two-fer

that's two for one, just in case you're wondering...

so the folks at we make money not art had this post about dust furniture with a picture that explains everything...

it's a really cool idea that comes from jurgen bey...

now i want you to visit both of those links in order... the first shows the picture of a neat idea... the second shows a website with the worst interface ever... it's not just a flash-based website, it's a flash-based website where the items move and jiggle around like jello... ack!... clicking on something is like trying to swat a fly...

merde!

once upon a time i had a roommate who was french... i don't mean french canadian, i mean he came from france... jean christophe crebier and he taught me all the best french words - or at least i thought so at the time...

it was quite a while ago, though, and i recently came to the realization that my memory of those words was fading (not my memory of christophe, however, that crazy french guy with his crazy french hair will be indelibly etched into my mind forever) so i decided to google up the words and lo and behold i found Cursing in French@Everything2.com...

what i learned from my searching is a) i can't spell salope at all and b) christophe left some of these out... darn you christophe..

also, because of christophe i now realize that toilet paper should have been called ass paper all along...

christmas got harder this year

so this year in my family we're all playing santa... everybody gets one name and the name you get is the name of the person whose stocking you've gotta fill...

it's amazing how far from easy that really is, even for people you're supposed to know, but I got the person i know least well of all of them - my almost cousin-in-law (or whatever you call someone who isn't yet married to your cousin)...

this also means that christmas has become much more interesting... using contacts to gather intelligence on family members is a new one on me... kinda like some sort of spy game or something...

you know it's not a good day when . . .

you know it's not a good day to get out of bed when the zipper on your sleeping bag won't open...

i mean really, that's gotta be the most telling sign of all that you should stay put... too bad it's not a decent excuse for missing work, though... somehow "i couldn't make it into work yesterday because i was trapped in bed" doesn't seem like it would cut it...

and today's bash at microsoft is . . .

. . . Unspecified error!

AAARG!

i don't know who's idea at microsoft it was to make the Unspecified error error message, but whoever it was should be shot... it's coming up everwhere and is totally useless... there is no diagnostic information... there isn't even anything to uniquely identify the error condition, searching for "Unspecified error" reveals that it's returned in all sorts of microsoft products under all sorts of different conditions... it's virtually impossible to narrow down the cause of the error i'm facing because it's so difficult to uniquely identify the error itself...

microsoft, you suck...

happy belated halloween

i am so lazy... so 4 days ago i went to fear fest at canada's wonderland... it's a special halloween sort of thing... completely new to me, i've never been to that kind of a show before...

basically what they had were these scary attractions where you walk around a make-shift maze where scary people jump out at you and chase you around with chainsaws (minus the chains)... it was an interesting experience but i never really got scared... to be honest, i wasn't particularly aware of the so-called scary people - i found that with all the flashing lights and smoke machines and various other effects meant to wreak havoc with your senses, it kind of overloaded my senses and i became very desensitized... to the point where the scary people were little more than infrequently illuminated obstacles for me to get around...

i guess i'm one of those people for whom less really is more... if it had been more subtle, played more upon one's sense of anticipation so as to get one really good scare at the end instead of bombarding us all the way through it i think i might have actually been scared...

also, i discovered i can made tiny (~1 inch) origami frogs with numb fingers (it got pretty cold as the night progressed)... hey, what else are you going to do in an hour long line-up for a 5 minute attraction?

the wonderful world of lego

y'know, there's no cooler convergence of geeky things than robotic hands made out of lego... i've always liked lego and i've always been interested in robots and duplicating the articulation of a human hand was one of those things i worked on as a kid...

it would seem i'm not alone in my interests, just check out this


by comparison, my own lego hand is just sad... mine doesn't even move on it's own... what can i say? some folks have a lot better lego than i do...

bowling, bowling, bowling

so last night a bunch of folks from work got together and went bowling... i haven't been bowling in years, and i'd certainly never been bowling with any of these folks...

and i'd never bowled while drinking before...

they were trying to convince me that drinking makes you bowl better, and it seemed to be working too... for most of the first game i was winning with a comfortable margin after having a couple strikes in a row...

