I like to read the News of the Weird in the Austin Chronicle. Every so often, there will be a story about how having the middle name of Wayne leads to crime. And in it are people who all share the same middle name of a famous John Wayne.
I know two people who share that middle name. I wonder what that means for me.
As I drove out for lunch, I passed this sight. A Round Rock fire truck was spraying a lot of water behind a building. So, I decided to stop and take a picture. But when I got there, they had turned off the water. I wonder what they were up to?
I looked at my door last night and found this stuck to it. Is it some junk advertising that people like to leave on my door? Are the neighborhood kids getting creative?
Google maps query for miserable failure link via
Paris viewed through a pinhole camera link via
Katamari Doh-macy link via and even more goodness
Lego Shinkansen warning sign (at bottom) link via
The top 100 gadgets of all time link via
Advertising for security glass uses some real money link via
It's a statement vehicle link via
The history of the universe in 200 words or less link via
Always make sure no one is behind your vehicle and that there is nothing that can catch fire link via
Robotic Dyson orders parts on its own link via
A concert though the audience's cellphones link via
Don't piss off Vietnamese women link via
Trash can that projects its contents on the ground link via
Andre Agassi and Roger Federer play tennis on world's highest tennis court link via
Guess presidents from their hair link via
Hamster controlled MIDI sequencer link via
your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions link via
A couple of weeks ago, I passed a somewhat new Hummer H2 towing a brand new black Corvette. This is obviously someone who has money to burn. Unfortunately, because it was the morning rush hour on IH-35, I was not able to take a picture.
Now, I come across this brand new black Corvette and wonder if that is the same person. But I do not ponder for long since the call of the hatch chile sauce is calling to me.
Update: This evening on my drive home. I passed a white van that had painted on the side: "Royal Norwegian Air Force Training" and towards the end of the van: "Apache division". How odd! What did they do? Drive here?!?!
I am really starting to want to work for Google. Why? They are coming out with some neat applications. Plus, I have heard that Google allows employees to spend 20% of their time on their own research projects. This would definately fit my style. The only problem is that they are located in California. Living in California is expensive and house prices are ridiculous.
First, it was GMail. When GMail came out, I thought that you could do more with one gigabyte of mail space than just read email. You could essentially treat it as a USB key and transfer files between work and home. So, I created a Python application to turn a GMail account into a network filesystem. It works quite well. I still want to enable Linux to be able to mount and unmount someone's GMail account.
Now, they have come out with Google Maps. The user interface is visibly better than other map sites. The reason why is they use Javascript under the web browser to do most of the work. Because their maps are pretty, I was tempted to reverse engineer the code. So, I spent the past two weekends figuring out what goes on under the covers. There were a number of challenges. The javascript code is shall we say space optimized. That is, there is no whitespace and all functions are named like: Ae, Bu, Jk, etc. So, I reformatted the javascript code and wrote a tiny Python proxy to substitute my pretty code for debugging purposes (Firefox has a great javascript debugger).
Now I can do something like this:
googleMap = GoogleMap ()
googleMap.setZoomLevel (2)
googleMap.setMapName ("map.jpg")
mapUpperRightHome = googleMap.findLocation ("2900 1460, Round Rock TX 78664")
mapLowerLeftHome = googleMap.findLocation ("1000 Sam Bass Road, Round Rock TX 78664")
googleMap.setBounds (mapLowerLeftHome, mapUpperRightHome)
googleMap.createMap ()
To create maps like this:
Every time I go to Central Market, I seem to spend 80 dollars on groceries and this time was no exception. One thing that I don't like about Austin is the poor quality of beef. When I drive around town, I will some times see Longhorns grazing on prairie grass and weeds. And that is what the tough and gristly meat tastes like.
So, I decided to splurge and buy a nice thick Black Angus porterhouse steak. Unfortunately, it was 2 pounds which was more than I wanted. So I switched to a T-bone steak (without the tenderloin side). Since I cooked it for lunch, I decided to pair it with some Yukon Gold yogurt & green onion potato chips.
As I eat this steak for lunch, I am reminded of a quote from the movie Sidways:
"Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing! I'm a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage."
No, not that quote! About how Miles was saving his bottle of 1961 Cheval Blac wine for a special occasion and then Maya responds that whenever you drink that bottle of wine it will be a special occasion.
Time Warner Austin is forcing me to upgrade my modem. My ex-officemate suspects that my old modem did not have DOCSIS support for throttling.
Anyways, I did notice some things about the new modem. It is *much* smaller than the original one. It is actually less massive than the power wart (on the right) that it comes with. I also saw that I get a new address range 70.113.33.X versus 24.?.?.X.
Update: I have also noticed that the receive light is always on. It is like the cable company is always trying to communicate with the LinkSys box.
