The Naked Jelly Doughnut

Awesome or Awwwwwww-some?

2009-12-02T00:43:42Z

Thanks to def_fr0g_42 and urlesque for this.

I'm all croggly now.

2009-12-01T23:27:59Z

The very idea of elective buttock surgery gives me pause. Dying from it makes me wonder just how folks come to think of it as a good idea. "Yeah, I know I could die, but at least they can bury me face down."

The future is here - and it's soggy.

2009-12-01T18:40:25Z

http://www.gizmag.com/scientists-grow-meat-in-a-lab/13478/

Yummy?

Something to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving day

2009-11-26T20:36:23Z

We've got a number of friends who've been dealing with MS (one of the reasons I was involved with the BikeMS ride this past year). This morning, I came across this story in my daily perusal of news from around the world. As always with preliminary medical findings, caution is recommended, but if studies continue to uphold these findings, it's certainly something to be thankful for and a cause for guarded optimism.

EMT favorite product of the year, no doubt...

2009-11-20T16:53:32Z

Found a link to this on a bicycle forum. Check the last four photos, and some of the product reviews are hilarious.

My new restaurant concept

2009-11-10T22:25:19Z

Bob's House o' Smothered Deep-fried Carbs

It's a very simple menu—we batter it, fry it, and cover it with one of a variety of gravies. As long as it is sufficiently carb-laden (bread, pasta, potatoes, mac and cheese, potato pierogies, or even gravy itself).

And then we serve it in a sourdough bread bowl.

The menu will be printed with little indicators (like they use little hearts to indicate 'heart healthy' on some menus) to indicate bypass level required after eating, from single to quadruple. The mixed appetizer with be the 'Cardiac Special' consisting of full portions of everything on the menu.

I'll be accepting franchise applications.

Not too shabby, but a bit to go.

2009-11-05T20:04:34Z

visited 38 states (76%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Edited to add Oregon and Washington. Somehow our train trip to Seattle had slipped my mind.

Hey! Got any gunpowder?

2009-11-05T16:07:54Z

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everybody. Don't blow anything up. Not a good idea. Remember, though, to save a penny for the Guy.

Now what do I do with it?

2009-11-02T19:11:57Z

Got my Google Wave invite this weekend. Now I just have to find out who else I know that's on Wave. Because wtf use is a collaborative social communications environment when you're the only one you know on it?

Any body out there Wave-ing?

In honor of Windows 7...

2009-10-28T04:51:38Z

An excerpt from Microsoft's attempt to be 'funny' with the Windows 95 launch, starring Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston. Who says you can't buy cool? Uh, this video does.

As opposed to the 'real' ones

2009-10-27T22:13:35Z

As opposed to the 'real' ones
Originally uploaded by GVDub

Projects that should never be greenlighted...

2009-10-27T16:44:50Z

1. An opera based on Weekend at Bernie's

2. Film adaptation of Freakonomics

3. A novelization of Teletubbies

4. Broadway play of Jackass

5. Saw VII

For all the Lebowski-ans

2009-10-26T22:30:44Z

The Tao Dude Ching

Web 1.0 is dead, long live Web 2.0

2009-10-26T17:05:53Z

Saw the news that Yahoo is officially shutting down the Geocities servers today, spelling an end to millions of personal websites that haven't been updated since Clinton was president. Back before everybody offered free blogsites and actual interaction, Geocities was a way to put up a static webpage that you could forget even existed and never update. All those millions of dreams and ambitions will be going into the virtual dumper later today when Yahoo pulls the plug, along with the personal photos, introductory essays, and countless animated GIF "Website Under Construction" pages. Someday, all our domains will resolve to that big 404 error, but, for today, let's just bid adieu to Geocities and hoist a glass of Jolt cola to the place where many started to learn basic HTML skills.

