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VJ Shantell Martin brings music to life with Intuos3 | Wacom Asia-Pacific

2008 Oct 15, 2:50VJ who does live illustrations on her Wacom tablet that's projected onto walls or crowds while DJ plays music: "An illustrator by training, Shantell's VJing style is to illustrate the music being played, mesmerizing the crowd with the line art drawn in time to the beat. She originates from London where she received a degree in graphic design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Moving to Tokyo in 2004, she began working as an illustrator and soon, the VJing scene found her."PermalinkCommentsmusic dj art vj wacom

Mail Games: Testing the System | PSFK - Trends, Ideas & Inspiration

2008 Oct 15, 10:47The artist Harriet Russell encodes the destination postal address of her letters with anagrams, crosswords, and other puzzles: "Despite fears of a Royal Mail backlash, Russell found the system more than willing to play her game. The crossword edition was returned completed with the comment "Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre". Only 10 of the 130 letters posted lost their way through the system, some held particularly testing anagrams, others were without a postal code."PermalinkCommentshumor puzzle crossword art mail postal-system harriet-russell book

Tom Ricks's Inbox - washingtonpost.com

2008 Oct 13, 2:40Watch out for too good to be true washing services (or free network traffic anonymization): "The laundry would then send out "color coded" special discount tickets, to the effect of "get two loads for the price of one," etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was coded. While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle -- every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue." From the comment section of Schneier on Security on this topic: "Yet another example of how inexpensive, reliable home washers and dryers help terrorists. When will we learn?"PermalinkCommentssecurity history laundromat ira terrorism bomb

The Future of Driving, Part I: Robots and Grand Challenges: Page 1

2008 Oct 13, 2:35"The robotics community outdid itself once again at DARPA's 2007 Urban Challenge. This contest featured all the challenges of the original Grand Challenge, along with a few new ones: the vehicles navigated a simulated urban environment and were required to interact with human-driven vehicles while obeying all traffic laws. Six teams successfully completed the course, with Boss, a car developed at Carnegie Mellon, claiming the prize." Sure, sure but when will they fly?PermalinkCommentsarticle robot car science technology transportation ai

Mozilla Labs launches geolocation extension

2008 Oct 13, 2:21Neat geolocation API for web apps: "Mozilla Labs has announced the availability of Geode, an experimental Firefox extension that implements the W3C Geolocation Specification. Geode provides an early preview of the same location-aware functionality that will be included in both Fennec and Firefox 3.1."PermalinkCommentsgeolocation geo w3c mozilla javascript web

McCain Booed For Telling Audience To Be Respectful of Obama - From The Road

2008 Oct 13, 11:52"Some of the questioners said they were scared of an Obama presidency, and one woman said she couldn't trust Obama because "he's an Arab." McCain shook his head. "No ma'am, he's a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."PermalinkCommentspolitics obama mccain article

Presidential Election 2008 FAQ

2008 Oct 13, 10:53"This is an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions list) for the 2008 United States Presidential Election. I need to disclose up front that I am an Obama supporter. However, with the exception of the very last question, this FAQ is designed as a collection of factual information (such as the latest poll results) and of analysis that is as objective as possible."PermalinkCommentsvia:kris.kowal politics election obama mccain

THOMAS Publishes Permanent Links (Another Recommendation Realized) | The Open House Project

2008 Oct 10, 3:35Apparently thanks to the Open House Project, US legislation can now have real and permanent links. I'm kind of surprised that legislation would exist so freely on the Internet without real links. The Open House Project is "a collaborative effort by government and legislative information experts, congressional staff, non-profit organizers and bloggers to study how the House of Representatives currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."PermalinkCommentsinternet url link uri politics

xkcd - Blog Archive - The Goddamn Airplane on the Goddamn Treadmill

2008 Oct 10, 1:32Xkcd providing answers to questions that I forgot I had, like what is the answer to the lawn-sprinkler question from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. "Feynman used to tell a story about a simple lawn-sprinkler physics problem. The nifty thing about the problem was that the answer was immediately obvious, but to some people it was immediately obvious one way and to some it was immediately obvious the other. (For the record, the answer to Feynman problem, which he never tells you in his book, was that the sprinkler doesn't move at all. Moreover, he only brought it up to start an argument to act as a diversion while he seduced your mother in the other room.)"PermalinkCommentshumor feynman comic blog xkcd physics science math

YouTube - KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

2008 Oct 7, 4:52"KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis", Obama campaign's faux-documentary on McCain's involvement in the 80's Keating financial crisis.PermalinkCommentseconomics politics obama mccain video youtube history documentary

Cadbury Bunny Sneaks Mint

2008 Oct 7, 2:49
Cadbury the bunny takes a moment from hiding under the chair to eat some mint. She comes out just to grab some mint and then goes back under the chair repeatedly for two minutes.
From: David Risney
Views: 328
1 ratings
Time: 02:01 More in Pets & Animals
PermalinkCommentsvideo

Weekend Dinners: Old friends, Old library

2008 Oct 7, 12:21

Last Thursday I saw a bunch of college friends that I hadn't seen in a while, despite all of us working at Microsoft, and Saul and Ciera who were visiting. We had dinner at Typhoon! which I haven't been to in quite a while. Daniil and Val brought their cute child. I got to see Charlie and Matt who I'm not sure I've seen since my 25th birthday. There was much nerdiness. I need to remember to organize such a night myself sometime in near future so I don't have to wait another year to see them.