then in the last frame the ball slipped out of my hand in the wind-up (or whatever you want to call it) so the ball went backwards instead of forwards (good thing the bowling computers are stupid and didn't know anything about that)... then i started out the next game by hitting myself in the leg with the ball (because i'm just a big bowling pin, dontcha know) which resulted in an immediate gutter ball... it didn't really improve much from there... so much for 'drinking makes you bowl better'...

pancakes

so i was all set to make myself pancakes this past sunday, as i've done just about every sunday since i was 13 (i know, i'm such a creature of habit), only to discover i was all out of mix and i needed to make more...

yes, make more... i'm not talking about some store bought crap, there's been a general purpose mixture (not unlike bisquick in it's ability to be used for lots of things) recipe used by my family for many moons and i needed to make more..

and as is often the case, my memory failed me... so i'm going to write it down for posterity...

9 cups of flour
1 cup + 2 tablespoons of milk powder
1/3 cup of baking powder
4 teaspoons of salt
1 3/4 cups of vegetable oil

you mix them all up thoroughly - you don't want any chunks (at least nothing bigger than a pea)...

pretty simple, i just couldn't remember whether it was 1/3 cups of baking powder or 2/3 cups...

and then i made my pancakes... people seem to like my pancakes - and i don't mean crepe-style pancakes either, i'm talking about pancakes that rise like bread, that are at least a half inch think and light and fluffy... pancakes that emphasize the cake part... they're also simple to make...

1 egg
~1/2 cup of milk
~1 cup of the aforementioned mix

the measurments are approximate because i like to tweak it to get just the right consistency (like a really thick milkshake, only this isn't something you'd want to slurp up through a straw - well you could do it, i suppose, the batter tastes fine the way it is)... i also double everything because i really can eat a tower of pancakes all by myself...

anyways, you mix it thoroughly (again, you don't want lumps) and you drop 1/4 cup amounts in a non-stick pre-heated frying pan (sorry, you'll have to experiment with temperature - 6 1/2 on my stove is probably something entirely different on yours) and cook till several bubbles rise to the top and then flip.. you should be looking at a nice golden brown pancake at this point (though only half cooked) and if not that's your cue to adjust the temperature... if, at this point, your pancake rises so much that the already cooked side splits open then you've got yourself a really good pancake...

if you want you can throw some apple slivers into the mix too, but i'd suggest making the batter more watery for that.. thicker batter doesn't cook as easily when apple chunks get in the way...

the public discourse

i was reading al gore's comments on what the threat to american democracy and found it to actually be very interesting reading about what has happened to the public exchange of ideas that american democracy depends on...

al gore mentions trying to address the erosion of the public forum with his own television broadast and to that end i have an idea for him...

in canada, specifically on citytv, we have this thing called speaker's corner - it's the starting point for the idea... consider the possibility of having kiosks (like speakers corner) spread around the country with live video (screen in screen) from other kiosks showing people engaged in debate... consider further opening up the
conversation(s) to being accessed over the internet by webcam and/or text-based chat sessions... obviously there will need to be some sort of moderation facility to prevent abuse of the facilities that would interfere with the public forum...

if you then broadcast the resulting conversations on network television you could quite conceivably bring the 'marketplace of ideas' to the television airwaves...

apparently he's already taking in and broadcasting 'viewier content' but that's hardly the level of interaction necessary to truely have a public debate - you need to multiplex feeds together in real-time so that people can interact with each other in the debating process...

me at work

recently i happened upon a picture of fred von lohmann in his office at EFF and i was struck by how small his space was - it's no bigger than my own space at the office...

now, i'm no famous EFF lawyer - and i don't have the kind of razor sharp wit to come up with things like "more carrot, less stick" but i thought folks might like to see me at work... thanks to the office shutterbug, alex, that is now possible..



alex will probably wonder why i chose to show the bad picture but it's kind of a running gag with me - i don't take good photos, i'm not photogenic and i find that humorous... besides, now that i'm working in a reclining position, don't you sort of expect to see me with my eyes closed?

i've been naughty

i've been neglecting my blog - bad, bad kurt...

