Stuff from June, 2007
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on June, 2007.
Sunset and Lamp
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on June, 2007.
Just tossed this online to test something.
Testing out RAW shooting on the camera.
Note: To view the changes made to tumbledry, you may need to do a hard refresh. To summarize that link, it’s Ctrl+Shift+R in Firefox, Ctrl+F5 in Internet Explorer, and Command+Shift+R on Macs.
As I cryptically mentioned a couple of posts back, there was a realignment going on at tumbledry. Not a redesign, oh no. Those are rather a bit more costly. Anyhow, the seeds for this evolution in design were planted back in April. You see, I sometimes diddle in photoshop as a way of getting my creative side out (and as a homework break). So, I put together a horizontal grid with a vertical grid and started plunking tumbledry elements in. Thus, this is a realignment in both the vertical and the horizontal sense. Vertically, I have finally found my rhythm, with an 18px baseline. Notice how the horizontal pieces of text (it works best on the front page, I’ve been lazier elsewhere) line up nicely, even with the gaps between images, etc. (This trick is slightly broken on Internet Explorer. Curse you, Internet Explorer.) Oh, and you’ll find the line lengths are quite short. So, you only have to read about 10 words per line. This has been shown (by a few studies) to maximize comprehension. Here’s the idea: the human eye has an arc through which it moves (comfortably). This allows you, at a set distance, to comfortably scan a certain horizontal distance without moving your head. Having to move your head back and forth requires considerably more brain work, and slows down reading comprehension. Restricting the width of the line keeps your eye within its comfortable arc, minimizing head movement and maximizing comprehension. So I think/hope this evolution will serve us well.
As promised: an addendum to my realignment notes—the revised comment ranking system. Nils mentioned that the challenge of earning new comment ranks was good and necessary. So, I have (very nearly) maintained the difficulty in getting ranks. There are still iron crosses at 1000 and colored iron crosses at 5000 comments. However, Dan argued (and I originally noted) that 125 commenting thresholds were rather widespread markers of achievement. So, I have changed things a bit. Now, vertical bars next to a commenter’s name represent the number of comments they have left, and therefore their rank. Each vertical bar represents 100 comments and every time the tumbledryer leaves 10 comments, their vertical bar increases in height. After 100 comments, a new vertical bar grows up next to the previous one.
Tulsa time capsule - In 1957, folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma put together a time capsule to be opened 50 years later. That works out to 9 days from now that it will be opened. Thing is, they took an entire, brand new gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe and stuck it underground. Will the car be rusted? Will it have survived? We will find out soon. Oh, and here’s the best part:
You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy - Ostensibly, this is a post about football, but the title, “You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy,” applies to so many things, that I simply had to share.
Toilet seats down: a scientific and humorous analysis - It turns out that game theory, specifically Nash equilibrium, can be employed to analyze the situation of the toilet seat being left up or down. The author here, building on previous examinations (which were published in peer reviewed publications), addresses the “costs of yelling.” That is, when anger is directed by a woman against a man who has not left the seat in the correct position.
Nathan Sawaya builds incredible Lego sculptures - I’ve linked to Lego builders before, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. The artistry in capturing the human form in Legos is great. I especially like the yellow guy, with Legos spilling out.
An Islamic bank is the majority owner of the Caribou Coffee chain: true! - This actually kind of makes sense, this Islam bank has about an 88% stake in the company… and it makes sense, because Wikipedia tells me that coffee became popular in Islamic countries with the ban of alcohol by the Shari’ah.
What “dynamic range” means - Take sixty quick seconds and learn what it means when the audio engineers of today are required by record companies to produce music that is lower in quality than previous generations. By “lower in quality,” I do not mean the music itself.
Instant camera attached to cat - When you attach a camera to a cat and set it up to take pictures of the things it sees, you get to see some interesting things.
Well, I thought the hardest part is done by developing the software and soldering the controller board. But it is more the housing to protect the camera. You can not imagine what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled if you want to equip your cat with a camera. I built a small housing out of plastic plates and put it on the collar of the cat for evaluation purpose. This housing was last seen as the cat walked out of the door… Probably the wires I used for attaching were not strong enough. Or someone released the cat from the interesting looking piece. For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned - dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot:
- Shock resistant - cat jumps from tree, housing hit ground
- Scratch resistant - Cat cleans itself with claws or sneaks above the ground
- Water resistant - If cat drinks, the piece around their neck will hang into water
- Theft resistant - If equipment draws attention cat will loose it, especially if it is easily removable.
