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| December 13, 2011 |
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A couple new additions:
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| November 13, 2011 |
Back from Japan, short visit but the best ever, trip report here.
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| September 9, 2011 |
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Back at 'Tino teaching nights twice a week, meanwhile busy,
busy with my day job, so much to say, no time to say it.
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* * *
| February 19, 2011 |
- On TV,
Nothing
is Real -- but you knew that. (When did the blue CGI screen go green?)
- Sure miss his voice -- a David Foster Wallace article from the turn of the century,
Present
Tense, which concerns English and The Dictionary, Prescriptives
vs. Descriptives. Only problem is a few -- well, calling 'em 'typos'
seems a little inaccurate as it looks like the original text's OCR
conversion wasn't properly proofread (hard to believe, for Harper's)
as the software guessed wrong, in a couple places.
- OK Cupid crunched the numbers and shares the results:
Best
Questions for First Dates.
- 2020
World's Fair pitch for Moffett Field.
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| February 4, 2011 |
Onto the scanner, an arrangement of the season's generous gifts of
candy -- the most remarkable perhaps, the wasabi KitKat, In fact
they're all Japanese except the orange Korean which is a special
souvenir from their Jeju island in the south.
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| January 30, 2011 |
- Paul Maybury, great artist underemployed by Whole Foods,
got
fired for his Mr T.
- Incredibly obscure YouTube: Kollywood?
Part 1
Part 2.
An army of robots, and talking mosquitoes. Indian
with Russian over-dubs.
- In local news,
NASA
accused of favoritism at Moffett. Right where I'm working
again; I see those planes all the time, recognized them
as new and guessed they were the Google Air fleet.
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| January 23, 2011 |
- Don't miss: Hardly
Working address web-surfing at work.
- The Pilot
reports
from Thailand, specifically the Phi Phi Islands, a
stupefyingly beautiful place ...ruined by throngs of visitors, one of the
great scandals of global travel. Hundreds of thousands of tourists -- let
me correct myself, hundreds of thousands of young and obnoxious tourists.
At one point he gets stuck in an elbow-to-elbow
scrum of dudes and dudettes kitted out in the preposterous,
inexplicable trappings of today's young people.
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| January 10, 2011 |
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Tomorrow I resume working full-time at the old job (but for
a different company) so updates here may be more sporadic than
usual, for a while. Will still be teaching one evening class too.
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| January 8, 2011 |
Here it is, the new machine. Although driving my old car's more fun this
one's certainly plush, can't resist all the contemporary features, like
the little fob for locking/unlocking without the key. Concerning those
little modules, from that Edmunds site essential for automobile info, the
Ten
Most Fabulous Key Fobs.
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| January 5, 2011 |
Busy times, new(er) car shopping...
- While back East one night I fell into tvtropes.org via their
Useful
Notes -- had never been before, hours later, surfacing, since then
have avoided these most compelling TV Tropes successfully.
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| December 29, 2010 |
Back from another successful Christmas jaunt back East, mingling
with all the jolly holiday air-travelers. Some years my flights are
non-stop but this time, plane changes at Denver heading out and then
Chicago on the rebound, where I had enough time to hang out inside
Michael Hayden's Sky's
The Limit, the subterranean neon tunnel connecting United's B
and C concourses which might be
the
largest light sculpture in the world. Its twinkling, minimal music
occasionally evokes Rhapsody in Blue and (maybe only to me) Good King
Wenceslaus.
Also at ORD, a first -- advertising on the escalator handrails. Click for biggery.
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| December 13, 2010 |
Another photo floating around the wwweb: the Beatles, just before the
Abbey Road photo. 'Tis the season: those MP3s of their Christmas records
(distributed only to fan club members) are
still
available.
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| December 7, 2010 |
- Hacking
Chrsitmas Lights, the $60 strings of R-G-B LEDs, actually
the controllers thereof.
- I'd eat
this
jello (but never, ever the kind with shredded carrots).
- In local news,
Safeway
adds third supermarket to Sunnyvale corner. This is walking distance
from my apartment, and I disagree with calling Trader
Joe's a supermarket. The new place across the street (Sprouts,
where Circuit City was) also doesn't quite qualify, seems to me it's
more bulk food store with an unappealing produce aisle. The Safeway,
though -- too big, and too expensive! Note this location also where
the new Five Guys-Pizza My Heart-Panera mini-mall just appeared.
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| December 3, 2010 |
- A blogger at
dubious quality
visited Disney World & etc. and has been
posting (and just concluded) a series of ruminations
about his experiences there, including an unauthorized
interview with a
n employee cast member.
- Photos at flickr, by Kernbeisser,
views
of the DPRK, with translations.
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| November 21, 2010 |
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At the library yesterday, found a big book about Chicago architecture,
where I learned about the famous 1920s design competition for the new
Tribune building. Although it's one of the most
popular images in the history of modern architecture it was new
to me, the very amusing "newspaper column" design (which was submitted
too late to qualify) which is shown in
this big
PDF in a couple modern renderings, with some more info.
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| November 17, 2010 |
- Firesheep FAQ.
It's a Firefox extension which allows for easy session-hijacking
when using that browser on public networks.
- Companies
yank cord on residential phone books [the kind of stupid 'pun'
headline editors should be fired for using] -- anyway, sounds great,
unless limited only to the white pages, which seems to be what's going
on here. This morning I was able to refuse the current yellow
pages, only because I was up early enough and I heard 'em coming.
- 48
print ads that would never be allowed today.
