Author: Harold
Wish me luck
In just under 24 hours I should be waking up from surgery to repair my fractured elbows. I won’t know until I wake up whether they screwed the pieces back together or replaced bits entirely. Eight to ten weeks of physical therapy to follow.
incommunicado
guess who fflipped his bike and dislocated both elbows? i might be sslow answering communication for a while.
Delicious Links for 2013-09-02
- What the Night Sky Would Look Like If the Other Planets Were as Close as the Moon – Atlantic Mobile
Some beautiful and awe-inspiring images of an imagined night sky where tidal forces have somehow managed to not rip the planet apart.
- Mini Water Heater | Home Inspection Nightmares XXVI | This Old House
I’ve always loved "This Old House" Magazine’s Home Inspection Nightmares series. As someone with a basic knowledge of DIY, and some time spend working hardware, I’ve come to appreciate how easy it is to come to a decision that makes perfect sense at the time, but later will cause others to look at you like your brain has just dribbled out of your ears. That being said, I can’t understand how any woudl look at a lightbulb that no longer works, see that it’s full of water, and think "Oh, I can leave this alone for now."
- 20 Signs It’s Too Freaking Hot Outside | Pleated-Jeans.com
Normally these listicles are funny enough but not worth sharing. This one, though, makes the cut based on image #4 alone.
- MAKE | Seventeen Sneaky Secret Hides
A collection of hidden/secret compartments, some of which you can make at home. For beauty I give top marks to the hidden garage, and for usefulness the hidden compartment in a stack of books takes the prize.
- S.F. Playhouse gives ‘Camelot’ a gritty makeover – SFGate
I can’t believe I’m considering going to see ‘Camelot’, but this new production in San Francisco sounds pretty amazing. I’m especially looking forward to hearing the reduced Medieval-style orchestra. And now that things have settled down with the move I really want to start getting out more. A tip of the hat to CaHwyGuy for alerting me to this.
- Texas Eatery Mocks Threat From In-N-Out with ‘Cease and Desist Burger’
I’ve been in California a month and a half and I still haven’t tried a ‘Double Double’ yet, but after reading this I kind of want to try the ‘Cease and Desist’ burger first.
- Britain storms: Frog takes shelter from the rain using leaf as UMBRELLA
Ostensibly, these pictures show a frog holding a leaf over its head to protect itself from the rain. They’re really very cute, but the more I look them the more I think that they’ve been faked somehow. Still cute though.
- The Doctor Puppet – YouTube
This creator has made a series (with new episodes still coming) of ‘Doctor Who’ fan films, using puppets. The style reminds me so much of those British cartoons I used to see on Nickelodeon back in the mid-eighties, in-between programs back when they had trouble filling the commercial time.
- The Song Broke Loose And Then Vamoose And Now You Know The Plot » Funny & Stupid Customer Stories – Not Always Right
From the sometimes infuriating, sometimes baffling blog ‘Not Always Right’ comes one of the rare stories of a customer actually being an awesome human being.
- Ellen Surprises Deaf Woman Who Can Now Hear [VIDEOS]
A couple years ago there was a video circulating that showed a woman who’d been born deaf heraing herself for the first time after receiving a cochlear implant. The followup to that story, which I only just learned, is that Ellen DeGeneres saw the video, was moved, and invited the woman and her family onto the Ellen show. And then she had a surprise for them…
- â–¶ XKCD #1190 – Time: The Animated Film – YouTube
Randall Munroe of XKCD has been slowly animating a movie on his website, one frame every hour or so, over the course of four months. It finally finished last month, and now someone has compiled the entire episode into a YouTube video. Follow the travels of a couple friends, starting with building a simple sandcastle.
Do you know what won’t cause spontaneous human combustion?
For the past month or so, I’ve been enjoying “Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap“, a podcast by ursulav and alchemist. Each week they review a variety of pre-packaged foods; some cheap, others too pricey for their quality. And each week, “[They] eat it, so [we] don’t have to.”
And I’ve been having a wonderful time. It’s great listening for my bike rides or when I’m doing the dishes, and of course, because of a quirk of timing I now associate podcasts with California, so it’s nice to listen to something that’s based back East. I really enjoy listening to them, and I love trying to figure out how the various food products will get rated at the end. Some of my favorite through-lines include “Is this made of food?” and “Oh god, why do we do this to ourselves?”
But the best has to be the odd questions and ramblings that lead into the sponsor’s spots each week. Over the years they’ve had three and a bit sponsors, and are currently sponsored by Dash Systems and SofaWolf Press.
While I’ve been listening, I’ve been noting down the lead-ins they use before the sponsor spots. And I collected them all into a single spreadsheet. While they’re all great, I’ve listed a few of my favorites below. See if you can guess which lead-in went with which sponsor, without looking at the whole spreadsheet.
* Do you know what has a really good crust and a really good assembly?
* You know what won’t make you violently ill, feverish, and full of chills?
* You know what won’t attack you and eat your head?
* You know what won’t give you botulism?
* You know what will provide you an orgasm per meal?
* You know who does pay us to mention the brand name every time?
* You know what won’t raise your bad cholesterol?
* Do you know what you will not block out of your memory?
* Do you know what texture is not distressing?
BoingBoing Ingenuity
This past Sunday Gillian and I headed into San Francisco to attend BoingBoing Ingenuity, sort of a TED like meetup for readers of the BoingBoing blog. I won my ticket in the first giveaway, and Gill managed to score hers in one of the latter ones.
It was a really fun day. Early day; we had to leave the apartment at quarter to eight to catch the BART into the city, and we were lucky enough that the first train was a couple minutes late so we didn’t have to wait around. On the train ride in we saw a Ringling Brothers circus train just before we went under the Bay.
The event was held in the old Masonic Lodge on Sutter. We took a ride in the original elevator, which still has an operator, up to the third floor and the big stage. Beautiful room. Apparently all 31 backdrops are original, and they had a scene from hell on stage, complete with devils tormenting damned souls.
While we were waiting for things to get started the lady sitting in front of us turned around to introduce herself, figuring that the kind of people to get invited to this kind of event had to be interesting. She was pretty nice, she makes props and scenery for photographs with her art partner.
There were a lot of great speakers, and a few okay ones. I liked the opening speaker, Ferdanando Buscema, a
Between speakers, and during some of the breaks the organist kept us all entertained with a variety of sci-fi tunes. I recognized the Eleventh Doctor’s theme, and the original Star Trek, and I think bits of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”.
The final block of block of presenters was a mixed bag for me. Up first was the music duo Barn Owl, who did electronic drone music. If it had been about a third the volume, or if I hadn’t had the first stirrings of a headache, I might have enjoyed it. As it was I rushed out of the room clutching my stomach, nearly ready to vomit. I stood in the lobby by an open window until they were done, and I think I may have loosed the tide because I saw several other people leave and hang around the lobby until they were done.
After Barn Owl finished Adam Savage came on to give the closing talk. He gave a brief rundown on his career as builder and then outlined his ten tips
Protected: California Update 3
Who wants a postcard?!
So we’re mostly settled in to the new apartment (update coming soon), and now we need to send out new address cards. If anyone wants a postcard or greeting card (not sure which yet) from sunny California, leave your address in the (screened) comments below.
California interlude 1
Took the afternoon off yesterday to go catch a movie at the nearby movie theater. Andy by nearby, I mean I can see the building from my bedroom window (so weird). Saw Red 2. Eight bucks for a matinee, that’s just nuts. On the plus side, concessions seem to be cheaper than they were back in PA.
The movie itself was okay. Not as great as the first one, still a lot better than most action flicks. It looked like everyone but Bruce Willis was having a great time getting together again & making the movie and he was only there because he had to be.
Safeway’s store-brand Cheerios taste pretty good, but they have texture of Captain Crunch. I never expected to tear up the roof of my mouth to the taste of nuts and honey.
And the best part of apartment living out here is that we get a constant stream of mail for previous tenants. So far I’ve been marking it “Return to Sender” and “No longer at this address”, hoping it’ll stem the tide over time. I know we still got mail for the prior tenant at our old place for years.