2010 July❮❮prevnext❯❯

'owling 'orrors

(1 comment)
2010.07.01
--The Terrifyingness of Barn Owls, from Cracked.com's 5 Lovable Animals You Didn’t Know Are Secretly Terrifying

iPhone 4 photos have a distinctive feel I might dig (maybe it's a shallow gimmick, just high saturation- kinda like glossy monitors?)
The iPhone 4 rotation lock is portrait mode only- I suspect because the home screen only works that way. And actually iPad homescreen rotation is bad UI; you can't use spatial memory for where icons sit! Both devices need "homescreen only" locks.
http://mrgan.com/gb/ -- glyphboard - go here on your iDevice to get wingding-ish characters to copy and paste- like w/ stars or apple logos
Feb. 26, 2011 - last Space Shuttle Mission ever? Sigh.

the wonder woman that never was

2010.07.02

--By Maris Wicks, from Cool Wonder Woman Costume Redesigns That You Won't See At DC -- mostly more traditional imaginings, but some awesome ideas.

So making the rounds is word of a new costume for Wonder Woman (SPOILER: she gets a very-90s jacket.) I like the design, but after reading this awesome roundtable on Wonder Woman's costume changes through the ages I gotta think it ain't no how permanent... (probably a lot less a deal than her "depowering" in the 1970s when she basically became Emma Peel...)

I Ride The Red Line

--
http://www.slate.com/id/2259350/ - "Toxo" - how a cat-based parasite predicts the winner of the World Cup. Maybe best not to think about it too much, especially cat owners.
Sneaking in games of "Strategery" during bathroom breaks. May be getting addicted to confidence-boosting microdoses of victory.
Damn it, I've just gone through I don't know how many months w/o thinking about eye floaters and now I can't stop noticing them.

governments preparing for the great chair famine

2010.07.03
A few years ago I update you all to EB's method of preperation for the Great Chair Famine of 2012 but man, I think someone's got him beat...
--via picture is unrelated
Self-portrait reflected off a Toyota Yaris

and off a Scion xA.

My (new? or just unrealized...) superpower: smothering my legitimate urge to be helpful with a general obliviousness, so that I offer to carry, say, the third of 3 big boxes Amber is wrestling, or bring up the sixth of 6 loads of laundry.

captain kirk wishes you a very happy 4th of july

2010.07.04

dont understan the world, if up is north how come u drive that way n not hit the sun. i need to get me a compast.

A Half-Hearted Defense of the "Star Wars" Prequels
Man, kind of a bummer to think that 2010, already a year that looks weirdly futuristic when written out, is half over!

July 4th Blender of Love digest is here!

Having 4th of July in this year, but pretty hopeful about Boston Pops Fireworks in HD with a big projector and Amber...

the art of the cookout

(1 comment)
2010.07.05
Amber and I had a housewarming bbq today... we had a bit of sidewalk chalk on the driveway, this was by Miller:
Kate did the top and middle part, Amber did the bottom, not sure of the middle...

leggo my logo

2010.07.06
Way back when, when commenting on the "new" Gamecube logo I expressed my appreciation for the rotating N N64 logo:


Recently on Wikipedia I found this history of the Playstation logo, which caught my fancy for similar reasons:

That's some neat design work there.
So Boston fireworks on the projector looked great, but the sound was lacking- needed less music, more boom... Actually maybe broadcasts of fireworks could/should tape delay the audio, so it could be the one time the explosion and sound seem in synch-
WHAT THE... RT @Photocritic: In 'Back to the Future', Doc sets clock in the DeLorean to a day 25 years in the future. Today is that day.

atomic fireball: diet food

(1 comment)
2010.07.07
So forming an oddly important part of my diet (down 8-10 lbs so far!) are classic "Atomic Fireball" candies... here is an animated GIF of them being packaged:

Cinnamon is thought of as an appetite suppressant and while there might not be any actual cinnamon in these I wonder if the spicy-sweetness might not have about the same effect. I think the flavor is "mouth-interesting enough", and each candy long lasting enough, that 2 or 3 of these during a workday keep from seeking out creamier, fattier sweet treats.

