November 2011
2 posts
The Newest National Park
The National Park Service announced that the 397th national park will be in Patterson, NJ — a mere 30 miles from me! I had no idea that Patterson Great Falls even existed, but now I want to go to there.
Photo by eutrophication&hypoxia
Your Kindle Gets Heavier Each Time You Download a...
The weight difference is unlikely to make much difference to holidaymakers’ baggage allowances, however, because each new tome is about as heavy as a single molecule of DNA.
Read the article for a full explanation.
(via Marginal Revolution)
October 2011
1 post
2 tags
W Knows Bo
From an old article about a White Sox / Rangers brawl:
George W. Bush, general partner of the Rangers, was in a box seat near the Texas dugout when the brawl broke out and said he considered for a second running onto the field.
“I thought about it, but then I saw Bo coming out and decided to stay where I was,” said Bush.
With quick thinking like that, is it any wonder he was...
August 2011
1 post
A Great Read on the S&P Situation
So this is an outrage — not because America is A-OK, but because these people are in no position to pass judgment.
Paul Krugman on the S&P’s big downgrade announcement.
(via @nbauman)
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Heavy Stuff
A copy of The New Yorker should not weigh 500 MB. … Condé Nast would never ship the paper magazine in a box that weighs 50 pounds. But that’s exactly what their digital editions feel like.
— John Gruber on iPad magazines
4 tags
Chosen
For most of my “web career”, I have been a definite taker of open source projects and not much of a giver. While I’ve always liked the idea of sharing work, I’ve always found an excuse to pass (not enough time, someone better than me should do that, baseball is on tv). Thankfully, Harvest asked me to spend some time working on a project we could share and no excuses were...
2 tags
How Much is Hogwarts Tuition?
The economics department at Lehigh University took a stab at answering that very question:
On page 51 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry receives a letter detailing the equipment that he is required to purchase for Hogwarts. The letter is reproduced here. Centives went to Amazon.co.uk to estimate how much each of the items would cost.
[snip]
One Pair of Protective Gloves...
1 tag
Really Long YouTube Videos
Kottke linked to a handful of 10 hour videos the other day and it continues to boggle my mind that YouTube can handle them. I imagine the file size for such a crazy length of video is fairly large.
It seems that almost all of the 10 hour are computer generated, so their creation time isn’t anywhere near as long as the time it takes to watch them start to finish. I did stumble across one...
June 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Fun With Lions at the Zoo
This is a video of a 400 pound lioness trying to eat a small child at the zoo. Even though there are several inches of glass between the lion and child, there’s still something very disconcerting about watching a lion “attack” a helpless child.
After watching that video, it’s not hard to imagine what would happen if you wandered into the enclosure, right? You’d...
2 tags
Dig This: Heavy Equipment Playground
Sand Shovel by Ben Bunch
For the right price in Las Vegas, you can live out any number of boyhood fantasies (easy buddy, we’re gonna keep this clean). You can drive Ferraris, Indy Cars and Dune Buggies, pilot Fighter Jets or play basketball with Michael Jordan. A new company called Dig This has created my favorite adolescent adventure yet: construction equipment playground.
I’ve...
2 tags
Peanutweeter
Peanutweeter matches kinda random Twitter posts with somewhat less than random Peanuts® comic strips by Charles Schulz.
This might be my new favorite Tumblr.
3 tags
Delivereads
Dave Pell (the self-titled “Internet Superhero”) recently launched Delivereads, a service that sends a handful of curated articles straight to your Kindle each week. It’s a wonderful idea with excellent execution. Here’s the sign-up process:
Let Amazon know Delivereads is going to send content to your Kindle
Give Delivereads your Kindle’s email address
Read
...
2 tags
Lockitron
For around 300 bucks, Lockitron lets you turn regular doors into awesome doors from the future that can be opened via smartphone or text message. Never again will your keys poke you in the leg when you’re jammed into a full subway car.
I was tempted to ignore the obvious security issues and order this bad boy until I read this:
The Lockitron is currently a “beta” product and...
1 tag
Hobbes and Bacon
When Bill Watterson ended Calvin and Hobbes, he could have handed the reigns of the beloved strip over to any number of cartoonists and raked in a pile of cash. Of course, Watterson was staunchly opposed to any licensing or merchandising of his work — and milking it for a few extra dollars would have been unspeakable. The last strip ran in papers over 15 years ago and yet it’s still...
May 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Lunch
Joel Spolsky (of Fog Creek and Stack Exchange) advocates for team lunch at work:
The importance of eating together with your co-workers is not negotiable, to me. It’s too important to be left to chance. That’s why we eat together at long tables, not a bunch of little round tables. That’s why when new people start work at the company, they’re not allowed to sit off by themselves in a corner. When...
1 tag
It's Not to Late to Say Thanks
Photo by John Moore, Getty Images
The Atlantic’s excellent In Focus blog ran a collection of photos for Memorial Day and the picture above really struck me. There are many people who deserve our thanks today and not all of them have served directly for a branch of the armed forces. The families of our servicemen and women bear a tremendous burden — and they are just as deserving of...
1 tag
Obama's Correspondent's Dinner Speech
You’ve probably already seen President Obama’s speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, but it’s simply too good not to share. Grab some popcorn and watch the whole thing.
