SHODAN LIVES

Support for same-sex marriage by age and state.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:55:27 -0500

Support for same-sex marriage by age and state.

Meet the Train Makers

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:45:27 -0500

Infrastructurist is doing a series on the manufacturers of high-speed trains:

The transportation industry seems to be undergoing a “retrofication” these days. We’re going back to the original form of mass transit: the railroad.

The computer business is the same way. Business computing through the 70s and 80s consisted mostly of UNIX mainframe/terminal architecture. In the 90s the world went the way of the personal computer, providing fast computing for everyone right at their desks. It feels like we’re swinging the other way again, with terminal services and shared resources making a comeback, along with all of the “cloud computing” possibilities around today.

Cloud of Atlases. Try to figure out what data each map...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:29:58 -0500

Cloud of Atlases.

Try to figure out what data each map displays. I got 3 out of 22 correct (they’re not easy).

I get goosebumps when the bassline thumps… I love this...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:34:00 -0500

I get goosebumps when the bassline thumps…

I love this song.

(tsoya)

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:23:25 -0500

“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

- Albert Einstein (via ckck)

Isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress. If you’ve seen...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:14:15 -0500

Isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress.

If you’ve seen the complexity of the Dwarf Fortress simulation, you’ll appreciate how insane this is.

“The Spirit of Adventure”

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:27:00 -0500

“The Spirit of Adventure”

Halloween 2009 data

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:29:53 -0500

Halloween 2009 data:

As he hands out candy on Halloween, this guy writes down each trick ‘r treater’s costume.

These are the results from the past five years.

I like that one kid was a Hunter from Left 4 Dead, and one was a “High School Graduate.”

BeeJive

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:04:06 -0500

This app is right up there with Tweetie in the most-beautiful-and-useful app contest.

BeeJive’s push notifications have almost eliminated my need for SMS. Most of the people I communicate with regularly have iPhones, and also have BeeJive.

MMS on iPhone finally? It doesn’t matter, because BeeJive now lets you send pictures inside of chats. It also can send voice clips now. The files are uploaded to some storage space on BeeJive’s servers.

The killer feature now released in 3.1 is group chat. On the fly, you can create chat rooms and invite friends into them. Every message sent to the chat room sends a push notification to your phone. In the few minutes we were messing with it, it worked perfectly. This functionality doesn’t even work correctly in Gchat, in my experience. Now we can all argue about where to go out on Saturday night together on our phones!

All the people I talk to are on Gchat now, so I never use AIM, Yahoo!, or MSN at all. One of my favorite features of Gchat is that it archives all my conversation history in my Gmail account. I search my chat history regularly when looking for a link someone sent me, an email address, or some other info. And because all Gchat activity in BeeJive goes through Google’s server’s, even mobile chat history is archived.

The app is $10, but we’ve saved more than that just by cutting out our SMS plan with AT&T.

Whew

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:18 -0400

For the first time in a month the Gators didn’t have me worried the whole game.

Plus we got to beat one of my favorite teams to beat.

Let’s hope Oregon can pull out the win against SoCal.

Chomp!

Ghostland rocked Orlando. We got there, somehow, just before...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:31:46 -0400

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland Observatory @ House of Blues

Ghostland rocked Orlando.

We got there, somehow, just before 7pm, when doors were supposed to open. How we rounded up all five of us right after work and trucked it to Orlando in time, we’ll never know.

DJ Lord (of Public Enemy) opened with a massive set, must’ve been an hour and a half long. It started a little slow, but kicked in by the end thanks to the crowd getting into it proper.

Ghostland played a set that was almost identical to the one at ACL, minus the UT band cameo, and with an extra few cover songs at the end. The light show these guys do is IN SANE. It has to be seen to be believed. Complements the music so well. We had a great spot front and center to see Aaron gyrate around the stage. I still can’t believe the whole thing was free. Amazing.

Colette caught some stealth footage with the Flip cam, too.

The T. I love maps that look hand-drawn.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:30:23 -0400

The T.

I love maps that look hand-drawn.

NASA’s Aries rocket launch from Wednesday.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:24:00 -0400

NASA’s Aries rocket launch from Wednesday.

Metairie Cemetary, 1895. A number of our Louisiana McCormick...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:10:47 -0400

Metairie Cemetary, 1895.

A number of our Louisiana McCormick family members are buried here. We visited a few years ago and it’s a neat place. Some of those above-ground mausoleums are incredibly ornate and ancient. Because of New Orleans’ situation at or below sea-level, traditional burial isn’t possible.

We noticed that many of them were unfortunately damaged during Katrina.

(shorpy)

Sort by MAGIC

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:21:44 -0400

The Google Reader team added a new feature last week that allows you to sort feed items “by magic.”

It’s the only way I’ve been browsing my “All Items” feed for the past week, it’s phenomenal. It ranks items you’ll like based on your previous “likes” and items you’ve shared. It’ll get more accurate over time, too. I don’t know if it factors the item’s age into its rank, but hopefully it sorta ignores that and ranks anything that remains unread. I tend to ignore my feeds for days in a row, so the unread items pile up fast. I wouldn’t want to miss anything that Reader claims I’d love just ‘cause it’s old.

DOOM.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:20:46 -0400

DOOM.

"Breakfast, you should eat alone. Lunch, you should share with a friend. Dinner, give to your..."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:20:14 -0400

““Breakfast, you should eat alone. Lunch, you should share with a friend. Dinner, give to your enemy.””

- Irina A. Dumitrescu

Madvillain - ALL CAPS.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:48:07 -0400

Madvillain - ALL CAPS.

Two Ghostland's in one October

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:07:59 -0400

We’re going to try to see Ghostland tonight in Orlando at the House of Blues. They’re playing as part of the “SoCo underCOVER” tour, where bands theoretically play all covers (we’ve read otherwise).

The show is free if you’ve signed up ahead of time. Just showing this special text message I’ve received at the door should get me in. We’ll see how that works.

As long as we don’t end up driving to O-town for nothing, I’ll be happy.

Dental work

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:18:26 -0400

Last week was my first trip to the dentist in who-knows-how-long, probably like 6 or 7 years, maybe more. I fear trips to that office like nothing else, even though I know it’s never as bad as my subconscious brain makes it out to be.

The cleaning wasn’t bad. X-rays revealed that I had three normal cavities and one gi-normous one that the doc thought would need a root canal (!).

The root canal was scheduled for yesterday afternoon, so after dreading the trip all day long, I showed up for the procedure.

He drilled at my tooth for a good 15 minutes (boring away the majority of the tooth itself) and told me it wasn’t deep enough to require the root canal, that a filling would do the trick. So he basically molded a new tooth for me on the excavated area.

I’ve now made a vow with myself to go back for checkups regularly.

The one thing that’s neat about not going for so many years is the light-year leap in dental technology since the last time I went. They’ve got digital, instant read-out x-ray machinery, filling material that’s indistinguishable from actual tooth, and even ways to prenumb the area for the lidocaine shot (or whatever it is they use), so you can’t even feel that pain. Even with all the fear of sitting down in the chair, I was truly impressed with the tech, especially those x-rays I could look at instantly after the snapshots.