ok, well i went to a club on friday - first time in a long time and that's a shame because it means i forgot all those things i said i'd do the next time i went to a club...

like wearing ear protection... i don't know how people can enjoy that volume - i could feel my hearing deteriorate as the minutes went by...

another little trick i've found (not specifically related to clubs, but it does apply) and forgot to apply is to not eat before going... what's that you say? you're not supposed to drink on an empty stomach? well i'm a weirdo because that's pretty much the only way i can drink... if i try to drink with food in my belly i don't get a buzz i just get nausious...

but there were still interesting things - plenty of pretty girls, some (though not a lot) good music, and a glassed in smoking room where we could watch darwin in action, real-time, and with a musical score...

i beat Grow RPG!

woo hoo! i did it, i beat Grow RPG from EyezMaze and i did it without any cheat codes...

so what you say? ah well, i know it's not really a big deal - it's just the first time i've been able to beat any of their Grow games unassisted...

and if you've never heard of EyezMaze before, go check it out - there aren't a lot of games there but they're all good and the Grow ones especially are unlike anything else out there...

(and if you want to know what the correct sequence is, read the comments)

[edit] now that that's accomplished, i'm going to go make pancakes and eat 'til i don't feel like moving anymore...

bathtub toys

do you remember playing with toys in the bathtub? i know i do... i wonder if girls play with bathtub toys - i'll have to remember to ask a few when i get a chance...

anyways, these remote control laser-tag submarine tub toys make me want to reconsider that whole shower thing and go back to taking full baths like i did when i was little...



of course laser-tag isn't really fun for just one person, so i'll have to find someone to share a bath with, i think...

[edit] doh! of course i'd forget to give the link...

birthday 'person' absenteeism

it sucks to lose track of friends - i wish it didn't happen but it does...

oh well, nothing says i have to let that stop me so:

happy birthday karylin smith, wherever you are...

on the dangers of phones in kitchens

having a phone in the kitchen is a convenience, i know, i understand, but there are some dangers involved...

"what dangers?" you ask... well, i could have meant ordinary, conventional dangers, but no what i'm talking about is the danger that someone might spill something on the phone... some food stuff might get spilled on the phone...

and it might not be obvious just by looking at it...

and it might be that you only find out when you go to check your messages and get an ear-full of goo...

just you wait and see... i'm not special, this can happen to any one of you as well...

too many dollars, not enough sense

wow!

there's not much more to say about this except that if he paid anything (and there's one quote that says it would have cost in excess of $200,000 for all the surgery and prosthetics) then he paid too much...

then again, maybe it's just me... maybe some people are comfortable with their environment but uncomfortable in their own skin - personally i'm the other way 'round... i can't get over how profound the ramifications of something like that would be...

more fun with the mighty potato

i knew it! i just knew that one of the many, many things you can do with the world's most versatile vegetable (aka the potato) was shoot it out of a gun.... here's directions how to do it:
MAKE: Blog: The Night Lighter - Spud Gun FREE PDF

i like me some fireworks

[special thanks to Putfile for being able to handle the animated gif - it was too big for imageshack]

that's just one of the things i found in this great Fark thread about fireworks...

there was also funny stuff, stupid stuff, and stuff you don't ever want to see up close...

file this under 'things i think you should know'

have you ever heard of the creative commons? do you know what it is and why it's important? if not, creative commons australia has an
animation explaining what's what...

[via Creative Commons, where else?]

the world's most perfect food

you can eat 'em, you can drink 'em, you can shoot 'em, you can remove broken light bulbs with 'em, you can make car parts out of 'em and now you can power a webserver with them... that's right, i'm talking about the potato...

it's so useful, can there be a more perfect food than the spud?

