbledry. There are now ranking icons that allow one to see, at a glance, the seniority of a tumbledry commenter. I decided to name these “irons.” It fits in with the theme of tumbledrying … see? However, it is rather difficult to make an 11 pixel high iron look like a nice stylized iron, so I have gone with some different icons to indicate status. The tumbledry commenter, after submitting 20 comments under the same name and email address, will find themselves awarded a gray bullet. This gray bullet indicates that the user has left between 20 and 124 comments. Upon leaving 125 comments using the same name and email address, the tumbledry commenter receives their first colored bullet. This is generally an occasion to celebrate. Rankings continue along these lines … another 125 comments earns another gray bullet and 125 more comments changes that second bullet to a colored one. Users are notified of the number of comments remaining until their next promotion when they visit the front page of tumbledry. When a user leaves one thousand comments, their bullets are condensed into a higher honor: the gray maltese cross. Feel free to throw a party for this occasion. 5000 comments and the tumbledryer (we’ve discussed the spelling of this term previously, I think) earns the highly prestegious red and blue maltese cross. These crosses are accompanied by the usual bullets that track the commenter’s progress towards another cross.
40 hours a week in the summer, 2-3 classes and labs during the school year, this science building is nearly my home.
Relative cost of video game consoles throughout the years - Check this out: the Sega Saturn, when first released, was equivalent to $524 in today’s money. Compare to the forthcoming PS3’s $500-$600 mark.
Dutch store celebrates its 10,000th shoplifter - Too good to pass up. Via kottke (only my third visit in the past 2 months!).
Stadium Arcadium is good - It would seem from the reviews that the Pepper’s “Stadium Arcadium” is a pretty darn good album. An excerpt from this great Rolling Stone review:
” Much of the credit for the album’s depth — and the swelling, ever-morphing, headphone-candy arrangements that boost every track — goes to the band’s not-so-secret weapon, John Frusciante. It’s been clear since his return to the band on 1999’s Californication that Frusciante came away from his near-fatal heroin addiction with new musical superpowers, and they’re in full bloom on Stadium Arcadium. … after 2002’s By the Way, the band’s least funky album, the bassist finally cuts loose again here, reasserting himself as the best non-hip-hop reason to buy a subwoofer.”
More photorealistic’ness - This is more stylized than that picture in the link I just posted a few weeks ago … but seriously, computer generated animation is looking better everyday.
Michael Jackson. A Star Tribune review of a local opera. The musical group Barenaked Ladies. How could these topics be anything but non sequiturs in a stream-of-conscious rambling? I did not know either until about ten minutes ago. That’s when I decided to write this post instead of simply linking to the Star Tribune’s review of an opera about a man called the “Elephant Man.” He lived in the mid 1800s and had an extremely rare genetic disorder called “Proteus syndrome.” He is pictured at right. More on that picture in a second. You see, I was reading that opera review, and frankly could have cared less about the actual opera … I was fascinated about the real story of this man who was shunned from society and what disease he actually had. Towards the end, the review finally mentions this man, Joseph Merrick. It says he died simply by laying flat; the weight of his head broke his neck. It was three feet around at time of death.
I continue to stumble on wedding pictures - This is a great candid.
Hilarious Hitachi Press Release - Who knew that hard drives could rock like this? Seriously, visit this link and do not stop watching until you get to the disco portion. Brilliant.
What in bloody heck is this - I ended up on this page when I used google images to search for “voting icon.” You see, I’m looking for ideas for the icon you’ll be able to click to vote a user’s comments up.
A Man Using Computers to Hear Music - A great story of the very real ways advances in technology can benefit those who depend on them for their senses. I would imagine Stephen Hawking’s setup has improved by orders of magnitude over the years.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.
— Stephen Hawking
She hung up the phone and I listened as, in a twist of irony, the dial-tone harmonized perfectly with George Winston’s “Living Without You” playing in the background. I listened until the tone stopped and the busy signal took over, beeping a relentless rhythm against my tired eardrums. I wondered if I would ever understand love, why it makes us do what we do, what it should be like, who are models of it, or even something as deceivingly simple as its definition.
The Emperor finds out about Death Star mishap - Thank you stop-motion geekery.
Unbelievable old school remixed dancing - They took old footage and put it to new music. This is incredible dancing - someone teach me.
10 Things I Hate About Commandments - The classic movie remixed into a trailer for a comedy.
Word of the day: aquitard - This word just made me laugh out loud.
I’ll miss being able to take these sunset shots next year.
A 17 foot mechanical giraffe - It seats six. It’s like the pipe dream of a child erector set owner.
Follow further developments here.
Make cool shapes in water - Frighteningly simple, yet sophisticated enough fluid dynamics to make it into the news on Nature, publisher of the prestigious primary source.
The O RLY Owl - I laughed very much outloud when I first saw this picture. Thanks, Matt!
A message for you - Please, have some dignity, folks. (Thanks again, Matt!)
Not the dynamic range I saw when I took this, but still interesting.
Over the Hedge has a scene in it that made me cry tears of laughter. I was absolutely in stitches during it. Thing is, my favorite scene is not my usual physical comedy (of which the movie is chock full of brilliant set-ups and take-downs), but a brilliant twist on an idea. I’ve already told Matt, Steve, John, Erin, and Dan what this scene is … and I fear I may have ruined its impact in doing so. SO, here we go … if you (1) forgot which scene I said was my favorite or (2) never heard which scene it was in the first place, and (3) have seen the movie … do try and guess which scene I am talking about. I’ll be sure to leave a comment about it after more of you have had the chance to see the movie. And see the movie you will. I rather mistakenly said “if you do not see the movie, I will take you and pay for you to see it.” Some threat.
Top 10 Worst Movies of All Time - Be sure to have an ad-blocker, the content is good but the ads are annoying. Try this:
“It is famous for having an opening nine-minute sequence in which nothing happens but endless driving through the countryside, due to someone forgetting to add in the credits.”
This was Dan’s old Redi Whip container.
Really fun JavaScript Tetris - Now, with music! The related article about his bet that he could write this code in 1 day.
Joan’s Broccoli Madness - If I had been drinking milk when I first viewed this picture, said beverage would have sprayed out my nose.
Two days ago, I moved out of my home for the past three years: Cretin Hall, Room 500. I moved in to this unique room during the second month of my freshman year of college. After four weeks of rooming with someone I had absolutely nothing in common with, I finally cajoled residence life into giving me the key to the vacant single on the top floor of my 1890’s dorm.
This is the last time I took a picture of a sunset from my room in Cretin 500.
Also, Dan has a candle.
Stunning solar powered lamp - The genius is Damian O’Sullivan’s use of the solar panels is to enhance and become integral parts of the design, rather than be relegated to incidental afterthoughts.
