• All posts tagged with "technology"
ם Linkdump.
Posted on May 29, 2008 at 11:17 pm
- I love Isabella Rossellini. For the Sundance Film Festival, she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a series of shorts called Green Porno. In each short, she dresses up like some bug, and then explains and simulates their reproduction. It is, in a word, fantastic. Potentially NSFW, if you work in an office full of insects.
- Like the Internet? Watch Weezer’s new video for their single “Pork and Beans” and see how many Internet memes/YouTube sensations you recognize to check your pop-nerd-cred.
- Side effect of the Weezer video: discovering the Daft Hands video and assorted spinoffs.
- Lastly, the geek in me must share this article about Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine, complete with this spectacular anecdote:
We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when Richard walked in, saluted, and said, “Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what’s my assignment?” The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.
After a hurried private discussion (”I don’t know, you hired him…”), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems.
“That sounds like a bunch of baloney,” he said. “Give me something real to do.”
So we sent him out to buy some office supplies.
That is all.
ם Twitter
Posted on April 7, 2007 at 3:00 pm
So after hearing enough about it, I finally went ahead and signed up for Twitter.
I can see the appeal, but really, it’s pretty boring sans friends to make it interesting. So you should go ahead and sign up and add me.
A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about MacSaber 1.0, a program to turn your brand new MacBook into a lightsaber. To quote myself:
Really, I just can’t wait for a video to hit YouTube of some geek wildly swinging his MacBook around, fighting off the Dark Side.
Luckily, all of my wildest dreams have come true.
YouTube <3
ם Powers of Ten
Posted on June 11, 2006 at 2:43 am
Some kind soul has put my favorite movie of all time on YouTube: Charles and Ray Eames’ “Powers of Ten”.
My neighbor and I would sit around for hours just watching this on loop, and we once even edited the Wikipedia entry to state, “This is the most amazing film ever produced in the history of movie-making. Ever.” (This was quickly edited out by someone less awesome, but it lives on in the history!)
The sound on the YouTube version is unfortunately a bit out of sync, but luckily I have my own copy. Contact me if you’d like a nicer quality version.
ם Jedis Use Macs
Posted on June 7, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Reminiscent of my previous post about exploiting the Sudden Motion Sensor in Apple PowerBooks and MacBooks, I’d like to share with you MacSaber 1.0.
Using your Mac’s sudden motion sensor, this software turns your computer into a Jedi weapon almost worthy of taking on the real thing by making authentic lightsaber sound effects. It senses speed for the lightsaber movement sounds and acceleration for different levels of striking sounds.
Really, I just can’t wait for a video to hit YouTube of some geek wildly swinging his MacBook around, fighting off the Dark Side.
Check out Guimp: The World’s Smallest Website, a nice mash-up of classic games and microscopy. Pong becomes noticeably more difficult with a one-pixel wide ball and a three pixel long paddle.
And, if you’re at work, your boss probably won’t notice that you’re playing Pacman.
ם SmackBook Pro
Posted on May 28, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Someone has figured out how to utilize the MacBook’s built in Sudden Motion Sensor as a sort of “hot key”. A well-placed smack to the side of the screen triggers some action, in this instance switching between virtual desktops.
For the full effect, watch the video. For an even fuller effect, do what I did and watch the video seven or eight times.
This is probably the coolest hack I’ve seen in a while, and I might do it to my PowerBook soon.
Researchers in the UK and the US theorize that they will be able to make a Harry Potter invisibility cloak within the next two years.
I’m just confused why they decided to figure out how to make the disgustingly flavored jelly beans from Harry Potter before they worked on this.
ם Dell Goes Retail
Posted on May 27, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Dell, attempting to copy Apple’s retail success, is opening up two brick-and-mortar storefronts in Dallas and New York shopping malls later this year. Notably, however, they will not carry any inventory. Some thoughts on why they will fail where Apple succeeded.
Dell, as a brand, doesn’t drive people to malls. People will not line up at 2AM to be the first into a new Dell Store. On a busy Monday before Christmas, Dell’s store will not draw more than a thousand visitors looking to go home with a late Christmas present and, even if it does, that’ll be a thousand disappointed customers when they realize that they can’t buy anything.
I personally think a better solution for Dell would be making computers that weren’t horrible.