The animation comes from Ferrara Pan's Atomic Fire Ball Virtual Tour, showing the pearl-like process by which these things are made. (It's funny what a late-90s vibe that page has... I wish I could put my finger on what the older aspects are, from a design standpoint.)

Man. "Atomic Fireball" is kind of a scary name now that I stop and think about it.
Digital glitches are getting me down-the iPhone podcast w/ a FF-busting 00:00 time. the unresumable xbox live download (a helicopter :-( )
I agree with Slate that Red Remover is a good game.
Avoidance of embarrassment is the least worthwhile of motives.

What I recommend is, when life gives you lemons: (1) Buy a bunch of Hefty bags! (2) Fill the Hefty bags with lemons! (3) Lug the bags to the curb! And (4) Call a certified waste-disposal contractor to haul away the piles of lemons now rotting in the sun!
George Saunders, "Ask the Optimist!"

whatever works

2010.07.08

--via this Gizmodo page which has a link to the original set of comic panels this is based on.
http://www.twitchasylum.com/jsvecx/ - WOW - A Vectrex Emulator in Javascript!
Bleh- sore neck makes me feel just a little nauseous all day. Plus more comfortable to walk head bowed, adding downward tinge to day.
Damn, sometimes I wonder just how falling apart the Red Line is...
Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
Neal Stephenson, "Anathem"

slow down, you're moving too fast

2010.07.09


--Not sure if that's *super* slow motion, but still kinda cool as the World Cup builds to its conclusion... (2019 UPDATE: not sure exactly what original video was, maybe something similar to this)
Sweet, Nike registered the trademark "TEE SHIRT FOR YOUR LEGS" last month. Can't wait! #fashionnews

Rethinking Reagan - kind of a Dove who knew when (and when not) to sound like a Hawk. The trouble with Neo-cons is they believe the Hawk and plan wars accordingly.
I must not be understood to mean that [interviewers] ever come consciously to destroy or are aware afterward that they have destroyed; no, I think their attitude is more that of the cyclone, which comes with the gracious purpose of cooling off a sweltering village, and is not aware, afterward, that it has done that village anything but a favor.

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/03/interaction_artist_games.php - forgot about a pretty decent dialog I had w/ Chris "Game-A-Day" DeLeon about games and their domain.

doodlesturm und drang

2010.07.10

Commissioned by Amber though she might not have realized it at the time.

When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.

Let's not forget who killed Jesus -- ambitious politicians pandering to religious conservatives. #PontiusPalin

in a sea of brown

2010.07.11

--via Archmage's Friday Pix
When you listen to Bruce [Springsteen]'s music, you aren't a loser, you're a character in an epic poem...about losers.
Jon Stewart

The only thing I was living for was Sarah McLachlan!
DMC (of "Run DMC") -- apparently her song "Angel" thwarted his suicidal plans.

super mario distant cousins

2010.07.12
Super Mario Bros Crossover is a super clever redoing of the classic Super Mario Bros game with a host of characters from other NES games... Dueling Analogs ran with the idea 'til it kind of keeled over with hilarious exhaustion:



It's intriguing to see how the coders patched over differences between the various games worlds and interactions.
http://gizmodo.com/5573952/iphone-4-review Jason Chen's Praising With (Not So) Faint Damnation, in overwrought Creative Writing 301 prose, is funny/sad, how he pretends to have some kind of gadget Stockholm Syndrome...
Empirically noted that a big glass of water can raise my morning weigh-in by quite a bit! "A pint's a pound the whole world 'round" indeed. (And when gaining 3 lbs a year would put someone from "normal" to "obese" in a decade, it's kinda scary!)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html - a creativity crisis might be really dangerous for our nation's future. (It's funny, come to think of it I remember playing that game where you turn an abstract scribble into a doodle with Marnie in High School, just to kill time. And show off.)
Harvey Pekar is dead! Bigger loss for Cleveland than LeBron, IMO. American Splendor was so great, wonder about stories left to tell...
A sad transitory time for certain types of geeking: I could learn Flash but not run on iStuff. I could code w/ HTML5's Canvas but not run on IE.
People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing: if I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian asshole.
Jack Handey, "What I'd Say To The Martians"

