Stuff from December, 2007
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on December, 2007.
Sun and Lake Superior
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on December, 2007.
Weightless dogs are very funny, especially when they appear from out of nowhere.
I will print this out and put it up somewhere, I promise you that. It is a unicorn eating a bowl of glitter — love the style of Koford’s artwork.
This picture of an LA transit station is unfreakinbelievable. The future called and said “hey, I’m no longer stereotyped as ugly!”
No new picture here
Eliciting the response
Horrors! No picture?
Dentistry, cleaning
Recently took over me
And all of my time
Kindly understand
More pics will be posted soon
For now, please sit tight
The Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh is, hands down, the greatest educational building I have ever seen.
One of the foremost Gothic architects of the time, Philadelphian Charles Klauder, was hired to design the tower. The design took two years to finish, with the final plan attempting to fuse the idea of a modern skyscraper with the tradition and ideals of Gothic architecture.
Question of the day: how was this photo taken? The guy is suspended so far above the water, so high up. Someone guessed a trampoline… I’m thinking that’s the simplest explanation, but perhaps they found a way to catapult him off the back of a boat while it was moving, then as they drove away they took the picture.
In a good example of the type of real writing/reporting that I read Gizmodo for, the popular tech magazine recently wrote about Zetix, a fabric that can stop multiple car bombs without sustaining damage. Zetix uses a relatively new material science technique called “auxetics,” whereby materials get thicker instead of thinner when they are stretched. As a special bonus, the material uses a lower concentration of special polymer threads per unit of material, which reduces its cost.
I once read in some extended piece about Roger Ebert that writing never came with any sort of difficulty for him. Apparently, he’d come in to the office, sit down for a certain amount of time, and stand up with a finished column in hand. Part of this ability surely stems from the fact that he is truly someone who loves movies. From this great love has grown great knowledge of cinema — so what I really appreciate about his writing is his subtle incorporation of that knowledge. While our local yokel movie reviewer always hits you over the head with movies he has seen by name-dropping a slew of films, Ebert incorporates the experiences gained from other films, not necessarily their titles. Therefore, I am inclined to trust his review of the psychological thriller Awake. Ebert’s conclusion, I believe, speaks to his experience as a reviewer:
Warner Chappell Music owns the copyright to the song “Happy Birthday to You.” You may view the lyrics and request a license for performing the song in public. Can I get a “lame”?
Nils writes:
This video describes visually and aurally what Indian culture is all about: Benny Lava. I have never seen a more educational video on Indians than this one right here.
I want to be Benny Lava,
Nils
The 18th Century Sundial and Compass is a great gift idea for that wanderer in your life who also has a timeless (har) sense of style. This isn’t a hint as a gift for me (I could use a kitchen table, frankly), but I thought I’d pass it along.
Confucius say: “Man who run behind car get exhausted, but man who run in front of car get tired.”
The parking garage of the Library of Kansas City looks like a bunch of huge books lined up against one another. The Charlotte’s Web book looks exactly how I remember it.
Matt Haughey’s Thoughts going through my mind while at the dentist, listening to my iPod and on nitrous for the first time piques my curiosity about the day at dental school where you practice novocaine injections on your peers. Hmm, I wonder if everyone has to practice gas, too.
Part of some directions to a Christmas party.
This morning, I had an 8:30 meeting on the sixth floor of the pilot process/laboratory building next to the building in which I work. I sprinted up 6 flights of stairs to wake myself up (and to get to the floor the meeting was on). The view from the conference room was incredible.
You see, 3M’s campus is covered in oak trees, and they all got a thick coating of frost last night. So, this morning, a diffuse reddish-golden glow shone over the entire scene — it looked like the kind of view you would have from a castle in a storybook. With some effort, I stopped admiring the brilliant colors of the perfect dream-like winter landscape and focused my thoughts on the meeting ahead. I wondered if any one of my colleagues were as distracted as myself by the beauty behind them. Perhaps, I mused, decades in cubes and laboratories stunts one’s appreciation of the transient beauty of nature. It was like a Schumann opus playing behind a group of deaf people.
I love little facts like the one from a Wikipedia article on the White Sands National Monument:
Unlike dunes made of quartz-based sand crystals, the gypsum does not readily convert the sun’s energy into heat and thus can be walked upon safely with bare feet, even in the hottest summer months. In areas accessible by car, children frequently use the dunes for downhill sledding.
As a web developer who has struggled with Internet Explorer for, well, nigh on 8 years… this is hilarious:
“Internet Explorer’s CSS rendering: WYSIWTF.”
We now return you to your regularly scheduled tumbledry’age’ing’ster’ling’ly.
Note the time - the photographer never sleeps!
That spot of color in the distance I left because it is a neat looking sign.
On July 19, 2006, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired what is largely considered the best explanation of the Net Neutrality Act ever put together. Please listen closely (and laugh along, too) — if opposition to Net Neutrality gains any traction, then internet as we know it will be done for. Stay informed, voters!
This is just about the only t-shirt I ever wear these days — it’s kinda silly, but it makes me happy.
Consider it part of my down payment on an education at the U of M.
