0 comments Sunday, December 23, 2007

I just finished Portal. Part of the Orange Box, it's been out on PC and XBox 360 since October, and was just released on PS3 this month. If you have access to any of these platforms, I strongly urge you to do what you must to acquire and play this game. It is fun.

It's not a long game, 19 puzzle-like levels, and I probably finished it in about 3 or 4 hours. All I can say is that on about the second or third level you begin to realize that you're playing a game like no other before. And that feeling only intensifies throughout the game, up to and including the closing credits.

Which is my real reason for posting. Have I mentioned Jonathan Coulton before? Oh yes, here and here. I read several months ago that he had been asked to write the music for a video game, which I thought was awesome. Then I learned that it was only the music for the closing credits, which seemed less awesome. So I forgot about it.

When I finished Portal, I was impressed by the song at the end, but it didn't jog my memory. It was only when I played the game again with the developer commentary turned on (that's another thing about this game, it has built in commentary like a DVD--how cool is that?!) that I learned that it was Jonathan Coulton, and then I was all, oh yeah...

ETA: And Portal sweeps the WRAs!

2 comments Thursday, December 20, 2007

These guys are awesome.

1 comments Wednesday, December 5, 2007

You know the drill. You type in a word, and then R2-D2 translates it into his language.

0 comments

I've seen several studies cited recently that show that kids perform better in school when they are taught to focus on effort rather than talent. A recent article in Scientific American reaches the same conclusion.

The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well.


I wouldn't say I had "little regard for learning," but I can definitely identify with the disdain towards effort. In my high school, all of us smart kids knew who the "workers" were, and how many of them had usurped our rightful places at the top of the class. In fact, the ultimate betrayal was when, around sophomore year, one of our own became a "worker," instantly shooting to the top spot with his unstoppable combination of effort and talent.

Of course, the "workers" were the ones that got into med school.

0 comments Sunday, December 2, 2007

I'm no singer, but I'm guessing this guy has a well trained falsetto.

0 comments Friday, November 30, 2007

In Back to the Future, Dr. Emmett Brown said to Marty McFly:

I'm sure in 1985 plutonium is available at every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by.


Turns out he wasn't that far off.

Be sure to read the reviews.

1 comments

...for a lawyer.

0 comments Thursday, November 29, 2007

"And that's why I hate Christmas."

0 comments Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Handy infographic which illustrates several different baseball pitches. Have to remember this for next season.

0 comments Sunday, October 28, 2007

Here's an interesting article on what, exactly, makes Guitar Hero so great.

Jack White gets some love at the end.

0 comments Tuesday, October 23, 2007

After watching Melissa run her 5K I got motivated to start running again. Along with that I've been trying to eat better and lose a little weight.

I found two websites that are pretty useful if you're wonky like me about this kind of thing, and like to keep track of all your calories. FitDay will let you get as detailed as you want as far as nutrition and exercise, but the interface is a little bare bones. It sure beats the Excel spreadsheet I was using before, though. Sparkpeople is probably just as detailed, but it's a bit more user-friendly and community oriented. It will tell you exactly what to eat every day if you want it to. It reminds me of the online nutrition and workout plans you get with some gym memberships, but it's free.

These sites will track all your exercise info as well, but I use other sites for that. I log my bike riding at My Cycling Log, and my running at Log Your Run. (Both sites will track both activities, as well as others, but I like each for the one it specializes in.)

Each of these sites have cool modules that allow you to plot your routes on Google maps to determine mileage. Or you can do the same thing at Gmaps Pedometer.

And finally, I'm using a training program from Cool Running, (I'm doing the Intermediate 5K), and the calculators at Running for Fitness. Active is also useful for looking up local races. It has other sports, too, so check it out if you're looking for a local volleyball tournament or something.

6 comments Wednesday, October 17, 2007

First, watch the commercial to get the jingle stuck in your head. I'll wait.

Now then. In the mid-eighties my parents bought my little brother one of these things. I don't know that he ever got all that attached to it, but he seemed to like it enough. What I do remember about My Buddy was that my older brother and I beat that thing mercilessly.

I still don't know what it was about that toy that caused David and I to succumb to violent tendencies we never knew we had. We never abused any of my sister's toys like that. (Sure, Super Grover spent more than his fair share of time up on the roof, but he was supposed to fly.) All I can tell you is that there was nothing more cathartic than grabbing My Buddy by the ankles and smashing his head into the metal bunk bed frame. Over and over and over...

I'm sure it started as a way to annoy my little brother. You punch his toy in the face, he gets mad, a good time is had by all. But it grew into something much bigger. Maybe it's because he really was indestructible--and he was the perfect size for such manhandling--so we took it as a challenge to see if we could really damage him. (I don't think we ever did.) Or maybe there was just something about his face that provoked our wrath.

Anyway, I was reminded of all of this by a blog post that claimed that My Buddy was for kids whose parents thought GI Joes were too violent. I had plenty GI Joes, but they never once inspired the kind of blood lust that My Buddy did.

0 comments Friday, October 5, 2007

Trouble At' Mill will be another thirty-minute film like A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers.

Wallace and Gromit have a brand new business. The conversion of 62 West Wallaby Street is complete and impressive, the whole house is now a granary with ovens and robotic kneading arms. Huge mixing bowls are all over the place and everything is covered with a layer of flour. On the roof is a 'Wallace patent-pending' old-fashioned windmill.


No word yet on when it's expected to be released, but Nick Park has said that he's using faster production techniques now than he has on his other films.

0 comments Thursday, October 4, 2007

This comic at Salon.com traces the rise and fall of a hip, ironic catchphrase.

0 comments

Someone out there has a blog devoted to anthropomorphic food characters. Huh.

Anyway, if you don't recognize the Del Monte Country Yumkins, it's probably because your mom fed you generic canned green beans instead of the good stuff.

Don't feel bad, I'm sure they were just as healthy.

0 comments

This movie looks awesome.

I do love me some Jack Black.

0 comments

I've blogged about Jonathan Coulton before, but he rates another mention. Probably several more.

This is the video to a song called "Flickr," which is really just a bunch of random phrases strung together about random pictures people put on Flickr. Trust me, it works.

0 comments Monday, October 1, 2007

His acceptance speech is long, but very good. He can't resist rhyming and using cliches, but he's so sincere, you love him anyway.