The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.
Jack Handey

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it.
Diax's Rake, as presented in Neal Stephenson's "Anathem"- a nice complement to our world's Occam's Razor

around and around and around we go

2010.07.13

--Detail from this brilliant work about the creative process, from the web comic subnormality...



Thought for the day: it just occurred to me how incredibly ironic it is that, when the Pledge of Allegiance was changed in 1954, they actually put 'under God' in between the words one nation and indivisible.
Phil Plait (via Bill the Splut) -- man, what a tin ear they had when they did made that blow against secular pluralism.

Note to future self: again, a param tag name="wmode" value="transparent" helps embedded Flash rest comfortably BEHIND div popups.
A little irritated HTML5 ditches framesets -seemed like great solution for keeping an index visible during browsing, what to use instead?
#RedSox fans should tip their cap, for George Steinbrenner gave excellent villain, and helped make for a whale of a rivalry.

dancing demon

2010.07.14

--I remember this program on TRS-80s from when I was in elementary school! Really impressive and detailed animation for the time, and you could compose the dance from a collection of steps...
http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html - World War II -- who wrote that crap? Were the writers just phoning it in? So unbelievable. (via Bill the Splut )
Diet Observations: There's a delay of 2-3 days between good/bad eating and scale results. And "bathroom weight" can account for .5-1.5 lbs. So weird how day to day "flux weight" can totally dwarf truly worrisome, longer-term trends in weight gain!
At Hogwarts School for Wizards, the 'special ed' kids were the most inadvertently dangerous of them all.

One day Jenny awoke to realize she could fly...but only up to 1000 feet, whereupon she instantly lost her newfound power forever.

Excessively-"Agile" development: "So, where's the finish line? Guess we'll paint it when we get there."
I want to be the Jared of Wendy's Taco Salad and Atomic Fireball Candies.
http://designfabulous.blogspot.com/2010/07/htc-1.html think the iPhone 4 was a bit minimalist? These HTC proposals are just stunning.

happy duck. or goose. or maybe it's just nervous. whatever!

2010.07.15

1516 Ways to Kill The Romance - Seanbaby can still make me laugh, sometimes.
I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!



(that was based on a bit from http://kisrael.com/2004/08/18/ - putting in different bits from the site, and the author I most frequently write like is Stephen King...)

duck n cover

2010.07.16

--The 2053 nuclear tests conducted
Ah, that old math spiritual, "Just a Random Walk with Thee"

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs&feature=youtu.be&a - Study like a scholar, scholar! This Old Spice is pretty great.
http://www.slate.com/id/2260617/ - cool, India invented a new currency symbol for the Rupee (scroll near bottom)
Heh, May 29 I missed noting the 10th Anniversary of my "Mundane" (i.e. personal, boring) daily journal - set to make sure that each day left at least a digital footprint...
http://ajaxload.info/ - awesome "throbber busy animation" generator, pick the template and the color...
The view outside my job's warroom area is kind of mezmorizing!


I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
jbezorg on slashdot

The last drop of 90s Arcade Competitive Spirit that I know of is The Downtown Crossing Gamestop: Street Fighter 4 and Smash Brothers.
Near Faneuil Hall, an excellent faux-statue bellydancer

Ariana drew the sailboat, I colored, then added the skull and crossbones at Jose's request:

pretty colour invader rally 3d

(3 comments)
2010.07.17
click to play

pcir3d2 - source - built with processing
Pretty Colour Invader Rally 3D! Inspired by Amber's liking of pretty colour crackdown Glorious Trainwreck's Klik of the Month Club #37 - the event's 3rd anniversary! Like most 3D updates, it might not be as good as the original, but I'm not displeased with how it came out. Move the mouse to have them follow the cursor and rally around their love of pretty colours or just let 'em hang out.