Did a bit of masking to get this effect right.
This past January, The New York Times had an article: Tears Are Shed at the White House for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq. Here are the details of that marine’s actions:
But the events of April 14, 2004, changed everything. That day, Corporal Dunham and his men were in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border, when they received reports that insurgents had ambushed a marine convoy. Corporal Dunham and his men boarded Humvees and headed toward the area, where they spotted a convoy of cars filled with Iraqis fleeing, according to various accounts.
The patrol led by Corporal Dunham stopped the Iraqi convoy and began inspecting the vehicles for weapons. As Corporal Dunham inspected one vehicle, a man jumped out and grabbed him by the throat. Two other marines ran over to subdue the attacker, who dropped a grenade, according to the accounts. It was then that Corporal Dunham made a fateful decision: he threw his Kevlar helmet and held it down over the grenade. He died a few days later from his wounds .
The Foo Fighter’s latest single, ‘The Pretender’, off of their newest album “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” is one hell of a song. I use “hell” here instead of my standard “heck” because this is rock, and rock music deserved profanities in descriptions of it. So, give ‘The Pretender’ a listen. If you don’t get it the first time, give it another try or two. You’ll come around.
This commercial for Cingular (now AT&T) is the one with the butcher… and it is hilarious. “I mean… we probably weigh the…” Brilliant ad by BBDO.
Some more masking — since the low light levels create color noise in the dark areas, I masked out the center area of interest and turned the outside edges to black and white. That way, your eyes are attracted to the colors of the Christmas lights, and not the colors from the sensor noise.
A diversion. The pattern is the F-117A Nighthawk, the paper is cotton letterhead from the sold-off 3M Pharma division.
Items like this make history fun:
Gimli Glider is the nickname of an Air Canada aircraft which was involved in an infamous aviation incident. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran completely out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12,000m) altitude, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba.
The subsequent investigation revealed corporate failures and a chain of minor human errors which combined to defeat built-in safeguards, deceiving Captain Robert Pearson into accepting an aircraft that should never have been flown. In addition, fuel loading was miscalculated through misunderstanding of the recently adopted metric system.
Fever dreams
They can only haunt you
Until the fever breaks
They can only haunt you
Until the fever breaks
I live in a building owned by Mint Properties LLC, which has really great attention to detail in addition to a high speed re:fixing any apartmental issues. I’ve put them into my phone as “Have a Mint.” You know, like haveamint.com…
Box up your gloves and your down coats
Bound for the sun and the west coast
Where upper-crust tragedies abound
A tip for the girl at the coat check
The guy at the door and the bar back
They know your face oh so well
This is Katy, after her semester was over.
The forthcoming Aptera Typ-1 h will be a gasoline electric hybrid getting 300 miles to the gallon. What’s exciting about it is two-fold: (1) it will be under 30k and (2) the company selling these cars is already profitable, having earned back it’s R&D through pre-sales of the all-electric Typ-1 e model. Popular Mechanics weighed in with a fun article featuring a bunch of great pictures, and this classic quote:
With blizzard-like conditions, sub-zero windchills, 1/4 mile visibility, and 2-4 inches of snow forecast, we’ve got the recipe for a tasty pre-winter weather treat! Unfortunately, the weather outside is frightful because some people still have some place to go. For example: Mykala is alone in Saint Paul waiting to pick her parents up from the airport. They’ve been delayed and rerouted to Iowa — I hope everything works out A-O.K. In the meantime, I’ll be here wrapping presents, thinking about taking an indoor run, and eagerly anticipating Christmas tomorrow. Perhaps Mykala and I will even play a digital game of Scrabble in which she’ll spell auditors on a triple word score with a 50 point bonus for using all 7 letters. We will see.
This one is from Steve, way back in the day.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
— C. S. Lewis
Christmas gift from Mykala! Love this one. More pictures of these when they are on the wall
You are all I need
You are all I need
I am in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds
It’s all wrong
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all wrong
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all right
When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
— Margaret Drabble
The view from my apartment - 3 inches of snow on Friday, December 21!
Thanks Etsy, for having a really cool handmade messenger bag for sale by a tiny little design studio called “moop.” Etsy sure is cool.
Dig that pattern.
Originally intended to be simply a link, this little piece has evolved into an account of a typical internet browsing pattern of mine… which has somehow been incorporated with an attempt at art commentary. Here it is:
A microcosm of my web-browsing experience reveals my natural curiosity about many things. You see, I browsed from kottke.org to I Did Not Know That Yesterday! via random clicking. At this (quite interesting, actually) website, I saw a post about the real estate value of Central Park in New York (for the curious, it is over 528 billion dollars). I then looked up Central Park on Google Maps, and noticed that one building interrupted the park’s solid green border. That building is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I then visited the Wikipedia page about the Met in order to learn when such a building had managed to negotiate with the city of New York to build on the precious grounds of Central Park (turns out it opened at its current location in the year 1880). After this, I began reading about the museum’s deaccessioning policy, intended to allow the museum to acquire “world class” art objects.
Hazelnut flavored liquor. Half of a chocolate cake shot.
