Oddities - 5

A radical new tire design may be coming your way soon.

Following my recent pattern of optical oddities, I present you this image from the planet Mars, and pose the question (click image for larger version):



Convex (mineral deposit) or concave (crater)? Continue reading "Convex or Concave?"

Paul Graham's latest is all about how "no one is scared of Microsoft anymore". It also did me the favor of informing me that I fit into the "older half" of Mr. Graham's audience. Someday, perhaps soon, I will write to you about age...they say "slinging code is a young man's game", and everyone I see at conferences or user's groups is at least ten years younger than me. Did I miss it?

I liked Johnny's post, so I thought I'd try it myself, except I took it one step further...I shaved half of my beard and combed my hair on that side, leaving the other side bearded and ruffled.





I'm not sure what it is, but something really disturbs me about the second image...I look like some sort of simpleton.

I believe the operative phrase is ZOMG!

Those of you who are "Green" will probably most admire what these guys did. Myself, I'm most fond of their stated mission: "Exploring niches in regulatory systems and social codes". HACK THE SYSTEM!

Here's one.

What to do?

Most of you are behind a troll-monitored firewall that blocks youtube, but when you get home, watch this. It's the actor who does the voice of Yakko from Animaniacs singing the countries of the world song...and he's an OLD MAN. I mean, OOOOLD MAAAANNNN!

I'm not entirely sure what Bob Dylan or Ted Geisel would have to say about this.

First off, how about a SCUBA diving cat (and dog)?

A book that sounds interesting, as well as a link to the Shelfari service (Pete, Jared, and I are already busily shelfaring (?) away).

If you're into technical books, O'Reilly Labs has an interesting project.

Are you becoming too gringo?

In a loving tribute to the needlessly complex, how about a 25 minute video presentation of a Rube Goldberg Machine? Actually, I'm not even sure what the device DID, because it cut away at the end to some high-school class doing far more simple machines, but for 25 minutes I watched fascinated. There are several explosions (including at least one cannon), lots of things burning/starting on fire, and a number of indistinct chemical reactions.

When computer scientist Jim Gray went missing, the technology industry started what has been called "the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort...ever seen." Unfortunately, he was never found, and the search was called off on February 16, 2007. It's a great loss to our community, among other reasons because he was working on some incredibly interesting areas of research.

Let's close with a guy doing 500 Impressions in 2 Minutes with a little bit of What *REALLY* Happened After the Death Star Blew Up (warning, the latter may be considered NSFW).

Fun With jwz

So, you might not know who jwz is, but he's probably largely responsible for the fact that you're reading this webpage right now, due to his involvement in making the former Netscape web browser into an open source project that become Firefox nee Mozilla.

Most of the time, his articles make me pretty angry (he's very opinionated, and you all know that *I* am the sole of peaceful agreement...right?). Anyway, I enjoyed this one. Note that there is a tiny bit of profanity.

No News is Good News?

I laughed. HARD.

Animated American Atlas

No idea if Daboo's students are studying this stuff or not, but I found it enlightening to have it all put together in one big narrative that way.