Tiny People

Photos of tiny people. Neat!

Who Doesn't Like Pie?

The White James Brown

I find this guy's voice pretty annoying. He can slide his feet around neat. I like how he has dual double–bass drummers, but all they do is play that straight, super boring beat in unison. I also wish the "audience" would get run over by a steam roller. Those have to be paid performers—they're just so hokey.

Dyson Bladeless Fan

Whoa. Dyson does it again with this super geeky fan. I wonder how loud it is. Good if you have dumb babies around that like to stick their faces and appendages into things (which is pretty much all of them, right?).

America's Downfall

Ugly plastic shoes and blankets you wear like a robe. They go together like puke and snot (and I don't mean the comedy team that I never saw, but seem pretty funny, because there's no way you could get me to the Reneaisisananeance Festival).

The Ladyboy

How to Find a Masculine Halloween Costume for Your Effeminate Son. The Onion hits another one out of the park, into the next county, across the ocean, and around the moon.

Pork Chops & Applesauce Brains

This totally pretty and non–insane lady went nuts when her kids ate the last pork chop. The little bastards.

And speaking of totally pretty and non–insane ladies, is Amy Winehouse still alive? How can that be? Why? Perhaps her new tits are really hiding alien beings that are using her body to conquer the world.

Reverse Trikes

I've seen a couple of these Spyder 3–wheeled trikes on the road over the past few months. One was just pulling out of a farm that's right on 163 between Des Moines and Pella, or thereabouts. I didn't know they were made by Can–Am, or that Can–Am even existed any more. I remember they at least made kick–ass motocross motorcycles back in the '70s.

Mork Radio

Rectangular radios without TV characters in them are lame. That's why we all need one of these.

Crystal Clear Electricity

Now that you've had adamantium cables run directly to your house from the 20x20 mile wide solar panel array you've installed on Mercury, you'll need new outlets that are rated for "audio grade". That's right. Ordinary outlets filter out Paiste ride cymbals and guitar solos played in cafeterias. Good thing you can spend $147 on a better one.

Be sure to read the customer reviews. Really.

Creative Marble Sculptures

Whoa, these marble sculptures are pretty cool. I like the 2 interlocked tires and the skull that looks like styrofoam.

It's Always January

We love Mad Men on AMC. If you don't watch it, maybe you just need some enticement. This is January Jones, who plays Betty Draper. She's so Nordic and hot. Plus, the show is so good.

We're All Cells

If you have about 20 minutes to kill, here's a fascinating film called Organism shot in 1975 by Hilary Harris. It shows NYC in time lapse, the people, the traffic, the boats and air traffic, and equates it to the way organisms move (hence the name). I also love the mesmerizing music. Lots of groovy vintage synth sounds played to great effect. I watched it in sections throughout the day while waiting for builds or email replies.

16G Still Not Enough

Turns out 16G of RAM still isn't enough. I just had a short swapping session going on while building Creator, while it was compiling some of the hairy C++ files that use heaps of template shit. Xcode 3.2 seems to use up more as time goes on, so if you've been building throughout the day, it's gonna use a bit more each time. Maybe it's not cleaning up after itself like it should. I guess I'll get in the habit of quitting Xcode a few times a day if it's gonna be this way about it. It's still a metric shitload better than Microsoft's lame excuse for a development environment, Visual Studio. That shit's just gross and should be put out of its misery.

Computer Sex

This is how somebody started a message to the Creator list. I don't see what he's so bummed out about.

My Mac went down on me yesterday, Bummer.

ISO 102,400!!

Nikon's new D3s has some serious light sucking capabilities. My D70 goes up to 1600, same as the Fuji film I used to use. So to even fathom ISO 6400 or 102,400 is, like, hard. But the shots are beautiful and noise–free at the lower–yet–still–ridiculously–high ISOs.

RAM Jam

We recently switched from Xcode 2.5 to 3.2. 3.0 and 3.1 sucked for large projects that used source control. They finally made it less sucky in 3.2 and fixed a bunch of other things that prevented me from wanting to go beyond 2.5. We're now also using gcc 4.2. And because of that and probably changes made in Xcode, each compiler thread now needs about half a gig of RAM. So with 16 threads compiling on my 8G Mac Pro, it quickly goes into a swapping frenzy and grinds the hard drive, bringing the entire machine to a near halt. Even simple things like clocks and Activity Monitor's CPU history icon cease moving. And 8G is still a lot of memory for a modern computer. So I bit the goddamn bullet and ordered another 8G for it. If that doesn't make it happy, I'll try painting a smiling face on its big aluminum side.

Whoa, Black Betty.

Timeless Chicken

A couple summers ago we were up in Two Harbors, just northeast of Duluth. I saw a big chicken that I just had to take a picture of. I just now saw it again on Square America, but that picture was taken in the '60s. I verified it's the same chicken because the building behind it looks the same. Even the pine tree in the back is still there, but much less full these days.

There was also this random shot of a dragster. And this bar scene where some guys took their kids along, were done up in blackface, and having one hell of a good time. Cracks me up. Ah, here's the rest of that rail. These are all in a gallery of shots mostly orphaned from the rest of their original set. I just love that site.

Magic Mouse

Apple has a new mouse that combines a multi–touch trackpad with a mouse. It doesn't do much that you can't already do with a 4–button scrollwheel mouse (although it can do horizontal scrolling without having to reach for the shift key if you don't have a Mighty Mouse). It's just sleeker. It's so flat; I wonder if that is worse on the hand and wrist. At least it no longer has those horrible side squeeze buttons like the Mighty Mouse has. Those would inevitably fire off that function if you were lifting the mouse while playing a frenzied game or something like that. And no more gunk in the tiny Mighty Mouse scrollball, although I never use mine enough to get any build–up (it's on the old G5 to my right here that only gets fired up when I need to debug on 10.4 or PPC, or to archive my MultiAd mail).

The Glory Hole

No, not that kind of glory hole. When I was on the phone with the Apple support guy for Kim's iPhone problem, we were talking about The Glory Hole, a huge pipe that's the spillway for a dam in NoCal. Here's a video of it being skated.