Friday, March 23, 2007

Friday Afternoon Craft Project!

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"Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5"x11" page and printed with any printer. You’ll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time."


Art-history majors: Check out the readymade, 3 down, 2 over.

Thanks FP!

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Wolfgang Puck Goes Humane

[cooking, veal, foie gras, Wolfgang Puck]

NYTimes: (Wolfgang Puck) has directed his three companies, which together fed more than 10 million people in 2006, to buy eggs only from chickens not confined to small cages. Veal and pork will come from farms where animals are not confined in crates, and poultry meat will be bought from farmers using animal welfare standards higher than those put forth by the nation's largest chicken and turkey producers. Mr. Puck has also vowed to use only seafood whose harvest does not endanger the environment or deplete stocks.

Having eaten at Spago's in Palo Alto and a Gourmet Express pizza at the Denver Airport, I can say good for him!

FWIW: Veal was the (double) source of my only 'Disney' dining disappointment. Dining at the Napa Rose I asked what kind of veal was in the salad I had ordered (the waiter couldn't tell me so I asked them omit it) but the kitchen simply left it out without even trying to replicate the dish in a less-cruel way. That's the kind of action I would expect at a Denny's, not at multi-star restaurant in the Los Angeles area.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Stay The Course

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Came across this today:

Ricky Gervais in Africa for Comic Relief 2007

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Make Your Car a Pixar Car

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Free Coffee

[free, coffee, Starbucks]

Stop by your local (and c'mon who doesn't have a local) Starbucks from 10:00 until noon on March 15th (tomorrow!) for a free 12 oz. coffee.

Say hello to the friendly folks in the green apron and tip well.

June 11th: an Orange Letter Day

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June 11th the Submarines are back at Disneyland and Westcoaster.net has some great shots of the work so far:

^Click for more

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Books Via CanadaPost

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Book 7, eventually. Actually, we got our Canadian (tree-friendly) copy only a day or two after the 'official' release (not that I didn't already read who died before the book came out) – I wonder if Amazon doesn't have a stash of them somewhere in the US to cut down on the air-miles?

Monday, March 12, 2007

Culture of Corruption

[Waler Reed, Halliburton, politics]

Read this today in today's Jon Carroll column in the San Francisco Chronicle, wish it didn't surprise me more:

Did you know, for instance, that the Army decided to outsource a lot of facilities management tasks, a move that, according to a memo written by Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi, led to protest from and an exodus of qualified personnel? The Army went ahead anyway, and awarded a five-year, $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by Al Neffgen, a former executive at, wait for it, Halliburton.

Does Halliburton's relocation of their HQ to Dubai part and parcel of this mix of corruption and profit above all else?
You decide.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Palm Reader

[iPhone, Palm, Apple]

26th Nov 2006: Palm not worried about a possible Apple iPhone

Palm CEO Ed Colligan found the idea ridiculous that a computer company can enter the mobile market and win a major chunk of it easily. "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." He further said that Apple is likely to rely upon their own stores to sell these Apple iPhone rather than collaborating with mobile service providers like Verizon and Cingular.

3rd Mar 2007 Palm hires ex-Apple engineer
In a move to fend off competition from the likes of Apple and Motorola, Sunnyvale smart-phone maker Palm has hired one of the engineers behind the vaunted iPod to work on future products.

Paul Mercer, helped create the original iPod operating system for Apple, joined Palm in February, according to a Palm spokeswoman. Mercer also brought along two employees from his current venture, Palo Alto device software company Iventor.
Mercer was an Apple engineer during the late 1980s and early 1990s, working on a variety of products, including the Newton, Apple's ill-fated effort at creating a personal digital assistant device.


Thursday, March 08, 2007

They Might Be Ringtones

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I am too cheap to have a phone that can use mp3 ringtones but maybe you are not (I make no judgments, for all I know your company pays the bill for your mobile).