(Originally the video cut out some of his remarks about torture, but in the end it appears that the level of irony involved in censoring a Liberty Medal recipient was too much to bear.)

0 comments

Did you see this video during combined PH/RS meeting yesterday?

Melissa did. She wasn't sure if it was a church-wide thing or if it was done on a local level, but she told me that she won't soon forget hearing the voices of Chris Parnell and Amy Poehler in the chapel.

They also showed this FedEx commercial.

3 comments Thursday, September 27, 2007

This blog post fascinates me.

Here's a guy who doesn't want to bother calculating the tip on his restaurant check, even though he probably has a palm pilot or laptop or cell phone out during dinner (judging by the importance of wifi access) and could easily use the calculator in said device.

So he rounds everything to even dollars, only to realize that he could be using those precious cents digits to communicate a wealth of information to himself about each meal. Simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication are too much to bother with, but binary/decimal conversions are de rigeur, apparently.

No less remarkable is his discovery that restaurants seem to be pretty lax about the total you write on your receipt.

1 comments Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Melissa finally accomplished her goal to run the annual Mansfield 5K.

Here are the race results.

One caveat: Melissa accidentally switched race numbers with her friend Shauna Steenbakkers, so their results are switched. Her time was 33:18.

Yay, Melissa! She's looking for another 5K to run in November or December.

0 comments

Only In China.
Only In Texas.
Only In America.

These pictures attempt to sum up the entire world. You'll see what I mean.

1 comments Monday, September 17, 2007

I guess they probably don't keep stats on things like this, but I'll bet it's never happened before.

It's one of those things that, given the number of at-bats in baseball history, was bound to happen sometime.

0 comments Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Did you ever wonder what Super Mario Bros. would look like in the style of Stalinist Soviet propaganda? I know I have.

0 comments Monday, September 10, 2007

Another addicting game that's difficult to describe, takes minutes to learn, and a lifetime to master!

0 comments Wednesday, September 5, 2007

My kids love Word Girl.

First they found her on the Internet.

Then they found her in 5-minute shorts at the end of their PBS cartoons.

Then they discovered that she's getting her own full-length show this fall.

Then I found her on the Internet.

It's a vicious cycle.

NYT on Word Girl

Jim Lehrer Interviews Word Girl

0 comments Friday, August 31, 2007

It looks like an old card game from the 60s, and it really ate up my afternoon. Just place cards on the board in such a way that your guests are sitting next to people they like.

0 comments Tuesday, August 21, 2007

MICHAEL: Hey Dad, if you want to get some more information about something, you should check the Internet.

ME: Thanks for the tip.

0 comments Friday, August 17, 2007

ME: Hey, Michael, I heard they're coming out with a new Zelda game for the DS.

MICHAEL: You mean Phantom Hourglass?

ME: Um, yeah, that's the one. How did you hear about it?

MICHAEL: I saw it on YouTube.

ME: Oh. That's right, I guess it's already out in Japan. It's not going to be released in the US until Christmas.

MICHAEL: Yeah, maybe Santa Claus will bring it to me!

0 comments Thursday, August 16, 2007

So I signed up for some Facebook. Everyone else needs to sign up now so I can have some friends.

It's a pretty slick interface, far superior to MySpace, as far as I can tell. I'm still not sure about the whole social networking thing, though. It's clearly geared toward kids who are still in school, so I find myself thinking about old friends I haven't contacted in years.

Still, Steve was asking me about a way to aggregate everyone's blogs, photos, videos, etc. this summer. Something like Facebook would be very useful in that regard.

0 comments Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Okay, it's a toothbrush with a concave back that is designed to redirect a stream of water just like a drinking fountain. So you don't have to use a cup (or other less sophisticated means) to rinse after brushing.

What will they think of next?

0 comments Friday, August 10, 2007

This is so two years ago, maybe I even linked to it before, I can't remember. It's "Since U Been Gone" covered by Ted Leo. Something reminded me of it today, and now my brain is craving it like heroin.

I've been thinking we need some new music at our house. Maybe Ted Leo and the Pharmacists is just the thing.

0 comments

Melissa, you need to show the boys this video.

1 comments Tuesday, August 7, 2007

"You come to me as Beginners. When I'm through with you, you'll be Experts!"

0 comments Thursday, August 2, 2007

You type in words, and then they sing it for you.

I could play with this for hours. It's fun to see how many songs you can recognize from just one word.

0 comments Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Paul Graham has some excellent articles.

This one is about Stuff. I feel like I've been saying this stuff to myself for years. And yet I keep accumulating more stuff.

"What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will."


Amen, brother.

0 comments

I have been looking for this for a long time, a way to play the old Oregon Trail game that we all played on Apples in elementary school. I've download stuff and tried to get it to run with no success. There are more modern versions available which are no good.

Now someone has set up a Virtual Apple II emulator that lets you play Oregon Trail on the web. I think you have to have Windows and Firefox for it to work.

(By the way, I found the link at MentalFloss, another highly recommended site.)

Watch out for dysentery!

0 comments Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Yesterday we were talking about how we needed to upgrade our stereo system, and Melissa mentioned the Bose store we saw at the mall.

I told her that Bose sucks.

She was incredulous, so I offered to post a few links. It's a lot to read, but by the time you're done you will be amazed at the sheer power of marketing.

What about Bose? (short)

Why Bose Sucks Review Resources (long)

Stuff like this always makes me wonder what else I'm assuming is good or true, not because I've examined it, but because some rich, powerful company or organization has spent a lot of money honing my perceptions.

0 comments Monday, July 30, 2007

It's a sport where you throw a ball at someone's face.

It strikes me as an office-friendly version of Crotchball.

I've seen the flickr group before, but I didn't know they had such a slick website. Be sure to watch the instructional video.

0 comments Sunday, July 29, 2007

I've heard of people who stop by Ikea every morning for breakfast, and others who choose to simply hang out there on the weekends, but now you can elect to stay overnight if you just can't bring yourself to leave.

0 comments Friday, July 27, 2007

Some guy went to Dell's website and priced a PC with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.

Notice the price.

(Don't get the joke? Explanation.)

0 comments Thursday, July 26, 2007

There's an article about Junie B. Jones books in the New York Times. Apparently, some parents object to Junie's grammar, afraid their kids are going to start talking like her if they read too many of these books.

