Sunday, October 2, 2011

Quotes are nothing but...

What are fascination triggers and why do I have 7 of them?
  1. Power - we focus on the people who control us.
  2. Lust - we crave pleasure.  Duh.
  3. Mystique - we're intrigued by unanswered questions.
  4. Alarm - negative consequences threaten us
  5. Prestige - we fixate on respect
  6. Vice - the forbidden fruit lures us.
  7. Trust - we're loyal to predictability
You might like this video.  It's a promo for the band Exo 4 which includes a high school friend.  The video was produced by another high school friend.  The high school bit is irrelevant.  The video is just really well done and the band sounds great.

Ten percent of the bombs dropped during WWII failed to detonate.  Until now, that is, when people go digging.  So here are some handy maps of unexploded bomb risk for the UK.

I did not know that the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band performed at halftime of the Houston Texan's game on 9/11.  I've also never seen them do a show this elaborate.

Pasta by Design serves up delicious treats with mathematical descriptions.  Here we see Galletti which is served well with either tomato or mushroom sauce.
Remember back in the day when an email signature of over 2 lines was uncouth?  These days you're more likely to get an entire resume at the bottom of every email.  Modern etiquette suggests 3 lines as the optimum signature length.  You can read about this and more in The Art and Science of The Email Signature.

PottyMouth is a maped-based visualization of swearing.

I've developed a preference for the number 8 but this guy loves him some 0.999.

Science replicates sloth by teaching computers how to watch football.  Lemme know when they can do that while consuming two bags of chili-lime chiccarones.

Tune news: Bassist Tony Levin talks about his career and his latest album, Levin Torn White, and reveals insights into his creative process which often involves laying down a variety of bass tracks to the melody and having the producer put the final piece together.  Steven Wilson is working on a new album, Grace for Drowning.

Sounds of a different kind.  First, there's UVB-76, a mysterious Russian radio transmitter.   And even NASA has made freely available iconic space sounds like those from the Space Shuttle or Apollo.

From the Movies I've Watched More Than Once department, I sure hope the prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing doesn't make a mess of things.

Apparently, I have 26 slaves working for me.  I wish one of them would've done this survey cuz it went on for-ev-er.

I don't think Smell of Books, sprays with the scent of literature, would help the e-reader experience.  Makes me wonder what the Dead Sea Scrolls smell like and whether the experience of reading them online would be diminished without a scent.

Like watching airports?  Here's LAX's runway 25 right on webcam.
Vim should be the last text editor you learn.  And you can learn about it at Open Vim.

If even the Cliff's Notes are too long, you need Book a Minute.  For example, Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is summarized: "You think you're reading a condensation of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, but you're not."

Supposedly, a million virtual monkeys are rewriting all of Shakespeare's works.  But there's a caveat: each monkey only contributes portions of a sentence.

...inspiration for the uninspired. ~Richard Kemph

P.S. My weekends through early November are looking pretty full so you may be seeing a lot of uninspired stuff here.  Consider this an advance apology.

4 comments:

Jim said...

That slave survey was zzzzzzzzz - I quit after the fourth question. At least I saved some time with the book-a-minute survey. (I think the summary of Animal Farm may be longer than the book.) Hope you enjoy Business of Software!

John said...

Thanks, Jim. I'm looking forward to a good time at BoS.

EG said...

Slow week, it seems. Or already diminishing time. I wonder how the bomb risk maps affect property values...

John said...

I don't know about values, but homeowner's insurance might have some interesting clauses. Do you think they cover unexploded ordnance damage?