Growing Up Sucks

Wringing out Water on the ISS

Bert found this cool video.

How education prepares you

A friend is working in Taiwan. He commented:


Taiwan has some extraordinary researchers; yet the education system, at least that is how i see it; handicaps people in that they've never learned to ask the truly serious, and game~changing questions.  

Maybe the Work Hard and Obey attitude in Asia is great for making engineers, but not inventors. They are excellent at working within a known system, but having always been punished for being wrong, I'd guess one would be much less prone to stepping into the unknown or challenging the known systems or beliefs.

The good side to getting old

A friend of mine, now in his seventies, presented me with an unusual thing. He told me something he liked about getting old! He said:


What I'm talking about is that "special" kind of treatment that is usually only given to the elderly (similar to that we give to babies, and to those that may otherwise look fragile, and harmless).
It's a whole new (and wonderful!) experience!  And it feels really great!  I am more constantly offered help these days, for example, like when I'm pushing a cartful of groceries back home.  Many people now call me "sir", the difference is that this time they truly mean it, and one can easily sense it's real.

Do you have experience (first- or second-hand) with this, and what do you think?
I suspect some people, the Fiercely Independent type, may resent being perceived as 'fragile'. But I also think that there's some genuine warmth which is there but which people only dare allow show to people who don't seem like a potential threat.

The Da Vinci caca

I'm just trying to watch The Da Vinci Code. But it's not easy... "Oh my god, the victim wrote the name of a professor in some unknown context. The professor must be the murderer, there's no other possibility! And since the French police, as everybody knows, don't simply arrest a suspected murderer, we must lure him to the crime scene, where surely he will become so confused that he confesses! And to track him, we will cleverly hide a small GPS tracker... in his jacket pocket. He will never find it there!"

And of course, if you're a cop holding a gun on two potential murderers, and they threaten to harm a painting, you put down your gun!

Inspector Clouseau was high praise for the intellect of French police compared to this caca. 

Wisdom of the day

Don't put all your eggs on one horse.

Drop the machine-gun

For years after starting using digital cameras, I still shot as sparely as if I still had to pay for each frame. But now that's gone, sadly. I feel pity for those photographers whose main job it is to pick out which to use amongst thousands of near-identical frames after every job.

There was a TV show about a Danish photographer. They showed nine photos documenting a farmer, all excellent shots.
They asked her how many frames she'd taken. She said, "well, I took those nine."

A friend had once been an apprentice with her, but he said "she couldn't teach me anything. I asked how long this film needed in the developer, and she said 'it's probably good now'."

SWISS A340 dives into Fog

Push-button Book Publishing with Leanpub

Push-button Book Publishing with Leanpub, article.

This may be a true quantum leap in lessening complexity in publishing and self-publishing. Very coooool.

Color matching

Color matching game/test.
In the first four rounds, I did very well. In the last two, dead-poor. I had no idea what the friggin' thing was doing, and there was little time to figure it out.

Experimental Writing for Children

Experimental Writing for Children, Kindergarde.

"Pa-tooooomb!" Uhm... "Krakatoooooomp!..."

New HP Prime calculator

I don’t use calculators much, but it looks very nice. I always enjoy prime hardware.
I wonder what it'll cost? $200?



I also wonder if it can do anything which calculator apps for Android or iOS can't?

I have this one. It has several skins, some pretty, some freaky.