I don't buy it. The arguments I thought of as I read the first few paragraphs show up on the second page: Mark Twain and Shakespeare. I think exposure to non-standard English, in either direction, can only be educational.

0 comments Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The boys at Car Talk recommend adjusting your mirrors to eliminate your blind spots while driving.

They say it takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's awesome.

0 comments

These lists pop up all over the place from time to time.

I thought the first three were pretty good.

0 comments

In 1947 Life Magazine asked some cartoon artists to draw their characters while blindfolded. The results are pretty cool.

0 comments Friday, July 20, 2007

So the Asian kids are using their piano skills to play the guitar. They just crank up the volume and play one-handed hammer-ons (to use a term I recently learned from Guitar Hero).

And hey, since you only need one hand, that frees up your other hand to play ANOTHER GUITAR!

1 comments

You enter your address at this site, and it tells you how walkable your house is.

Except, there's been so much traffic at the site I haven't been able to try it yet. The way it's supposed to work, as far as I can gather, is it counts up the number of businesses, schools, and other services within walking distance (1 mile) of your house.

I have to imagine that my address has a pretty good walking score. I think we have every kind of business imaginable within a mile of our house, plus two schools and two nice parks. Maybe we should start walking more.

UPDATE:

So I finally get in and find out that my house has a walk score of 35: Unwalkable. That's bogus, man. Actually, it didn't see a lot of the businesses in my area, so I might have had a better score had I been able to update the information.

0 comments Thursday, June 28, 2007

This is what happens when you drop a gummy bear into molten potassium chlorate.

0 comments

This pic should remind you of a scene from Wayne's World. "Denied!"

It's funny because it's true. When everyone who walks into the store plays the same song, it can really get on your nerves.

My friend Lars and I somehow got roped in to working a Freshman Orientation booth at BYU in Fall 1995. It was some kind of travel theme, all of the incoming freshman had passports that they were supposed to get stamped at each station. Ours was karaoke, and after listening to kids sing the same blasted song for about the tenth time, we posted our own sign:

"No stamps will be awarded for "Love Shack."

0 comments

According to this research, female tennis players' performance tends to deteriorate in critical situations, while men do not tend to play any differently as the stakes rise.

Then they go on to question whether this has anything to do with the gender-wage gap in the labor force, which is an interesting question.

1 comments Wednesday, June 27, 2007

In this game, you try to break as many plates as possible with an invisible cursor.

Sounds weird, but it's pretty wild. 40 is my best so far.

0 comments Tuesday, June 26, 2007

This guy, Eric Young, teaches a film class at Dixie State. Every year he has his students write a secret on a 3x5 card, resulting in something like PostSecret, but from a single demographic: college-age Mormons.

He has about 800 cards, and posted this sample on his blog.

0 comments

Charles Darwin said it first: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." But Dunning and Kruger designed some experiments around the idea and quantified the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that incompetent people tend to overestimate their level of skill, and that you actually have to have some degree of skill before you can begin to perceive your lack of it.

It might well be called the Dilbert effect, as much as Scott Adams talks about it. (Not to be confused with the Dilbert Principle, which states that companies intentionally promote incompetent people into management to limit the amount of damage they're capable of.) The one problem with the world, he claims, is that most of us are dumb about most things. Because of that, not only do we fail to recognize our own ignorance--and therefore inflate the importance of our own opinions--but we also fail to recognize the genuine skill and knowledge of those who aren't dumb about those particular things, and therefore we wind up discounting their opinions because they are usually different from our own.

0 comments Monday, June 25, 2007

Perhaps you've heard that the Vatican has released its "Drivers' Ten Commandments," part of a 32-page document that addresses everything from road rage to "tramps" and "street children." It's all in the Document of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People: "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road."

Not to be outdone, the guys at Car Talk put out their own list of commandments (I count 17). Besides the obligatory "Thou shalt not drive like my brother," my favorite is "Thou shall keepeth thy 17-year-old son bound to the slowest and ugliest 1979 Volvo which hath presenteth itself on the list of craig."

0 comments Friday, June 22, 2007

This may be the first picture of Harrison Ford on the set of the new Indiana Jones movie.

I don't know, guys, he looks kind of old. But I'm sure the movie will be awesome.

0 comments Thursday, June 21, 2007

Another simple flash puzzle game, mostly I like this one for the music.

0 comments

What not do to if you get a strike.

0 comments

Everyone's favorite free online game has hit the big time. Paul Preece, creator of Desktop Tower Defense, was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

What started as a hobby for Mr. Preece has blossomed into a full-time career.

2 comments

Video demonstrations of 20 magic tricks.

0 comments

This article includes a map that shows the childhood mobility of three generations in a family. The great-grandfather was allowed to wander six miles from home when he was eight, while the current eight-year-old is allowed to stray only 300 yards.

0 comments

So Microsoft has this new technology that turns a tabletop into a touchscreen computer. A co-worker of mine was all excited about it, while I couldn't figure out what it would be good for. Like so much tech, it strikes me as a solution in search of a problem.

I think these guys are of the same mind.

0 comments Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Ah, Wikipedia, always good for a laugh.

0 comments Tuesday, June 12, 2007

This web page seems pretty mundane at first, but as you scroll down it starts to become clear what it's all about.

0 comments Wednesday, May 30, 2007

I will definitely be putting this skill to good use.

It's not that I mind chip clips, there just never seem to be enough of them around when you need them.

1 comments

Holy smokes, this is what my house needs.

Though we try to avoid it, at times our stairs become overrun with shoes. Because the stairs are right by the front door, and they are natural little storage shelves, they usually have at least one pair of shoes on them.

Too bad our stairs are carpeted. But I am definitely going to think about this.

0 comments Friday, May 25, 2007

Have you ever noticed how fast Wikipedia updates? Whenever there is some breaking story in the news, you can usually go to Wikipedia to get the latest information.

Wikiclock takes that phenomenon to the extreme. It's a clock that runs solely on wiki technology. So far I haven't seen it off by more than 15 minutes.

0 comments Friday, May 18, 2007

Traffic reporting while under the influence of cold medicine.

I hear this is getting a lot of play in Utah.

(Via dooce.)

0 comments Monday, May 14, 2007

When we were kids, and we would ask our parents if we were poor, the answer we always heard was that we had enough money to keep shoes on our feet. Obviously, that meant nothing to us. Of course we had shoes.