[via MAKE]

rock star scientists

have you ever thought to yourself 'i wish i could have sat in on a lecture given by einstein or newton or some other big name'?

well, you can, of course... stephen hawking is still around - a few years back he was in toronto and a friend of mine was bound and determined to see him talk at convocation hall at the st. george campus of the university of toronto... i passed on the opportunity because, well, he's just not my preferred 'flavour' of physicist - i'm really more of a feynman fan... also because i'm not really inclined to get so excited about a person that i have to see them give a talk in real life...

even if i were, i'm never going to get to see richard feynman give a lecture in real life because, like einstein and newton, he's dead - but his lectures on quantum electro-dynamics live on in book and apparently also in
video form... now i read one of his books, "QED: The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter", back when i was a teenager in highschool and it was a good book, not just because it explained a great deal without being overly complicated but also because feynman himself seemed an engaging personality... in fact, i believe i've marked the book down as one of my favourites in my profile here...

anyways, the videos seem to be a video version of the same lectures that the book presents, only in the videos feynman does have a tie to look at (however it's a solid colour so you still can't count on it to keep your interest)... also, it's a much more visceral experience to watch him talk and draw diagrams, to see him crack jokes, and there's a Q&A portion at the end the videos where he answers questions from the audience (he gave these particular videotaped lectures in new zealand)...

hmmm... maybe i would have gone to see him talk, i don't know... definitely some good viewing, though...

[via MAKE]

edu-tainment at it's finest

y'know as a kid i loved watching jacques cousteau shows (? i don't remember the name of the actual show(s) i just remember he was in them) as well as a show called "struggle beneath the sea"...

this is kind of like that, but with a surprising twist - it's an octopus that eats sharks...

[via All Things Christie]

it's official - my childhood was deprived

i mean really, what else can i conclude from the fact that these kids got to go to explosives camp and i didn't?

[via Fark]

The World's Smallest Co-axial Helicopter

it's not quite like the mini-helicopters i've seen before, but that's ok - those other helicopters couldn't lift people...



also, those other mini-helicopters probably didn't cost $30,000 for the kit to build them...

here's a question though, didn't they have one of these on the flintstones? i seem to remember they did...

[via Red Ferret Journal]

you are now a ninja!

so you want to be a ninja... well now you can be in 7 easy steps...



the thumbnail doesn't really do it justice though, you have to look at the full size version...

[via Populicious]

the japanese are at it again

i wish they'd invade and force their great ideas on the rest of the world...

great ideas like drawers in your stairs


apparently those and other ideas are found in Space : Japanese Design Solutions for Compact Living...

[via Signal vs. Noise]

wake up and smell the . . .

. . . bacon...

yes, that's right, wake up and smell the bacon... not the roses, not the coffee, the bacon...

wake n' bacon is a pretty neat idea, and at the same time a bizarre convergence of fatty/unhealthy food and aromatherapy...

i'm sure if it were in my bedroom i'd wake up hungry...

[via Gizmodo]

did i witness a dead-drop pick-up?

ok so this morning on my way to work i'm sitting on the bus, starring out the window, and this guy gets off the bus and opens an enclosed garbage can by the side of the road and starts pulling out newspaper...

now, it was raining this morning so i figured maybe he was just trying to get some newspaper to hold over his head in the rain (though this would be the first time i ever saw someone go through the trash for that)... he didn't hold it over his head though.. instead he laid the paper out on the ground and started rifling through it and all of a sudden out pops what looks like a DVD case...

and then the bus i was on lurched forward and i didn't see anything more...

so what did i just see? i don't know but it really reminds me of a dead-drop...

more stuff i wish we could have done at my highschool

at my highschool we made tiny little bridges out of popsicle sticks... at this high school they made a hovercraft...

other people have all the fun...

[via Make]

isn't there something i should be doing?

i just had a wonderful realization...

it's late sunday night and i've realized i don't have to worry about homework that i may or may not have finished yet because i'm not in school anymore...

i often feel like times were better in school - less stress and responsibility, more opportunities to goof off...

obviously being out of school has some merits though, like no homework... (no rising student debt either - that's pretty important)

still, at school they don't bog you down with monotonous work - assignments are short and to the point and meant more as a test of your skills and ingenuity than of your stamina...

maxwell's demon

this article interestes me for one reason and one reason only... it tells me that if i ever do manage to get one of my crazy free energy ideas to work that it will be called maxwell's demon...

of course, there seems to be every possibility that it might not be the first one...

say what?

shannen doherty was on little house on the prairie?

holy cow has she ever changed...

how can that possibly work?

here's a rather incredible story... a guy, fed up with his lack of dating prospects, stands next to a sign that says "Girlfriend wanted: apply here" for 18 hours and gets 93 phone numbers...

i would have never thought that could actually work... now if you'll excuse me, i have some signage to produce...

