Nice page of miscellaneous photos by Philippe Carly.
(Who I often present on Domai.)
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Maggie Gyllenhaal
I just had lunch at a place with, today, several very cute waitresses, including one who was the spitting image of Maggie Gyllenhaal. (Movies: "Secretary", "Stranger Than Fiction", and "Adaptation", all good.) Same roguish smile and everything. That doesn't suck! And she seemed to appreciate me mentioning it.
(More pictures of Maggie.)
(More pictures of Maggie.)
Coffee mill
When I was visited recently by a couple of old friends (o, how we laughed and talked), including one who was my boss in the nineties, he one-upped me in the espresso machine department, he's taken courses, has a bigger one (espresso machine that is), and uses a coffee mill.
So I decided to get one myself, seeing as I was not always happy with the quality of my coffee. After some research, I bought a Dualit Burr Coffee Grinder, and I just got it today.
So far I'm very happy with it. It seems like quality, and it's compact, fast, and really easy to use.
And I must say it actually makes a difference to use freshly-ground coffee. I had to have two cups this morning, it was delicious.
Role models
It seems yet another Disney movie star is shocking the bourgeoisie by becoming a woman. Mike Johnston has a suggestion for a solution.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
iTunes unsung songs
I realized it was silly that there are so many songs in my iTunes app which I rarely listen to because I listen to my favorites most of the time. So I made a Smart List which plays songs which I've not yet rated and which I've listened to less than 3 times. Songs which I've bought on iTunes music store, or downloaded, or ripped from old or new CDs. I am thinking I would find a few new favorites to broaden my horizon.
Guess what, that list contains over 2,000 songs!! Jeepers creepers.
Guess what, that list contains over 2,000 songs!! Jeepers creepers.
Compact parcel
Ya gotta like Apple's new efforts in making their packaging compact. This parcel is barely bigger than the one my last version of Photoshop came in, and that one only contained a CD and 38 pages of legal boilerplate. :)
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On the other hand, Apple sometimes goes overboard with the aesthetics*. Witness this external superdrive. Very slick, very pretty. But what's with the eight inch cord? Suppose you want to have the laptop on your lap? And the minuscule 4-point text on the back, printed in... matt black on glossy black! Holy cow.
* No, I'm wrong, what they sometimes go a little overboard with since the millinnium, is minimalism. I'm almost a minimalist myself, but not quite. I like simplicity. But I sometimes wish they would not go all the way to complete featurelessness. For instance I liked the curves on the lid and on the edges of my old Powerbook G3. (Man, that was a wonderful machine for the time, but it cost like five grand. Laptop prices have sure fallen since then!)
Lou said:
* No, I'm wrong, what they sometimes go a little overboard with since the millinnium, is minimalism. I'm almost a minimalist myself, but not quite. I like simplicity. But I sometimes wish they would not go all the way to complete featurelessness. For instance I liked the curves on the lid and on the edges of my old Powerbook G3. (Man, that was a wonderful machine for the time, but it cost like five grand. Laptop prices have sure fallen since then!)
Lou said:
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Song of Blades and Heroes
One of my oldest Net friends, Italian artist Andrea Sfiligoi, is having success with a games rules book called Song of Blades and Heroes. He has promised to write a short article for this blog about his unexpected webtrepreneur success.
Wiki article. Review. Blog.
I don't know from games, so Andrea had to explain to me that it is one of the type of games played on a big realistic toy landscape with miniature game figures. (Or, I guess, just a tabletop.) He created the rules/story and wrote the book, and I guess it's played with pre-existing board/figures. Oh, and he illustrated it too, he's an excellent artist, both in fine art and in the commercial realm.
YouTube short-humor
YouTube is clearly giving birth to new humor productions, which is a good thing.
Take for instance Two Hot Girls In The Shower (sorry, no nudity, it's a tease). I think a few of the episodes are pretty funny, like this and this. And the humor is nice and subtle. It's clear they are pros, and they are apparently working in TV. Nice faces too.
But, some of the humor may be too gentle for its own good. Or is it just that 80 seconds is really too short to get the laughter muscles going? I think it is really short. Sure, we have short attention spans these days, but... ?
The Asian babe, Kim Evey, is also in Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show. I'm not sure if it's a parody of an egregious show or just an egregious show. OK, the Ron Jeremy episode is pretty funny, sort of.
Take for instance Two Hot Girls In The Shower (sorry, no nudity, it's a tease). I think a few of the episodes are pretty funny, like this and this. And the humor is nice and subtle. It's clear they are pros, and they are apparently working in TV. Nice faces too.