As I look through these colorized photos from the 1940s, the thing that stands out are all the barefoot kids. Especially this one. Even though I know that the kids with shoes are probably jealous of the kids that get to go barefoot, it's still kind of sad.

1 comments Thursday, May 10, 2007

So tightrope walkers gather in Korea to walk across a rope stretched across the Han river.

Result: the greatest headline ever.

0 comments Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Have I mentioned that they know how to do TV in Japan? (Of course, I'm only seeing the highlights. For all I know their typical daytime lineup makes ours look like the Renaissance.)

Anyway, believe me when I tell you that you will enjoy this video of a secretary taking care of some routine paperwork.

0 comments Friday, May 4, 2007

Not me!

1 comments

We've all seen these before, but I thought this one was particularly impressive. My favorite part was the use of the cell phone.

1 comments Thursday, May 3, 2007

"There's no need to spell out why this waffle iron rocks harder than most."

Ha!

0 comments

So this guy wants to create a video of Michael Jackson's live performance of Billy Jean, that's just his white glove, right?

And instead of writing a program that looks at every video frame and isolates the glove, he figures it would be easier to get 10,000 or so people on the internet to do the work for him.

So if you want to help him out, go to White Glove Tracking, draw a box around a white glove, and click to submit the frame. Hey, do two or three while you're at it--it's fun!

0 comments

Bond Girls are a cultural icon. They are often cheesy, over-the-top caricatures (just look at the names: Pussy Galore? Holly Goodhead? Xenia Onatopp? Sheesh.) so like everything else cheesy, sometimes they work and sometimes, not so much. And so I give you:

The Ten Best Bond Girls

The Ten Worst Bond Girls

0 comments Thursday, April 26, 2007

There's no point to this, as far as I can tell. You just have to try and see what you can do. For some reason, it's fun.

0 comments

I wasn't a big sticker collector or anything when I was a kid, but most of these are surprisingly familiar. In fact, I can almost smell them.

0 comments Tuesday, April 17, 2007

This is frustrating to watch--I can't imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to play.

Basically, it's a video of someone trying to complete one level in Super Mario Bros. that is so impossibly hard it can only be called evil.

E-Vil, like the fru-Its of the De-Vil, e-Vil.

2 comments Thursday, April 12, 2007

Who knew? The opposite of Absolute Zero is the Planck temperature, 10^32 Kelvin, the temperature beyond which the molecules of matter become black holes unto themselves, or something.

Some scientists believe that we, or at least our universe, have already experienced the Planck temperature, although it went by so quickly you may have missed it. It occurred at 10^-43 of a second after the Big Bang, the great cataclysm in which the universe was born. (10^-43 of a second, in case you're not hip to the notation, is an incredibly tiny fraction of time. Time enough to create the universe, but not, as a University of Chicago physicist was once at pains to explain, time enough to get off a disputed last-tenth-of-a-second shot against the Chicago Bulls.)
(I had no idea that Planck had so many units.)

0 comments

So we have this hot tube that came with the house. We used it once or twice that first year and haven't bothered with it since. I've filled it up and cleaned it out a few times since then, in case we ever wanted to use it, but we just haven't.

So this week we decided to get rid of it.

Melissa suggested we list it on Craiglist and see if someone will come haul it off for free. I can't believe anyone would want it, though, so I decide against it. I figured it would take about $500 to get it all fixed up and usable at this point, and I can't believe anyone would want to put that kind of money into it.

Today I asked my dad about borrowing his trailer so I can haul it to the dump on Saturday, and he suggested Craigslist as well. This time I decide it couldn't hurt, so I go ahead and list it. I mean, if someone really wants to come take it off my hands, that would be great! I'm staring at a major project this weekend, and I'm even considering hiring some company to haul it away.

I posted the listing at 12:00 pm. It's now 1:26 and I've received 14 responses from people who want to come pick it up tonight!

Please, do me a favor and check out the listing. Have I failed to communicate what bad shape this thing is in? Or have I simply underestimated the demand for dirty, run-down hot tubs in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex? I'm baffled.

UPDATE:

I've taken the ad down. Too many responses. Plus, Melissa tells me that if you search Craigslist in DFW for "hot tubs," the listing right below mine is for a free hot tub removal service. Doh!

0 comments Tuesday, April 10, 2007

This one includes an excellent quote from Schopenhauer: “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.”

I agree with Adams that an idea as simple as "We don't know as much as we think we know" can change the world. It reminds me of another of his posts from November, we he suggests that one way to magically solve all of the world's problems would be to simply "imbue us all with the knowledge of who is smarter than ourselves on any given topic."

2 comments

Check out the new sport that's all the rage in Europe right now.

Parkour's founder and chief practitioner is David Belle. It supposedly stems from French military training during the Vietnam War era, which made extensive use of obstacle courses.

Free Running was started by Sebastien Foucan. He basically took Parkour and adapted it to a British audience.

While thy seem very similar on the surface, practitioners cite significant differences. Parkour is very similar to martial arts. It has the practical applications of escape and reach, and is also meant to be a kind of life philosophy. The goal in Parkour is to get from point A to point B in as fast and efficient a manner as possible, with an emphasis on problem solving and overcoming obstacles.

Free Running, on the other hand, is more like an extreme sport, with its emphasis on tricks and "going big." It lends itself more readily to commercialization and competition, and is more concerned with the beauty of a particular move than its usefulness or efficiency.

Parkour article in the New Yorker

Video of David Belle falling

0 comments

I assume this is some kind of swing dancing move.

1 comments

I tell you, they know how to do TV in Japan. Why don't we have any reality shows called "Ninja Warrior?" I would watch that.

This guy is only the second to complete an obstacle course that can only be called insane. Five hundred others have tried and failed.

0 comments

There are some awesome pictures of Antarctica here. I always thought the entire continent was covered in ice all the time, but I was wrong.

By the way, does anyone know if we treat Antarctica like space, in that no country is allowed to claim all or part of it as their own?

0 comments

This opinion piece was written at the U of U a few years ago, so maybe some of you Utah people have seen it. But it was new to me.

Basically, the author argues that pi should be the ratio of radius to circumference, rather than diameter, because that would make all the formulas look prettier. I have to agree that, once you get beyond elementary geometry, it's all radius, all the time. So why is this famous number based on diameter?

