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January 31, 2006
links for 2006-01-31
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Awesome bike. I wish cities in the US were more like cities in the EU where these types of things are possible.
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So obvious but still amusing
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MC Escher-esque satellite photo stich puts buildings at impossible angles right near each other.
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I've always wanted to see popup books on the web, this one is a great flash-based homage to those kinds of kids storybooks
Posted by 12:18 AM
January 30, 2006
The awesomest thing ever
(Dance Dance DNA Revolution, originally uploaded by mathowie)
DDR Science game at the scripps aquarium, full story on flickr.
Posted by 11:10 PM
Four things about one thing
It's been interesting to watch the "four things" meme spread. It took several days between the first time I saw it and the time someone actually threw me into it, and it sort of came from LiveJournal and seemed to move from less trafficked blogs to more trafficked ones.
Anyway, I looked over the stuff and realized I could do the four things for friends of mine before I even read their responses. I'm sure any astute reader here could answer my four things for most every category. So instead, I just want to focus on the one section I've talked least about, and expand a bit.
Four jobs I've had
1. Bikeshop employee, 1989-90.
Pretty much any hobby that becomes your life's passion ends up costing about $2,000-$3,000 a year to maintain. I've seen the pattern take hold during my own obsessions with hiking/backpacking, computer dorkery, and especially cycling. When you're young, coming up with enough money to keep your bike from constantly being broken is tough to do, so working at a shop is the best way to make ends meet. Most shops are known for giving employees bike parts at cost (about 40-50% off), but the one I worked at only gave 10-20% off which I secretly hated, but I went through parts so fast it was still a good deal. It was the perfect job to have at age 17 and if you spent more than 4 hours a day on a bike, it was the perfect job for a lifetime. I frequently ran across other bikeshop workers that never left, all the way into their 40s.
2. Pizza Delivery Guy 1991-1993.
I worked at three different pizza places during my first two years of college, two of them were small unknown franchises and one was a huge national chain (rhymes with Feeza Butt). It was shit pay and added wear to your car, but you got tons of tax-free tips and it taught me a few life lessons. Avoid eating national chain pizza if you can. National chain food prep aims low -- you have to keep costs down but you can't have every customer getting e. coli, so the economic optimum is just barely above safe for eating. I also learned that smaller franchise pizza shop employees can't be trusted. I was one of three managers of one place and years later I ran into an employee after the place folded and found out I was the only one in the shop that wasn't skimming from the till. I never thought people got away with that stuff but two managers cooked their books and took home enough money to cause the owner to close down a year later. On the flip side, I once worked for a place that required me to wear day-glo t-shirts/hats, answer phones by saying "Hot and Tasty $brandname Pizza!", and the owner was a lying bastard that I would argue with from the moment I entered the store until my shift was over. After six months of working there and not getting a xmas bonus or card (every other shit job I had gave me at least a $20 bill in a card at xmas), I sat down and wrote him a long letter about what a jerk he was for it, and I ended it with a giant "FUCK YOU." The funny part was I showed up to work the next day fully expecting to work and was surprised when he thought I quit, and wouldn't let me work. He closed the store down a few weeks later with some convoluted tales of missing several night's profits by a series of unlikely mishaps.
3. Environmental Engineer 1997.
Having finished my BS and MS degrees, it took me about a month to find an environmental job at a consulting firm. The pay was low and I had a temporary cubicle with a 486. The office environment was close to what you see in Office Space or The Office (US Version) -- mind-numbingly boring and my primary task was preparing environmental impact reports and support packages so Sprint could put up PCS cellphone poles all over Southern California. My day to day work mostly involved making copies of city hall records, faxing stuff, and sometimes delivering documents to city halls around the southland. It was glorified pencil pushing and anyone out of high school could do it. I was so happy to leave this job for my first web design job and I distinctly remember my coworkers saying the internet was just a fad that wouldn't amount to much and I was making the wrong choice.
4. Professional Web Dork 1997-2006.
Still in progress.
Posted by 03:07 PM
links for 2006-01-30
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Shuttle memory from someone that went to the same high school the teacher-astronaut taught.
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Good honest description of what corners were cut, and why.
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My favorite from the Bubble Project (throwing thousands of blank speech bubbles on NYC posters)
Posted by 12:17 AM
January 29, 2006
droppin' whales
I've been thinking about this and this which was prompted by this, and hearing that modern hiphop diss songs date back to vikings and even inuit people is really amazing. I love the idea of an Inuit diss song. I couldn't get this out of my head, so forgive the following, which flowed forth a few minutes ago.
