2010 May❮❮prevnext❯❯

Dan Meyer's 2009 Annual Report from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

via boingboing - man, and I thought I was good at recording stuff. Not to mention his mad video assembly skills...

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So yesterday Amber, Kjersten, JZ, his gal Michelle, her dog Moose, and I formed Team Angry! Manatee for the second Hub Crawl organized by my former housemate Miller. The hubcrawl is a photohunt (like a scavenger hunt but you don't scavange per se, you just take pictures) with a little bit of puzzle solving for flavoring. You get bonus points for having more team members in the photo...

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Memorial Drive is taken over by Walk for Hunger. Which is cool and all, but the ice cream truck at one end seems a little out of place.
--via gifanime.tumblr.com/. Man, I love animated GIFs. Their filesizes are disproportionately huge, but they're such neat little bits of storytelling.

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Wasting time is an important part of living.

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Q: How long does it take to boil 4 gallons of water? A: a long time if you turn on the wrong burner. #imnotgoodinanemergency

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we're glad you stopped by to see how seriously we take humor. http://www.microsoft.com/education/competencies/humor.mspx

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For work I just had to jump into gmail with IE. Man, that just doesn't feel right somehow.

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Kind of amazed that over whole weekend, none of my local Twitter followees made the obvious "Boston, Love that Dirty Water" joke.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2150015 - from 2006, an overview of some of the different translations of the Office, and the cultural differences.

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"Look at that. She's totally flirting with him."
"Hmm you don't know that. Some people can't help oozing sexuality."
"You ever notice you can only ooze two things? Sexuality and pus. Man I tell ya."

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http://www.slate.com/id/2252209/ - nice bit on Eadweard Muybridge (the guy who did the original stop-action photos of a horse running.)

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Amber figured out why Android's homescreen looks less polished to her than iPhone's - icon labels w/ borders, not just written on background

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Yeesh, the lyrics to "Good Golly Miss Molly" really go "Sure like to ball"??
--Amber (Niagara Falls, Ontario.)

Decided to exercise the iPad by making a flat color picture... I was tempted, then, to trim the edges, but I kind of like 'em the way they are, how they add a bit of a dream like quality.

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As they enter the water together, she thinks of the tank top left behind on the sand, drawing in the sun and heat. Later she will wear the tank top into the water, and observe the almost too interesting way the water inundates the fabric, transforming its nature as it now clings and reveals, and she will think that it is a complete, if imperfect, metaphor for love.

Weirdly, I then had another dream about transcribing this quote from the previous dream, but at my grandma's old house. Then I got up and transcribed it for real, though there's always some give and take with the half-melted dream memory and the conscious desire to make a good quote.

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Marine Week in Boston- lots of amazing hardware out by Copley and other spots you can poke around with- guns, artillery, vehicles, etc!

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they like big guns and they cannot lie

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armed gal

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probably not the life for me, but hey
--from this cool xkcd project about naming colors. Some laughs in that link, especially the "color by gender" graphs.

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Apparently the Aquapocalypse wasn't all that apocalyptic - tests confirm water was OK to drink all weekend. http://bit.ly/cfkxrx

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http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/why-steve-jobs-hates-flash.html - wonder if iPad is way to get people to accept "files live in the cloud". I'm kind of a control feak when it comes to my files though...

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the best way to think of iPhone OS devices: app consoles.

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--via gifanime

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Wow, if only every terrorist was as clever as the guy who left his apartment AND getaway car keys in the would-be carbomb.

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Hate to ruin your childhoods, but The Power of Greyskull is NOT carbon-neutral.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2253050/ - PowerPoint isn't the problem. It's not the solution, but it's not the problem.

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Without that black fold-around slipcover case, the iPad really feels like a big digital photo frame.

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[on the possible b-/m-illion typo Dow drop] "Imagine what would have happened if the guy yesterday typed 'zillion'!"

--from a Slate piece of a comic artist quitting the Internet (tougher to find reference art!) and the current break-neck pace of the publishing industry.

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Pretzel M&M's?!? click to play

tvland - source - built with processing
--an animation based on a drawing I made on Marnie's PC in the very early 90s...use the mouse to speed up, slow down, or reverse the animation!

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http://harveyjames.livejournal.com/157143.html - Harvey James' take on drawing people, and how many heads tall people are...

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You'd think Buddhist practice would be good for weight loss: (acknowledge hunger, but as a transient feeling-) but the Buddha was kinda fat.

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Fun Fact: my first nickname, given to me by my parents when I was a long but very chubby infant, was "The Buddha"

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Funner Fact: my parents were odd enough that their friends thought maybe that was the name they picked, despite being protestant ministers.

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Weird. My work computer has lots its ability to type capital "h". Lowercase is fine. Maybe the thing I do to swap out caps-lock for ctrl?