0 comments Monday, April 9, 2007

Melissa is a benevolent realist.

0 comments

If the one of our nation's greatest classical musicians plays some of the world's greatest music on what may be the most famous violin ever built, and no one notices, is he really any good?

Joshua Bell will be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize tomorrow.

0 comments Saturday, April 7, 2007


Most of us have probably taken our fair share of personality tests on the Internet, but this one had an interesting format. You give your responses by moving an arrow on a slider, plotting a point on a coordinate plane, and other analog stuff like that.

It felt like it was just the right length and asked things in several different ways, so even though I felt like I was contradicting myself at times, the results seemed to be pretty accurate.

0 comments Friday, April 6, 2007



I just bought this bike. It's on backorder, so it won't be shipped until May 5.

If you look at my profile, I'm sitting on the bike I just bought for Michael. It's a 20 inch Haro, compared to the 16 inch Huffy he's currently riding. It fits him, technically, but he's not as confident on it, and the smaller bike is just more fun for him right now. And let's face it, fun is what it's all about.

So I've been riding the bike I bought for Michael, leading Melissa to suspect that this was my plan all along. (I feel like I need to say something about a hockey stick here.) Anyway, it has always been my plan to buy a BMX bike to ride around with the kids, as the road bike just doesn't work well for that. I figured now was as good a time as any--Michael's new bike is really too small for me and I don't want to wear it out before he decides to start riding it.

Let's see, I need a link...

Here's a BMX video for ya.

0 comments

About a year ago we had some sales people come into our office and give a presentation on this cool electronic whiteboard that would let you save whatever you wrote to a computer.

This was attractive to us because the financial planners use whiteboards a lot in their presentations, and this would allow the client to take home a copy of all the diagrams and notes and stuff. And it would be useful for other things in the office, too. I won't get into all of it.

Anyway, when I first encountered this website, I thought it would be a demonstration of this kind of technology.

Boy, was I wrong.

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A recent comment on Clark's blog made the following claim:

Brigham Young once commented on the weather in St. George with a statement something like this: "If I only had a house in St. George and a house in hell, I'd summer over in hell."
I've heard similar quotes attributed to various people, mostly about Texas (because I live here) but also about various other places. I suspected the comment had been made about nearly every state and city in the Southwest, so I googled "live in * and rent out *" (because that's the way I've heard it most often) with interesting results.

My favorites:

"...I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas/Arizona/San Antonio/Houston/Brooklyn/Vegas/Arkansas/Oklahoma/South Africa/Memphis/Louisiana/New Guinea/etc."

"...I'd live in California and rent out Heaven."

"...if I were a UN peacekeeping force and owned Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tombstone, I’d live in Bosnia-Herzegovina and rent out Tombstone."

My limited research indicates that the original quote was about Texas and was first attributed to General Phillip Sheridan in 1866, but I'm open to argument.

UPDATE:

It appears the St. George quote is most often attributed to J. Golden Kimball (Jeffrey Holland cited it once in a 1974 speech), which makes sense. Kimball was a GA from the 1890s until his death in the 1930s, so he could have heard the Sheridan quote and adapted it to St. George during that time.

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Pat Venditte of Creighton University is one of only a handful of ambidextrous pitchers to ever play the game. He uses a custom glove that fits on either hand so he can switch arms in the middle of an inning.

A switch-pitcher facing a switch-hitter could make a fine Abbott and Costello routine. Against Nebraska last year, a switch-hitter came to the plate right-handed, prompting Venditte to switch to his right arm, which caused the batter to move to the left-hand batter’s box, with Venditte switching his arm again. Umpires ultimately restored order, applying the rule (the same as that in the majors) that a pitcher must declare which arm he will use before throwing his first pitch and cannot change before the at-bat ends.
Scouts are considering him as a possible late-round pick in this year's draft.

0 comments Thursday, April 5, 2007

Yet another Flash game. This one is called Disorientation, and it's just what it says: disorienting. All you have to do is move your guy from point A to point B, but the board tends to move around in ways that make that more difficult than it sounds.

0 comments Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Still using Google? Lame! Don't you know that these days, savvy web-searchers trust their queries to none other than Kevin Federline?

Actually, even if you choose to search with Kevin, you'll still be using Google. A company called Protege has made its "Search and Win" portal available to A-list celebrities while giving us all a chance to win prizes with every search!

If K-Fed isn't your cup of tea, you can also Search With Wynonna, Search With Meatloaf, or Search With Andrew Dice Clay.

0 comments Friday, March 30, 2007



Emily Haines is the lead singer of Canadian indie band Metric, and for some reason tonight I find myself mesmerized by her voice.

Besides the intoxicating voice, she's also a brilliant songwriter and not too shabby on the piano. Metric's two CDs, Old World Underground and Live It Out are your typical hipster indie fare, with shades of electronica and math rock.

But recently she released a solo album called Knives Don't Have Your Back which is much more mellow and gives her a chance to sit at the piano.

You can download a recent concert of hers in its entirety from NPR if you're interested.

And I think she looks kind of like Heather Armstrong.

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This is a pretty impressive graphic of every star, planet, moon, asteroid, and TNO in the Solar System (over 200 miles in diameter) all lined up in size order.

I think you'll agree that Mimas, Saturn's smallest moon, is actually the Death Star.

1 comments Thursday, March 29, 2007

Ok, I've been reading xkcd for I don't know how long, maybe a year. Just today I noticed that if you hover your mouse pointer over the comic for a second, the title of the image pops up as a comment. It's like a second punchline for every joke!

For example, in this comic about Ender's Game, the comment says, "Bean actually sabotaged it just to give Dink the excuse to make that joke."

Has anyone else noticed this? Am I the last to know?

Now I feel like I need to go back to the beginning and read every single one.

Again.

By the way, if some of them are too long to read, you can see the entire text by right-clicking on the image and going to Properties.

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In January I posted about MIT's OpenCourseWare program, where they intend to eventually offer every class in their catalog online for free.

This is another example of what I think is a great emerging trend of free educational sources on the Internet. Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at UC Berkeley, has been uploading his weekly physics lecture entitled "Physics for Future Presidents" to Google Video for over a year now.

To his own surprise, he has since garnered a worldwide audience. I think it's awesome that there is such a demand for this kind of thing.

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I give you three videos of a samurai sword in action.

Those things look pretty sharp.