UPDATE: this is actually Pretty Colour Invader Rally 3D *2*... changes are: invaders now stay upright, move a little differently, have outlines, and the (remodeled) chase cursor moves X+Y when you just move the mouse, and X+Z when you hold the mouse button down as well. You can see the original here -- would be interested if anyone (besides Amber who I consulted with on this) cares enough to say which they prefer.
Inception: Eternal Sunshine meets Oceans Eleven with a touch of the first Matrix... not bad!
Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nuts are in effect edible wood.
Peter de Vries, "A Hard Day at the Office"

random photos

2010.07.18

http://derp.cheezburger.com/ - when did "Derp" replace "Duh" and "Duhhr? I admit it's a better term, more concise. Funny website.
http://lab.andre-michelle.com/pulsate - lovely sound toy... I like the logic behind it, once I figured it out.
I've converted Amber to the best way of dealing with scraps of tortilla chips: crunch even smaller, mix in with salsa, eat with spoon.
The perfect half moon visible with the sun still out gives me a sense of the crazy 3D clockwork of the solar system....

ah mel

2010.07.19
(WARNING: A LITTLE CUSSING)
--Before this Mel Gibson thing gets totally played out.

Man, I kind of liked him in Lethal Weapon.

http://gizmodo.com/5590327/windows-phone-7-in-depth-a-fresh-start - I doubt I'll like the phone, but I like the idea of MS's clean "authentically digital" design vs Apple's Apple's skeuomorphic trend.
No joke: I just received a junk e-mail from "Rhett Butler" but frankly my dear, I won't read his spam.

y'know my beetle photo yesterday looks a bit like Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" album cover.

tweet

2010.07.20
TWEET.

BY OYL MILLER

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3 am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams, looking for angry meaning, any meaning, same hat wearing hipsters burning for shared and skeptical approval from the holographic projected dynamo in the technology of the era, who weak connections and recession wounded and directionless, sat up, micro-conversing in the supernatural darkness of Wi-Fi-enabled cafes, floating across the tops of cities, contemplating techno, who bared their brains to the black void of new media and the thought leaders and so called experts who passed through community colleges with radiant, prank playing eyes, hallucinating Seattle- and Tarantino-like settings among pop scholars of war and change, who dropped out in favor of following a creative muse, publishing zines and obscene artworks on the windows of the internet, who cowered in unshaven rooms, in ironic superman underwear burning their money in wastebaskets from the 1980s and listening to Nirvana through paper thin walls, who got busted in their grungy beards riding the Metro through Shinjuku station, who ate digital in painted hotels or drank Elmer's glue in secret alleyways, death or purgatoried their torsos with tattoos taking the place of dreams, that turned into nightmares, because there are no dreams in the New Immediacy, incomparably blind to reality, inventing the new reality, through hollow creations fed through illuminated screens. Screens of shuttering tag clouds and image thumbnails lightning in the mind surfing towards Boards of Canada and Guevara, illuminating all the frozen matrices of time between, megabyted solidities of borders and yesterday's backyard wiffleball dawns, downloaded drunkenness over rooftops, digital storefronts of flickering flash, a sun and moon of programming joyrides sending vibrations to mobile devices set on manner mode during twittering wintering dusks of Peduca, ashtray rantings and coffee stains that hid the mind, who bound themselves to wireless devices for an endless ride of opiated information from CNN.com and Google on sugary highs until the noise of modems and fax machines brought them down shuddering, with limited and vulgar verbiage to comment threads, battered bleak of shared brain devoid of brilliance in the drear light of a monitor, who sank all night in interface's light of Pabst floated out and sat through the stale sake afternoon in desolate pizza parlors, listening to the crack of doom on separate nuclear iPods, who texted continuously 140 characters at a time from park to pond to bar to MOMA to Brooklyn Bridge lost battalion of platonic laconic self proclaimed journalists committed to a revolution of information, jumping down the stoops off of R&B album covers out of the late 1980s, tweeting their screaming vomiting whispering facts and advices and anecdotes of lunchtime sandwiches and cat antics on couches with eyeballs following and shockwaves of analytics and of authority and finding your passion and other jargon, whole intellects underscored and wiped clean in the total recall 24/7 365 assault all under the gaze of once brilliant eyes.