[via Fark]

oh, the irony

the wonderful, delicious irony... our friends to the south have suffered a terrible injustice at the hands of, well, their justice system... some asshats in the US supreme court ruled that local governments could take private property away from people (ie. home owners) in order to give it to commercial developers for building things like malls and hotels...

so how should people react to that? simple, try to use the new system that the supreme court justices have set up to take away the homes of those very same supreme court justices... it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of folks...

long, long ago in a galaxy far away

obviously darth tater can't mash the rebel alliance all by himself, he needs an army of spud troopers...



i haven't been able to find any other models, but i'm sure more are coming (because really - R2D2 was little more than a metal potato, and that's who the movies were really about anyways)...

bad apple

if the dark side took it's cues from apple it would most assuredly result in the Dark Side Switch Campaign...

"I am a Japanese School Teacher"

have you ever wanted to travel abroad? to teach english to the unfortunate victims of our cultural colonialism, err, i mean, to well behaved students?

hmmm... you might want to reconsider that... maybe... i've known a couple of people who did it, and i didn't hear of any problems, but they were all female...
this guy isn't, and holy cow you wouldn't believe the stuff he's encountered...

now, i have dealt (and continue to deal) with kids so i know what kids can be like, but kancho? kancho?! i thank my lucky stars i live in canada - it's all about the tickling here, none of that kancho assassin business... and the kids grow out of it, too... well the boys seem to at least figure out that guys don't tickle other guys - girls are another story (i think that might be a power thing, i'm not sure, but even as adults if they discover a guy is ticklish then 'its on')...

counter-productive convergence

i can see how folks might like the idea of combining a mouse and a coffee mug into one thing, but there are a couple of big drawbacks - like the fact that you have to unplug your mouse whenever you need to go get a refill... also, how do you work and drink at the same time?


[via we make money not art]

boing boing rocks

i guess it's no secret that i read a lot of stuff over at boing boing, but can you blame me? i mean, look at this entry about a chocolate fashion show... even weeks later, i'm still getting a kick out of the "Milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not on your ass" line...

the problem with social network sites

i always knew there was something fishy going on with social networking but i could never quite put my finger on it... well, luckily someone else has managed to do so in this article... number one just struck me as so true - there really is nothing to do there...

i know, i know, i must just be the most uncool person in the universe (next to the guy who was actually able to put this stuff into words the first time)... oh well, sucks to be me then...

a new telepresent paradigm

this article describes a situation where 2 teens are connected to each other for extended periods of time via cell phones and wireless headsets... they aren't necessarily talking to each other for the 10 hours a day they're connected, they just go about their business and if one wants to say something to the other they can just blurt it out and get a response like the other person was in the room with them...

i think that's kind of cool, and if you add some multi-party calling into the mix you've got yourself the next generation of social networking - or the borg hive mind...

[via Smart Mobs]

body area network

awww, isn't that cute... now when new lovers want to exchange digits, all they have to do is pick up their phones and hold hands...


[via Boing Boing]

finally an active video game that's actually cool

i've seen dance-dance-revolution in the arcades but i never could bring myself to play it... there's just something about it that seems really goofy and lame... but Kick Ass Kung-Fu apparently takes all the healthy benefits of dance-dance-revolution and packages it up with (surprise) a fighting game...

as far as i'm concerned this is way better than dance-dance-revolution, but it might breed kids who are unstoppable kung fu machines...

[via Boing Boing]

time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time

here's a comedic catastrophe that only takes a few seconds to watch: Le Building - movie

[via Screenhead]

can you spot the serial killer?

so there's this flash game where you're supposed to try and guess which picture is of a serial killer and which is of a programming language inventor... this is actually kind of disturbing... of all the people to compare with serial killers, they chose programming language inventors? did a geek steel your girlfriend, run over your dog, or beat you at arm wrestling? computer nerds are nothing like evil incarnate . . . usually...