(Apparently this is what TV is like. In Japan.)

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Google Maps helpfully provides driving directions between any two points on the map.

For example, say you want to get from Stanford, CA to Stockholm, Sweden.

It's a long and arduous journey, but I'd say that once you get past Step 33, the rest is easy.

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Yay, I won!

My brother-in-law Dan hosts a NCAA basketball bracket at CBS Sportsline each year, and this year I took first place out of 16 participants. (Although the tournament's not over yet, at this point no one can catch me.) I should clarify that there were only 14 serious participants, because two people picked BYU to go all the way.

Now, what makes this so fun for me is that Dan, my brother-in-law, is such a sports fanatic. And although his dad, Rick, actually hosts a sports radio show, his uncle Doug claims to know more about sports than either of them. So it's safe to say that these guys are all into it.

I, on the other hand, have not watched a single minute of college basketball this season. Ergo, these brackets are 100% luck.

0 comments Tuesday, March 27, 2007

So my dad is becoming quite the bowyer. He does the whole deal with the wood and the fiberglass and the carbon fiber and he bakes it all up nice in a homemade wooden oven in his garage.

On Sunday we all went over for a little shootin'.

Is there a clip? I think we have a clip.

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So I'm playing this game after dinner last night, and Melissa casually wanders by and asks about it.

Next thing I know, she's in my spot, playing it.

I go about my usual Monday evening routine, buying airline tickets to Utah and uploading videos to YouTube, and she's still playing it. I think she played it until 12:30. It's funny because I never thought it was the type of game she would be interested in.

But there you go. If you find that you, too, have become compulsively addicted to this game, here are some others in the same vein:

Tower Defence

Flash Element TD

FlashCraft Tower Defense

0 comments Monday, March 19, 2007

He always said that he would quit doing The Show on March 17, 2007, I just never thought that day would come.

So sorry to see it go. Still, between all the episodes I missed and his upcoming projects--whatever they may be--I'm sure there will be plenty of Ze Frank in the future for all of us.

1 comments Sunday, March 11, 2007

Spring is in the air, so the bikes are out of the garage. I told Michael that if he learned to ride without training wheels, I'd buy him a new bike. I figured it would take months of bribing along these lines to get him to take the plunge, but I was wrong. He immediately called me on it.

I guess we're bike shopping tomorrow.

Be sure to check out the video footage.

1 comments Wednesday, March 7, 2007

For my 100th post, I give you a list of Top 100 sites from across the vast reaches of cyberspace.

Oldest 100 Currently Registered .com Domains

Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2006

Top 100 Kids' Books

Top 100 Baby Names of 2006
Michael and Benjamin make the cut; Timothy and Amy do not.

PC World's 100 Best products of 2006

100 Biggest Cities
Where is SLC? Is it really smaller than Boise?

Top 100 Chuck Norris Facts

100 Greatest Theorems

100 Greatest TV Episodes

That should do it for now.

0 comments

I didn't do a lot of snow fort building as a kid, but this article represents a growing genre that is close to my heart: the "Wow, with my grown-up brains, muscles, and money, plus access to tools like the Internet, I can do all my favorite childhood activities so much BETTER!" genre.

I've been known to apply this thinking to video games, Legos, riding bikes, coloring books, skateboarding, cartoons, and comics, to name a few.

Someday when I'm really old I hope to apply the same kind of thinking to activities I undertook in my twenties. Like college.

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Depending on its orientation, invites guests to "Come in" or "Go away."

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This is music that was truly ahead of its time.

I never heard of most of these bands until well into the 90s or later (I didn't hear of Bauhaus until my mission. Of course I waited until I was released to actually listen to the tape.)

Some of them (Durutti Column and Teardrop Explodes) I've still never heard of. Well, now I have. Barely.

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Suzanne's post about Starbucks hot chocolate reminded me of The Firearm, a humorous periodical that circulated on the BYU campus during the '01-'02 school year. I never saw it in print (although that was my final year as a student, I wasn't really "on campus" much) but I heard about it and read all the issues online. It's funny stuff, and if you haven't read it before, I encourage you to do so. If you were around BYU at the time, you've probably read them already.

The inaugural issue is classic for it's treatment of Mochas and hardcore boardgaming.

Volume 1, Issue 3 introduced Chimptech, which is still in use in our office today.

As near as I can figure, there are seven issues in Vol. 1 and six in Vol. 2.

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"I want to help people. I want their life to be a better life. I want them to have what I have. A whole range of guns. Made from office supplies."

Scott and I came across this site years ago, but I had forgotten about it until a binder clip to the back of the head suddenly jogged my memory this morning.

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It all started with this site: How many of the 50 states can you name in 10 minutes?

I saw it a couple of weeks ago, but didn't post about it because I wasn't really impressed. First of all, it was kind of easy--I named all 50 in less than 5 minutes. Then you had to wait for the time to run out, and then it didn't even verify your answers. It just popped up a list of the correct answers and you were supposed to check them yourself. Boooring.

But apparently the Internet thought it was the greatest thing ever, because similar tests started popping up everywhere. And the copycats are much better. First of all, they are more challenging: World Countries, African Nations, UN Member States. Also, they sport a much improved interface. The correct answers are verified as you go, and it keeps a running tally for you of how many are left. Very nice.

Not to be outdone, Ironic Sans went back and spiffed up their original States quiz, so now it's high-tech like the others.

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I would like to live like this someday.

Or at least give it a shot.

1 comments Thursday, March 1, 2007

I remember one of my music lesson books had a diagram of Rachmaninov's hands. It showed him comfortably playing a C octave with the 2nd and 5th fingers of his right hand, and his thumb on the G below that.

Anyway, Asians are renowned for their musical prowess but also for their sometimes diminutive stature--which is to say, their piano prodigies don't always have the biggest hands.

This video is one man's attempt to compensate for that.

0 comments Wednesday, February 21, 2007

With over 5000 pieces, the Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon is the largest Lego set ever produced.

Just $500. (That's less than $.10 per piece!)

0 comments Tuesday, February 20, 2007

According to this article, there is a 1 in 30,000 chance that an asteroid will collide with earth in 2036.

Considering that the odds of a person dying in a terrorist attack are 1 in 88,000, I think this justifies a War on Asteroids. Or two or three.

And since the impending attack is scheduled to occur at least ten years before Social Security goes bankrupt, and fixing that was such a priority in 2005, well, you can see that we should have begun worrying about this years ago.