Every event had a cause, no matter how opaque or oblique. So yes, "everything happens for a reason", but not necessarily a reason you'll like. Perhaps you're thinking of "silver linings"- they're down the hall, to the left.
I wish more elevators weren't closed opaque boxes. It's like we're trying to pretend it's not vertical travel but magic floor teleportation.
Grr. I like having a monitor at work, but using the laptop for some background information, mail-monitoring etc. And I also like using Win-m or Win-d shortcuts to "Minimize All" and start with a clean slate. Increasingly irritated there's no way to say "just clear the screen I'm working on..."

The iPad Kindle app's highlighting feature is SO BROKEN it makes me angry. It adds a bizarre "shift whole block" feature that is SO WRONG.

things that go dib dib in the night!

2010.07.21
via felisdemens:

Crewmate casualties in the original Star Trek series, by uniform color: Red: 43 // Blue: 5 // Yellow: 6 // Engineering Smock: 4
Wired "Datastream"

Innumeracy must affect, like, a kajillion people.

We cannot sense a belief or desire in another person's head the way we smell oranges.
Steven Pinker, "How The Mind Works"

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
Sam Rayburn

When I was a kid, I had this awesome windup rubber tire toy; it had an offcentered weight and bounced like crazy, and overall had this great, highly appealing kinetic feel. Any idea where to get information on it, or where to replace it?
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/dead-sites-web-1-0?click%E2%80%A6 - the Web 1.0 graveyard. I really miss Suck.com.
[about fake online dating scammers]
"'Cause of all your cyberstalking... you KNEW I really was that good"
"Oh honey- scammers don't pretend to be 30-something programmers working from home in an apartment in their aunt and uncle's house."
Me and Amber

can't face it

(3 comments)
2010.07.22
--via Kotaku's When Video Games Go Wrong which is mostly taken from the site I Get Your Fail, about weird bugs that show up in game development.
Holy shit. It's 20-fuckin-10 and this laptop cannot install a god damn Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. What. The. Fuck. (Especially because the laptop's pre-windows boot menu has NO GODDAMN PROBLEM understanding that hey- it's a fucking keyboard, the kind people type on.)
And now endless bluescreens. SON OF A FUCKING BITCH. It is a mother fucking KEYBOARD. It is not god damn rocket science. Now I look like an asshole for wanting a better keyboard. Fuck Fuck FUCK. It's like Windows 95 era USB all the fuck over again.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/swearing.htm - I like that swearing is distinct in the brain. Oddly I didn't learn to cuss 'til highschool.
http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html - "The Top Idea in your Mind". I'm kind of annoyed that right now it seems to be "losing weight". (Also, for me it's less "shower" thinking and more what comes to mind while walking down the hall to the men's room)
That free #Tron game for iPhone is awesome- like Vindicators meets the spider level of the old Tron arcade game- damn I love tank games! Control scheme is dual 360 like Robotron, a bit like this one Mac tank game I saw way back when....

learning english the poopy way

2010.07.23

--"I have a bad case of diarrhea"

canoe-dling

2010.07.24
Apologies (mostly to my folks) if my blog has been a bit coarse the past couple of days, I'll try to get back on track.