[via Boing Boing]

not so dyslexic four

have you seen this defamer article? (someone snapped a photo of the fantastic 4 logo written in the sky apparently backwards)

can you spot the obvious error? well obvious to me, but apparently not the folks at defamer...

take a blank peice of paper, write something on it with a big black felt marker... now hold the peice of paper up to the window (or some other light source) - looks good, right?... now turn the paper over - <sarcasm>amazing, you've just become a dyslexic, and everyone is going to laugh at you for writing it backwards </sarcasm>...

so someone snapped a photo of the logo from the back - it doesn't matter where you draw the logo in the sky, there will always be some people who see it from the front and some people who see it from the back... that's not news, or even interesting - next defamer will be telling us about how the sky is blue and water is wet, only they'll phrase it like there's something wrong ('who spilled the blue goo in the sky?')...

answer: steve jobs

question: so whose a better person: steve jobs because he calls up a father of a boy who was killed over an ipod in order to offer his condolences, or bill gates because he doesn't make anything valuable enough to kill a person for in the first place?

there's a movie on my belt and everyone's invited

i remember last year there was this thing about tv screen's embedded in t-shirts... well now there is the TV-Belt (which is wide enough to be used by the WWF)... they're obviously not for the wearer to watch as the image is not oriented properly for navel gazing, but if you're an attention whore, this one's got your name all over it... they're supposed to be high fashion, but the only thing i care about is how many times a day can one watch the simpsons on it...


[via Gizmodo]

i'm going to save you some time

if you're looking for info on the deep impact project (where nasa launches a big chunk of metal at a comet to see what happens) just check here...

i was mildly interested in it but i wasn't going to turn into the live coverage just to see that - and from the actual pictures taken i'd say i made a good call...

the animated artist's rendering is pretty cool though...

[via MAKE]

thumb drive followup

well, i blogged before about the gruesome turn thumb drives were taking, now it seems that there's a gruesome thumb drive for women too - with a manicure and everything...


[via Popgadget]

words fail me

this is pretty much the most bizarre thing i've seen . . . today...

i don't even know what the heck it's supposed to be - it's described as some sort of rag-doll pinball but that doesn't do it justice... you have to see it to get any idea of what the heck it is...

basically there's this rag-doll which seems to be an animation of a woman in a bikini, and she's endlessly (unless she gets stuck) falling (lifelessly no less) through a space filled with big bubbles... and you can drag her around if she gets stuck...

[via Future Feeder]

ummm... why?

maybe it's just me, but i can't seem to see the benefit behind folding mice...



[via Popgadget]

opinion on gay marriage

so canada finally legalized gay marriage... i think that's just great but a lot of homophobes think it's terrible...

they're obviously not thinking clearly - hello?!?! more married gay people means fewer single gay people who might mistake you for a potential mate - and isn't that what's really important?... i think i speak for straight people everywhere when i say that being approached in that way by someone of the same gender (or really, any other type of person one has no amorous interest in) is a situation we would really rather not find ourselves in...

therefore: gay marriage is good for everyone...

why am i the only one who finds this funny?

ok, technically i guess i'm not the only one since i found it on the Best Week Ever blog, but when i showed or described this to the people i work with they did not have the laugh out loud reaction i did - all i got were blank stares...

not quite far enough

you know, it's kind of a fun idea to make jewelry out of dismembered doll parts...


only problem i can see is they don't have any necklaces made out of little tiny doll heads... i mean, really, if you're going to cannibalize barbies then a shrunken head necklace just seems like the most appropriate thing to make, don't you think?

[via Boing Boing]

you stick the cable in where?

think warm thoughts, teddy ruxpin jr. (aka mubie?), cause i'm plugging you in...



[via The Raw Feed]

do or do not, there is no try

i happen to be a bit of an origami enthusiast, and i also happen to like starwars (especially yoda), so when i saw this document showing how to make an origami yoda i thought it was pretty cool...

unfortunately there were no pictures of the origami yoda so guess where this comes from - yup, you guessed it, these bad pictures were taken by me of my own attempt to make an origami yoda (following the directions of course)...



of course, the actual instructions are in a language i don't understand or even recognize, but i managed to make yoda anyways - a testament to the universality of standard origami fold symbols..

hey, here's an idea for a remake of an old tv show... i call it my two yodas...

take smaller bites

to think, when i was a kid i used to get in trouble for putting too much food in my mouth at once... at least i never stuck an entire kangaroo in my mouth at once... my cousin kathryn sent me these pictures so if you find these images of a snake eating a kangaroo disturbing, blame her - it's all her fault...

