January 30, 2004
Sushi Kart Double Dash
Sushi and Mario Kart-like racing? Sounds like a job for meta:
tokidoki v2.0
Burning ring of fire...
That's not quite the 'ring of fire' Cash sang about
A advertising exec in Florida has the bright idea of using Burning Ring of Fire for a hemorrhoid commercial.
January 29, 2004
A role Johnny Depp should play
There was talk last night of how Ain't It Cool News is reporting that Depp is going to be playing Lex Luthor. Like him in Pirates we do, but Lex Luthor? However, I did spot this on Neil Gaiman's Journal. Too bad the movie will probably never get made due to lack of US funding:
Dear Neil,
Is Johnny Depp going to be in Good Omens?
Or is that just too good to be true?
Hope you are feeling much better.
-LauralynnHe was going to be playing Crowley, when Terry Gilliam was making it. These days Terry's gone on to things that he was able to get the finance to work on, and I foubt that any of the casting he did for it applies. Unless he comes back to it one day.
January 28, 2004
101 Worst moments in business for this year....
Business 2.0 has released there 2003 list.
Highlights
- After years of bombarding Web surfers with annoying pop-up ads, wireless camera maker X10 files for bankruptcy in October, listing debts of more than $10 million. Among the parties stiffed: AOL, Google, Yahoo, and AdvertisementBanners.com, which won $4 million in a lawsuit against X10 shortly before the bankruptcy filing.
- After marketing its sporty Eclipse coupe to 20-something slacker types through a mix of ultrahip ads and zero-percent financing, Mitsubishi Motors announces a $469 million loss from loan defaults. New CEO Rolf Eckrodt says the company's mistake was "aiming at customers interested in products which are lifestyle-oriented and emotional and cool." The fix? Aiming at customers with money. The move looks good on paper—just not the paper on which the company's books are kept. After tightening up credit requirements, Eclipse sales fall by 48 percent, forcing Mitsubishi to spend another $432 million to clear out unsold inventory.
January 27, 2004
Ahnold is bzusted...
In a preliminary decision that could force Schwarzenegger to repay the money personally, Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster ruled on Monday that the Republican governor had violated a law restricting candidates from accepting personal loans of more than $100,000 for their campaigns, said Lowell Finley, the lawyer who filed a lawsuit challenging the loan.
All is have to say is this: BZUSTED!!!! Update: Arnold calls the result fantastic.
A bike pqbon doesn't own
World's largest motorcycle
(via poor man)
update: short video of said bike
January 26, 2004
Clerk steals $20,000 lottery ticket
A convenience store clerk has been charged with larceny for allegedly snatching a winning $20,000 lottery ticket from a customer's hand and giving her only $100.
The Lottery Commission confirmed that the book of tickets from which Schmitt purchased her ticket had one $20,000 winning ticket. The ticket has not been cashed.
At this point the clerk is insane for not just returning the ticket. He could have come forward and just lost his job. Now, he will very likely go to jail.
Small victory over the Patriot Act
The portion overturned is minor but all wins against the Patriot Act should be celebrated and revered.
Tooch and Cathy, Brian and MJ should go see this in person
This is really cool. Next to a slide show of the tank are quotes from passers by (as far as I can tell).
The Pink Tank is permanently parked (until further notice) at the corner of Pages Walk and Mandela Way in Bermondsey, SE1, near the Old Kent Rd flyover. The nearest tubes are Elephant and Castle, Borough, London Bridge or Tower Bridge.
Why haven't people moved past the mentality of elementary school students?
"Finders Keepers; Loosers Weepers..." It seems most adults in our society have not moved past this mentality.
An employee at a mall in Long Island (Massapequa, more specifically, which I only know about because my Childhood friend Jamie McNeely lived there before moving to Midland Park, NJ) found a little over $12,000.00 on the floor of the mall and he returned it.
The story quickly circulated among mall employees this week, said Erica Lockhart, senior sales manager at the Nine West shoe store.
"How do you leave that sitting around?" she said.
"I told people in the mall about it and they were all like, 'Did he keep it?'" she added. "They were mad that he did turn it in."
Asked if she would have kept the money, she sighed. "Oh man, yes," she said. "I have bills to pay."
As you can see people didn't have the best reaction to the fact that he didn't keep something that didn't belong to him.
January 23, 2004
Two more from BoingBoing
Here's a cool zipcode viewer applet done by Ben Fry of the Media Lab.
Also cool is this Hey Ya, Charlie Brown, which features OutKast's music video redone with a Charlie Brown clips.
(via BoingBoing)
Smack the Pingu
Directions: Click once to drop the penguin and a second time to swing the bat.
My personal best is 492.4545.5...
January 22, 2004
'Ethics' on the Senate Judicial Committe
"Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media"
- Boston.com / News / Nation / Infiltration of files seen as extensive
The details of the breech aren't detailed until the last paragraph: "A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password."