Courtesy of WIRED magazine and They Might Be Giants, enjoy these 'original songlettes' as an alternative to the boring bleeps, bloops and Hello Moto's on your phone, iPod or computer.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Listen To A Movie

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No video iPod? No iPod at all? Listen to a Movie is just what you need. But a sample of what the have:


Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back


Star Trek: Nemesis

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Gattaca

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Smile When You Type That

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The latest issue of Inc. had an essay on emoticons on the last page, and yes, they managed to find something new to say about them even in 2007:

"Picture if you will a colon: one tiny, perfect dot poised above its brother. Now imagine that colon transformed into a pair of eyes, bright and sparkling with mischief. From between those dots extends a hyphen. Yet screw up your eyes and…do you see it? A nose! Yes, a nose! Patrician in its straightness it dips toward the generous curve of a closing parenthesis. That parenthesis is a mouth, corners up-tilted in mirth. Viewed in sum, these marks compose a face whose expression of gentle amusement suggests the good humor intended in the previous remark."

:-)

Start the Pardon Clock

Monday, March 05, 2007

The Lawyer For the Defense

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Thanks to Garrison Keillor and The Writer's Almanac I am a little bit smarter today than I was yesterday. When you are done, ask yourself, who is the John Adams of our day?

It's the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which took place on a cold and snowy night in 1770. It was touched off by an argument between a young barber's apprentice and a British officer about payment for a haircut. The barber's apprentice claimed that the officer had not paid, and the soldier reportedly knocked the kid down in the street.

A crowd of young men who were watching shouted at the officer, and they began throwing snowballs and pieces of ice at him. The officer fled to the Customs House nearby, where a sentry stood guard with his musket. Other soldiers came out of the Customs House to help defend the men against the crowd, which was growing. Someone rang the fire bell, and more people flooded the streets to see what was happening. The crowd grew rowdier, throwing ice, oyster shells, and lumps of sea coal. The soldiers brandished their weapons, but the crowd dared them to shoot, calling them cowards.

Suddenly shots rang out. When the smoke cleared, five colonists were dead or dying — Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and Christopher Monk — and three more were injured. It was hardly a massacre, but the more revolutionary members of the colonies played it up as much as they could.

The soldiers were put on trial, and it turned out that the man chosen to represent them was the American patriot John Adams. He didn't support the British by any means, but he was told that no one else would take the case, and he believed that all men deserve a good defense under the law. So he took the case, and he managed to get most of the soldiers acquitted.

Arlo and Janis Comment on Anna Nicole 'Saga'

[Arlo & Janis, Anna Nicole]

Probably shouldn't reproduce the actual cartoon here but go see today's cartoon for what should (but won't) be the last word on the Anna Nicole story from cartoonist Jimmy Johnson.

Al Gore and "One More Thing"

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From today's (San José) Mercury News comes this small fact reminder: Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' talk is not a PowerPoint talk but an Apple Keynote talk (thanks to Duarte Design).

Makes sense give he's on the board, wonder why Apple isn't making more of a noise about this (they are). As a Keynote user since version 1.0 it would be nice to have more company than just me, Steve and Al, not that I mind the halo by association.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Starbucks Leprechaun Latte – New England Only?

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According to PRNewswire, in 2006, "The Leprechaun Latte, a peppermint mocha flavored beverage topped with green whipped cream, (was) available at Starbucks stores in New England from February 15 through March 17, 2006."

Sounds like a grown-up version of the 'Shamrock Shakes' Uncle O'Grimacey used to pitch at McDonald's around March, doesn't it?

So has Starbucks repeated this for a sixth (!) year or is another minty-green beverage disappeared, this one before I could even try it? (It's tough to be me, I tells ya!)

Starbuck Cubed

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A very old picture (Newscom lists it as taken in 2003) but as a photo-op, you knew this was going to be done by somebody at some point. Katee looks like she just met her idol. Dirk makes a 'face' like I would expect he would.

We're Only Making Plans For Nigel

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One of my favourite Pepsi™ commercials of all time, the young boy who plans the rest of his life out, including Florida retirement and 'complaining about the government full-time.'

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Steam Punk Star Wars

[Star Wars]

Using the picture of a home-made 'steam punk' lightsaber as his jumping-off point, Eric Poulton has begun to reimagine the Star Wars universe in a series of illustrations. So far he's done Vader, Han & Chewie and Jabba. Go encourage him to do more!

Huzzah!
idogcow. Get yours at bighugelabs.com/flickr

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