But, some of the humor may be too gentle for its own good. Or is it just that 80 seconds is really too short to get the laughter muscles going? I think it is really short. Sure, we have short attention spans these days, but... ?
The Asian babe, Kim Evey, is also in Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show. I'm not sure if it's a parody of an egregious show or just an egregious show. OK, the Ron Jeremy episode is pretty funny, sort of.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Neil Gaiman, size of web images
This book by Neil Gaiman, for children, is probably cool. But it's hard to tell because the "sample images" are just two tiny ones, basically thumbnails, as I had predicted before I clicked through to that page.
How come web designers seem stuck in the mid-nineties when it comes to image sizes on the web? Less than 600 x 800 pixels is not a proper image, people, get with it.
How come web designers seem stuck in the mid-nineties when it comes to image sizes on the web? Less than 600 x 800 pixels is not a proper image, people, get with it.
A veteran's stories
A certain middle-eastern Frenchman posted this in a comment.
He's been sent a membership to a certain Art site for his recent labor-intensive contributions.
"GPS? Phooey! In my days, we didn't even have a round planet, it was still flat as a pizza. Even the full moon was smaller before the days of inflation. We had to walk 300 miles in the Sahara blizzard barefoot to go to school... on our hands. And schoolmasters were tougher than Arizona sheriff Joe Dick, I mean Joe Arpaio ruling this whatchamacallit Abu-Grain fancy middle-eastern resort.
For breakfast, we had to wrestle she-wolves to steal their milk and nab their cubs, or we wouldn't be getting any calcium or protein. If we wanted candy, we had to go and milk the bees ourselves for honey. The million, billion and trillion didn't have as many zeroes, because many were fighting for the Japs and it took them years after that to get amnisty and a Green Card.
There were no toothbrushes or toothpicks, we had to chew thistles and gargle with broken glass at bedtime. In these days, son, men were men. And so were women, by George! But we still clenched our teeth and mated with them, just so you little ungrateful whippersnappers could be born and disrespect the life out of us.
The only green fuels were put in the engines of horses, and ho-boy! did the exhaust stink from back in the carriage! If you wanted to take your date for a ride, she needed to cover the stench by putting a handkerchief on her nose after dipping it in skunk oil. If she could AFFORD skunk oil. The mosquitoes were as big as dinosaurs and meaner than a tax inspector's mother-in-law.
We were so poor, the whole family had to share one shirt, while we slaved 29 hours a day in the silver mines to pay for having the other shirt patched. That's right, silver: even the filthy rich didn't have gold mines then. Africans were so poor, they all starved to death before they were born! Every other year, whe had to feed by eating the locusts after they devoured all our harvests of brocoli, eggplants and rutabaga.
He's been sent a membership to a certain Art site for his recent labor-intensive contributions.
"GPS? Phooey! In my days, we didn't even have a round planet, it was still flat as a pizza. Even the full moon was smaller before the days of inflation. We had to walk 300 miles in the Sahara blizzard barefoot to go to school... on our hands. And schoolmasters were tougher than Arizona sheriff Joe Dick, I mean Joe Arpaio ruling this whatchamacallit Abu-Grain fancy middle-eastern resort.
For breakfast, we had to wrestle she-wolves to steal their milk and nab their cubs, or we wouldn't be getting any calcium or protein. If we wanted candy, we had to go and milk the bees ourselves for honey. The million, billion and trillion didn't have as many zeroes, because many were fighting for the Japs and it took them years after that to get amnisty and a Green Card.
There were no toothbrushes or toothpicks, we had to chew thistles and gargle with broken glass at bedtime. In these days, son, men were men. And so were women, by George! But we still clenched our teeth and mated with them, just so you little ungrateful whippersnappers could be born and disrespect the life out of us.
The only green fuels were put in the engines of horses, and ho-boy! did the exhaust stink from back in the carriage! If you wanted to take your date for a ride, she needed to cover the stench by putting a handkerchief on her nose after dipping it in skunk oil. If she could AFFORD skunk oil. The mosquitoes were as big as dinosaurs and meaner than a tax inspector's mother-in-law.
We were so poor, the whole family had to share one shirt, while we slaved 29 hours a day in the silver mines to pay for having the other shirt patched. That's right, silver: even the filthy rich didn't have gold mines then. Africans were so poor, they all starved to death before they were born! Every other year, whe had to feed by eating the locusts after they devoured all our harvests of brocoli, eggplants and rutabaga.
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How's the build quality? Let us know how long it stays good.
eolake said...Each time I get a new Mac, the build quality gets even better.
Only frustration right now is that I have way too many files for the automatic Migration Assistant software to work, and it won't do it partially, so I can't figure out any easy way to transfer my settings, bookmarks, macros...