0 comments

The Homophoner takes you text and converts as many words as possible into homophones.

So,

"There are many things I would like to see and do before I die"

becomes

"Their are many things I wood like too sea and dew before I dye."

Mildly entertaining.

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Wikipedia is great with these lists. Plenty of magic tricks, including several exposures.

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Another oldie but goodie from the vast archive of tech support horror stories of the early 90s. Remember when computers were new and people were idiots?

"I'm not a technical person, I just want to go places in my car."

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I saw this a while ago, but came across it again today. It's an attempt to find some unique fact about every number between 0 and 10,000.

0 comments Friday, February 16, 2007

Some, like this pocketknife, are obvious errors.

But others, like this antique paperweight, are for reals. $85 large. Wow.

SenseList has a whole list of them. That's what they have. Whole lists of things.

0 comments Thursday, February 15, 2007

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There was some chatter yesterday about how Google had messed up their Valentine's Day Google Doodle.

Everyone was all, "What's a Googe?"

A few people found answers in obscure references, such as Barnabe Googe, a 16th Century poet, and Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine.

But in the end, Google wants these people to know that they just don't get it. The extra long stem on the strawberry is the L. Case closed.

2 comments

Not much else to say. It's just the worst commercial ever.

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I'm sure you've all heard about the terror scare that shut down Boston a couple of weeks ago.

This video that describes what kind of diabolical mind could be behind something so sinister.

0 comments Monday, February 5, 2007

Piggybacking on Clark here.

The first time I heard of Regina Spektor was in January 2006, when her video for 'Us' appeared at number 21 on Good Weather for Airstrikes' list of the Top 65 Videos of 2005.

GWFA is a top-notch blog for indie music, if you're into that kind of thing.

Anyway, that list introduced me to a lot of new bands, notably Hot Hot Heat, Sigur Ros, The Decemberists, and Bloc Party, among many others. I highly recommend it. The number one video, Glosoli by Sigur Ros is particularly good.

I can't find a way to link to the post, so here's what you do. Go to the Good Weather for Airstrikes homepage, and search for "Spektor." The last result should be a link to the top 65 videos of 2005.

Then head over to the Top 50 videos of 2006 and get current.

1 comments

This flash game measures your reflexes by timing how long it takes you to shoot a tranquilizer dart at runaway sheep. (Because that's the most obvious method that springs to mind, right?)

After several attempts my best average is 0.1772 seconds--a Rocketing Rabbit!

0 comments Monday, January 29, 2007

Awesome.

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No points for creativity? Seems a bit harsh.

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Your typical list of crazy laws, still on the books but rarely enforced, broken down by state.

I liked this one, which was never actually a law:

A Utah legislator proposed a resolution urging that each TV weather person be required to provide an ice cream cone to every member of the state House of Representatives whenever the forecast was wrong. The resolution failed, perhaps on First Amendment grounds.

1 comments

I never tire of these simple flash games.

In this one, you dodge tangerines. Brilliant!

I scored 87 on my first try.

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Very interesting (and long) piece in the New York Times on food and the advent of "nutritionism."

Unfortunately, the bulk of my diet is comprised of highly processed items that, in Michael Pollan's estimation, hardly qualify as food.

"There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these."

Oh well, there's always Lean Cuisine, right?

"Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best... When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised."

Oh no!

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Two of the greatest comedic minds of our generation (the third being Sacha Baron Cohen) on camera together. It's like chocolate and peanut butter!

(Via Cynical-C.)

1 comments Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Today is Amy's birthday. Happy Birthday Amy!

But the American Pie Council would like you to remember that January 23rd is also National Pie Day.

So do your patriotic duty and perform a Random Act of Pieness today.

1 comments

A video about why this guy doesn't like Pachabel's Canon in D.

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So, did the Disney characters murder one another often back in the old days?

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Can you guess what the most shoplifted item in America is?

I couldn't.

It's meat.

Meat.

I've never even heard of anyone shoplifting meat before. I would have guessed it was some kind of clothes or accessory item at the mall, or possibly gum. (Hasn't every six year old stolen gum from the grocery store? Maybe it doesn't count as shoplifting if your mom makes you return it.)

2 comments

Neat Google Maps pic of an SR-71 sitting on the deck of a docked aircraft carrier.

So many questions. First of all, they don't look like they would be able to take off from aircraft carriers, and are these planes still active anyway? Maybe it's someone's souvenir or something.

0 comments Monday, January 22, 2007

This essay represents a valiant attempt to rectify some of the continuity issues with the Star Wars saga.

Basically, the galaxy is held together by R2-D2 and Chewie.

0 comments

Sometimes words are more effective than graphics.

Especially when you're trying to convey the true evil that is the other paddle.

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Another flash game. Collect the black squares, avoid the red squares.

I got 7078 on my first try.

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As in, "brown is the new black."

Some of my favorites:

Ohio is the new Florida.
Prequel is the new sequel.
Actual is the new virtual.
Knitting is the new rock 'n' roll.

0 comments Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Kind of like Six Flags Over Texas, but with a giant banana.

(Via Cynical-C.)

0 comments

Stephen Colbert explains the telecom industry.

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And we'll follow the ceramic toaster with the cure for cancer.

0 comments

Wow, work has been crazy these past few days.

OK, let's kick the morning off with a ceramic toaster.

(Via Boing Boing.)

0 comments Friday, January 12, 2007


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I'm going to try embedding a video here.



The good part starts around the 3:00 mark.

Spelling Bee...

A test of wit and wordlery
The ancient sport of kings and queens
To make it on the spelling bee scene
You've got to be the cream!

Spelling Bee...

Daniel's dream goes up in smoke
He had his chance but then he choked
And this my friends is not a joke
It's a frickin' tragedy!

Spelling Bee...

Daniel lived in misery
But Daniel's not his name you see
For this tidbit I hid from thee
That little boy was me!

3 comments

The Spelling Bee was today, and Michael got out on his first word.

I'm very disappointed, and I can't stop thinking about it in order to get any work done. Which surprises me.

I'm surprised by how excited I was leading up to the event, how nervous I was sitting in there waiting for it to start, and how disappointed I am that he got out so early. I did the Spelling Bee once as a fourth grader and I got out on the first word, too, and I didn't care, so why do I care about this?

