Saturday, March 26, 2011

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society.

It never fails.  Create something cool and before you know it it's being used for sex.  TargetMap is a free online mapping tool that lets you map data to any geographic region by uploading an Excel file: Nobel laureates by country, nuclear power plants worldwide, it's all available.  So how do I find out about this tool?  A world map of penis size by country.  Which might be funny if the data wasn't obviously wrong.

Tarzan meets Spanky, my favorite picture of the week.  It made me smile.  How I loved them Little Rascals.

Must-watch aviation pr0n of the week: flying the U-2 spy plane.

All the vintage spy gear you'd ever want to see. 

Have you downloaded Firefox 4 yet?  I haven't.  But as this animated real-time worldwide map shows, over 30,000,000 people have.

More proof that you should need a license to reproduce.  If you have kids you'd better check My Bad Parent, a photo blog of bad parenting in action.  In a similar vein there's White Whine, a blog about "first-world problems" aka things white people complain about.

Did you watch Ze Frank's year-long comedy video blog, The Show? ("Thinking, so you don't have to.")  Well, he's reviewing and commenting on episodes in The Show Replay.

Still trying to figure out exactly what Chartwell is.

Plato said "He was a wise man who invented beer."  So toss back these cyber-brews.
  • What to expect from brewery tours worldwide.  (Do not question why I'm reading Women's Day.)
  • Brewery Map is built on Google Maps - enter a location and see all the breweries nearby.   Within a 25 mile radius of Fort Worth I found 3: Rahr & Sons, The Covey (now closed), and Ass Kisser Ales.
The folks at i.materialise present their list of materials for 3D printing in the form of a periodic table of materials.

Check out this bar chart of the legal right to paid vacation and holidays worldwide.  Spain and Portugal lead the pack with a combined 35 days each.  Good ole USofA is in dead last with zero.  (Note: this is the legal right to paid time off.)

2013 will be a special year of emphasis on the Mathematics of Planet Earth.  Assuming, of course, that we survive 2012.

The story of Schmaltzed to Death illustrates the process of going from rough sketch to final art.

Has engineering lost some of its luster?  If you read the post and comments you'll see that I'm not certain engineers ever had any real prestige.  I think part of the problem might be illustrated by this cartoon.

The Web Standards Sherpa can help you on your journey toward best practices on the web for topics like CSS, usability, and performance.  Someone has even more free time than I do because they created this web site in CSS that emulates a Mac keyboard.

Duct Tape Marketing announced the winners of their worst business advice contest.  I should've entered my experience: "I gotta tell you, I think you're crazy."  Being crazy and successful aren't mutually exclusive.

My good friends at the NYT want to help with your spring cleaning by telling you which tech gadgets to toss.
  • They recommend tossing your desktop computer in favor of a laptop.  There are two flaws in this recommendation.  First, laptops are more expensive than desktops for the same level of performance.  Second, desktop boxes are much more easily upgraded - they can grow with you.
  • Keeping your high speed internet connection seems like a no brainer.
  • They want to debate whether you should keep your cable TV or just view online content from the interwebs.  While I know people who have done that, I'd miss local news and sports.
  • They're ready to give your point and shoot camera the heave ho in favor of the camera in your smart phone.  For those of us who only take snapshots (as opposed to photographs) this is probably a good idea.  But I'm pretty attached to my tiny Canon 2 MP camera and my dumb phone.
  • Lose the USB flash drive?  Are you kidding?  
  • The smartphone's also gonna push out your music player.  Since I have neither...  Actually that's not true.  I have an iPod Shuffle that's never been out of the box.
  • Alarm clock.  Keep it.  (Genius)
  • Smartphones must be taking over the world because they're going to replace your GPS too.
  • Thank god they say to keep your old-fashioned dead-tree books.
Now rethink the list above in light of this prediction: mobile internet usage will pass desktop usage by 2014.

More meshes as art: RELEASE pt.4.  Click thru and watch the video.  Makes me wonder about trying this in our software.