It's a must that I bust any norwhal tusk you're handing me
dropping beats, dropping whales, it runs in my family
not like that kook, nanook, and his silly northern crew
his harpoons can't hit the broadside of an igloo.
Posted by 10:46 AM
links for 2006-01-29
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insult/dis/call-out songs go back to at least 1830, and way before. Crazy.
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slick design on some window privacy film (good for clear bathroom windows)
Posted by 12:18 AM
January 28, 2006
True Crime, NYC
True Crime: New York City is a video game somewhat like Grand Theft Auto, except you're a cop in the NYPD. The game is also known for having all of manhattan modelled exactly in the game, all the way down to specific buildings on every street. It's fun to tour around NYC and look for familiar spots.
Here are some things I learned after playing it for a few hours:
- I've been to NYC 4 times now but since I took the subway so much on my last trip, I couldn't really remember all the streets between each place I visited in real life, so I kept getting lost in the game. I most remembered short sections closest to my hotel, so I found my hotel's building, the NY Public Library, the Empire State Building, but I couldn't find Anil's old place, or where Jason and Meg used to live.
- Everyone in a sex shop is guilty of something, it seems. Frisk away, and you'll find lots of perps. I wonder if the game designers were trying to say something with this.
- I was dropped off somewhere near Tribeca at the start. After cleaning up a few buroughs by making a bunch of arrests, I noticed that Harlem was worst crime area so I dropped everything, headed uptown and proceeded to clean it up. Apparently even in virtual worlds, I still have white guilt.
Posted by 12:43 AM
January 27, 2006
links for 2006-01-27
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Nice new, larger pre-fab house from Michelle Kaufmann
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Adam Savage talking about the Archimedes Death Ray show that debuted on Wednesday night, back when they were working on the episode
Posted by 12:16 AM
January 26, 2006
links for 2006-01-26
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sledgehammer + sweater = all the exercise you need to stay in shape
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Is digg.com worth over $30 million? I don't think so.
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DWR announces their 2nd annual chair contest winners (made from a champagne bottle cap), all fine designs.
Posted by 12:18 AM
January 25, 2006
links for 2006-01-25
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best captcha ever
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Holy crap, basically this is free skype-out for jabber/gTalk servers.
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The highlight of last week's show.
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This looks fantastic and I'd seriously consider it despite the price (if I had a new video ipod)
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fun guessing game, sorta like a visual hangman
Posted by 12:19 AM
January 24, 2006
MyBigRiver
I tried out MyBigRiver (via Ev) and it's pretty cool, though I was a little surprised it couldn't find any of my books. Check out the inline video to see what it did find though:
Awesome.
Posted by 07:05 PM
links for 2006-01-24
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Awesome, clever packaging design for fruit box drinks
Posted by 12:15 AM
January 20, 2006
links for 2006-01-20
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very cool place to stash your stuff.
Posted by 12:21 AM
January 19, 2006
links for 2006-01-19
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flatpack fun
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Bob Loblaw's law blog
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I've seen at least a dozen different weblog awards and it's great to see many communities within the big umbrella of all weblogs recognize their best.
Posted by 12:21 AM
January 18, 2006
Taint
Someone really needs to make this into a t-shirt:
Posted by 11:13 PM
iPhoto 6 mini review
So I just got iPhoto 6 going today and I was playing around with it for a bit and I'm pretty happy with the upgrade. Here are the things that stood out so far:
- It's much faster than previous versions. There was a long painful step where it had to create thumbnails for a few thousand photos (took a while) but now it actually does scroll quickly through the library.
- I used to think iPhoto was slow but then I tried Aperture. Even on my 2Ghz G5 iMac with a Gb of RAM, Aperture would lag during scrolls, animations took a while, etc. I gave up on Aperture and am back on iPhoto now which feels super fast compared to both Aperture and earlier versions
- The photocasting out to .Mac is kind of pointless since I won't use that feature, but subscribing to photocasts is KILLER. You don't have to follow just .Mac photocasts, the app can read flickr RSS feeds natively. Here's a screenshot of my flickr friends feed in iPhoto. This sure beats using a reader like bloglines. I can already tell I'll be looking at more photocasts than listening to podcasts. It hink Apple's really onto something here.
- I noticed you can drag flickr photocast photos into your own albums though it doesn't seem to import them into your library. I could swear that shared iPhoto libraries over the network let you drag other people's photos to your library. It'd be cool if iPhoto could interpret settings on photos like say, Creative Commons licenses, and let you pull down images from Flickr to your library based on the license, and maybe if people had a share-alike license you could edit them in your library and repost to flickr with the license info intact (along with a pointer to the original on flickr). At the moment, you can't do anything with flickr photos in the photo editor.
