Ploafmaster General

The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating (though QUITE long) article that theorizes a world in which America no longer enjoys hegemony, the changes leading thereto, and the consequences thereof.

Thanks to a delightful Google logo this morning, I've found that today is the 50th anniversary of the Lego brick.



Now I played with Legos nearly every day of my life from 1 year to 16 years, and I still occasionally lust after the higher-end Star Wars sets. Growing up I went through nearly every variety of theme and skill level, from pirates to cities, from little cars to full-blown Technics boom cranes. I still have a custom-designed spacecraft in my bedroom, and an A-Wing from Return of the Jedi in my office.

I have to admit, however, that I have mixed feelings about the mighty little bricks these days.

On one hand, today we have a greater incidence of specialized bricks and pieces that preclude much of the construction that would have been required in years past. What's the point of a building-block set where half the building is done for you? On the other hand, I have to admire the longevity of such a fundamentally simple toy. In an age of electronics and video games, Legos have adapted admirably with their popular Mindstorms kits and a slew of reasonably successful video games. They also, meanwhile, continue to offer multifarious kits for all ages that allow for the creative rebuilding and invention that so attracted me to Legos as a child.

So happy 50th indeed, Lego. Here are a few useful links in honor of the best toy since the cardboard box:

Lego's own history and manufacturing process (PDF, close to a Meg)
Wikipedia's rather exhaustive Lego entry (if only because of the near-overwhelming array of links to subsections and related articles)
And lest we forget what may be one of the coolest Lego kits ever conceived...the Motorized Walking AT-AT.

All I have to say about Ocean's Thirteen is that it's not like haute cuisine. It's not going to change the way you look at and consume food. No, this film is more like that bacon cheeseburger from Carytown Burger and Fries. Familiar, and by now not too groundbreaking, but tasty none the less. And satisfying from start to finish.

4/5

Have you seen that commercial for the Ford Edge "crossover" vehicle? The one with the gal in the backseat staring up through the sunroof at the night sky in a city? There's some totally sweet music playing, and I've finally figured out what it is: "The Funeral" by Band of Horses. This song came out in 2006, I believe, and sometimes I just feel so behind the curve when it comes to what all the cool kids are in to these days...All the same, this song rocks my face off (even if it sounds like James Mercer from The Shins is moonlighting with these guys), and submitted for your approval is the original video for "The Funeral":

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibE7IqEjni4&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

I'd known for quite some time that the EU legalized the sale of Absinthe a few years ago, but I had no idea that the wormwood-infused boisson was now allowed in the U-S-of-A.

Now to seek out a bottle of the stuff...

Well it appears that most Americans will end up seeing some kinda hot cash injection from Uncle Sam by the summer time. Because Val is way more practical than I, we'll likely stuff ours in savings (and thus counteract the intended purpose of economic stimulation). Others, however, may have grander things in mind.

While trying not to count chickens before they're hatched (no legislation has actually passed as of this writing), what do you plan to do with your money?

This may be a bit dated, but there's a useful (and sometimes hilarious) interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz from way back in October on Esquire's website.

Some of these I knew, some surprised me, but just about all of them were interesting at the least. I have to disagree with him about pizza, though. While it may not be the most heart healthy, it IS good for the soul.

The Morning News has an informative article from Timothy Ledwith about Staten Island and how the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge affected life in the borough.

That is all. For now.

This weekend I decided to trust the advice of John Gruber (generally not a risky proposition) and purchase SuperDuper, the backup software from Shirt Pocket Software.

Dang, it's quick, easy, and intelligent. See, I connect to an AFP share on my external hard drive, so that's mounted most of the time while my computer is upstairs with the Ethernet cord plugged in. I ran my initial backup creating a disk image on that external drive. I was concerned that if I took my computer away for a day and forgot to remount the AFP share when I returned, that the backup would fail. Well, SuperDuper can execute a script for you immediately preceding the backup process. So I was researching Applescript methods for auto-mounting a volume if it's not already connected, and as the evening wore on, the scheduled backup kicked off. To my delighted surprise, it automatically mounted the volume for me, and problem solved!

I highly recommend this to any of my Mac-slingin' peeps out there (who have an extra drive).

This is a really interesting typeface found by my friend Stephanie called Book Club. It's cool looking, but I feel it's a good example of form over function. That's perhaps the intention, which would be fine. I can't tell from the author's website whether it was a commercial project or proof of concept, but in short artistic applications I could see this having a really cool effect.