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http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050905/stupid-utopias-a.shtml - nice survey of bad ideas for "Utopias"

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http://www.sudaneseeducationfund.org/ - friends of mine help refugees. I'm sponsoring a triathalon-er buddy for $50. Wanna help too?

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When Sumana calls my cell I like to answer the phone with a fake business name. Today I said:
L: Leonard's Apple-Eating Service.
S: What are you doing?
L: I'm eating an apple. I figured I'd try to turn my hobby into a business.

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Every Bostonite who freaked out about "the aquapocalypse" should text "Flood" to 90999 and donate $10 to Salvation Army flood relief in Nashville - that's the real deal.

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Netflix on Wii is awesomer than I expected. Season 1 of The Office, yay! Weird how "on demand" life is becoming.
--via gifanime. Man, I just love stuff rotating.

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Java Geekery: I had forgotten how sorrowful Eclipse's debuggery is. Free hint: if I'm looking at a standard collection, I'm interested in the values stored therein, not the plumbing of the List object.
--from Cracked.com If Pop-Culture's Greatest Characters Wrote Tell All Books. Man, Robocop references will never get old for me. To prove it, here's this:

--from Bad Gods (for those note in the know it's a parody of a poster for this movie)

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Lawn sprinklers? Really? On a day that's supposed to have rain anyway?

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http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1259-High-Frequency-Trading-Is-A-Scam.html - a coworker is talking about how flash trading = front running; this automated sneaky algorithm crap should be illegal.

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The Alewife T stop is kind of broken. Maybe they should put a crude cardboard sign telling people the parking garage is on the other side at the BOTTOM of the escalator as well as the top.
--via gifanime. Shout out to the old Game & Watch

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While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.

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http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/12/apple-gives-a-nod-to-newton-with-new-what-is-ipad-ad/ - Apple echoing the old Newton ads with the iPod spot... man, the old Newton looks pretty good in those!
--via lileks tumblr, where he writes

I have two favorite Coke ads. This is one of them. 1946.

It reminds me of Yoko Ono's Ceiling Painting, the one that's said she used to woo John Lennon...

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Moderation is like a foreign language. You have to learn that shit when you're young.

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My heart was with the Cavs vs. the Celtics. Cleveland needs it more.

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flowers by me and amber
--MAN I've loved this clip for so long! Random thoughts: that's an odd place for a mail slot to open into and B. Damn that's some rocking subwoofer-ish bass Tom has going on there.

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The MFA prohibits backpacks which makes some sense, but the policy that backpack purses must be worn over just one shoulder is funny.

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Anyone know what the name of that one keyboard voice you hear so much in electronica is? Some kind of organ or something? Amber and I went for a long overdue trip to the MFA the other day. Walking back to the car, we saw this liberally decorated mailbox:


Closeups:



I really like the Dali. I guess that's what the neighborhood gets for being right across the street from Mass Art...

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omg a Massachusetts Gulf gas station where they didn't disable the freakin' handle clip, so you can let go of the damn thing. Living on the edge!

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Amber has a new theory that the almost complete lack of "70s Classic Rock" in my collection might be a manisfestation of an indifference to string instruments in general.

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loveblender!

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Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

(also this month's quote for http://loveblender.com/)
--One of the parts of our MFA visit I liked the most was the exhibit of photographer Harry Callahan's work, especially his Eleanor series, one shown here. Just simple and beautiful over all.

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Just read "1001 MAD Pages You Must Read Before You Die" - many grins, few laughs in all. But, weirdly influential to my young self. Like "Little Known Celebrity Cult Groups"- I guess it taught my 7 year old self a bit of a something about Ed McMahon, Jerry Lewis, Renee Richards, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield Dangerfield, and McLean Stevenson...

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http://gawker.com/5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-from-porn?skyline=true&s=i - Jobs email catfight! "Freedom From Porn"? There's the web ya? Anyway it seems like a charging App Store could be better age gatekeeper than the web is-- it's just to stop the morality police from kvetching, like in schools...

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Jobs' publicly available email must lead lots of nerds to "set him straight" after an exchange like that-wonder how he/they sort through it?
--via gifanime

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BK sending out squads w/ coffee backpacks

- distributing samples by Copley

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Drop Shadows Suck. Last month BK posted this quote on the Blender of Love

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

Also, Amber found this on one of her favorite tumblrs:



Not sure what I think of committed love as being "empty" but still it's kind of a neat infographic.

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Amber thinks near ubiquitous DVR + stuff like Hulu means less common talk about big shows. Or it's the fragmenting audience?

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Tip of the Day: if IE seems to be insisting a div be taller than the height you set for it, try cranking down "font-size" as well...

