Super Mario, in Post-it Notes

I saw this on BoingBoing this morning and it's too good not to share.

Engineering students built a Super Mario Brothers mural for Engineering week on a glass building -- out of Post-It notes.

Alexi rules the road

Alexi is a custom project car made of a hearse. Mad Max had better run and hide. Found via Gibson's blog.

Hunter S. Thompson has commit suicide.

I'd like to believe that he decided that the time was right, rather than believe that he decided that life wasn't worth living. Either way, I'm glad that he was here for a while.

The Horror that is TicketMaster

I'm cranky this afternoon. This is the icing on the cake:
Rather than drive downtown to pick up tickets to see Interpol at Jannus, I figured that I'd order them online -- how convenient! What I didn't realize is that TicketMaster was going to screw me blind for the privelege. For the "convenience" and the "service" that TicketMaster provides, which is what the charges were called, I would have been paying an extra $30.30 (granted, split among the 4 of us who are going, but that makes a $23 ticket into a $30.58 ticket.)

I suppose that I'll be driving downtown on my way home from work. How much will I pay downtown?

$23 a ticket.

eCommerce is not supposed to be a barrier to purchasing goods.

Hubble Wallpaper

Yes, killer wallpaper for your 'puter from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now everyone at work will know how cool you really are.


Note:
These last 2 posts are from Lifehacker.com, a Sony-sponsored (but really great) blog with links to hacks that you can use in everyday life, or interesting things. Pretty nifty. They have made a post or two that panders to their sponsor's views on file sharing networks, but hey... I'm not going there for the politics.

Verizon "Free" Web Access Cell Phone Hack

This hack tells you how to set your proxy server on your phone to use something other than Verizon's proxy server -- which means that you don't have to pay them $5 to use it. The effect is that you can get your wireless internet for free on your cell phone -- of course, your minutes are still charged.

It's amazing what you can do when you understand how the tools work. Of course, I haven't yet tried it...

Dig the article : Link

I wanna know...

why coffee robots (vending machines) make such god awful coffee. I mean, terrible. Worse than burnt, old, gnarly gas station coffee. There's no excuse for it. We need to design an automated machine that makes fresh brewed, fresh ground, real coffee. This is not beyond the reach of the brighter minds of contemporary industrial design.

Because this crap doesn't taste remotely like coffee.

Parents around the world REJOICE...

They Might be Giants have released (TODAY) Here Come the ABC's, a DVD aimed at teaching the alphabet to yer little ones. The great thing about TMBG's pedagogic streak is not that the music is entertaining, but that they're not limited to just the basics of the ABCs or Presidental History (James K. Polk), they'll take on complex subject matter like taxonomy (Mammal) or stellar astronomy (Why Does the Sun Shine?). Unlike so many of other entertainers who aim material at children, they're not coddling them. Like any good science musem, they're fun and challenging.

This will be great, because Edison and Ana Tobin have "discovered" music, and one of their favorites is a vanilla-bland CD of "childrens music" which sounds as if it's been performed under heavy sedation. They love it, though, and I'm thrilled for them. I'm happy that they have a favorite record that they want to wear out and dance and sing.

However, I'm not above a well-placed counterstrike, and it appears to be working: They're getting hooked on Flood and yesterday Edison nearly went hysterical when Mommy couldn't figure out which track was about "Whistling in the Dark". Ana Tobin loves the intro and Birdhouse in your Soul.

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

This page is really, really cool - a visual plot of the last 100 years of the top 1,000 baby names, dynamically altered based on the names - or beginnings of names that you type. Fascinating. Also interesting to note that the first name "Edison" was at its most popular in 1910, dropping from the top 1,000 in the 1950's. Requires Java, and some Microsoft browsers may note have it.

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

Google Maps Rule

Keith just brought this to my attention - the Google Maps service has launched, and it has some GREAT user interface improvements over the other providers that I've used -plus, once you've selected an area, you can search for anything within that area. Once again, Google shows that they've got amazing talent...
Google Maps

Mad Knife Skills

As someone who loves to cook, enjoys large, sharp knives, and has a penchant for lopping off chunks of my left thumb, I was excited to see that one of Yahoo's website picks of the day was a page on good knife technique. Some good stuff here:

How to Cut...

Why I am an Inept Political Analyst

Note: This post was touched off by a post on Gary's LiveJournal last week - I'm trying to hash out those thoughts more completely.


