Category: observations

collage/montage

Most Emailed Photos

The challenge was to take the top 3 most emailed photos on yahoo and create a hopefully amusing story about the sequence. I reserve the right to refuse a disturbing picture, this includes any pictures of celine dion.
Please feel free to add alternative captions if you can or comments if you can’t.

reporter dies in hypergravity experiment — and writes about it

Wired 11.03: Surviving 7G

It isn’t until later, during a photo shoot, that I find out I had flatlined – I actually died – in the centrifuge. Even though my heart stopped for only three or four seconds, a possibility that Pelligra had described at the prebriefing, the discovery shakes me. I have second thoughts about my willingness to do more experiments.

I got motion sickness just reading this, but then I can’t even sit on a child’s swing anymore (vertigo: bleacgh).

I hadn’t realized zero-G had that much effect on the body: it would be a bad idea to have our Mars explorers become amoebas en route.

Bicycle laundering

So I’m not completely happy at how this whole bike theft thing has played out.

<from an email I just sent to a senior assistant attorney general>
The issue here is that the bike shop is out the cash they paid the thief, I mean, person of interest (whose name and city I have tracked down, by the way). This seems unfair. But if any shop declines to pay on receipt of the goods, they’ll lose trade, putting them at a disadvantage to those who are less scrupulous. What I think would be more fair is to have a waiting period, 10 business days to a month, where no money can change hands, but the serial number can be checked against the police case database. Once it’s clear no reports have been filed, the transaction can take place.

This takes one of the big incentives for bike theft off the table and doesn’t stick bike shops with the tab for stolen goods they have to return to their rightful owners.

What do you think are the odds of the Bicycle Laundering Act passing?

one of everything? no problem

Public Project

Welcome to Browser Cam!
Browser Cam creates screen captures of your web pages loaded in any browser, and on any operating system, so you’ll be 100% sure your web pages look good-and work right-on any platform.

I used the free trial today to see what some new things I was trying would look like. I discovered the fieldset CSS tag and decided to redo a page with a form to take advantage of it. In most cases, it looks fine, only irretrievably broken in IE5.5 (it crashes?!), but it is disappointing that the 1 px rule around the form and around the legend only renders in KHTML-based browsers and even there not uniformly. Sadly, IE5’s violent reaction means I can’t use it.

where do you belong?

I’m reading The Nine Nations of North America, a book I remember being talked about when I left high school, but for various reasons, never looked up.

It’s quite interesting: while it’s not a scholarly book (no footnotes and somewhat breezy prose), it builds on factual observations and real statistics to make the case that the continent of North America is not made of three countries as the maps show, but nine, based on ideologies, economics, and regional/national interests. It may be a stretch to call a nation what’s commonly regarded as a region, but not that much of one: I think there’s a stronger sense of self in these region/nations than in others in, say, France or England.

The nations are (roughly: I’d like to find a map on the web, but this will do):

  • New England, similar to what we refer to now, with the addition of the Canadian Maritimes
  • The Foundry, or the Rust Belt: the central part of the the East Coast, from W Virginia to New York to Ohio, and including southern Ontario
  • Quebec, marked by the traditional provincial boundary but spreading a little eastward into Labrador
  • Dixie, or the Old South, down to south Florida
  • The Islands, comprised of south Florida, and the offshore islands, all the way to Venezuela
  • MexAmerica, essentially Texas to southern California and the old Spanish settlements and all of Mexico
  • Ecotopia, (home sweet home), the West Coast from Point Conception to Juneau
  • The Breadbasket, meaning the grain-producing midwest of the US and Canada
  • The Empty Quarter, the vast open spaces of the West, from the 100th meridian to the coastal mountain boundary with Ecotopia and north to Alaska, Canada’s Northwest and Yukon Territories, valued by residents for its mineral and oil wealth, and by non-residents for its unspoiled beauty.

I’ve lived in three four of the “nations” as it turns out: the Foundry, the Islands, Dixie and now Ecotopia. I found the summaries and descriptions of places I knew to be accurate, even 20 years on, and I assume the others are similarly close. In fact, in an article that came out in the wake of the book (linked below), the author says he was too conservative in his predictions of what the census’s results would bring.

I recommend giving this a look to understand why the regions act and vote the way they do and to see if you’re in the right one. I belong either here or New England, but Ecotopia suits me just fine. I’ll take my two seasons of breathtaking summers and light rain to the extremes of the east.

NB: here’s a link to an article that sums up the book’s premise with a Q&A section.

back in the saddle

Fuji Bikes

You get a lot for a little with this bicycle, a comfy suspension seat post and saddle, wide range gearing for easy pedaling, and good looking too!

It’s a loaner, until mine comes in. Easy bike to ride, though this one is a couple of inches too big. The gearing is low, so climbs are manageable, but descents are a freewheeling experience: my legs don’t go fast enough to pedal once this thing gets upwards of 20 mph. But the brakes are excellent, so I’ll take that compromise.

At almost 30 pounds, it’s a far cry from the skeletal contraptions the world’s best athletes are riding through the Pyrenees.

<update> turns out I don’t have a loaner. The guy at the shop wants it back, and he can’t order the new one yet (he doesn’t have enough credit this cycle and I can’t pay up front for it).

<grumble>