ATTENTION AMERICANS IN CANADA!

ok, so i know you're not used to obeying speed limits in kilometers or converting between kilometers and miles, but come on...

here's a clue, just drive at the same speed as all the other people around you... sure we're all speeding... sure we seem to be going at 80mph... do you really think a cop is going to single you out when everyone else is going at that speed? if anything, your american plates are easier to distinguish if you're going slower than everyone else so step on it already...

the end of blue screens

so apparently with the next planned version of windows there will be no more blue screens of death... they're all gone... never to be seen again...

instead we get red screens of death... wow, that's worth hundreds of dollars right there...



[via The Raw Feed]

if at first you don't succeed . . .

. . . try making your next death star a topiary...



[via Boing Boing]

if only we could have done stuff like this in science class

i so would have loved to make a Gauss Rifle in science class... instead we did boring stuff like dissecting things and guessing what element a big rock was made out of... oh, and let's not forget making tin foil boats...



[via Fark]

a view from the inside tornadoes

you heard me, it's a view from Inside Tornadoes...

it's actually less dramatic than the movie (twister) but this has the whole reality thing going for it...

[via Boing Boing]

it's demolition time again

do you want to see everyday things take a beating? how about cars? would you like to see them smashed? would you like to be able to choose a particular type of car and a particular type of crash?

well, now you can...

[via Future Feeder]

mark, this one's for you

actually, i don't know how mark would feel about his favourite brew being treated like this but really, who could say no to a Guinness popsicle?


[via Boing Boing]

the sound of one robot hand clapping

i don't know what the sound of one robot hand clapping is, but i'm sure if it were up to the Shadow Robot Company it would sound exactly like one regular hand clapping... they've obviously gone to great lengths to make their robot hand look and move like a real hand... they even gave it fingernails...


[via Engadget]

a sign that the word "feature" is over used

they'll call anything a feature these days... really... just look at this "Passive Electrocution Feature" on Flickr - Photo Sharing!...


[via Boing Boing]

why dancing cars just won't work

do you remember the dancing citroen? i thought i blogged about it but now i can't seem to find that entry... oh well, no matter, i'll make up for it with this...

it's a more realistic depiction of what would happen if your car transformed into a giant robot and started dancing...



[via All Things Christie]

how to finally be free of those pesky door to door canvasers

it's kind of like a tree house without the tree, i guess... i wouldn't want to get anywhere near it though - call me crazy, but i can easily imagine it toppling over in any direction a good strong gust of wind blows in...



[via Boing Boing]

oh, behave...

true story...

so i'm in a bus shelter waiting (pacing) for a bus... the light at the intersection turns red... the traffic stops and right outside the bus shelter is a car with a black guy and a blonde girl both in the back seat...

he leans his head out the window and says in a somewhat effeminate voice "excuse me sir..." (ah, the plaintive cry of someone needing my help) "... this girl beside me thinks you're very sexy"... and there's the girl, all smiles, waving at me...

right... ok... thats new...

i swear, sometimes i've got to beat the girls off with a stick, i just look soooo good...

the trouble with life . . .

. . . is the lack of cool background music...

i don't remember where i heard that (but i'm sure google could tell me)... anyways, i had put my earphones in so i could listen to music (without inflicting my tastes on those around me) but the music in my head was doing such a good job i forgot to start-up winamp so that i could actually listen to music... eventually i realized the music was all in my head and i felt very silly sitting there with earphones in my ears...

oh, and google says it was calvin & hobbes (the source of all wisdom)...

now back to nofx' "don't call me white"...

where does the time go

i don't know if writing this down will actually get it out of my head, since this is kind of amazing to me, but it just occurred to me this morning that i've been a programmer for 19 years...