Strolling with the dead

2009-10-25T03:53:35Z

Just back from the Dia de Los Muertos celebration at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. _darkvictory has been going for several years, but this is the first time I've been able to join her. I uploaded a whole bunch of photos to Flickr, but it's hard for them to really do justice to the event. It's too much for all the senses.

Almost ever altar put up has music playing, and incense burning. The folks who are doing the altars want to talk with you about the departed and give you a little glimpse into their lives beyond what a casual glance can offer. One was a devoted Red Sox fan, another was a serious chef. This one rode a bicycle and that one told stories about their childhood to their grandchildren. It's hard not to both feel the loss and join the celebration - a complex mix of sensory input and emotional tugs. You get dragged into the lives of strangers and see how they affected at least a small part of the world. You leave taking a part of each one of them with you. That's human commonality - that we can all share a little bit of our world with each other and find some reflection of ourselves staring back from the glittering painted skull sitting next to a set of faded old photographs.

R.I.P. Soupy Sales

2009-10-23T16:40:50Z

Another part of my childhood passed beyond. It's hard to appreciate these days just how subversive Soupy was. A true Erisian presence in children's television. I don't think that Abbie Hoffman would have ever existed without Soupy.

A pie, a seltzer bottle, and a couple of giant imaginary dog/bears. I'm missing them all already.

Warning: Extreme Silliness

2009-10-22T00:15:03Z

Directing the wisdom of the crowds

2009-10-21T19:37:16Z

One of the primary hooks on which the structure of Web 2.0 is hung is the concept of crowd-sourcing — the belief in the collective wisdom of the masses. I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about my experience with Aardvark, a crowd-sourced answer engine. As I've continued to use it, I've been impressed, and have continued to search for other, related solutions for other problems.

As it happens, a problem in need of solution was conveniently at hand. My daily commute can be a bitch. I've got to deal with three L.A. freeways (the 10, 405, and 101) that can be incredibly congested, including making two passes a day through an freeway interchange that was dubbed the worlds worst a few years ago (the 101/405 interchange). I've subscribed to sigalert.com for traffic updates, downloaded several different traffic applications for my iPhone, picked the brains of former L.A. cab drivers about alternate routes, and done everything short of sacrificing a Yugo to the traffic gods in attempts to streamline my drive. So, when I came across a crowd-sourced, free, open source, real-time traffic and routing application and website called Waze, I was eager to give it a try.

The way it works is simple in theory – load the app on your GPS-enabled mobile phone (clients are available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile phones. Not all features seem to be currently available on all clients) and run it while you're driving. The phone reports your location and speed back to Waze, and this is combined with all the other Waze users to generate real-time traffic maps and routing which are sent back to your phone. Map segments are downloaded as you move from one to the next if you haven't specified a route, so real-time updating requires a data connection at all times. If, on the other hand, you've specified a route by choosing the 'Drive Here' option, the map of the entire route is downloaded to your phone all at once, so you can lose data connection and not lose your way, although you'll lose traffic updates if your phone drops the data connection. As you travel, you can report accidents, police activity, traffic problems and other issues, and even post photos of the problem using an interface that's streamlined enough to be able to just tap the screen a couple of times with no text entry needed. The info seems to update quickly on the live maps.

The maps are also crowd-sourced, after a fashion. Roads that haven't been traveled are marked with a series of dots, and if you're the first to drive one your icon on the map turns into a little Pac-Man replicant that dutifully munches up the dots, earning you points. Points towards what, aside from a ranking in the user listing, is not precisely clear, but it's a fun game. Some users, judging by posts on the community forum, route specifically for unused roads just for the joy of virtual munching. Users can edit the map, adding missing road segments, correcting bad directions, etc. This is a plus, as it means that maps will self-correct over time and may well end up being more current than the map set that comes with your commercial GPS unit. This last depends on just how large and loyal a user base Waze can build.

Here we come to the part where faith and conjecture build expectation. Any crowd-sourced solution depends almost entirely on the size and commitment of the crowd. If it catches on, like Wikipedia (even with all its problems), it can become an amazing resource. If the user base never reaches a critical mass, it can constantly taunt you with its possibilities only to never quite deliver on those promises. For Waze, it's early days yet, and the user base is still growing. Different parts of the country are growing at different rates. For example, the Bay-area Waze community seems to be pretty strong, while L.A. seems to be growing, but not quite as quickly. The routing reflects that lack of having quite enough users yet, in that it doesn't seem to easily find alternative routes when traffic gets dicey. I'm willing to give it time, as the real-time traffic seems somewhat better than other apps I've tried, and the development team seems pretty responsive to bug reports and suggestions for improvement.

So, I'll be sticking with it and hoping that enough folks find it and try it to grow the user base sufficiently to make it an alternative to subscription-based commercial traffic and GPS routing apps. If you've got an iPhone 3G or later or a GPS-enabled mobile device that's running Android or Windows Mobile, I'd recommend giving it a try and helping build Waze from a 'pretty good' to a 'great' solution to one of the most common problems of modern life - simply getting around.

Culturally insensitive much?

2009-10-15T21:13:11Z

Current headline on CNN front page:

"Deaf Users Sound Off"

Not the the story itself is bad - it's not, but the headline writer needs to think twice.

R.I.P. Captain Lou Albano

2009-10-14T15:57:22Z

I met Lou several times, most notably when he was managing one of my favorite bands, NRBQ. Seemed like a good guy, and certainly was a personality and a force in professional wrestling. Great sense of humor, to boot. As professional wrestling became more glamorized, there wasn't room for the Captain Lou's of the world anymore. It's sad, because I thought he and others like him brought a breath of perspective and fun.

If you haven't seen it...

2009-10-05T23:07:41Z

check out therinth's awesome post about how TV is misleading folks in the health care debate (and, no, it's not what you think).

Incontrovertible Proof...

2009-10-01T19:44:42Z

that I am the bastard child of Jomo Kenyatta and Ingrid Bergman.

Check out my Official Fake Kenyan Birth Certificate

A little pre-holiday season joy spreading...

2009-10-01T15:41:32Z

Happy Natal Anniversary asimovberlioz

2009-09-23T15:01:17Z

I know that birthdays can be difficult for you, but I like to think that every year we end still above ground and functioning is a triumph. Plus, still being here means that there are still things to be discovered and there is always the potential for joy. Best wishes of the day, and for the rest of the year, Matthew.

Crowd-sourcing the answers

2009-09-18T04:43:18Z

On the whole, I'm a big believer in crowd-sourcing. I've seen it work time and time again, when a reasonably intelligent and thoughtful group of people get together and a question arises, if somebody present doesn't know the answer, they know somebody who does. Despite its flaws on hot-topic issues, Wikipedia is pretty good proof that it tends to work well if enough people are involved that the grinding of axes can be drowned out by common sense.

I was also having a conversation with _darkvictory this evening about altruism. I know that I've been helped multiple times over the years by folks who have no real reason to help out, but they do, and expect nothing in return other than the expressed hope that I 'pay it forward'. I've run across folks who say that they don't believe there's any such thing as altruism, but I've seen it in action too many times not to believe.

So, when I heard about Aardvark, I signed up. Over the years, I've managed to somehow collect a huge amount of random facts and esoteric knowledge, and I have no trouble with sharing it if it can help somebody else find a solution to a problem they have. After all, Man is a tool-using animal and his best tool is his brain.

So, I'm asking you, my friends, to sign up too. I"ve asked a couple of questions so far and gotten good answers. I've answered a couple of questions (I hope the answers were good. I did my best to make them so). Sign up on your own or use the link to my invites if you feel like helping me get a Vark t-shirt (yes, if 10 people respond to the invitation, I get a t-shirt, which I'll probably donate somewhere, since I've already got more t-shirts than I need). Together, we know a bunch of stuff, and there's no reason not to share it with others who can make use of it.