As we were driving home from the Twins game, John switched the radio to The Current last night (thanks for the free ticket, guys!). Anyhow, the radio played a song from the Scottish band Travis. These guys have another album out, called “The Boy With No Name.” The song I heard, and the entire album, are really surprisingly good. You guys may remember a song from three albums ago (about 7 years back) called “Why Does it Always Rain On Me.” Remember? Anyhow, Wikipedia talks about the rollercoaster of the album that song was on in 1999:
Fantastic off camera lighting kit - Some time ago, Mykala linked me to an article at Strobist about building your own softbox for $10. Since then, I have regularly dropped in to read the website responsible for that tutorial. It’s all about how to get your light off of your camera and into the space around you, and creating extremely interesting effects, etc. Turns out that if I actually had a camera with a PC sync terminal (just about any camera except my own, ha), the least expensive lighting kit would be perfect. You get a great manual flash, off-camera connecting cords, a tripod, a diffusing umbrella (like the kind from your school portraits), and other extraordinarily useful accessories. Plus, for a bit more money, you can connect cameras like my own. Just takes a bit more fiddling.
A etymological analysis of why you can say “hots” in lieu of “heats” - Beginning with the omission of a letter from a headline to say “hots up,” this article goes on into some intriguing territory:
Unbelievably cute kittens - The photography is pretty good, too—nice narrow depth of field, well lit with a flash.
Randomly snapped as I was walking to the backyard. My apologies.
This celebrity (Kyra Sedgwick) was talking on Conan a couple of nights ago about how she doesn’t understand text messaging in general, specifically the acronyms in use by today’s youth. (As a side note, I do note understand text messaging for two reasons: (1) cost of it stateside and (2) the absolutely atrociously horridly awful method for entering in words using a keypad designed for dialing numbers. Both problems have been solved over in Japan (who is generally about 14 months ahead of us in cell phone technology), so I would expect text messaging to seem like a more viable option for real communication in the next couple of years). Anyhow, this actress said that she always thought that the abbreviation “lol” stood for “lots of love.” So, she’d send a text message to her kids using the abbreviation her way. For example: “great job at the soccer game tonight! lol.”
Fulfilling a promise in an extremely late manner (it’s been almost a year, sorry!), I have made Mykala’s own website, complete with archives of her previous two websites officially available online at http://www.unicorndog.com
Not too long ago, June 9 to be precise, the daily photograph journal at tumbledry passed 2 years of daily photos. For the approximately 730 pictures posted, about 7,000 pictures have been taken. So, a little under 10% of the past two year’s photographs are represented here. I believe an evolution in style, subject matter, and especially post-processing is evident. One can also see the devolution of my lens—it is a very cheap “kit” lens, and after two years of service, it is beginning to show its age through not-so-sharp imagery. My idea, however, is that I should be able to still get good pictures with a bad lens.
Over at Unicorndog - This made me laugh out loud: “Happy Father’s Day to those of you who are dads, or have dads, or may be dads but are waiting on paternity tests.” We should engineer a commenting system over there.
Edit: This was originally titled “Over at Unicorncob.” I have no idea why.
Sometimes you need a Wikipedia whiteboard - “I’ve got some Sharpies in a drawer in case I need to lock it from editing.”
On a whim a couple of weeks ago, I decided to ratchet up my running distance. I’m doing ten mile runs now at around eight and a half minute pace. This isn’t bad, though I recently heard my cousin Tim threw down a half marathon (the Gary Bjorklund) in 90 minutes, which raises the bar. Anyhow, the first time I got back from this run, nearly dead, I drank a lot of water. But that’s not the point of the story. I then went to the basement and mapped the run out on Gmap-Pedometer.com. This yielded the picture below.
Improving the 2012 Olympic’s logo - One look at the London Olympics logo, and you’ll understand why it could use some improving. This little summary showcases an idea that combines the visual identity of the Royal Air Force with that of the ubiquitous olympic rings. It won’t be used, but it’s brilliant.
I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Alex, how do I get business cards that don’t stink?” Well, first you’ll want to design them in Photoshop, using a high DPI (300 or so), preferably in a vector format, should you want to resize that beautiful logo you just made for your burgeoning business. Now, I can’t make vector art (I haven’t had the time to learn), so you can get away with a 300 DPI version of whatever your logo is. I cheat a bit and use elements of type combined in a novel way to generate my logo, which makes it “vector” in a way. However, the “wicked worn look” has to be redone at each resolution. Anyways.