19 years!

it's not like i'm an old guy or anything, 'cause i'm not... i started programming when i was 10 (which isn't that unusual, come to think of it) but it's wierd to think that i've been doing something that turned into a career for most of my life so far... i've done it for fun and i've done it for profit and i've done it for most of my life and i'm not even 30 yet...

so that's what it would look like

have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel Through the city at nearly the speed of light?



[via Fark]

wiki wiki wiki

i just got home from work where i was evaluating a variety of tiddlywikis...

background: a wiki is a web application that allows users to enter content and allows anyone to edit it... the most famous example is wikipedia...

a tiddlywiki is a kind of private wiki stored in a single local html file...

i was evaluating them for use at work for personal documentation of all the work related stuff i forget or might need to share with cow-orkers or whatever (e.g. there's a lot of common SQL tasks we do that i somehow always wind up having to look through old scripts or google to find again because i just can't seem to remember the exact syntax and i'd like to not have to go to all that trouble)...

there are 5 that i looked at, TiddlyWiki, GTDTiddlyWiki, TagglyWiki, GTDTagglyWiki, and TiddlyTagWiki...

as soon as i found the tagging ones i lost interest in the others... i like tagging a lot.. having a simple way to organize your data according to your own semantics is a lot more useful than it sounds...

so anyways, of the tagging ones i really liked TiddlyTagWiki for the fact that it's tags were a space-separated list (like del.icio.us) and the UI was better than either of the GTD variants, but it's UI wasn't perfect... the fact that the list of used tags was set so far apart from the other methods for organizing entries (Timeline and All) was a bit of an eye sore but even worse, as your tag list grows it pushes other useful features off the bottom of the screen!

TagglyWiki and GTDTagglyWiki both put the tags together with the Timeline and All views and avoid putting anything particularly useful underneath (in fact GTDTagglyWiki is just TagglyWiki with a GTD template applied to it, but since i wasn't trying to do a GTD system that really wasn't all that interesting to me)... unfortunately they implement their entry tagging as a comma seperated list which is annoying but not unbearable and it's really the only problem i had with it (beside the colour and the fact that the empty one you're supposed to download is so empty that the documentation entries are blank)...

woah, some people just do not respect their own flesh

some people find piercing sexy, but i'm not really one of them and even if i were i still think this sort of thing is going too far...

wow - what some people can do with sand

there are some really skilled sand sculptors out there... as these two links can attest to...



[via Boing Boing]

do i want to be a mentor?

i got asked the question again - you know the one, what do you want to be when you grow up?...

well, there was motive behind it this time and that was to find out if i was interested in being a mentor to new employees...

well, gosh, uhhhh.... i don't know... i knew a mentor once, a really good one too (so good i thought of him as one without ever being told that's what was going on) but things were cut short and while i think i learned plenty about being a better programmer i don't think i really got to the point of learning how to be a mentor...

i guess intuitively i think of a mentor as being a little bit like a teacher, and this entry in wikipedia solidifies that notion (and also makes me feel kind of honoured/flattered about being asked)...

none of this helps me decide, though... a mentor isn't something i ever saw myself as (what i really want to be when i grow up is an inventor) and i don't know if i'd be any good at mentoring (if i've ever acted in such a capacity before it's been entirely coincidental and unintentional) but i see why it's important and why it's needed...

why can't this question be more like "do you want pizza for supper"? that one's easy...

well, here's a really good idea

so you might have heard somewhere that wind power could help us get over our dependency on fossil fuels but for some reason wind turbines are not catching on... and no wonder, you need land to erect the wind turbines, land that could be used for something else... local governments have to be really forward thinking to make the choice to really go full out with wind power...

so what could we do to change that equation? i think rooftop wind turbines could do quite a bit to upset the applecart... no land has to be set aside, and the decision is taken out of the local government's hands and put into the roof owner's... instead of the government deciding whether or not to try to supplement an entire city's or region's power supply with wind power, individual buildings or communities could simply become electrically self-sufficient - possibly even have enough spare power to sell back to the power companies...

gosh it sounds disruptive, no wonder i think it's a good idea...


[via Treehugger]