I guess it's because he studied so hard and he knew all those words. When he came home a few months ago and said he was going to be in the Spelling Bee, I didn't think much of it because he's just a first grader. How well could he possibly do? But as he studied those words, I was amazed at how well he learned them. Once he got them right he remembered them. I started thinking that he actually had a shot. When we arrived at the school there was some buzz among the teachers and parents that there was a first grader in the Spelling Bee this year.

But there's a reason they don't usually let first graders in the Spelling Bee. They are just squirmy little kids. They don't really have the composure to get up there at the microphone in front of the whole school and say what they know. They lack the gravitas, if you will.

Michael's word was "massage." I knew that was one that he studied, and he knew how to spell it. But he repeated the "g." He did it in such a way that nobody thought that he intended to put two g's in the word. He just stopped for a second, thought about it, and then picked up again on the last letter that he was on. (Which I think you are allowed to do, according to my viewing of the documentary "Spellbound.") Anyway, at first the judges told him he had it right, and he punched the air victoriously and took his seat. Then they discussed it for a while, then they went to the tape and reviewed it, and after what seemed like forever they walked over and told him that he had to leave the stage. He was visibly disappointed, and I felt crushed.

I wanted to get out of that auditorium as fast as I could, for some reason. I didn't want to hear any other kids spelling or misspelling words that I knew Michael knew.

0 comments Wednesday, January 10, 2007

MIT is offering a ton of free courses online. You can't get credit for them, and you won't have access to faculty or anything like that, but anyone is free to download the syllabus, lecture notes, assignments, and exams. No registration required.

If you were really motivated you could get the rough equivalent of an MIT education for a fraction of the cost! I guess you would still have to buy all your books, though.

UPDATE: Turns out OpenCourseWare is not limited to MIT, but actually consists of a consortium of several outstanding universities, such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, ...and UVSC.

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Kodak is back, baby! Booyah!

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Very cool animation that walks you through each dimension.

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Flickr photos tagged with 'faketiltshift' demonstrate an interesting photo editing technique where the immediate foreground and background are blurred. The resulting effect gives the appearance of miniature scale models being photographed up close.

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Melissa showed this to me the other day. The videos showing the process are especially cool.

0 comments Tuesday, January 9, 2007

This depiction of the gears of a clock is supposed to represent a triumph of Scalable Vector Graphics, but I just think it looks cool.

What's amazing to me is to realize that each second that ticks by causes every gear to move, however imperceptibly.

0 comments

You know how sometimes you're walking along, or driving to work or whatever, and you think to yourself, "Hey, I wonder what Art Garfunkel was reading in August of 1991?" And you just had to be content not to know, because even in this information age there are still some crucial bits of knowledge that lie just beyond our grasp?

Well, not anymore. Thanks to the Garfunkel Library, you can finally be at ease, secure in the knowledge that while Paul Simon was promoting his latest album with another free concert in Central Park, Art was reading Oscar Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

Fascinating.

0 comments

Steve Jobs announces the new Apple iPhone at MacWorld 2007 this morning.

They will be available in June, priced at $499 for 4GB, $599 for 8GB.

I am quite certain I will not be buying one, but they look pretty sweet.

Official website

UPDATE: Apple stock is up on the news, while Palm and RIMM (maker of Blackberries) ...not so much.

0 comments

Once you get past the inherent awesomeness of the chart itself, there is a lot of interesting information here.

By the way, does anyone see "Periodic Table" as one of the elements? I didn't, but it seems like it should be included, right?

2 comments

This one is just for Clark.

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This drum machine, and my skateboard, are my two main articles of life. As of today, I am officially nomadic.

(Seems to be a little skewed towards latin beats--three congas but not a single tom.)

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1. Go to any website with a lot of pictures. I had good results with Amazon.com.

2. Copy and paste the following into your address bar, then hit Enter:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

3. Be mildly entertained, then go back to work.

1 comments

As played on the side of a building.

0 comments

As if girls could ever understand the intricate machinations of naval warfare.

3 comments Monday, January 8, 2007

I want to try this recipe but I don't have one of those big soup pots.

0 comments Friday, January 5, 2007

Maybe not overtly political, per se, but definitely agenda-laden. It's all about sticking it to the man. You'll see what I mean.

Third World Farmer

Dissafected! (Links to download)

McDonald's Video Game

0 comments

Amy does, at least. And so do these girls.

0 comments

This time-lapse video depicts a Picasso painting from beginning to end.

What would be awesome is if Picasso narrated the process Bob Ross-style.

1 comments

Martha Stewart shows us how to turn one wall of your home office into a chalkboard calendar.

Now I just need a home office.

UPDATE: How to make your own chalkboard paint. As Suzanne points out, you'll need this if you actually want to attempt this project.

0 comments Thursday, January 4, 2007

I can imagine Clark having a similar conversation with his own kid someday.

0 comments Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Clever put-downs from high-minded folk.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
Groucho Marx

0 comments

This guy collected samples of all different kinds of food in 200 Calorie portions, took pictures of them, and then posted them in order of Calorie density. Nothing we didn't already know, of course, but it's an interesting visual.

0 comments

Every year they ask one open-ended question and some of the most brilliant people on the planet give their answers.

This year's question is "What are you optimistic about?"

Last year's was "What is your dangerous idea?" and the year before it was "What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?"

There is some really thought provoking stuff here--along with a few crazies, of course.

0 comments

Ze Frank's "The Show" has to be one of the most informative and entertaining things on the Interweb right now. Unless you count The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but I think they still technically count as TV.

What's your power move?

1 comments

Another strangely compelling online game that is extremely addictive. Seriously, don't start playing it unless you have a significant chunk of free time available.

0 comments

Foldedspace has collected many of your favorite classic Sesame Street clips on YouTube into one convenient location.

Note: If you try and click on the "La la la" song, you will find that the video has been removed. Never fear, someone else posted it here.

I haven't tested the rest of the links recently, but let me know if any others are broken.

0 comments

Well, Christmas break is over so it's time to get back to blogging. These first few days of work have been particularly busy ones, but hopefully things will die down once the year gets underway.

For the first post of 2007, I give you fifty great TV commercials from the 80s.

I still quote from No. 1 regularly.

The 80s commercial I quoted most in high school isn't in this list though. You can find it here. It's the second one. "Pardon me, guys." Never gets old.