Catalina dancing for us nerds

For those who thought the last post was dry...
Nadine Velazquez.



If that won't make you watch My Name Is Earl, I can't help you.

Coated glass

For decades I've been wondering why they have not been using the same anti-reflection treatment they use on camera lenses and eye-glasses, on the glass used in picture frames. Reflections in glass really kill the contrast of the art. And the old style "anti-reflection" treatment is just sanding of the glass and does nothing except make the reflections blurred.

Well, it's finally here. I was by my friendly neighborhood frame maker today, and he showed me this. It is much more expensive than regular glass, but for many applications I will consider it more than worthwhile. The difference is dramatic. There are still reflections, but they are much reduced.

Willow, lightfastness

"We can't run, that would be wrong. Can we hide?" - Willow, Buffy

---
In other news, I just bought a bunch of pricey designers' markers, for art. I made sure they were the "permanent" kind.
Then I come home, and by accident find the information on the web that "permanent" does not mean lightfast as I (and the store owner) thought it meant. It merely means water-resistant. Almost no markers are lightfast. O great. Markers really are so handy.

New air traffic system

New air traffic system.

Sketches

TTL sez some of these are totally hil.
(If you get "service unavailable", try again.)

Synthetic head

Synthetic girl watches the cursor.

I've been notified about this page a couple of times now. I didn't think it worked in my browser, but it turns out the site simply has neglected to show a flash-file-download progress bar, so I thought nothing was happening, and left the site prematurely.

I wonder why they used a model who's been partying all night?
Or perhaps they just wanted to avoid artificially over-white eye-whites, and overdid it a little.

Update:
Ian S points to Ms Dewey. Good fun, although it's against my sensibilities that the main page does not tell you anything about what the site actually is for.
Damn talented and pretty actress too. Named Janina Gavankar. I want her on a cracker.

Phones and leashes

Pertinent to the IM post, Bert said:
It has been years now since I stopped giving my mobile number to clients. [...]
And, despite my refusal to be held on a leash, I have yet to experience a genuine emergency where being immediately available would have helped in any way.
It just feels to me like there is something disrespectful in assuming that one is (or should be) always available to answer "on the spot".

Indeed, phones are "worse" than IM. A few times in recent years I've given in to somebody who wanted to do business with me (always somebody who found me, not vice versa) and who insisted that we do it over the phone and not over email. And every time I found that the resulting phone call took over 90 minutes and yet did not tell me anything I could not have learned in an email it would have take two minutes to read. Basically I find the phone is only good for ordering pizza and talking to family or close friends.
And like Bert hints: unless you're an ER doctor on call, what can't wait a few minutes or hours? Really?

Clarity

Here's an article about clarity in writing.

This bit from the article isn't clear to me:

Because language can have an underlying structure different from its surface structure, syntax can mislead, as the linguist Noam Chomsky demonstrated with this pair of sentences:
John is eager to please.
John is easy to please.

How does the syntax mislead? Both sentences seem perfectly straightforward to me. The first one means that John wants to please people, the second one means that John is easily pleased by people.

Groucho

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
-- Groucho Marx

Was HAL conscious?

Was HAL conscious?

Tymchak art

Tymchak art. (PDF file.)

Life goals

Seems like a pretty good book, and you can't beat the price.