Way back when (aka April 2006) a few family members and I visited my brother during his semester abroad in Spain--his extremely trying last semester of law school. One important discovery we made there was a fast food chain that sold "pizza cones." What a fantastic idea! I am always impressed with people who are able to take what is ordinarily not finger food and turn it into something transportable. Pizza you can eat with your hands. Who would have thought.
Anyway, I was not the only one whose creative juices began flowing. This caused my sister's innovative side to emerge. She still talks about starting a rival chain here in the US. She would stick with the Italian theme, and create the world's first Lasagna Cone! Genius. Pure genius.
Here I am, back from another trip. I returned this afternoon from Denmark (plus a side trip to Sweden this time -- where, sadly, no one sounded like this). More on that trip later.
Not long before this trip I brought a new toy -- my Microsoft-produced Zune (competition to the ipod). What, you might ask, possessed me to purchase such a device? Well, I wanted a music player, but my new car apparently is not compatible with the ipod. Plus, just about everyone I know curses their ipod regularly. The device came in handy... I ended up watching all of Season 1 of The IT Crowd while I was stuck for six hours in Frankfurt, Germany. I've vented enough about that unexpected layover, and will refrain from boring you with that story...
In preparation for my trip I decided to get a few new songs. I found out about an eMusic "download 35 songs free" offer and decided to test it out. Unfortunately, they didn't have many of the songs I was seeking. I ended up rather arbitrarily picking out songs in the alternative, math rock, and goth genres.
Anyway, here are the songs I listened to most during the trip--some of which were new eMusic acquisitions, and others were not:
- Juliet, by Emilie Autumn. Goth/industrial/electronica. I like. I like much.
- Imitosis, by Andrew Bird. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I picked his album for the cover, of course. My goodness, I'm predictable. Anyway, I like this song despite its use of the word "machinations," which is one of my least favorite words ever. Whenever I read a paper containing that word, it undercuts the author's credibility by approximately 64.3%. And that's on a good day. Despite that, the song is excellent. You can listen to the song on his myspace page. Grr, I apparently just missed his 9:30 Club concert! Oh, also, the singer appears to be a thinner version of Dr. Who.
- Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T's. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I actually heard this song on on the radio (it seems to get some late night "new music" play, at least), and decided to follow up. This song, as well as Hate (which I think is an amazingly entertaining song!!), is on their myspace page.
- Tired of Being Sorry, by Ringside. I wish they'd play more concerts. This is such a great song. And it doesn't hurt that the singer is HOT. Though I still don't understand why the video is about him getting beat up by a girl.
- Caramel, by Suzanne Vega - Good song. I can't find it now, but I swear I first heard this song in a trailer for the movie Closer. Not that I ever saw the movie... but I always have that association.
- The Mating Game, by Bitter:Sweet - Interestingly, this is one of the default songs on the factory-fresh Zune device. But if you like it, you have to download it later, 'cuz MS deletes it when they upgrade your firmware. This one is also available on the group's myspace page.
- The Last Remaining Light, by Audioslave. I've had this song (and album) forever, but for whatever reason, it regained my attention during my trip.
Last, but not least:
- The System is Down, by Homestarrunner. I have no idea why I have this, nor why it kept coming up. But it's kind of amusing...
To demonstrate what a fun and exciting person I am, I'm going to give you a list of my favorite words, complete with hyperlinks to random and totally unrelated tidbits.
Despite the fact that this story has been proved to be a myth, I still find it amusing (indeed, fiction is allowed to be funny). Penguin thievery. But stories like these have their impacts: people apparently are calling a zoo in Utah and accusing them of harboring the stowaway penguin from the story. Stories that sound too good to be true (and that are full of plot holes and improbabilities) probably aren't true. Ah, well, you can still look at pictures of penguins on this penguin blog. Penguins are all the rage.
And here is xkcd.com's view of Snopes (the urban legend and myth debunking site):
Emily insists that I have to relate the full tale of the blog title. It all started many days ago. No, wait, it was Thursday. Emily's birthday. We went to Carrabba's for dinner. We had the same waiter that we had last time we ate there. Note, of course, that last time he gave us free ice cream for no apparent reason. No such luck this time around... he rushed us through our meal, and took my dinner away to box it up when I was pretty much still eating. It was fun. I suggested that perhaps the rush and lack of free sugar was because Emily was less attractive this time than the last visit. For some reason, she didn't like that possibility. To console her, I said, "your looks rock!" And now it's the title.
Rejoice, and show mirth, for behold, ye are now in on the inside joke.
My brother-in-law, Rob, is currently working on the movie The Golden Compass (scheduled for release in December). Apparently everyone has their daemons. And mine is an osprey. I am now going to do exactly what my other blogging family members have done--except Melissa, but she'll cave soon--and let you check whether I correctly assessed my daemon, or whether you see me differently.
This one is nice, and does convince me that the movie is worth checking out (and not just to see Rob's name in lights). Even so, my favorite personality identifying site is still kingdomality.com. According to that, my medieval career would have been as the evil prime minister. Mwahahaha.
