sunday, may 27, 2007
Another eccentricity
The following is my new desktop picture from Wikipedia, where its contributor described it as “The typical car wash view from the inside of a car. The ride can sometime compare to a theme park joyride.” The main car wash article is detailed but leaves out that second part.
Yesterday Doug’s truck went through an exciting car wash at a gas station, where the arch of power zoomed back and forth over us inside of it, spraying water and soap and hot air on the ceiling and windows, noisy and enthusiastic and perfectly automatic with little signs flashing the name of the wash stage, like a dishwasher or washing machine. The arch looked like this, but inside a small structure instead of nothingness:
On the right, the little green sign says markvii.net, and there’s a relevant product page with excellent bits such as “It’s not about the carwash, it’s about the carwash business”, turbo nozzles, and the AquaJet GT showcase video. I love the informativeness of this website, hinting that a smallish dorky business owned by a German conglomerate hides untold corporate horror behind another convenient component of life.
Too bad it didn’t make the truck very clean.
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tuesday, may 15, 2007
Because the world should know
These are my terrible photos of a great story that crushes Ira Glass by Lynda Barry, from her book One! Hundred! Demons!. The rest of this book is good too, and you should buy it so I don’t feel bad about excerpting it here.
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thursday, may 10, 2007
Constraints and educational websites
My college’s website works well considering that it’s disorganized, inaccessible, and ouchy on the eyes. It’s part of a succession of limited resources that we’ve survived. But constraints foster creativity, right? Last year I realized that I could help improve this thing, and that it was worth working on because the administration would take me seriously if I tried.
So I took the whole website and gradually redesigned it, re-organized it, proofread it, added missing content, uploaded new photos, and sent an email to the dean announcing the end of the first phase of my grand project.
He’s a great dean, and he likes the idea. We’re beginning the second phase — the hard part — where I convince the rest of the college that this website is better than the old one (and fix everything that turns out to be wrong with it). I have two more years here and think it’ll take that long to finish this project, which makes me happy.
If you want to help test it and/or tell me how to make it prettier, let me know!
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saturday, may 05, 2007
I like this newspaper a lot
These are two of my favorite pictures from the New York Times recently:
A wolverine, part of “A Featherless Audubon Menagerie”.
An illustration for “The Brain on the Stand”.
These are three of my favorite articles, which are somehow all about food:
- “A Taste of Ghana” — street food that sounds delicious.
- “Thumb-Wrestling With Plantains Is Now an Optional Sport” — Edwin Rodriguez and the invention of the E-Z Peeler.
- “Native Foods Nourish Again” — “‘You can go to most any area of this country and eat Thai or Chinese or Mongolian barbecue, but you can’t eat indigenous foods native to the Americas.’”