- I imported several thousand old photos from my 2002-2004 iPhoto backups as well as hundreds of recent photos from Aperture and it went pretty quickly. Rebuilding all those thumbnails took a while, but I now have over 11,000 images in iPhoto and it's still fast.
Overall, I haven't found any problems yet, though I'm still looking for a flickr export plugin that works with iPhoto 6.
Posted by 09:00 PM
links for 2006-01-18
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The teens that beat up the homeless guys were IDed on this thread by other members
Posted by 12:23 AM
January 17, 2006
links for 2006-01-17
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Nice minimalist wall-mount for bike storage
Posted by 12:20 AM
January 15, 2006
links for 2006-01-15
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handy small review, ING and HSBC look good.
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"She's like a bag lady," my caseworker told me. "With money."
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The answer
Posted by 12:20 AM
January 14, 2006
links for 2006-01-14
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I smell a remake!
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Bloglines' regex to remove hacks is broken, but then again, maybe paul is one big cross site scripting hack.
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whoa, I had no idea something like this existed.
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Seinfeld doing a kids movie: "What is the deal with honeycomb. I mean, it's not honey, it's not a comb, then what is it?"
Posted by 12:20 AM
January 13, 2006
links for 2006-01-13
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I've always heard recipes weren't protected, though this story seems to imply otherwise
Posted by 12:24 AM
January 12, 2006
links for 2006-01-12
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Holy crap
Posted by 12:25 AM
January 11, 2006
The Year in Cities
Las Vegas, NV
San Francisco, CA*
Portland, OR*
San Diego, CA
Austin, TX
New York, NY
Toronto, ON
Not as many as most years, due to the baby putting a serious dent in my travel time, but at least one new place in another country got added.
Posted by 07:49 PM
links for 2006-01-11
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If you bought an old apple product in the last 14 days, you can return it for a new updated one.
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Sweet. This is exactly what the Phillips Photo Frame should be capable of.
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Kottke gets Jobsed just a week after the return policy deadline.
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Clever way to build a smarter umbrella
Posted by 12:24 AM
January 10, 2006
Oh shit, I just got Jobsed
From MacRumors Macworld Live Updates feed:
10:12 am First Mac with Intel processor today.
10:12 am The iMac - built in isight camera. front row. incredible reception.
10:13 am No other desktop PC can match it.
10:14 am Same sizes. 17", 20". Same design. Same features (isight, front row, apple remote), Same price. What's different.
10:14 am Intel Processor. 2-3x faster than the iMac G5.
10:14 am Intel Core Duo. an amazing chip.
10:15 am Two cores. each one faster than the G5.
CrapDamnCrap. My 20" G5 iMac is only two months old for chrissakes! And I bought it days after it was announced! Damn you Steve Jobs (*shakes fist*)!
Posted by 10:19 AM
links for 2006-01-10
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Eh, I think I'd prefer red vines and mr. pibb to this stuff
Posted by 12:20 AM
January 08, 2006
How to speed up your mac and make it more stable when web browsing in 3 simple steps
1. 
2. 
3. There is no step three! (actually, Just Use Preview is step 3)
Posted by 08:03 PM
links for 2006-01-08
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Very handy tool and nice map hack
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I can't describe in words how badly I want one of these boxes. I hate my comcast HD DVR, I would pay any price for this TiVo. *Any* price.
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I'll have to remember this trick
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More on the json api
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Way cleaner than my tag parsing code
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Nice.
Posted by 12:20 AM
January 07, 2006
Testing JSON
Last ten from delicious, via the JSON api (thanks to Jason)Posted by 08:51 PM
links for 2006-01-07
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Though the new sony phones include a USB cable, I've been looking for something more compact that can travel well. Ziplinq doesn't make one but Martin Fields does.
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I'm always amazed when someone asks a pretty innocuous question and two developers of software products show up to help.
Posted by 12:19 AM
January 03, 2006
links for 2006-01-03
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The new flickr hack "retrievr" is so good, I'd venture to say it's getting close to Turing Test territory.
Posted by 12:21 AM
January 02, 2006
links for 2006-01-02
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This will be interesting to follow the series
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Fox rent a car is the only car rental place in the US with hybrids for rent
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Rogers Cadenhead once freaked out a user at MeFi by writing a lengthy bio, based solely on the user's contributions to the site.
Posted by 12:20 AM