I’m married, so I don’t need the pick-up line, but I wonder if it’d get me laid:
“The weatherman isn’t calling for snow, but I see 6 inches coming your way tonight.”
(for the record, I picked “six” for the cadence of the sentence, a two syllable “seven” doesn’t flow as correctly and “eight” just sounds like drunken bragging – better to underpromise and overdeliver)
Was messing around looking at some stuff on Bing maps and saw a link to a new beta version of the maps, so I clicked it.
Wow! Really nice stuff. The map now changes from map view to aerial to bird’s eye automatically as you zoom in and they’ve added a “Streetside” feature that viciously crushes Google’s Street View. The whole thing is ridiculously smooth and intuitive – it just feels right and it looks damn good.
Definitely go check out the beta.
(note: this is the 600th entry to my blog)
Just one look at this countdown traffic light and you know it’s a great idea. A progress bar on a stop light? We’re on board with that. Besides alleviating frustration, designer Damjan Stankovi? sees his idea saving energy…
(more)
9 Signs It’s Time To Lock It Down
Two things:
1. My wife is good for at least 6 (probably 7) of those…hence the lockdown.
2. George Romero movies? Pfft. We’ve been in George Romero’s bed watching laserdiscs. (yes, laserdiscs – it was the early/mid 90’s)
A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
“Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.”
Joan Jett in the Nov 2009 issue of Esquire
Crank 2: High Voltage
Every bit as stupid and awesome as you’d expect it to be.
Adventureland
A slow moving movie full of uninteresting characters I barely cared about.
Suck on that, Toyota!
Chevy Volt to get 230 mpg rating
Obviously, that’s not a final spec and there’s weirdness with measuring and the way the car works (technically one could achive infinity mpg with it), but this looks like a promising little car for GM that will end up with a triple-digit mpg rating.
Now there’s just the pesky business of the cost of electricity and the business of producing it.
Today was a slow Saturday. The wife was at work all day and my daughter had a birthday party that took up the entire afternoon, so my son and I spent the day just hanging out at the house. I did some stuff online and got some more photos done. We watched an episode of Hometime (you’re welcome HGTV, DIY, etc) and used my new favorite tool (the Dremel) to get the last bits of ceramic number and adhesive off the front of the house after leaving it look like hell for the past two months.
At some point during the day, my little man was playing with his Transformers. He’s usually pretty good about transforming them himself. Maybe a little quick guidance in the correct order of steps, but for the most part, he’s pretty solid for a 7 year old. And when he’s not he’s usually pretty good about holding on to the instructions and digging the right one out and taking a look to refresh his memory.
So today he comes to me with one that I know he’s been wanting to turn back from robot into vehicle for a while now and making absolutely zero progress and generally getting blown off by me (just being honest) when he’s looking for someone to figure the damn thing out. So today he hits me up with this damn Transformer in hand and I figure what the hell.
Of course, he doesn’t have the instructions – which is probably ok because they all show you how to go from vehicle to robot and tell you to just reverse the steps to go back to vehicle and no matter how long I stare at the pictures, I just have more luck figuring it out on my own. And that says a lot about the system, because I’m generally a ‘read the instructions before you begin’ kind of guy.
So after a few moments of bewilderment and asking my son questions, we figured that this is apparently the most difficult toy in the world to get to go from robot to what appeared to be a tank of some kind. With no instructions, we thought to look online. Somebody is bound to have a site with scans of instructions for figures…the only catch was that neither of us know what fucking Transformer I was holding in my hands.
We searched all kinds of things, looked at too many fan sites, toy sites and whatnot and I was starting to get a little frustrated because:
1. We we getting nowhere fast.
2. I didn’t give a flying fuck if this thing ever looked like a tank again.
So I decided there had to be some marking on it or something that I could put into Google and get results. After looking it over, part of the graphics on it’s shoulder/gun turret thingy read, “GALV-25″ and I plugged that into google.
I got a bunch of results about drywall so I added transformers to the query and realized we were dealing with a Galvatron figure. Great.
After a little more searching we settled on this video of some annoying kid doing a review of the figure while chomping Cheez-Its like…well, like a Transformers geek chomping on Cheez-Its. About 13 minutes in he gets to showing us how to take the damn toy back to tank from robot…even commenting that it’s one of the most difficult figures of the Transformers Universe series (see, we’re not idiots – seriously, watch that shit) and that even when done correctly, some parts snap off, some never collapse and connect correctly and it’s easier to do if you flat out pull some pieces off and put the toy back together at the end.
So even playing and pausing the video of the kid doing it step-by-step we still found a lot of frustration, but between the two of us, got it back to tank form with strict instructions (with a wink) to never, never, ever, unless it will somehow magically save your life and even then think twice before you do it, transform this damn toy into the robot again.
Jeff linked to this on his blog and it’s an absolutely fabulous read that has seemingly taken the thoughts, words and images directly from my mind and replanted them on the (virtual) pages of Wired.
A little of Dave’s interesting interview with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz:
Saw this over at Draegs. It’s a five part thing with each part being a little over nine minutes, so set aside a little time to watch. The first three parts are absolutely fascinating and enlightening. The fourth gets a little preachy and the last shows hints of an agenda or at least the author’s personal opinions come through – less fact and a little too much opinion. All in all I’m glad I spent the time to watch it. For some good fun, watch the first few parts and think about what money is and how none of us really consider value and worth and currency – just that money buys things – and then go back and read my 8 Monkeys post. (smile)
Here’s part 1 (with links to parts 2-5 below):
Things like this make me think:
Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.
Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water which makes them miserable. Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.
One of the original monkeys is then removed and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. He immediately begins to climb the ladder.
All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.
A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him.
This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey.
One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries without having any idea why.
8 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh PA 15212
Sampsonia Way & Arch St, Pittsburgh
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Actually, if you explore that street a bit there’s lots to see.
There is much wisdom in ball scratching.
I dunno. Looks pretty good to me.
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