monday, january 31, 2005
Dead blog fads
Things I pruned from Jeweled Platypus today:
- XFN rel tags - useless
- Navigation accesskeys - useless
- Link to FOAF file - useless
- Meta element preventing the parsing of MS Smart Tags - obsolete
- Link to Technorati profile - useless
- Creative Commons license RDF - unnecessary
- Dublin Core meta elements - useless
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tuesday, january 25, 2005
The only Hipster PDA that is hip
Are you as cool as you think you are with your piddly little Hipster PDA Mini? Does the Hipster PDA leave you wanting more?
It’s the Hipster PDA MEGAAAAA. Big index cards + a huge clip = well, it won’t fit in your pocket, but real hipsters are all about irony, right?
The improvement is obvious.
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The illegality of matchbooks
Somebody gave my school a bunch of these little matchbook calculators. The administrators asked my Statistics teacher what to do with them. This is part of his discussion with the class (student comments in parentheses):
What would I do as an administrator? I would not give it to the kids. However, being very clever, as I am — (What kids are you talking about?). You. (Why not?) It’s against the law, I think. Uh, because you’re minors. Minors can get them. They promote cigarettes in [certain places], not that you guys aren’t involved in that. I mean, there’s people probably smoking marijuana, crack, cocaine, with these matches, probably 10-12 years old. But, because, I have seen — I have heard of — and know of seven-year-olds who were prostitutes and who were on cocaine, by their own mother. I have seen things that you wouldn’t believe, in this country. I have seen people who are five and six years old involved in espionage, yeah…who in the end killed their entire family — massacred them. So, uh, in this country. I have seen it all.
But…this could be a moneymaker! I would say, I would sell this for as high as five dollars. I have people who could sell these. Five dollars, and then bring the money to the school. Like that? Consider the Mormons, for example. I’ve worked with a lot of them before. They don’t drink sodas — the good Mormons, maybe the jacked Mormons do. They don’t smoke cigarettes, they don’t take liquor. But yet, they sell it. You see. That’s just like some people, uh, uh, selling drugs that wouldn’t want their children taking it — the Sopranos, if you’ve ever watched it. Real mafia. They wouldn’t want them doing that but yet they’re selling them, destroying families, to the point where some of them will lose their job because they’re taking drugs, and they start dragging everyone down with them. They also uh, will be in jail, like a revolving door, and their parents will have to go once a week or twice a week to different prisons around the state, visiting them, and it puts a tremendous strain on them. You love your child, you can’t hurt your child, so it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. You can never put a value on that. So, well, you know.
[A few minutes later] If you knew how much these were made for, you would poopoo in your pants…They’re made in China. I don’t trust China.
See also: Negative vacuums and superconductivity.
comments (4)
thursday, january 20, 2005
Three uninteresting things
Some of the things on my Wikipedia watchlist:
Baldness Code of Hammurabi Crest toothpaste Declarative memory Denim Driftwood Duct tape Episodic memory Flip-flop (footwear) Gnocchi Harp License plate Sellotape Smog Tartan
Statistics about my Delicious links:
462 days (from 10/14/03 to 1/19/05)
1500 links
~3 links a day
120 tags (10 to 75 links each; median is 25)
1-3 tags per link
no more than 10 characters per tag (minus /tech and /meta suffixes)
no link title longer than half the page
extended descriptions on every link since 9/18/04
Most popular of my Flickr photos:
My iBook with all its lying stickers.
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tuesday, january 18, 2005
Nerdy nerdy wordy wordy
The best unixy things have names that are so obviously right, so well thought-out, I love them. I forget syntax and flags and how to do things, but the names stick. (Translations included for my mom [and grandma?].)
ls - list directory contents
cd - change directory
rm - remove files
They’re weird little names: whole phrases reduced to two letters. They’re the right length for basic commands that get typed a lot. The names don’t share any letters, which sort of subconsciously makes them harder to confuse. I like them, this little triplet of useful things. They go in that order, of course.
vi; emacs - text editors that can do a lot
nano; pico - simple text editors
“vi” and “emacs” look and sound appropriately different — with a longer name for the more complicated one. “nano” and “pico” sound and look similar — but not identical — just like they should.
This had been sitting on my desktop since July. Someday, I’ll write about HTML tags and the worst names.
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tuesday, january 11, 2005
showing off the loot
yay! presents! and they’re all mine.
weird, delicious candy from europe: fruit-mimicking marzipan and violet-flavored candies.
a terrific shirt and a stuffed platypus for my growing collection of [unjeweled] platypuses acquired in thrift shops by my mom. current count: two (the other one).
you can see the kind of stuff i like to read. i’ve already read two and two halves of these books.
fetishistic stationery? naturally! my moleskine notebook and space pen.
update 1/11/05 1:10: two more books have been added to the pile: the eudaemonic pie, by thomas a. bass, and the visual display of quantitative information, by edward tufte.
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grandma and grandpa’s house, again
old things, the new york times, biting cold, scrabble, and a chocolate cake.
how to make a moose-chip burger:
- with a fork, mash up about a third of a can of black beans.
- cut a good amount of onion into tiny pieces. put it in a bowl with the beans.
- add some parsley (dried is ok) and a little garlic powder.
- put in a few spoonfuls of smelly cheese (for you non-family members, that’s parmesan cheese). put in more than you think.
- mix it all up with your fork. taste it! if it’s a little too salty, that’s ok.
- form the stuff into a patty. it’ll stick together.
- heat up a pan (not too hot — medium-ish). put margarine in it. mmm.
- drop the beany stuff into the pan. flip it after a few minutes. flip it back. let it sit there for a while.
- serve like a hamburger! yay!