Incidentally, try typing the following text into MS Word:
=rand(3,4)
Then press enter. It'll automatically insert the text "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." You can change the numbers around. One represents the number of sentences per paragraph, and the other represents the number of paragraphs. Hours of non-stop entertainment.
Start celebrating! Apparently scientist have found a "potentially habitable planet." And it's only 120 trillion miles away (approx. 20 light years)! Start saving those frequent flier miles--you may be able to earn a free trip!
That planet's sun is called Gliese 581. Why don't we have a name for our sun? It seems unfair that we don't. We're just a really boring solar system. Our planets have great names like Pluto, and the planets have cool moon names like Io (which, incidentally, is the only natural satellite with acne). But we have no name for our sun... or moon, for that matter. Someone come up with a name!
I'll always love this next song. I discovered it while avoiding studying for a freshman year astronomy class.
My sister wants to be a cake decorator. If I'm lucky, when I get married she'll make me a fancy wedding cake. Perhaps I'll be very lucky, and she'll make one like this:
Sorry, non-nerds out there. You might not be able to comprehend the vast amount of humor in this posting. Maybe next time I'll say something about TV shows or something more widely understood by mainstream America. Maybe.
But today it's tech humor. Yaay!
Part 1: A Joke.
Years ago, when Apple first came out with their text-to-speech applications, two computer guys decided to use it to settle a score: the pronunciation of the name of a popular Unix text editor. The application is called vi. One guy said, "It's pronounced 'vye,' and rhymes with 'sky' or 'bye.'" The other guy disagreed, saying, "you just say Vee Eye -- it's just the names of the letters, it's not a word."
So into the talking computer application 'vi' went. And it said...
"SIX."
(get it? vi = roman numeral 6. oh, never mind.)
Part 2: Chaos Theory.
This picture demonstrates how not to set up your network. Yikes.
Part 3: Toys.
Specifically, USB toys. (fine, and some funny USB storage devices)
- You've heard of thumb drives, right? But you probably didn't think there was a real THUMB drive, did you? - I don't know what to say about this digital storage device. - This is arguably old technology (4 years -- that's ancient in computer terms), but it's still clever. It's a USB-powered rice noodle strainer. - Everyone needs one of these. It's a USB-powered hamster wheel. - If you're a workaholic (like me), you shovel your lunch down at your desk. Dropping too many crumbs into your keyboard? Clearly you need a USB-enabled duck-shaped vacuum cleaner. Why don't I have one of these? -Have you declared war on your cubicle neighbors? It's your civic duty. Surprise them with a USB cannon, then beat them down with a USB-powered rocket launcher.
Every now and then various family members pass on relatively interesting pieces of information. Here are some fine examples:
From my brother: Can't decide where to eat lunch? Spin the Wheel of Lunch. You can even run such queries as (your zip code) and "Thai," and it'll limit your options to Thai restaurants in the area. If you want details, read the explanation.
From my mother: Go to google maps. Click on "get directions." Ask for directions from New York to Paris. Scroll down to Direction #23 or so.
Today's posting is all about Easter Eggs. This weekend my sister and I decorated eggs with two very young cousins. Let's see if you can tell from the following picture which eggs were decorated and/or cracked by our cousins and which were decorated by us.
My aunt came up with this very effective trick for adding designs: dye + glue gun + more dye. Nice.
Not into food art? Well, there is another other kind of easter egg -- hidden stuff in computer programs! Unfortunately, it seems this is a dying (no, not dyeing) art--too many companies fear risks added by undocumented code. But back when I taught MS Office classes to pay my way through college, I found that the easter egg discussions (for instance, I pointed out an old version of Excel's Spy Hunter and the MS Access Magic 8 Ball, among others) were the only times when students paid attention.
Ah, the days when you could ctrl-shift-f into Netscape's fishcam... or go to about:mozilla in Firefox for a funny message. Oh, wait, I think those still work (assuming you're using the right browsers).
Looking for others? The eeggs.com archive might be worth a visit.
UPDATE: For some bizarre reason, this has turned out to be my most popular blog entry of all time. Not this quality posting or this controversial topic, but this teensy little entry on Easter Eggs. Huh. You just can't predict these sorts of things.
Anyway, I thought I'd reward the adoring public by giving even MORE information on the creative egg decorating technique displayed in the not so hot picture that probably brought you to this page. I don't know if my aunt made this up, or if she got the idea from an egg decorating book/magazine article/voices in her head... whatever the source, this is a fun and easy technique. (caution--this involves the use of a glue gun, which may not be safe or appropriate for young kids). Steps:
- Take a hard boiled egg, then dye it the color of of your choice. Or skip the pre-dye phase and move directly to the next step... - Using a glue gun, decorate the egg. If you use one of those mini glue guns you can get a fairly high degree of detail in your design. Wavy lines, squiggly lines, little teensy circles... so many options! But be careful not to burn yourself! - After the glue dries (which shouldn't take long), put the egg into a second color of dye for a few minutes. - When you're satisfied with the updated color of the egg, remove it from the dye. Dry it off, then peel off the dried glue. Voila! A beautiful and unique egg design!