Sometimes, when you’re job searching, you are looking up businesses and their locations in your area. Then, you find yourself Google Mapsing Hawaii, specifically the spot where you vacationed last…
The father of the father of Engadget - Peter Rojas eulogizes his father, the man who inspired his passion for gadgets and technology. A heartfelt, moving, piece of writing. The paragraph that struck me most:
1983: Stereophile’s jubilant review of the first CD player - You see, when the compact disc came into the consumer space, it was a pretty big deal. An entire host of problems were completely eliminated:
… the sound was so opulently gorgeous it almost defied belief! It was a total incarnation of the perfectionist’s wildest dreams: rich, velvety, airy, awesome, liquid, yet incredibly detailed. There were none of the analog disc’s problems. No marginal mistracking, no subtle VTA-error distortions, no disc-resonance smearing, no feedback-induced low-end boom or mud, no ticks or pops or pressing grumbles even at the highest listening levels. And there was no analog-tape flutter or modulation noise or transient-rounding or print-through or hiss.
A cornucopia of unique business cards - See anything you like, Mykala? I liked two of the dentist ones—the one with floss threaded between teeth at the bottom, and the other with an embossed impression of teeth. Fun!
Nothing like putting the cart before the horse.
1992: Philharmonic plays Carnival of the Animals - Katy took me to see Joshua Bell at the Ordway for my birthday this past May. In addition to the violins sounding gorgeous, Mr. Bell was (to my untrained ears) awe-inspiringly amazing. (For someone who made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 18, I should hope so!)
This picture is hilarious.
Target Pharmacy - Amazing labeling system for pharmaceuticals that Target rolled out a couple of years ago. Also, I haven’t been able to find it, but they have this fantastic logo for their pharmacy that looks like a pill, and the little specs in one side are tiny Target logos. I thought it was really eye catching, both from far away and up close.
Obscure slang: 23 skidoo - “23 skidoo (sometimes 23 skiddoo) is an American slang phrase popularized in the early twentieth century, first appearing before World War I and becoming popular in the Roaring Twenties. It generally refers to leaving quickly. One nuance of the phrase suggests being rushed out by someone else. Another is taking advantage of a propitious opportunity to leave, that is, “getting [out] while the getting’s good.”
…
Another source of the term has been rumored to come from the area around the Flat Iron building on 23rd street in NYC. Apparently, winds would swirl around the building and in the roaring 20’s groups of men would gather to watch women walk by with their skirts being blown up by the winds. The police would then ask the men to break-it-up and leave… hence the term 23 skidoo.”
I feel that when I’m old
I’ll look at you and know
The world was beautiful
Then you tell me
You say that love goes anywhere
In your darkest time, it’s just enough to know it’s there
Let’s set aside the cryptic message of the lyrics in my previous post and look to the bare poetry of this one; it’s really really nice. This is a great song. It’s by Syd as in Syd Matters the French musician, not Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. The name of the song is “Here’s a Love Song.” The previous link is a more produced version than the one I have (I’ve just guitar and singing), but I think you’ll enjoy it, nonetheless. Oh, and the bridge in that linked version is new to me, too. Anyway…
Record industry - doomed - The music executives were dinosaurs; therefore, the article concludes, their inability to adapt seems to spell the end of the record industry (emphasis mine):
… many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels’ failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. “They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster — that was the moment that the labels killed themselves,” says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm. “The record business had an unbelievable opportunity there. They were all using the same service. It was as if everybody was listening to the same radio station. Then Napster shut down, and all those 30 or 40 million people went to other [file-sharing services].”
David Pogue: iPhone Review - A great video review, in funny narrative format, from David Pogue of the New York Times—the Apple iPhone. It’s nice to see the iPhone in real settings, without all the digital retouching done on PR photos. It truly is tremendously thin and sleek.
Mykala and I saw some great science demos on Jay Leno; they were centered around a chemical called sulfur hexafluoride. Heretofore, I hadn’t heard of it. It has some really unique properties - for one, it’s a super dense gas, and so it flows like an invisible liquid. You can float boats (well, makeshift aluminum foil rafts) on it when it’s in a fish tank, and it puts out fires like no one’s business (which is the reason it is used in electrical installations). It is extremely non-reactive, not unlike Teflon or other perfluorinated hydrocarbons (though, it’s a sulfur compound). Anyhow, I got to looking it up on Sigma Aldrich, which is the chemical company I ordered chemicals from when I worked organic synthesis at St. Thomas. So, the 99.75% pure form of sulfur hexafluoride clocks in at a smidge over a dollar per gram. Mykala estimated the fish tank filled with the stuff was about 50 liters. So, let’s see… at STP, one mole of an ideal gas takes up about 22.4L… which means they probably used about 3 moles of the stuff. It weighs about 146 grams per mole, sooo that’s north of $450 in sulfur hexafluoride. I guess they don’t skimp for Late Night science demonstrations.