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followup to that "Dinner with Cupid" Boston Globe blind date from last year. I have "self-described chatterbox" ways!

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For years I've been bummed about how little noise I make when I blow my nose; Amber says the trick is to nasally inhale first. INHALE? Whoa. Have I been missing out this whole time???
--on a bit of a Beatles kick, triggedered by reading "100 Best Beatles Songs: An Informed Fan's Guide". Went on a bit of a wikikick (what's the word for that, when you just start following links? Surfing? More networked than that though...) freading about Cynthia Lennon having an affair with "Magic Alex". I was intrigued by his "Nothing Box" (partially 'cause of the name), something that John Lennon is said to liked staring at while tripping... this advert for it and a picture of Lennon with it from Lennon's Sunroom. (I'm kind of conceptually interested in the Indica Gallery where Magic Alex showed some of his kinetic lightwork and also where Lennon met Yoko Ono...

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One MAD parody, "G.I. Shmoe" - repeated gag was a woman asking "HEY JOE- YOU GOT CHEWING GUM?" Guess it was a pickup-line, not sure what era though.

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Yay to 10-1 Design and their iPad/iPhone Pogo sketch stylus- mine got a broken clip, I emailed, they said there had been a bad production run and sent a replacement.

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It occurs to me that the App Store's restrictions and control are to this coming mobile era what Windows's inferior user interface was to the PC era: something that offends some critics to a degree such that they will insist for years, despite the success and popularity of the platform, that it's a fatal flaw that will ultimately doom it.

--Because it's Friday! A picture of Spock and a kitty.

(Found by Amber, original here, I think from her new favorite tumblr.)

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A javascript function I'm surprised I had to write:
function isAllNumbers(val){
return(! /[^\d]/.test(val));
}

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Shit is a very natural function of the body. We shouldn't discard it.

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Google's playable Happy-Birthday Pac-Man tribute today is brilliant.

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RIP Isis- a nervous but friendly wonderful family cat. No ceiling fans will spook you now!

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The amount of sleep needed by the average person is ten minutes more.

--Can't wait for the new Tron movie! Here's UGO geekily analyzing the trailer and talking about details of the original that they hope make a return...

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http://snibbe.com/scott/dynamic/gravilux/gravilux.html - that's the web version of an 11-yr-old minimalist art program that, amazingly to me, is currently listed as the top free iPad app.

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--Chiranjeevi - Finest Tractor Warrior of this or any time. (via)

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RIP Martin Gardner! Mathematics will seem that much less recreational...

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http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/lost/index.html - awesome who's who on Lost, including the 75% of ensemble now dead...

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*achoo* I'm allergic to season finales.

There's a hawk nest with a family on a building near the roadway at Fresh Pond, near Alewife... here's a quick photo Amber took from the car:


The thing is, there are all kinds of birdwatchers with crazy telephoto lenses. But Amber was mostly amused by the guy who turned his camera around to take a picture of the birdwatchers
I'm not sure if anyone took a picture of Amber taking a picture of the guy taking a picture of the people taking the pictures of the hawk.

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A woman's voice on the radio can convince you you're in love. A woman's voice on the telephone can convince you you're alone.

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I don't believe in a lot of things. But I believe in duct tape.

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I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

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The Apple Store "Genius Bar" is itself kinda genius-y. Where else to go to get the bellybutton lint scraped out of an iPhone's headphone jack? (It was messing with the mic.) It definitely adds to the power of the brand.

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http://boyslife.org/features/4560/olympic-mascots-through-the-years/ - there really needs to be an Olympic Mascot Fighting Game.

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So odd to see ads around for "The Sportsman's Guide". I ported their website once upon a time... http://kisrael.com/2008/05/06/
--Just before everyone forgets about Lost entirely...(via)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlmho7SY-ic -YouTube 5 yearaversary video. Just noticed maybe "YouTube" is a play on calling TV "The Boob Tube"... I mean, why else "tube"?

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I can barely express my contempt for the web forum game of "First Post!". What a waste of people's attention.

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Happy 25th Anniversary to My Ever Lovin' Aunt Susan and Uncle Bill! Here's the (heh, Amber) frog pin and earrings we collaborated on for Aunt Susan...

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Plus we got 'em flowers... "Sweet William", get it? click to play

sabotage - source - built with processing
--My kinda unfinished entry for Klik of the Month #35. Arrow keys move, z shoots. This is a rough copy (sans scoretracking or ending) of a game I played on PC in the early 90s, which in turn was a stripped down version (dropping the 'waves' and jets and bombs) of an old Apple II game Sabotage.

The PC version also had "gravity bullets" that were pulled down by gravity to help clear out landed troops, but I thought that might look a bit odd.

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A shared Google calendar, synched with iPhones/iPod Touches, has proven to be a bit of a relationship saver, or at least helper.