Carnegie's Public Library in Ballard Seattle is now a restaurant.On the weekend Sarah and I went out to dinner at Carnegie's, a former public library in Ballard, Seattle that's now a restaurant. I saw the restaurant's website in Matt's delicious links and thought it looked interesting. The exterior and entryway look like a public library, but just inside its redone as a sort of modern version of french classical with a bar and two dining rooms. No pictures since my replacement camera only arrived today, but there are photos available. They serve french cuisine which was good and not as expensive as I would have expected. An interesting place, although its a bit of a drive and I'm not sure if we'll be going back soon.

PermalinkCommentscarnegies personal restaurant weekend nontechnical

QuickBase Formula Pretty Printer and Syntax Highlighter

2008 Oct 5, 9:17

Sarah asked me if I knew of a syntax highlighter for the QuickBase formula language which she uses at work. I couldn't find one but thought it might be fun to make a QuickBase Formula syntax highlighter based on the QuickBase help's description of the formula syntax. Thankfully the language is relatively simple since my skills with ANTLR, the parser generator, are rusty now and I've only used it previously for personal projects (like Javaish, the ridiculous Java based shell idea I had).

With the help of some great ANTLR examples and an ANTLR cheat sheet I was able to come up with the grammar that parses the QuickBase Formula syntax and prints out the same formula marked up with HTML SPAN tags and various CSS classes. ANTLR produces the parser in Java which I wrapped up in an applet, put in a jar, and embedded in an HTML page. The script in that page runs user input through the applet's parser and sticks the output at the bottom of the page with appropriate CSS rules to highlight and print the formula in a pretty fashion.

What I learned:

PermalinkCommentsjava technical programming quickbase language antlr antlrworks

HELLO, I'M FAMOUS STARRING JOHN HODGMAN: GQ Features on men.style.com

2008 Sep 30, 12:11"Before he was on The Daily Show, before he was the PC in the Mac commercials, John Hodgman wondered, just like you, about the very special world of famous people. Now he explains why being one of America's best-known minor celebrities is even better than you imagined"PermalinkCommentsjohn-hodgman humor article apple tv fame

MAKE: Blog: Metal plates send messages to airport x-ray screeners

2008 Sep 29, 3:07'These metal plates contain messages which will appear when they are X-Rayed.' What an awesome idea. Display messages to your friendly TSA x-ray security folk by cutting the messages into a plate of metal and placing it in your bag.PermalinkCommentshumor security product wishlist tsa airport x-ray

YouTube - HTML 5: Features you want desperately but still can't use

2008 Sep 29, 1:39Demos some of the working HTML5 features now available in recent builds of FireFox, IE8, Safari, and Opera. "Speaker: Ian Hickson. As the HTML5 effort reaches its first big milestone -- feature completeness -- browsers are starting to implement it. It will be years before you can rely on HTML5 support when writing Web pages and applications, but you can start to experiment today to get a feel of what the new standard offers. This talk will explore some of the most recent implementations of HTML5 features."PermalinkCommentshtml5 ian-hickson html google video browser ie8

Anecdotes from Work

2008 Sep 23, 2:15

Diveristy in NumbersThe names in the following anecdote have been changed. Except for my name (I'm Dave).

I got a new laptop a while back. I had it in my office and Tim came in to ask me something but paused when he saw my laptop. "Oh, is this one of those new touch screen laptops?" he asked, the whole time moving his hand towards my laptop and punctuating his sentence by pressing his finger to the screen. "No" I responded.

Walking down a hallway I heard Winston, one of our managers, say, "Hey Tim!" Winston catches up to me and asks, "Are you almost done with the XYZ bug?" I realized Winston was talking to me and got my name wrong but I figured I'll ignore it and perhaps he'll realize his mistake. Winston continued "I just talked with some people who say they're blocked and waiting for Tim to finish the XYZ bug." "Dave" I said helpfully attempting to diplomatically correct Winston since he apparently hadn't realized his error. "No, it was Jeremy and Bill." Winston said naming the people he had talked to who were waiting for me to fix the XYZ bug. At this point I decided it would be easier to just answer his question and end the conversation than to get into this whole thing. As far as I know, Winston has not gotten my name wrong at any other time.

PermalinkCommentswork nontechnical

Bailout Satire

2008 Sep 23, 1:19The economic bailout program written as 419 spam. "I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you."PermalinkCommentshumor politics economics satire spam via:boingboing

Carnegie's Restaurant

2008 Sep 23, 10:58Matt says this is a good restaurant. It certainly looks interesting.PermalinkCommentsvia:swannman seattle food restaurant

Party Movies Recommended by Netflix

2008 Sep 18, 10:31
Poster for 24 Hour Party PeoplePoster for Human TrafficPoster for The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down

Netflix has recommended three party movies over my time with Netflix and if you're OK with movies featuring sex, drugs, rock&roll (or techno) as almost the main character then I can recommend at least The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down.

24 Hour Party People is based on the true story of Tony Wilson, journalist, band manager, and club owner (not all at once) around the rise of punk and new wave in England. Like many true-story based movies it starts off strong and very interesting but gets very slow at the end like the writers got bored and just started copying the actual events. Unless you have some interest in the history of music in the 80s in Manchester I don't recommend this movie.

Human Traffic is fun and funny following a group of friends going out for a night of clubbing and partying. I had to get over seeing John Simm as not The Master from Doctor Who but rather as a partying youth. It felt like it was geared towards viewers who were on something like the totally odd techno musical interludes with the characters dancing for no apparent reason. Otherwise the movie was good.

The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down is done in the style of an old educational movie on the topic of clubbing and partying. It sounds like a premise that would get old but they do a good job. While demonstrating drinking and driving they have scientists push a mouse around in a toy convertible. Enough said. It was funny and I recommend it.

PermalinkCommentsparty movie netflix
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