I do, however, find it humorous that a typeface created with books is difficult to read :-)

I don't own an iPhone (not enough storage for me...yet), and I don't own Delicious Library (2.0 is rumored to be around the corner, so why buy now?). There is, however, an impending SDK for the iPhone which will allow third party software development for the platform.

I've given it a lot of thought, and I think a totally hot piece of software would be a Delicious Library client for the iPhone. Imagine being able to scan your media with the camera on the iPhone instead of having to get a unitasker scanner or holding everything in front of your Mac's iSight. Imagine being able to scan media in the store to check whether you already have something in your home library or add it to a wish list. It could be pretty sweet to manage your media lending on-the-go as well.

I'd pay for that.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!

Tonight, against the odds, Eli Manning threw NO interceptions, and my NEW YORK GIANTS defeated the excellent Brett Favre and his Green Bay Packers. Much respect to you, Favre, but I'm glad the boys in blue came out victorious.

I know the Patriots are currently a 13-point favorite, but you can't count out the Giants now. Not after taking down Dallas. Not after taking down the Packers. We came pretty close in week 17 against the Pats, and though they learn quickly and rarely falter, I've now watched my team's defense surprise most of the pundits with coverage when it counts.

The added bonus, for me, is that I can count on an extra helping of people rooting for the Giants since there are so many folks embittered towards the Patriots, yearning for their perfect season to be taken away. While I personally think another team with a perfect season would be cool, I don't want it to happen when the Giants stand in the way :-)

I just discovered this excellent tribute to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining on the Late Night Underground website. DRAEB EKIRTS!!!

Before I headed upstairs to finish the aforementioned book, I watched the Dustin Hoffman rendition of Death of a Salesman. I'll not dwell on the details, but I did give it 4 out of 5. The acting was amazing, I already love the story (and the stuck very tightly to the script), and the casting was mostly excellent. My only dings are the production quality (it WAS made for television in the '80s, after all), and Stephen Lang's Happy Loman. Otherwise, it was a treat to see one of John Malkovich's earliest film performances, and he was outstanding as Biff Loman.

Last night I finished reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. This book was easily one of the funniest volumes I've read in the past several years. Coarse, profane, yet insightful - this book is less an exposé of the commercial kitchen than of the author himself. Bourdain shares expertly crafted anecdotes about his restaurant years, all the while exhorting the readers to accept and appreciate professional cooking (and it's oft unseemly cast of characters) for what it is.

Two stand-out chapters (also the longest, I think...):
1. A Day in the Life - Here we follow Bourdain from his waking before 6 AM through a grueling restaurant Friday ending, exhausted, in a bar at 1 AM. The pacing and detail is extraordinary, convincing me further that I never wish to run a restaurant :-)

2. Mission to Tokyo - The chef is sent by the owners of Les Halles to a satellite restaurant in Tokyo to consult about the menu. Left to his own exploring devices, Bourdain rapidly falls in love with Japanese food culture. The sense of discovery is palpable, and the reader (or at least THIS reader) is filled with a desire to see the Roppongi district.

I absolutely recommend this book. It's not for the faint of heart, but it IS hilarious and informative. The format is mildly scattered - more the feeling of semi-chronological narrative with various asides - but easily readable. Taste and enjoy.

Because nothing says conspicuous consumption quite like gold-flecked granite. In your CAR.

I know many folks who check my site already read Signal vs. Noise, but this program they posted about today is such a cool concept that I had to write it up as well.

Fluid is a tool from Todd Ditchendorf which allows users to create a stand-alone desktop "app" for any web app. This is accomplished through the generation of a standalone browser for the page, and it supports RSS and the like as well.

Some questions I have (until I try it out at home this evening):
1. What's the resource usage on this puppy - does an "app" for GMail use more ram than Flickr? Is there a minimum RAM/CPU usage regardless of the web app?
2. Does the Fluid app have to stay running in order to use the "apps" you've created? Or is Fluid just the generator?
3. Once you reveal the regular Webkit controls, can you then navigate away from the site? Wouldn't that then make these "apps" simply standalone instances of a Webkit browser? If that's the case, it sounds like running multiple instances of Toad on my Windows 2000 work PC, where each instance has a process ID, and each can crash independently (which they do!).

I'll update this with my findings as soon as I get to play with the new program.

