Guess and Check

I signed up for Facebook on October 31st, 2004. I last edited my profile on November 1st, 2004. The information I included at that time, while not much, was carefully calculated to withstand the test of time.

Facebook used to have a feature that listed on each profile a “Last Update” date. So for a long time, I had the furthest back date of all the people I knew. In March 2006, they had some problems with their “Recently Updated Profiles” list, so they were forced to reset everyone’s “Last Update” to March 23, 2006. Shortly thereafter, Facebook did away with listing the date at all, taking away from me what I saw as a cool little bit of status.

Since the outward sign that I hadn’t updated my profile in a really long time was removed, I had to resort to telling people in conversation. Not as cool, let me tell you.

Now, not updating has pretty much just become a personal weird thing. I would say things to myself like “I haven’t done it in such a long time, let’s see how long I can go.” However, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I’d need to update something or other eventually, so I should probably figure out a significant day to make that update.

So today, three years seven months and twenty-nine days after my last edit, I updated my Facebook profile. Don’t look for any significant change in the data there, it’s the update itself that’s significant.

So I have a lot of t-shirts. Each one has a story; if you see me wearing one, feel free to ask me about its story.

Left to right, top to bottom (stacks ordered reverse-chronologically by date of laundry load):

First stack

1. Pace University Wellness Week 2007 #1
2. The River Project green
3. V-Day Until the Violence Stops
4. L.L.Bean Visa Credit Card Outdoor Advantage
5. Pace University white
6. Pace University Women’s and Gender Studies
7. The River Project blue
8. ShopRite Ronetco Supermarkets Walk America 2002
9. Pace University PaceOne Card

Second stack
(more…)

There’s a storm rolling in.

So I met my nephew Andrew yesterday. My brother and sister-in-law brought him down for the weekend to visit.

Here’s some video my father put together of me and him:

He’s a cute little guy.

See Apatosaurus and Normal human body temperature for more info.

So I pulled the “filling up the office with packing peanuts (but not really)” prank on my boss.

Here are some photos and videos of the setup and his reaction:

Joan Acocella gives her opinions on how New Yorkers are both seemingly rude but also helpful in public.

My mother, who lives in California, doesn’t like to be kept waiting, so when she goes into the bank, she says to the people in the line, “Oh, I have just one little thing to ask the teller. Do you mind?” Then she scoots to the front of the line, takes the next teller and transacts her business, which is typically no briefer than anyone else’s. People let her do this because she is an old lady. In New York, she wouldn’t get away with it for a second.

But also:

In the subway or on the sidewalk, when someone asks a passerby for directions, other people, overhearing, may hover nearby, disappointed that they were not the ones asked, and waiting to see if maybe they can get a word in.

Her main point on this is that we (New Yorkers) live so much of their lives in public (eating outside in parks, using the subway, etc.) that we act in public like we do in private. Very interesting.

Via Kottke.

Finally saw the Cash Cab last night.

Ben Bailey gave us the thumbs up. And a producer shushed us for getting too excited as he had a passenger read from a script.

So today is the first day of ROFLCon. I’m here in Boston/Cambridge mainly to cover The Brothers Chaps appearance tomorrow for the wiki, but there’s plenty of other interesting stuff going on I’ll be sure to post about and take pictures of.

I’ve long been a fan of that Tiger Woods Nike commercial where he bounces a golf ball around and then hits it off straight down the course. Both because the simple way it’s filmed is cool and the fact that Tiger Woods is awesome with golf stuff.

Recently an article quoting director Doug Liman appeared online at CNET where he talks about filming it. He says

To illustrate his point, he recalled a commercial he was shooting for Nike in the late 1990s starring golfer Tiger Woods. Liman noticed Woods bouncing a ball on the edge of a club during breaks from shooting. Liman grabbed a shoulder-held camera and, away from the crew, asked Woods to bounce the balls while being filmed. Liman began to lose his patience when Woods blew the shot several times.

“I told him, ‘I can’t believe that of all people you are choking under pressure,’” Liman told the audience.

