This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on December, 2009.
Best use of plinky piano counter-melody: “The Brilliant Dance” by Dashboard Confessional. That album was released 8 years ago. 8. Years. Bad things have happened since then, but I can remember nothing but good things. I think that means that nothing truly bad happened. That’s interesting.
John Mayer: ‘You can’t make music as a famous person’ | The Guardian:
“It’s very, very difficult to want to give 14 hours a day [to making a record], to continue to choose music over a lifestyle,” he admits. “This is the part in a lot of people’s careers where they usually come in to the studio for four hours a day. I’m not a four-hour-a-day guy, but I can definitely feel the pull: do you wanna go into a room where you’re basically gonna excavate, emotionally, for 12 hours? Or do you wanna go to a restaurant where everybody gives you golf claps for what you’ve already done?
The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as uptalk, upspeak or high rising intonation (HRI), is a feature of some accents of English where statements have a rising intonation pattern in the final syllable or syllables of the utterance.
When John Gruber linked my piece on unscientific laptop repair numbers just before Thanksgiving, traffic at tumbledry jumped significantly. It was fun to finally, truly test my homebrew website code (when Gruber links a site, the traffic tends to crash the site of interest) — I’m happy that the code I wrote can survive a decently large torrent of traffic. How large? Year over year on November 24, traffic here was up 30,000%.
Is the American Dream Over? - Opinionator Blog:
The average American works 9 weeks longer per year than the average Western European, which is insane but does mean our standard of living is higher.
The colored spaces are almost gone for this year! See the 23rd? That’s where I start 8-10 hour days studying for boards. The fun just never ends.
Today was not a great day because I lost my keys in a snow bank. On the coldest day of this season. 0°F (before windchill), and I’m on my hands and knees outside the Rec Center, with my red bike tail-light to light up the dark, snowy ground, trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
For as long as anyone here can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead — sometimes months — mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. Then, on the big day, hungry guests ravage the buffet, piling plates high and packing more in takeout containers so they can have them for breakfast the next day.
Elmo is on Emeril right now. He’s wearing a Christmas cumberbund, and his hair is combed. This is the most adorable thing I have seen today. How can I study when Elmo is on Emeril?
nickd on gratitude during the Christmas season:
if you have a lover, here is the most important thing that you can do. you should go over to that lover and tell them that you are grateful for their existence, and their love. because one very, very sacred thing that exists in this rather bleak-at-best world is knowing that someone out there gives such a passionate damn about you, your health, your success, and your well-being, and is willing to take you seriously and meet you halfway in their life.
So, here’s how you do it: you analyze what people are searching for online (e.g. “what’s the best lure for muskie fishing?”). Then you analyze how crowded the ad space is for that search by examining how many companies are paying for the ads to appear for the combination of these words: muskie+fishing+lure. You repeat this process many times and select the searches that are likely to be most profitable over a long period of time.
The American Way of Dentistry is the dentistry article of this year:
The medical profession has struggled to replicate dentistry’s achievements in disease prevention with its “health maintenance” model. Dentists, by emphasizing preventive measures—like biannual checkups and cleanings, fluoridation of community water supplies, the use of fluoride toothpaste, and encouraging patients to eat less sugar and processed foods—have reduced overall treatment costs as well as pain and suffering to a degree medical doctors can only dream of. They have done so in part through a structure of dental benefits that is far more punitive to those patients who slack off on prevention, or for whom prevention fails, than anything health insurers typically contemplate.
The Last Question — Isaac Asimov:
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…
Help the indie film “Dear Mr. Watterson - a cinematic exploration of Calvin & Hobbes” meet it’s production budget by donating (follow the link for details). They’re over half of the way to their $12,000 goal — I hope to be able to contribute, myself. A bit about the film:
The picture below is a stack of the materials I covered for 3 of my 7 classes this past fall semester. I read, generated, or memorized every single one of the pages below.