UPDATE: Ha haaaaaa...Seems I missed the fine print. This requires Leopard, and it seems I don't have that. Whoops!

How can you make almost anything better? With MONKEYS, that's how. And tea, that fine brewed beverage, is no exception (yes, monkeys really picked this tea). If this stuff wasn't so pricey, I'd consider purchasing a pouch, because really - shouldn't monkey's do more work for us?

(via Uncrate)

I've not yet seen this Orbit Gum commercial on television, but my boss sent this around the office, and it's hilarious:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWDgQPSomGk&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

What the French, toast?

Here's a summary of what Jobs unveiled (for those three or four readers of mine who aren't nerdy enough to follow the whole thing in real time):

1. Time Capsule - a full-fledged Airport base station with built in hard drive. Nice! I wish I hadn't bought that blasted LaCie!

2. Update to iPhone software, stuff that doesn't affect most of the folks I know (since we're all too poor to own one!).

3. iTunes Movie Rentals - as expected. 3 bucks for library titles, 4 for new releases, 5 for HD titles. You have 30 days to start watching the movie, and after you start, you have 24 hours to finish. You can also transfer it to any Apple device - iPhone, iPod, Apple TV...and speaking of that...

4. New version of Apple TV software to handle this hot new video goodness. This includes a more robust video browsing interface to support the movie rentals. The hardware price dropped as well.

5. MacBook Air. Super thin, like, ranging from 0.16" to 0.76" - that's right, barely more than 3/4 of an inch...AT IT'S THICKEST. Dang. Magnetic latch and 13.3" LED-back-lit screen, built-in iSight, ambient light sensor for the keyboard (like my MBP)...MULTI-TOUCH TRACK PAD. And you can even order one with a 64 Gig flash disk if you want to pony up the dough. Battery life? Try FIVE HOURS. There's no optical drive (to save space and battery power), but you can wirelessly share another computer's optical drive, even reading a Mac disc on a Windows computer's disc drive! It starts at 1800 clams, and that sounds fair to me considering what they crammed into such a small form factor.

Everybody was counting on a more portable laptop, but man - I don't think anybody expected a full-spec computer this size.

And that's it, really. Gaze and enjoy:

So today I wait, with baited breath, for Steve Jobs to deliver his keynote address at 9 am Pacific (noon over here).

I already blocked off 1.5 hours on my Outlook calendar for "lunch" and I don't expect to get anything done during the talk. Everybody has their predictions, including Gruber, and Apple stock has been fluctuating wildly in the run up (and will continue today, I'm sure). I just can't wait to see what's up. Surprises would be nice :-)

Every once in a while, the boys in Redmond come up with some idea that actually makes sense. Today, Engadget's Paul Miller tells us about Microsoft's forthcoming tech-enabled shopping cart.

Using RFID tags on the merchandise and smart shopping carts, it looks like such a concept could actually save shoppers time (and possibly money if they see a running total on the screen).

Here's hoping they don't screw the pooch in the execution.

Preface: I love Netflix - their shipping is fast, their selection is great, and their recommendation system (especially since I've rated over 1100 movies) is excellent and marvelously prescient. Last year, they decided to become even more awesome by introducing online viewing for subscribers to their existing DVD service. Members could, in addition to their regular DVDs, view as many hours of streaming video as they paid in dollars every month. This means that I could watch about 15 hours of video every month based on my plan. Netflix topped itself, though, by announcing recently an end to that cap of online video watching time - a move seen to preempt the expected announcement by Apple to start providing digital movie rentals. Pretty nice, huh?

Preface over.

You see, it's not actually nice. Because I don't have a computer at work or home that can play this online Netflix video. Their current system requirements indicate that I need Windows XP or Vista to use the online viewing service. At work? Stuck on some vintage Windows 2000. At home? I chose an Apple computer that has OS X, so no dice for me.

So while I'm excited that Netflix is allowing for unlimited online movie watching (from the 6000+ available titles), I can't get to pumped because it does me no good. As soon as they code a freaking Mac tool for viewing, then I'll be jumping for joy.

Woohoo!!! Looks like my New York Giants get to spend next Sunday evening in the cold reaches of Green Bay, Wisconsin playing against Gran-daddy Favre and the Packers in the NFC Championship game for a chance to appear in Super Bowl XLII.

It's amazing to me that our defense was able to pull off tonight's victory over Dallas, and I'm hoping we can do at least as well next week.