Gary asked us if we thought the left (or just normal conservatives) can figure out how to compete with the radical right "NeoConservative" movement that appears to be stonger-than-ever after the November elections, or "is it just a matter of waiting until it burns itself out?"

I like thinking about politics and on occasion I suffer under the illusion that my thoughts on this subject matter in some small way, so I spent a few moments pondering this question and came to a most surprising answer:

I have no idea. Not a blessed clue. And I'm usually willing to conjecture on anything.

But this one has me stumped, because it hangs on what large groups of people will believe, and that's what I'm confused about. No matter what the political slant, I hear things being said that leave me completely perplexed. Here's what makes me think I'm totally unqualified to issue future predictions:

• My fellow Americans just re-elected an administration that was the source of reversals and broken promises even before 9/11, and then became even more twisted -- behaving in a manner that either looks grossly inept, or criminally deceptive.


• The biggest problem facing the American people right now is that Social Security, allegedly, will run out of money in 40some years. A plan that funnels money OUT of the system will solve the problem. (scratches his head). I'd love to get a plan like that for my student loans. Employment, health care, education, hunger, poverty, who cares.


• George Bush claims a "mandate" after winning by some 60,000 Ohioans. A claim which I've seen repeated in the press (wish I could remember where). Amazing. People seem to buy it, even democrats. Doesn't this bother anyone?


• The figures that I've seen on people opposing gay marriage - healthy majorities, all of them. Huh? I completely fail to understand how someone else's marriage, gay or otherwise, has any impact whatsoever on MY marriage. All of the arguments that I've heard against the idea are either ridiculous (the slippery slope artuments about Gay marriage leading to marrying trees and rocks), or entirely motivated by religion-based bigotry. Whatever the reasoning, a big, big chunk of the American People are buying this argument


• What passes for political speech in this country is not really discussion of the issues and searching for solutions, but sloganeering and banter about issues that really matter. Both Conservatives and Liberals speak past one another, sniping each other, rather than trying to the issues.


• Maybe the most compelling argument that I'm a complete fool is the fact that I'm annoyed by the people I'm supposed to agree with:
  
  • "Not One Damn Dime Day" was a great indicator of how infantile and lazy the left can be. People "protested" by staying home and doing nothing. Maybe this goes a long way towards explaining all of the stuff above. There's no positive vision, there's nothing being advocated, just an exhortation to damage companies that had nothing to do with the decision to go to war, in order to "send a message" to the leaders of our country. You wanna send a message? Buy a stamp and use it. I feel weird pointing this out -- if you're doing nothing, you're actually... doing nothing.
    
    It seems that the "protest" culture of the left is good at one thing - digging their heels in and saying what they're against. You don't win voters or politicians over with that kind of stuff. The left needs to put forth a positive vision of life: compassion, energized communities, decentralized economies, economic justice... These fantastic ideas are out there, but the message is hidden by sarcasm, anger and bitterness. Nobody wants to listen to a mob of angry protesters. I know why they're angry, and it's understandable, but the current strategy is losing the battle for the American people's minds.
  
  
  • That being said, I'm amazed by talk about pulling out of Iraq. Like it or not, those of us who hated the idea of the war failed to stop it. Now we've destroyed the country, and it's time to fix it before we leave. It's really pretty simple -- we are obligated to leave them with as much or more stability than they had when we bombed the stuffing out of them. Is this too simplistic? We blew it up, we have to help fix it.
  
  

The long and the short of it is that I'm completely out of step with many of my American contemporaries, and it doesn't seem to divide like it used to, on clean ideological lines. And this could mean many things, but the explanations that stand out to me are these two: I am either insane with arrogance, or this country is crowded with grossly misinformed people who aren't thinking clearly. When you're hopelessly out of step with the vast majority of your society, it's much more likely that you're the one who's crazy and they're not (we can get into a discussion about "truth as intersubjective convergence on data" later if you want). This is why I am an inept political analyst. Now, don't listen to me!

A Day of Mourning

After a long, 5 week wait, I have had my repaired eMachines Laptop returned to me -- without my data. Pictures, website files, a massive library of music, almost a year's worth of email, bicycling training log, all gone. It'll take quite some time get the computer back to where it was.


So if you aren't doing it already, back up your data. Losing it sucks, completely.