Friday my company had an outing, canoeing on the Charles (Newton area) followed by some tasty meat from Red Bones. Most of these are from my photoset of the day...
I take you to the beach sometime and i'll bring the blanket and the chicken. Is this not the makins for love?

"Pretty please?"
"The physical appearance of the please makes no difference."

Is Time Itself Slowing Down? (or "disappearing from the universe" as the article is headlined.) You know, I have to say that makes more sense to me than "Dark Energy". Also: would creatures in that universe really notice it? Or just move slower and slower, asymptotically closer to stopping forver? (via Bill)
Can't figure out if flikr's UI lets me do what I want, namely, quickly go through large versions of photos in set and discard ones I dislike.
The gratifying *SNAP* of unfurling a new garbage bag more than makes up for any drudgery of taking out the kitchen trash.
Been thinking about how the iPad might represent a new breed of "Casual Computers". I was thinking about my computers before the web; for me they were game players and word processors and that was it; nerdy and/or boring. Would I even bother owning, say, laptops if not for the web? With the iPad, the PC might return to a workhorse type role; it's good for more serious browsing, and critical for getting things done, but not so much fun beyond that.
It was grandmotherly, as though grandma... might have done it with... her axe.
Patrick O'Connell on Top Chef

on pint glasses and the ephemerality of things

2010.07.25
From my friend Sumana's Blog:
When Leonard and I first moved in together, I asked him to get rid of those big pint glasses he had. They were chipped and scratched, but that's not what I minded. I just didn't like dealing with glass, because glass breaks. Anything glass is on loan from a jealous God. I feared the inevitable smashes, so goodbye glasses.

Years passed.

Somewhen I found myself thinking, so what if the glass breaks? There's a saying that you must drink from the cup as though it is already broken. Maybe I'd just had enough hard knocks to appreciate ephemeral joy and function for what they are, instead of clutching them so hard they fall apart. Maybe I'd had enough hard knocks to know that I won't fall apart even if a glass does.

There's a Jorge Luis Borges quote:
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
So now I've bought a few commemorative pint glasses, on trips. One from Pacific Standard. One from Borderlands. One, from an art shop in Providence, featuring two astronauts in love.

We drink water from them, mostly. The clear round glass admits light, lenses it, lets me see a dream of what's on the other side.

They are for him. They are for us. They are for me. They are whole, and someday they will be broken. Not "but," but "and." But I chose them, so I can distantly imagine even cherishing the memory of their deaths.

i don't talk to no walls

(6 comments)
2010.07.26
Sumana (of yesterday's post) recently suffered a loss in her family, and encouraged people to post happy memories of their own families.... my response was:
I think what I like most are some of the little anecdotes and catchphrases that become part of one family's lore. I worry that they might not seem to have such comedic legs to outsiders (which is part of the point, kind of) but I guess the one that comes to mind is this:

In the late 70s or early 80s or so, we were living in a house that had a laundry chute down the basement. My mom got down there only to find she had forgotten my coat that needed washing. My dad was taking a bath when he heard the voice from the chute: "toss down Kirk's coat!"

His stentorian response "I DON'T TALK TO NO WALLS" is a family shibboleth to this day...
I also added one I've mentioned once here before:
And another one is from my toddlerhood, when my mom purposefully moved a bowl of grapes to the center of a big piano to keep it away from me - she came back to find me having made the piano climbing expedition to get to the bowl, and my quick witted, nervous grin cover story to appease her irritation was "gapes... I *yike* gapes"

Even now, my mom and I yike gapes.
Mom, feel free to correct any of the details...
Fight Fred Phelps with Fire or something... great counter-posters.

iPad Stickering Phase 1 Complete - it kinda reflects my personality and hopefully making it look a bit ghetto will make it less steal-worthy...

wash me please

2010.07.27

--MELAS passed on a kind of intriguing bit of email-lore -- artist Scott Wade's Dirty Car Art -- this piece is less technically impressive than some of his stuff, but I like how it integrated the wiper as part of the work. He's got a sense of light and darks I've never developed, great stuff.
Yatima's name ideas for a crossdressing strip-poker variant, at crummy.com:
Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer, is up for parole. Alarmed at how much his old mugshot looks like my Middle School school photo.

plastic to the bone

(1 comment)
2010.07.28
Amber found this page of Tattooed Legos -- actually a promotion for Piot Extra Fine pens:

The flavorwire page has several more, including a rather amusing trampstamp.

