Archive for May, 2008
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

55 minutes into the movie our protagonist spots the cops and guns it. Everything up to that point serves only to justify the 40 minute car chase that ensues.
Written, produced, directed, choreographed and performed by H.B. Halicki, also known as “the Car Crash King”.
You can find clips of the chase on YouTube, but I recommend picking up the DVD and watching it in decent quality.
It’s bumble bee season
I know because one of the little fatties found it’s way into my kitchen, which of course drove the cats bonkers. It stumbled through the air between the window and the overhead light for an hour or so while I cautiously tried to catch it in a glass so I could re-integrate it into the wild like the caring liberal that I am. Eventually it bumped into the cabinets and basically fell out of the air, making it easier to catch on the ground.
Clumsy bumble.
Now that I think about it, it must be hard to be a fat little mockery of a honey bee with undersized wings. Isn’t that what they are really? Bumbles can sting, but I think it’s uncommon, and they’re fuzzier than honey bees, which makes it look like someone’s 8 year old kid sister saw a bee and decided to cuten it up a bit. “I want him fat and soft, and shrink his wings because they make him harder to hug, and no stinging!”
I imagine early bumbles looked like this:

(drawing by me, age 31)
Somehow I can’t find a t-shirt that just says “NERD ALERT” in big red letters.
It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to be readily available.
J.J. Abrams at TED
I’ve always enjoyed his work but this is one of those less common cases where I’m actually a fan of the person too (at least after watching this).
…

From somewhere on reddit…
Crazy glass armonica
This ‘glass armonica’ a banned musical instrument apparently “causes insanity” - I’m not sure about that but it’s gorgeous looking and sounding… (more about it at the Wikipedia too).
From the linked article:
The glass armonicaâs sound is perceived by human ears differently than other instruments because its range is between 1,000 and 4,000 hertz. When sounds are below 4,000 hertz, the human brain compares âphase differencesâ between the left and right ears to triangulate the origin of the sound rather than comparing volumes. This causes hearing disorientation and a ânot quite sureâ feeling about where the sound is coming from.
(Via Make.)
Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops
This is why Microsoft annoys the crap out of me.
Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.
This irks me because Microsoft has no interest in providing quality low-cost computers, they only have an interest in making sure that people don’t use something else
Granted, most computer makers don’t have much interest in making low-cost computers either because they know what 90% of users out there don’t care what they use so long as they can read their email and browse the web. Regardless, whenever I hear news like this it reminds me that Microsoft is the king of the mountain not because they make a great product that everyone wants to use but because they make “back room” deals to make sure that everyone has to use their product.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
The hidden value of processing.js
We’re already starting to see the results. John released his code on Thursday. By Friday, someone had already duplicated the processing.js environment as a XUL program and someone else already created an editor where you can try out processing scripts
If Bender had a website, this would be it: http://maddox.xmission.com/
Found after reading an old (237 in internet years) erm, “iPhone article”: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone