[2004/04/29]

→ this is so rach, so timely, so the book i'm reading. . . introducing the blackspot sneaker: "Adbusters has been doing R&D for more than a year, and guess what? Making a shoe - a good shoe - isn't exactly rocket science. With a network of supporters, we're getting ready to launch the blackSpot sneaker, the world's first grassroots anti-brand, with a ground-breaking marketing scheme to uncool Nike." | comment 0

[2004/04/27]

→ technically, these are bunnies. we saw roger & me this weekend. make your own connection.

→ the magazine colors is being designed by our client (managed by one of the consultants here at the office) No.17.

[2004/04/26]

→ i found this avatar maker thingy (in spanish) on fri and made one of myself. rach was tough; in between hair length is mssing. sid made a good one in, like, two min. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ the intermagoogleweb comes through again, this time passively via kottke, not via active goolin'. (back story: we saw kill bill, again, this weekend and rach asked about the references) this exhaustive page on all the references far oustrips any meagre list i could have made. actually, the only ref that i could think of at the moment was the yellow jump suit. and i couldn't remember the film title. memories. . . note, the site is struggling, so be patient if it doesn't come up first try. | comment 0

→ thanks to excellent tutoring from brown and rach (and our two younger neighbors) this weekend, i finally learned how to ride a bike. thanks tro armin for (unkowingly) lending me his bike ot learn on; the others all had those funny shoe clip/clamp things. i can get started on my own and peddle and steer mostly. don't know how to change gears and stopping is a little sloppy and i can't control the thing enough to turn around street corners -- but i did single-handedly ride to and from the little shop at the end of store road yesterday, avoiding cars, not hitting any animals or other pedestrians, and stopping without the aid of a large tree. | comment 0

→ i've commented before about how the onion sometimes uncannily echos my own sentiments, but it just stuns me how true parodies sometimes ring: President bush clarifies funeral protocols for protecting Iraq combat fatalities from photographers, tacky military ceremonies, and canned presidential eulogies. . . this one is for you, kevin.

[2004/04/23]

→ a little article on the finding of the downed plane of antoine de saint-exupery (the author of rach's fav the little prince). | comment 0

[2004/04/21]

→ back in 94, publish mag asked a few design firms to redesign the 1040ez. i can't find a link to their version, but here is one of the others from that project.. this contemporary version doesn't look as compelling to me. it doesn't earn any points in my book that the information designer is ok being quoted as saying that they didn't use helvetica becuase it "signals a lot of bad vibes". kottke suggests that the interface of tubotax is a redesign of sorts itself; now that's an interesting point. [update: kottke has a link to another redesign attempt] | comment 1

→ this medical mood ring is just the latest step in a trend towarsd the merging of jewelry and personal electronics i predicted in my undergraduate senior thesis (not much info in there, alas). | comment 0

[2004/04/20]

→ with all this thinking about security and passwords (ie. having read cryptomonicon recently) today's reading of a bbc article on passwords is ann excellent counterpoint to the discovery yesterday of bruce schneier's grypto-gram newsletter, specifically, his recent bits on national id cards and stealing an election are tight. | comment 0

→ i've bene curious about running a RADIUS server to provide per-user/reasonably secure authentication (as opposed to WEP) for access to a wireless LAN (and dialup perhaps) and RDXServer (Cross Platforme Radius Authentication) (um, i don't think there is an "e" in "Platform...") looks like the only option i see. this article in the apple kb provides a quick explanation of WEP vs WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) in OS X.

[2004/04/18]

→ some photos up from ali + armin's wedding last night. all i can say is wow.

[2004/04/15]

→ the new amzon search tool (built atop google but with the freaky-been-predicted-for-years-weird-that-it-slipped-in-under-the-radar feature of searching inside actual books) A9 is in beta. what's cool (in their words). what's cool in mine? search the text of books (as i just said), URL short cuts (though the google box undermines this for us safari users), and search and click history (kinda creepy, kinda cool). here's a good page with a rundown on lot's o coverage. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/04/14]

→ don't ask how i came across the page for the bureau of the public debt. do ask why they chose lime green and blue as their colors (better than purple tho, i suppose). also, the amounts of debt held by the public ($4,216,270,760,489.97, i assume in the form of treaure bonds etc) and in intragovernmental holdings ($2,948,527,197,607.68) are a little hard to wrap the head around. the historical numbers are interesting, esp 1791-1849. ah, 1835, those were the days.

→ ten years ago today, spam began (not the canned meat product).

[2004/04/13]

→ ev, man, this has nuttin' to do with bribing restaurants you wacko. . . for the rest of you, the key pictured does indeed work to a door. but (as you may note) the page specifies, "the specific key varies." the key actually sold does not go with any door i know the whereabouts to. interestingly, my friend deborah has been bouncing around a related concept. | comment 0

[2004/04/12]

→ we were just talking on sat(urday) about dehydration, so this article on "the myth that people should drink eight glasses of water per day" is timely: "The new report recommends that thirst be the main motivator for drinking more. One of the urban myths of water consumption was that if you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. This study helps put that myth to rest. Another common myth about water consumption is that water from caffeinated beverages should not count. The new report repeats previously published findings that say you should count all water intake, including from caffeinated drinks such as coffee, tea and soft drinks, and also from food. A more significant health finding is that Americans are consuming far too much sodium (usually in the form of salt in foods) and too little potassium."

→ i see my allergist has a website. ahem. see, i wasn't joking about the Food Challenge.

→ kinda big news over at slashdot (at least for any of us who just read cryptonomicon) on quantum crypto leaving the lab. the application is really pretty narrow at first, but potentially has widers uses; it is currently limited to point-to-point sites connected directly by optical fiber within 120km of each other (according the the MagiQ VN datasheet). for more background info, check out the wikipedia entries on quantum cryptography and the one-time pad. | comment 1

[2004/04/10]

→ if i don't bookmark this, i'm never going to remember the site for good ole gloomy.

[2004/04/09]

→ hm. i feel like i should be offended at the blatant unfairness inherent in bribing restaurants for a table, but it seems almost more like some sort of rule of nature exposed. maybe because i know there isn't anything fair or open about the table allocation anyway. the link came from kottke, btw. | comment 1

→ as first reported by ev, our friend william morrisey (finally?) got his website up from down there in rio. will and i met working together at 2x4, before which he'd worked with scott at open, and after which he worked at nestor.stermole and then no.17. . . the funny thing about all four of those ny design firms? they are all on our clients list. all of them. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/04/08]

→ according to this page comparing the sony ericsson T610 and the T616 mobile phones, the main diff (besides the previously discussed 900 vs 850 one) is that the 610 is spec'd at 840min of talktime versus the 616's 300min. huh. i wonder if that's a mistake.

→ i finished reading neal stephenson's cryptonomicon last night (thank you mr. brown). and i joined the eff today.

→ i wonder if this is ever going to be explained: a real life x-files, people (of the kind my parents love; not a conspiracy theory one).

→ so we all know gateway is giving up and closing all of its stores (and firing 2500 people, incidentally). we also know that there are at least two resellers who have grave doubts about how apple is accounting for profit in their stores. i guess the big question is (will be?) what differentiates apple's stores from gateway's and will those differences be enough to make one a success while the crashed and burned. i bet apple's intent is essentially to poach business from their local resellers -- ie. to move towards a more dell-eque model where they control the whole channel. while this isn't the kindest, gentlest vision, it does seem viable. (disclaimer: i used to be involved in an AASP location/reseller in NYC and shut it down after the SOHO store openned a few blocks from us. that sure seemed like a battle we were going to lose quickly.)

→ i did not know that that "jewellery" (as well as "jewelry") was a legit spelling. but that is completely beside the point. i'm having a wacked day today and this piece on eyeball jewelry is making me vaguely queasy. i think elective surgery in general make me uncomfortable. . . though disucssing the anatomy of various artery slices in kali, interestingly, does not. hm. | comment 0

[2004/04/06]

→ kottke just keeps getting better. i only put people on my url sidebar that i know personally, but every time i've checked his site the last couple of weeks i've found something kickin. his piece on google is wonderful. | comment 0

[2004/04/02]

→ i took jetblue down to florida this past weekend. good experience; no complaints at all. this article on how the ceo sometimes hops on flights and plays flight attendant is intense. wow.

→ dude, what do you know. eric spiekerman (formerly of metadesign, where i used to work) has a blog. cute that it's done w iblog. | comment 0

→ how many phantom ipod killers can microsoft have? this is the second article (the first) calling (with a question mark, to be fair) a not yet released technology an ipod killer. one quote captures my gut feelings: "He doesn't expect Janus to drive dramatic growth in online music subscriptions, adding that it could take years for music rentals to challenge CD and download sales, if they ever do." | trackback 1

→ this page called "strike that out, sam" is a casual analysis of some documents microsoft posted to their public web pages but did not remember to strip out the prior version information that word holds on to when you edit a document. amazing. my fav quote: "I must say that all those 'xxx, Chief Information Officer/Vice President at Avensis' quotes make it look as if they were fabricated prior to even figuring out who to talk to at the company, not to mention determining what his/her name would be. The author could forget that guy's name when writing down taped conversations, of course, but not being able to tell CIO from VP makes that scenario somewhat less plausible. Naturally, the story could be quite different - but I can't think of a sane explanation, other than this serves as a good evidence those 'case studies' are produced in bulk, eventually reviewed by the other party, and just as convincing as stock photography." | comment 0

→ from my sister and ethan, an article on real estate prices predicting that a bubble is about to burst. it's well reasoned and quite convincing; the most compelling snippet from my perspective: "By other measures, too, the market is badly bloated. One index of housing inflation is the difference between house prices and rents. In a healthy market, driven by demand, rents and sale prices ought to track roughly together. But while sale prices have soared, rents have stayed flat; and in some of the most overheated markets, like San Francisco and Seattle, they have actually been declining. Such a gap, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has written, suggests ithat people are now buying houses for speculation rather than merely for shelter,' evidence that he called a 'compelling case' for a housing bubble." | comment 0

[2004/04/01]

→ a good little article explaining the significant difference between "market share" and "install base," especially as it relates to the computer world. it doesn't try to come back with real numbers ("Until a reputable research company can provide figures that measure the computer industry with install base dynamics, everything else is meaningless."") and does explain the significance of the difference and (for these uses) limited value of "market share" figures. i was struck in the airport this past weekend how many windows machines were doing duty as check in counters, ticket machines, etc. while those all make money for ibm/dell/toshiba/etc, none of those are what (i think) people are imagining when they see marketshare (i suspect people picture their multipurpose home or work computers). i wonder what the the percentages are for macintosh and linux marketshare (not ot mention installed base) once you subtract industrial uses like the airport stations, atms, and all the other computers that sit in a place doing only one thing all of the time. | comment 0 | trackback 0