I went to Central Market's cooking school tonight to learn how to make gumbo. This is a hands on class that has 16 people in it. They are divided up into four teams that will make: seafood gumbo, chicken gumbo, duck gumbo, and venison gumbo. I was on the team that made the venison gumbo. We cut the vegtables and followed the recipie, but due to time constraints the roux (4 different stages: blonde, peanut butter, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate) and the marinated meat were already prepared.
And this is the result! I think that this class is well worth taking. You definately eat a lot of food. We started out the night with spicy shrimp in remoulade sauce. They served Louisiana beer and played Cajun music. We then cooked and ate the four gumbos. After that, we topped it off with Blue Bell Mardi Gras ice cream and a cookie.
This tree speaks to me as I feed my beast. There must be hundreds of birds that live in the tree. They spend most of their time at night bickering amongst themselves. Or, could they be hurling insults at me and my beast and compete for the prized worm?
Fan lipsyncs over a webcam link via
Because this [extraction] step is pretty messy, certain sources of DNA should not be used, such as: Your family pet link via
Hello Kitty crop circle link via
The prototype design is a coat with warning strips of fur that become electro-statically charged in situations where the wearer feels threatened link via
Satellite photo of the Gates link via
The Fastest Die in the World (The central point and the center of gravity of this cube are almost the same with 99.99999999% of accuracy)link via
Digital Ink prototype link via
I have learned that Jack L. Chalker has died. This is sad news. He was one of my favorite authors. The world will be a slightly worse place now.
This reminds me of when Issac Asimov died. Sigh. I must be getting old when my favorite Science Fiction authors are dying...
Gee, would I like to to buy this car. If only I was rich. Leif Johnson Ford is selling it for only $250,000 dollars (only $100,000 above MSRP).
A bunch of artists bought thrift store art and modified it link via
Even Microsoft employees use iPods link via
Five years of fortune cookies link via
While some people may like to shoot at people, those people should not say it in public link via
Mappr is an interactive environment for exploring place, based on the photos people take. link via
English names for musical intervals link via
A student grades papers link via
I, for one, welcome our ant masters link via
While I was sitting at the light at Parmer and Metric, I witnessed a strange ritual that was held in the empty field next to a McDonald's. There was a group of 6 or so people that were standing in a small circle facing each other. They looked like they were doing some calisthenics. I imagine that they were holding some religious ritual that was possibly related to McDonald's.
It is a shame that the camera quality is so pathetic on this phone. A short movie would have exposed this unexpected cabal.
I baked some more bread today.
Update: I forgot to add that I made sweet potato french fries on Saturday. Very good!
More follows:
I decided to take a big step. It is the second scariest moment of my life (the first being buying a new house). I have paid off my mortgage. The savings account was making a ridiculous rate so I thought I could at least not have to pay off interest on the house. This brings my savings down to an unconfortable level, at least for me anyways. And I don't feel comfortable about my job security either. So, this year I will have to save big time! I am aiming for being able to live for two years of unemployment.
Yeah, I know I could have used that money to invest in something, but I have not have that good of luck with the stock market. I am much more concerned about security and reducing my monthly expenditures right now.
I played 6 games of High Society today during lunch and it was fun. They were quick, rapid fire, played in succession games. As we played each game, a "group mind-think" started to form on what certain items were worth and to not spend all of your low cards, and to mind "gaps" that form when money is gone from the game. Towards the end, we had all reserved our four highest cards and we were passing on later numbered items after spending all the we thought we could get away with. In the last game, a 2X doubler was completely passed on by everyone and then a final 2X doubler was passed on Mike and Dan. I had two money cards left in my hand. I needed to buy it to win so I spent my lowest cash card. Unfortunately, that moved me into a tie for the lowest remaining money and I lost the game! If I had only saved a 1 or 2 dollar cash card. I could have bought that doubler and won. Oh well, it was fun.
So, Mike Chapel tells me to search on this global thermal nuclear war game and look at the number 2 entry. I do. It was this:
Global Thermal-Nuclear Warfare - ticalc.org
... wargames.zip. Filename, wargames.zip. Title, Global Thermal-Nuclear Warfare.
Description, The simple game of global thermal-nuclear war. ...
www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/86/8690.html - 12k -
Cached
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This obviously was not what he was talking about. I asked him what he was talking about. He said it moved further down and was now number 6. So I look at it. It was this:
IMG Review: Big Bang Chess
... If I had to choose between a rousing game of Global Thermal Nuclear War, and
a nice game of chess, I’d take chess any day of the week. ...
insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=509 - 39k -
Cached
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That also was obviously not what he was talking about. So I ask him again, "Are you on drugs?-)". It turns out that I was using Firefox and he was using Microsoft Internet Explorer. So I try IE and I can see what he is talking about.
Interesting!
It seems that IE was showing me this:
And Firefox was showing me this:
This is on the same computer at around the same time. Two different browsers show two different results. Weird!