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One way Starbucks beats Dunkin Donuts: w/ iced drinks, the lid straw hole is 3 cuts, not a 2-cut cross; easier to insert and preserve straw.

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The post-facto insert of "under God" wasn't just bad secularism and bad pluralism, it was bad poetry that breaks the rhythm of the Pledge.
--This vehicle came to me in a dream, though it's probably straight out of Miyazaki's "Möwe" aircraft from his movie Nausicaä.... it was like the front end of an old-timey biplane but the wing was small and detachable and it only flew it a walking pace-- kind of like a flying Segway, in practice.

I'm really glad the iPad lets me get stuff off like this down, and then online.

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Glad the wristwatch is on the way out replaced by pocketwatch-ish cellphone-will we still make the 'glance at wrist' gesture for impatience?

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http://www.slate.com/id/2254863/ -interesting bit on Stop Signage (first video link is great) BUT- are full stops that much better than alert "rolling stops"? It kind of begs the question if they are.

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Hey IBM! Rather than having red lights disable people's cars, lets make red lights smarter about the traffic around, eh? It's a crime that I have to sit and wait for the stop light at an othewise empty intersection.

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You know what? Screw Photoshop's "oh I can't possibly include those 100% transparent pixels in the selection" stance-Jimminy F'in Crickets!

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The key to understanding the past is the knowledge that people then did not live in the past--they lived in the present, just a different present from ours. The present we are living in will be the past sooner than we wish. What we perceive as its uniqueness will come to be seen as just a part of the past as view from the point of a future present that will, in turn, see itself as unique. People in history did not wear quaintly old-fashioned clothes--they wore modern clothes. They did not see themselves as comparing unfavorably with the people of the future, they compared themselves and their lives favorably with the people of their past. In the context of our area of interest, it is particularly interesting to note that people in history did not see themselves as technologically primitive. On the contrary, they saw themselves as they were--at the leading edge of technology in a time of unprecedented change.

Man, I really have a hard time adopting his view for the 70s. Plus, for the record, I do kind of compare myself unfavorably with the folks of the future. Assuming stuff doesn't turn all Mad Max.
--via gifanime but here for Amber...
--Continuing yesterday's theme... I didn't realize how awesome a theme song and montage that was.

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App of the moment- "Find in Page" is a brilliant bookmarklet that makes up for a serious lack on Apple gadgets, lack of "ctrl-F" find.

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In NJ for a wedding. Irritated that the Dunkin Donuts iced coffee is all mucked up with Yankees logos. Least it's not "New Yorke Kreme" eh?
--Polish Sex and the City movie poster, via Cracked.com's 15 Grossly Misleading Movie Posters. I love that Eastern Europe tradition of making their own covers for Western books and posters for movies.

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Now this is a street that knows how to get the beerpong mojo working for its block party....

WAT IS LIFE

BEEN TRYIN 2 WRITE MY THOUGHTS MORE SO CHECK THIS.

WAT IS LIFE? IS IT JUST THE OPPOSITE OF DETH OR IS IT SUMTHING MORE. WE KNO IT IS ALL THINGS LIKE FROGS AND STICKS AND SHIT BUT WHERE DOES THE LIFE GO WHEN THOSE THINGS DIE. I KNO FOR CERTAIN THAT WHEN I DIE I AM RIDING WITH FUCKIN JESUS BUT EVEN THAT HAS GOT BE ASKIN QUESTIONS. LIKE WAT R WE GONNA DO FOR ETERNITY. IS ME AN JESUS JUST GOIN 2 PRETTY MUCH CONSTANTLY FIGHT DEMONS? DO THEY NEVER DIE? WTF R WE SUPPOSED 2 DO IF WE KILL ALL THE DEMONS AND DEVILS AND SHIT AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS. THERES STILL GONNA BE MILLIONS OF YEARS LEFT. MY PAPS USED 2 TELL ME THAT WED BE ROLLIN IN MEDOWS WITH FLOWERS AND SHIT BUT I DO THAT HERE AND I GETS BORING AFTER LIKE 10 MINETS AND MAYBE IF I TRIED REALLY REALLY FUCKIN HARD I COULD ROLL AROUND IN A GRASSY FIELD FOR LIKE MAYBE 30 OR 40 MINETS BUT HOW THE FUCK AM I GONNA DO THAT SHIT FOR MILLIONS OF FUCKIN YEARS. SO I GUESS I HAVE 2 END THIS DA SAME WAY AS I STARTED WAT IS LIFE

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Checking out Amber's and my soon-to-be new apartment, our first official place together... woot!

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Smoky haze and faint burning wood smell all around Boston--Canada's on fire! Canada's on fire!

2010 May❮❮prevnext❯❯