- See James
Fallows' blog for the latest, best commentary about airport security.
One of my favorite journalists, he's been all over this issue though
not actually his specialty (that would be Asia).
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| November 15, 2010 |
- Lovin' all the media attention, finally, on TSA
abuse, although the media voices are still ignoring some obvious
questions -- why are airline crew-members forced to run the
security gauntlet? And why aren't airport workers?
We'll be hearing endlessly now about touching his 'junk' but irrate
passenger John Tynar's more important comments (at the end of
this)
address how it's always other passengers who wind up apprehending
the terrorists now and we should be treated better. Another
fun fact (just mentioned on Marketplace): that expensive new
back-scatter imaging hardware's being paid for with economic
stimulous money.
- The supposed Sitzpinkel movement in Nordic countries encourages
men to sit, thereby preventing urine spatter (and it's far more
relaxing) but
the
SF Weekly's reporting on a guy who was offering ~$500
workshops where women are taught how to pee standing up (without any
FUD like
the GoGirl)
but now you can just watch the video online. A blog at the Weekly has a little
more
about this.
- At the Big Picture,
opening
ceremony for the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou.
- This site depicts REAL things
said to me (or at least near me) by customers in the comic
book shop that I work in.
These are real people.
This is what they look like and this is something
that they actually said.
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| November 7, 2010 |
- Beautiful night-time
cat/balcony
photo from Santiago, Chile, alarming to those unfamilar with feline
abilities. (Had an irritating run-in with them when I had my 12th-floor
condo.)
- Video@youtube: People
Are Awesome.
- In The
Great Unwashed, a NY Times article about relaxing
hygiene standards in the US, a clean-cut actor/producer in LA is
happy to report that he finds deodorant unnecessary,
and anti-perspirants absurd. My own decision about the absurdity of
anti-perspirant occured with the discovery, after application, that my
armpits still became wet. I learned that (by design) it only blocks 10%!
My own non-usage of deoderant evolved from rejecting the dogma of frat-boy
jocks encountered in locker rooms, who used their Right Guard so
ostentatiously. The fact is, sweat doesn't smell -- it's the bacteria
in sweat, and on most people that doesn't begin to stink immediately. A
daily wash removes it, and that's all you need.
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| October 29, 2010 |
Last day of my first non-ESL class, Intro to Excel. Note -- no
tie, the instructor being not quite as formal when leading
a computer class.
- I listen to as much Public Radio as possible, and have been
for a long time. Loved the electronic All Things Considered theme
from the 1970s and dislike how it's been so completely banished,
but now everything's avaliable -- somebody at WFMU posted an
ATC
Theme Overload page, with MP3s.
- I've enjoyed Bill McKibben's books and articles but first
heard him on the low end of the FM dial, reading excerpts from
his Age Of Missing Information. He's back with
report
on public radio, and what worthwhile local programming is
available now, via internet.
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| October 10, 2010 |
A design from Chitra Kutira's
Rangavalli #3, a book of intricate mandala patterns published by the
Vasan Book Depot in Bangalore, found in the recycle.
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| October 5, 2010 |
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Just one thing after another, here -- car trouble, another towing;
and another bike spill, though injuries from the latter not as
severe as my tumble in June.
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| September 24, 2010 |
- NY Times slideshow: Capturing
the atom bomb on film. Finally, the source of the wavy parallel
lines at the edges of the old photos revealed: sounding
rocket plumes used to gauge the progress
of shock waves through the atmosphere, from an array
launched just prior to the detonation.
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| September 12, 2010 |
 It's exciting -- the new
Gibson just came out, and I've got the library copy -- my name at the top
of the reserve list, placed there weeks ago, in anticipation. Watch
the
promotional video (first of those I've noticed, for a book).
- While living in Northern Virginia in the mid-90s, in Arlington,
back then there was a little two-shop operation called Five Guys
Hamburger. Nowhere to eat inside, no decor; just paper bags
of fresh burgers and fries, the 'taters' source noted on a small
blackboard. Free peanuts were available for while you were waiting,
their shells littering the floor. Well, if you live in the DC area
now, you're aware this
chain has been expanding, aggressively... there's even a branch
near my parents' place, out in Maryland;
Obama
Stops for Lunch at Five Guys; and just this week I learned
they've already opened a few shops in California, triggering reactions like
Seven
reasons In-n-Out is better than Five Guys. His #2 is my
#1 -- the price. Also Five Guys overuses aluminum foil in their
takeout packaging (to-go still the only choice there, although now
you can sit down and eat inside).
- Vancouver Neon
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| August 24, 2010 |
Never miss James Kunstler's weekly rant, he's such a Doomer;
this
week's column ended with this curious observation made while
touring New England:
The orange rubber cones
were deployed along the center line of I-91 for scores of miles, with
absolutely no sign that any project -- shovel-ready or otherwise -- was
underway, leading us to suspect that the project of cone deployment for
its own sake was a kind of rogue stimulus program. Just cones, cones,
and more cones, as baffling as crop circles. No heavy equipment, no men
in hard hats. Just mile after mile of cones.
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| August 12, 2010 |
Originally in a
book
and the Library of Congress, we've seen these color photos from the 1930s and 40s
before, but a Denver
newspaper has posted them again and I've been studying the series with my parents.
They say these girls are all wearing feed sack dresses -- for more about these
printed fabrics once used as packaging see
Feedsacks,
Frugal and Fun.
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| August 10, 2010 |
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August is the internet dog days -- people on vacation, nobody updates enough; but here's some linkage.
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