Stuff from October, 2007
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on October, 2007.
Sky and Tree Blend
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on October, 2007.
Ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous! This is a video of crazy dice stacking from Gizmodo: “Dice Stacking a Camera Trick? Nope, Here’s Slo-Mo Proof.” More? Why yes, there is.
I’m going to have to quote John Gruber quoting Annie Dillard, just because this is so good:
“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
This “instructive” video details How to Shower: Women vs. Men. You see, it’s the same word/verb, but it results in two very very different activities (depending on your gender).
A birthday present from Katy back in the day.
A question for today: if your wife is pregnant with your first child and it is “take your child to work day,” then does your wife come to your place of work?
Now I’ll bet you’re wondering why I haven’t posted some new pictures for a while, aren’t you? Me, too. See, these really big birds came by and snatched the camera from my hands when I was trying to take a picture of a… no, no, that’s not it. Well, the answer is quite simple, really — I just finished moving out to Saint Paul, into my first apartment off campus. Moving into your own place where you cook your own meals is particularly difficult since kitchens need many many many many little items to make things work. You can run scenarios through in your head all you want, but really you just have to attempt to cook something, then write down everything you don’t have. The resulting list can get long.
Here are some pictures of a real-life wireframe of a Toyota Camry. The effect is incredibly convincing, especially in the high-contrast picture where the folks are lifting the model into a truck. Apparently, this was for a commercial.
I never knew that bonsai trees could look so stunningly realistic. Certainly, they are very real and alive tiny trees, but the trimming and maintenance patterns employed in this example by John Naka are tree-mendous. Ha! The caption for that linked picture:
Every Friday afternoon this fall is another round of layer tennis — it’s an online game played live where two designers face off against one another; each receives 15 minutes per volley to riff off the other’s image. The game takes the pace of design and increases it by a coupla (sic for humor) orders of magnitude, giving spectators the option to watch the creative process unfold within the minds of two talented artists. Humor, beauty, and speed combine for a truly unique experience. Playing today is a man named Chuck Anderson, who has a vivacious, one-of-a-kind style… here’s a short bio by Jason Kottke:
I am reading about the Hearst Tower this morning. In addition to it’s stunning, organic-looking design, it’s environmentally friendly:
Hearst Tower is the first green building completed in New York City, with a number of environmental considerations built into the plan. The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone. Polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. Rain collected on the roof is stored in a tank in the basement for use in the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby.
Fruity scented.
Picture update coming soon - it’s been about two weeks since I put new pictures up! This will be exciting. I’ll try to get some good ones up. In the meantime, listen to John Mayer’s song “3x5.” Or, leave your own recommendation for me.
Purchased these for Mykala at Whole Foods for Sweetest Day.
National Meatloaf Appreciation Day is today. Perhaps you’d like to know more?
You may recall that we declared today National Meatloaf Appreciation Day to celebrate the unique combination of comfort and innovation that meatloaf embodies. We asked readers—and the Serious Eats team—to make a meatloaf, document the process and share their results.
From Mykala’s Madre.
For some reason, I really like this picture. I think it’s the subtle sunlight.
It’s not impossible, but not exactly straightforward, to engineer an argument against this statement:
That’s just the start. Why didn’t Microsoft implement some really awesome tools to assist with driver and hardware management? What they have is so basic! They have BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollars and this is the best that they can do?
Honestly, Windows XP isn’t terrible as an operating system; if you stick to simple stuff and don’t expect too much, it can serve you well. But in terms of bang-for-the-buck, it must be the worst piece of software ever. Because if it’s the best that a company can do with more money than most (e.d.: ‘some’) countries, well that just says that the company in question is pathetic.
A recent article by Marc Hedlund (who writes the Wheaties for Your Wallet blog) covers a paper entitled Consumer Myopia and Information Suppression in Crowded Markets. If you scanned too quickly over that title, think about it once more: it means that when consumers don’t take the time to analyze the full extent of their purchases/services in a given market, then they will get overcharged by companies taking advantage of mis/dis/missing-information.
Since the last science article I wrote here was pretty successful, I’ve set to work on another one: this time the topic is an intriguing part of global warming. I think you’ll like it.
Target is like Toys “R” Us for twentysomethings.
This picture consistently makes me feel dizzy.
I’m filing my own bug report for tumbledry here. Has anyone noticed that when you mouseover Dan’s comments, there’s a thing that says “A partial iron” instead of loading an image? Well, that’s not the intended behavior of the comment code - it’s a rounding error that should never have made it past bug testing. Nevertheless, here we are, months after I recoded the ranking system… and this ugly bug pops up. I’m working on a fix, and more pictures. So that’s good.
For you native Minnesotans out there — perhaps you can confirm or deny your experiences with Minnesota nice. The Wikipedia entry about Minnesota nice had the following list:
The illustrious Kottke recently linked a piece from the New York Times about Jewish Delis. While the following quote does nothing to summarize the article, I thought it stood on its own pretty well:
This one, on the other hand, smells of apple cider and cinnamon.
If you are in the Twin Cities area November 6, and whether you are ostensibly a ‘liberal’ or not, you should see Paul Krugman speak. John Gruber calls him “the world’s best political commentator” and even wrote “I didn’t mind paying the $50 a year for TimesSelect — I’d pay that just to read Paul Krugman and Frank Rich.” Krugman’s most recent book is called The Conscience of a Liberal. Here is a quick summary from Andrew Leonard’s recent review of the book in Salon magazine:
My sister Katy is closing in on oral exams, which are an important milestone on her way to math Ph.D. stardom! With the goal of encouraging her, I’ve excerpted sentences from a recent Computerworld article about celebrities with math majors:
“I do not have to build a perfect wall today. I just have to lay a perfect brick. Just lay one brick, dude.”
Here’s an excerpt from “Stuff You Didn’t Know,” which (among other things) explains why English (though lacking grammatical gender), is still unbelievably difficult for non-native speakers:
Quite decorative.
Welcome to the October Picture Vacuum. We’ve come up a bit short this month, but I’ll hop back on that horse. Photography will resume!
Slashdot has an article titled The Real Mother of All Bombs, 46 Years Ago; inevitably, the discussion turned to Cold War politics. I found this comment to be particularly interesting:
