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27 February 2006

The things you find at TED

So I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to pony up the 5k it's gonna cost to send me to TED2007. Sure I have to be invited first, and I have little to offer such a brain trust, but I can be such a fanboy when I really want to.

PAD Mobile Urban Loft

The GM PAD. Because this is exactly the solution we've been looking for to ease the pain of population overload and the lack of government aid in low-cost housing development. I'll just live in my blunt-nosed ügleecar, wrapped in the warmth of every type of electromagnitism and radiowave bombardment I could possibly afford.

TED 2006: Burt Rutan

Burt 'How bout you Sideburns? You want some of this milk? Rutan. So my co-worker David claims that his side of the family has been estranged from Burt's for a while. No matter, I still feel I could drop Dave's name and get the secrets to Scaled Facial Hair, the awesome spin-off of that silly space thing Paul Allen's trebucheting money at.

CIMG1331

The 100 dollar laptop. Sure it's designed for children in the developing world, but who says the elite can't spend 15 minutes with one before moving on to something even more beneath them. In all seriousness however, while I'm not convinced we're going to get kids in Kinshasa blogging anytime soon, we should at least find a way to get tech like this little green machine into some hands that don't have any other way of expressing themselves to the outside world.

TED 2006: Oryon Crushable Electroluminescent Sheet

The ELastolite: This flexible washable sheet of light looks fantastic, something Monzel and I have been dying to get our hands on in order to revolutionize snowboarding gloves. The age of Tron is upon us!

TED Swag

Last but certainly not least, there's the swag. The contents do look diverse and exciting, but honestly I'm more interested in the bag itself. Timbuk2 created a recyclable bag for everyone to tote around their goodies, and I really really want one. Well really two; one to use and one to recycle ;)

23 February 2006

Another one for the 'roll

My long lost friend Jeff from upstate NY has found his way onto the Blogger. All six of you should go read him at Shenanigans. His fantastic dry wit is something we don't have enough of out here in the west. Just to wet your appetites, here's a sample of a post entitled The one about how I got arrested at the grocery store...:

Look lady, you have 45 things on the checkout belt, how about you decide 20 minutes ago what you want to keep and what you're gonna leave behind. Making the kid search for that ground turkey in all the bags because you grabbed the wrong one and don't want to spend the 45 cents extra is NOT COOL.

I'm looking forward to reading this sort of thing regularly. Also, be sure to get his Flickr photos here.

15 February 2006

ODEO: How to Leave a Voice Mail Message

Thanks to Merlin from 43 Folders for this bit of world training. Everyone should listen to this, there'll be a quiz later ;)

10 February 2006

Moment of Zen: Monzel / Y-axis

I am a plane. I am a fucking rocketship of death.

09 February 2006

Oh you poor lost souls

I hate Snapfish

I'm not writing to call anyone out in particular (least of all Julie), but how do the people I know find their way to such terrible software. I suppose if I did more soapboxing here about the things I love on the internet(s) then I could rest easier, knowing I had done my best to help the people around me make software choices.

Goddamned Snapfish. If viewing these photos doesn't require any payment, then why must I have an account with you (and your HP overlords) to look at something hosted on your site? Is your business model really rooted in a pissing contest over the size of your user base? What do you stand to gain by preventing the general public from viewing photos hosted on your site?

I'm sure that if I create an account you'll try to lure me into ordering calendars or t-shirts or Cambodian interpretive place-mats, all adorned with my favorite images from your site. These are all potentially lucrative opportunities for you, but have you considered what is perhaps the ultimate Hollywood instance of this sort of hucksterism:

Picture a Jewish comic genius, big fake ears, sprayed with gold paint, pointy shoes on his knees, waddling around a cave: "Space Balls the FLAMETHROWER!!!" That's the sort of business you're running here.

Unless of course I'm wrong. Maybe you've managed to keep some insanely great features hidden from the world, and you only make them available to your users. I doubt it, as I'm sure if you had real value to offer, that would be mentioned somewhere on this invitation.