Woods glared and then bounced the ball while transferring the club through his legs behind his back and finished by smacking the ball in mid air. The shot, which became a classic, was natural, unrehearsed, and driven by imagination rather than millions of studio dollars, Liman said.

Nice.

Via Ricky Van Veen.

Space Shuttle Endeavour launched earlier this morning, they’re going to assemble a giant robot up there.

It was brought to my attention that “those wacky NASA guys” are hilarious, case in point the informational text on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft seen in this image.

Via Ben.

I saw a cool idea for decorating a kids room, this pirate decal.

Judging from the price, I’d probably just try to paint something myself instead. And of course, the next kid would have to have a ninja theme.

Via Boing Boing.

This morning as I woke up, my clock radio alarm was playing this jamming tune. That was, until it started to skip. Now, I knew my radio wasn’t skipping, since they don’t tend to do that. So I kind of just raised my eyebrow a little, even giving it a little *tap tap* just to make sure. Nope, it turns out Gary Walker was having some technical difficulty, as I then heard a clunking noise followed by him explaining how technology was wonderful. He got the track to start again, but I really wanted to know the name and artist and Gary only gave me a little hint by saying “Dr. Billy Taylor” after the skipping.

Enter WBGO’s nice play list feature: there it is, Billy Taylor with I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free from the Taylor Made at the Kennedy Center album.

I also managed to find a nice YouTube video of him playing it with his Trio, have a listen.

<Dot_com> Dolores Umbridge has plates with cats all over her walls
<Dot_com> I’d like to see lolcats made of these
<BazookaJoe> Nope, can’t find any DoLOLrescats.
<HeimAway> im in ur school. writin ur edukashenal dekrees.
<Dot_com> im in ur hogwarz
<HeimAway> inquisitor cat disapproves ur defence group
<Dot_com> hem hem
<DorianGray> holy shit it’s a centuar. Get on the broom!
<HeimAway> u will submit to minnistree. kthxbai.
<Dot_com> i wil not tel lais
<HeimAway> o hai. i help wif ur dissiplinning students.
<DorianGray> there will be no need to talk.
<stux|away> and they said that the internet would lead to a decline in grammar… how wrong they were.
<HeimAway> There’s probably a few contexts where “DO NOT WANT” would work, but those tend to rely on images, so a bit hard to do in here.

Via undisclosed IRC channel. (I wasn’t there at the time to be able to contribute.)

I think this idea has great potential. This image (from this post by Kristen Devoe) is the best I could find for the purpose. There’s plenty of cats in a variety of poses there that could be used.

Halloween 2007 pumpkin and costume photos can be found in this album.

1996
Twelve seasons have come and gone
For Joe: best wishes

For the Joe Torre Haiku Contest.

I was setting up a computer the other day and came to the point where I wanted to setup the background image. I usually like to pick something new, but this time instead of looking around online I decided to use one of my own photos.

I came up with the following, a crop of this photo I took at the Exploratorium.

We recently acquired the Food Network in my building, and I’ve come to greatly enjoy the work of Alton Brown.

He’s my kind of cook. He cooks hand in hand with science (Wikipedia calls it molecular gastronomy) and that’s right up my alley.

I bought I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0, Alton Brown’s Gear for Your Kitchen, and I’m Just Here for More Food: Food × Mixing + Heat = Baking and from what I’ve read so far, they are absolutely excellent.

I’ll soon be stocking up my kitchen with all sorts of fun things to help me make wonderful creations.

Earlier today I finished reading the Harry Potter series. You should read it, I think it’s quite excellent.

I went to the MoCCA Art Festival 2007 today. I met and got sketches from Jeph Jacques and Chris Hastings/Kent Archer and picked up a whole bunch of stuff from many of the six hundred plus exhibitors.

Be sure to check out the photo album.

Here’s a photo of my new cat. His name is Roger, and I found him at KittyKaretakes of Queens.

My lolcat caption would probably be “I’m on ur chair, using ur cushin”, any other ideas?