I admire this on multiple levels: the intricate artwork, the cleverness of the idea of giving Lego guys tattoo, how well it shows off the capability of the pen, and how by sticking in the product, they do a good job of making sure people know what the campaign is for.
You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way navigators use stars.
Charles Kuralt

Apple's Magic Trackpad Ambitions: The Mouse Is Dead -- intriguing notion - if this is true, would it spread to PCs in general? I'm skeptical, the mouse utilizes precise muscles that the trackpad can't (I go a bit nuts if I go too long with only a trackpad.) But Apple has been a harbinger of old technologies' demise before: losing the floppy drive, and USB ports rather than specialized keyboard and mouse slots.

geon and on and on and on

(1 comment)
2010.07.29
In Pinker's "How The Mind Works" he touches on "Geons" -- a theory that the brain uses a smallish set of basic visual/structural elements (akin to atoms, but on a larger level) to remember what things look like, and identify them later, even if the image we're looking at is at a funny angle, in different colors, etc. Here's an example, showing 5 Geons and some common objects that could be described with them:
I am very bummed that I can't find a "complete" list with all 24 Geons anywhere online. It's an intriguing idea though, complete with some nice testable implications. (It's not 100% complete in terms of describing how we identify things in theworld, but -- as Pinker argues at length -- the brain may also have a set of additional task-specific subsystems, for example, a different way of identifying and "reading" faces, and that would not destroy the basic theory.
Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other, but to George Lucas it is a name that trumpets evil.
Anthony Lane, "Space Case"

Evolutionary speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek--why, for example, people would rather make love with an attractive partner then get a slap on the belly with a wet fish.
Steven Pinker, "How the Mind Works"

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour

If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
Elbert Hubbard

Panasonic RP-HJE 130: Cleverest earbud packaging ever?

The "Golden Record" on the Voyager probes has an hour of Carl Sagan's wife's brainwaves, including a bit on what it's like to be in love.
Weird iOS 4 bug- when music is playing, but you get the music controls on the lock screen, the play triangle never becomes a pause icon? Odd
The only thing for which they should have used wood-grained plastic was the coffin of the man who invented wood-grained plastic.
James Lileks

Daniel Shore died? Nuts!

alien billin'

2010.07.30

--Portrait of Alien Bill I comissioned from HARVEYJAMES... Check out the other stuff from this batch he did.
HOW THE MIND WORKS FOR DUMMIES (by Amber M and Kirk I, 2010):
It's complicated. You wouldn't understand. THE END.

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself-an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.
That's from the first few pages of Twilight, I stopped reading shortly thereafter. I mean, I'm not quite sure she knows what "exile" means... surprised they couldn't find an editor for Stephanie Meyer.
Coffee separates us from the dead. Tea separates us from the animals.

Ballmer and the MS Response to the iPad - He says it's Windows(TM) for the "Slates". OK, that's fair, but funnily enough, avoiding windows (no TM) is a UI strength of the iPad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon - whoa -- Damon "Guys and Dolls" Runyon helped invent the Roller Derby as we know it!
The glass spiral staircase at the Boston Apple store:

Damn it I forget how much more effective and less distracting my energetic work "!psyched" playlist is that my other playlists.

max headroom we need you more than ever

2010.07.31

--Max Headroom was really ahead of his time -- kinda predicted Fox News by a few decades!
Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.
Sir Julian Huxley



http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/2/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality


2010 July❮❮prevnext❯❯