January 20, 2004
January 19, 2004
Reading for meta's new job
The Onion | I'll Have You Know I Have Several Black Friendsters
MP3 vs. AAC
I've seen a bunch of MP3 vs. AAC articles out there, but this one seems well-written enough and is getting enough blog karma that I thought I'd post it. The spoil the goods, the reviewer gives AAC the edge, though he also points out that you need at least 192Kbps AAC to be "Good." Most of his analysis comes from studying the harpsichord - though a lot of his comments seem similar to what I hear when I listen to cymbals in live recordings. I usually record my stuff at 256Kbps MP3 for portability, which is good enough for my concert-damaged ears.
Encoding Observations
Top Ten Movies of 2003, Visually
metacritic: Film: Awards (2003) (via Kottke)
Link should take you to a histogram that visually compares the critics' top ten rankings. Definitely have some more movies that I need to go and see.
January 16, 2004
Moscow Below
With all the talk that's been bouncing around blogs of whether or not Mole people exist below the streets of NY, I stumbled across this:
- Mysteries Under Moscow
(via Neil Gaiman Journal 6/1/02)
January 15, 2004
Jon Stewart is god and dog
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
To a young generation of Americans, Jon Stewart may as well be Walter Cronkite.
Well, I know Ken, Meta, and I fall largly into this catagory.
January 12, 2004
Silver cars are safest
Autos
About half the drivers in this study had been involved in a crash in which one or more of the occupants had been admitted to the hospital or died, while 571 were not involved in crashes and served as a control group, reports Reuters. Even after taking into account the vehicle and road conditions, driver's age, gender, and educational level, as well as whether the driver had been using drugs or alcohol and had worn a seatbelt, the color of the car still had an impact on the likelihood of a crash.
C-shell, Tonya, and I are in the best colored cars to drive... Maybe this explains why Shane's green car keeps getting hit....
January 11, 2004
BMW 2004 motorcycle specs
For pqbon, though he's probably already read it knowing him:
The New 2004 R1200GS Spec. Sheet
(via Gen Kanai weblog: New BMW R1200GS!)
January 09, 2004
It's worse than I thought
The new HP iPod is even uglier than I ever imagined. Here it is straight out of Carly's hands:
(via macrumors)
Huge People
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
Results of this programme are demonstrated in the above photographs showing large humans (TM) to scale against a traditional 40GB SCSI drive. As can be seen from the above images, the technoloy has also been applied to children, in attempts to bring school bullying to a historic end. Rumours that Toshiba have in fact just announced a tiny hard drive are being dismissed as ludicrous.
January 08, 2004
A use for that acrylic case
I found a use for that Christmas present of pqbon's:
bit-tech.net Forums - G-gnome's Orac3 - Part 1
Perhaps one of the sickest case mods ever (still in progress).
(via Gen Kanai weblog)
Sketches
Don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but the drawings are actually pretty good. As the story goes, they are drawings done during a study in the 1950s of the effects of LSD.
LSD drawings
Also of interest, Louis Wain's skitzophrenic cat drawings
(via Kottke and a poster named Adam)
Ramblin' On
Found this site while I was looking up the lyrics to "Ramble On," which I noticed for the first time (after having listened to the song a thousand times before) was an ode to the One Ring.
LedTolkien
Ugh
When I heard about the HP iPod one of my first thoughts was, "well, first they'll have to make it a really ugly blue." I shouldn't joke.
Mac Rumors: More HP iPod Details...
Buy one today!
Amazon.com: Toys & Games: Barbie and Ken as Arwen and Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings
January 07, 2004
I'm sure we'll get a chance to see the chart when he's president
Yahoo! News - Kucinich Shows Pie Chart on Radio Debate
Never leave a friend at you place unsupervised
Friends foil Olympia man's home / South Sound -The Olympian
A lone book titled "Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends" was untouched.
But nearly everything else in Chris Kirk's downtown Olympia apartment was encased in aluminum foil when he returned home Monday night from a trip to Los Angeles.
The walls, ceiling, cabinets and everything in between now shimmer with a metallic glow, thanks to a prank by Kirk's longtime friend, Olympia native Luke Trerice.
Trerice, a 26-year-old known among his friends for his off-the-wall schemes, stayed in the apartment while Kirk was away.
Roses are red
Whopper: Laura Bush - The first lady lies in order to make the president look ... stupid? By Timothy Noah
(via Neil Gaiman)
January 05, 2004
Pop News... Britney Married, then annulled...
Britney does it, then undoes it...
I wonder if this is related to recent comments about her drinking problems? One must suspect that given the way the story reads she was bombed out of her mind.
January 04, 2004
Hear ye, Hear ye
Movable Type 2.68 has been released, and some details of Movable Type 3.0 have been posted. Check out the details in the Six Apart News. Looks like we'll have to wait until 3.0 for improvements to the comment spam problem.
kozyndan
meta and honeyfields both bought these cool spoof of Hokusai's Great Wave of Kanagawa (part of his Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji), and coming back from vacation I spotted a link to the artist's homepage on BoingBoing. Turns out the poster was done as a cover for Giant Robot, which reminds me -- if you've seen meta's Giant Robot hoody let her know :).
- Kozyndan main page
- Kozyndan shop