Are you tired of programming methodologies like XP and Scrum?  If so, this programming manifesto may be for you.

Looking for help with your code reviews?  Try Stack Exchange's Code Review site.  For that matter, check out all of Stack Exchange's sites.
    • What is CFD - science or black magic?  Like any profession, it's a skill that can be practiced with a great deal of craft.
    • The wings on Boeing's 747-8 were designed with the latest in CFD.  Maybe that's why Boeing's backlog of planes (all models) is supposedly 3,399.
    • VENTOS, a CFD solver for wind energy, is getting some upgrades.
    • The Conference on CFD in Medicine and Biology will be held 25-30 March 2012 in Israel.
    • ORECA will likely be doing CFD as part of their design of an aero kit for the 2012 Indy car.
    • ComputIT offers KFX, a CFD code for fire simulation.
    • CFD simulation of spouted beds.
    • Apparently, CFD isn't suitable for some simulations of liquid natural gas sloshing on tankers.
    • The BAC Mono can be your own personal race car and was designed in part using CFD.
    • The FloTHERM User Meeting is coming soon to a city near you.
    • Symscape launched the CFD Emporium, an online forum for CFD consultants and engineers needing CFD work to meet.
    • Here's a video of a presentation about simulating blood flow with CFD with a special emphasis on visualizing the results.
    • Stellar is software for improving tet meshes.
    • CGAL is an open platform for meshing.
    I like lists about as much as the next anal-retentive, short attention span reader.  I know a guy who is an admitted sucker for lists.  But long lists can be counter productive.   Take this list of 69 tips for your blog.  69?  Really?  That just seems like piling on.  I read it and think "when am I gonna have time to do all this?"

    Again.  109 ways to make your business blog irresistible to the media.  C'mon - gimme the top 5.  And as far as #7 (congratulate reporters on their birthdays) goes, no thanks.

    Awesome preproduction sketches by Chuck Jones from One Froggy Evening.

    This is an old story but back during WWII Lockheed's factory in California was covered with netting to make it look like suburbia from the air.  I bet it was hot under there.

    All things earthquake and nuclear are in the news these days.  Here are a few.
    Interview questions.  The bane of job seekers and employers everywhere.  This article lists some that are funny, tips on how to reply, and examples of some that are just plain odd.
    • Zappos.com asks "If you were a superhero, who would you be and why?"  (Batman.  Because unlike the other super dudes can't help being super because of their innate abilities, Batman is just a guy with a lot of cool toys and an attitude.)
    • A job seeker was asked "If the department had a potluck what would you bring?"  (Apparently they already have too many people bringing deviled eggs.  I'd bring chili-lime chiccarones.  Or deviled eggs.)
    • The more bizarre: "Will you file my fingernails?"  (No, but I'll slash your throat with this emery board.)
    • The illegal: "Do you attend church?" (I once had to go to a boss's boss to get the boss to stop asking this during interviews.)
    How well are you using Twitter?  Here are some websites that will help you monitor your Twitter usage.
    • TweetStats reports that I tweet 2.7 times per day, mostly around 8am.
    • Klout only gives me a score of 34 and labels me "an explorer."
    • Twitter Grader rates me 72/100 and ranks me 2,505,230 out of 9,024,739 tweeters.
    • I'm not sure what to think about Twitaholic - it says I joined Twitter on 31 Dec 1969.
    Google Doodles (how they change the logo on their home page for holidays and other events) is now patented.  Google also has a new magazine, Think Quarterly.  (That's about how often I think, too.)

    I've always wondered how laxatives worked.

    Not for the sensitive: man makes shitty perfume.

    Bovine.  Rectal.  Simulator.

    The optimist invents the aeroplane; the pessimist, the parachute.  ~George Bernard Shaw

    2 comments:

    Francis Shivone said...

    laughed out loud on many of the family pictures. The duct tape was my favorite. The scariest was the baby in the bucket.

    John said...

    I always thought it'd be a good idea to leave a baby in a bath tub with the faucet dripping and the drain open and cover the whole thing with chicken wire.