March 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Meet Gardener
Harvest just released an alpha version of a project I helped build, called Gardener:
In February, a few members of our team were asked to dedicate a week to R&D by building a new time-tracking app. While discussing scope, we agreed that we get more done on days that we take a a few minutes to set an agenda, and we sought to design an app around this thesis:
I believe planning/allocating...
1 tag
Who Turned Out the Lights?
Earth hour asks people to turn off the lights for one hour to serve as a small symbol of commitment to further action against global warming. I don’t know how effective this gesture is, but it sure does make for some nice imagery.
Both Alan Taylor’s In Focus and Boston Globe’s Big Picture have posted sets of pictures from earth hour. Most of the photos are of famous landmarks...
2 tags
Better Than a Bronze Plaque?
Opening day is approaching and Summer Anne Burton is doing her part to make sure we’re ready. Though she’s only about 10% of the way through drawing every baseball hall of famer, I smell an impending book deal. Go ahead and sign me up for a pre-order, Summer.
(via the really, really awesome Chitwood & Hobbs)
1 tag
Grandpa Jay
Earlier this morning, my Grandpa Jay passed away. Though the news was not unexpected, that hasn’t stopped me from reminiscing my Saturday away.
Many of my favorite moments with him were spent over a game of cards after school (usually gin rummy or cribbage). Our games gave us a chance to talk about my classes or sports or whatever was going on in the world. Mostly, though, we talked about...
February 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Ken Jennings Welcomes Our New Overlords
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably already know that Jeopardy! super-champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter were defeated by IBM’s new supercomputer, Watson. It’s been 14 years since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov and Watson represents a tremendous leap forward in natural language understanding.
Over at Slate, Jenning’s has offered a wonderful...
1 tag
1 tag
Feel Good Story
I am not immune to a sweet tale of human decency:
On a plane bound for O’Hare International Airport, Elsie Clark felt weak, scared and utterly alone — until she spotted a pair of shiny leather shoes across the aisle.
What happened to the 79-year-old Canadian over the next 12 hours — she was embraced by a good Samaritan, escorted through O’Hare in a wheelchair and...
Happy Valentine's Day
Will you be my Valentine, reader? No? Ok, then — read this profile of the Sweetheart candy company for a little Valentine’s Day trivia:
More than eight billion (some 13 million pounds) of the little hearts are sold in the six weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. Sweethearts make up 40 percent of the Valentine candy market, just behind chocolate, according to Aimee Scott, Necco’s...
1 tag
The Only Super Bowl Preview You Need to Read
HINES WARD is a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. You will notice him because he always seems to be smiling, even when he’s tackled. The joy this man gets from adrenaline and violence is so pure and awesome that if football didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it to prevent Hines Ward from breaking into zoos and biting polar bears in half.
From The Rumpus’s “Super Bowl...
2 tags
Make Mine a Pepperoni
Ask most American’s what their favorite pizza topping is and there’s a very good chance the answer will be pepperoni. With Pizza’s big day fast approaching (the Super Bowl is to pizza what Valentine’s Day is to flowers), the New York Times takes a look at pepperoni and its absence from nearly all of the high-end pizzerias that have opened up in recent years.
Across the...
1 tag
An Amazing Life
Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop. He’s now destroying them. That is an amazing life.
Rupert Murdoch on Steve Jobs and the iPad.
(via Daring Fireball)
January 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Netflix Gets It
Netflix maintains a tech blog where they discuss everything from their database set-up to their innovative cloud architecture to how Netflix performs across different ISPs. If you’re a developer who’s at all interested in how a large online business manages scale and implements new features, it’s a must read.
While much of the content is very technical, anyone with an interest...
A 12-Year-Old Explains the Information Age's Facts...
I don’t know what kind of stories you’ve heard from your friends or the ladies in your book club. Sometimes, old people will spread around what they’ve heard from other old people. This can make things even more confusing and scary. That’s why it’s important you get the straight facts from me.
Classic McSweeney’s
(via Linklog)
Queue: The Communist Version of Monopoly
Instead of Chance and Community Chest, players will draw wild cards that can be positive - getting them sent to the front of the queue because of a Communist Party connection - or negative, such as seeing a shop closed down for ‘decadence’.
I’m sure they’ll be queuing up to buy this one (sorry, I could not resist).
(via Marginal Revolution)
1 tag
US State Economic Equivalents
I have long been a fan of the anecdote that, if counted separately from the US economy, California’s economy would rank in top 10 worldwide. To me, it’s an excellent illustration of just how large the US economy is compared to the rest of the world. Now, The Economist has taken it a step further and assembled a map showing US states as their nearest counterpart by size in the world...
2 tags
Beware Bears
The Seattle Seahawks Marshawn Lynch had a 67 yard touchdown run that literally made the ground shake during his team’s upset win on Saturday:
Vidale said a seismic monitoring station located about 100 yards west of the stadium registered seismic activity during Lynch’s run. The shaking was most intense during a 30-second stretch about the time Lynch broke free from the line of...
December 2010
6 posts
2 tags
2 tags
Slice Harvester Tells it Like It Is
I’ve made no effort to conceal my love of pizza and am not ashamed to admit that there are more than a couple pizza blogs in my RSS reader. I don’t easily tire of reading about new pizza places and I’m always interested in a fresh perspective.
Colin from Slice Harvester is attempting to eat every slice of pizza in New York City (starting with Manhattan). There has been...
2 tags
2 tags
At least not at Christmastime
This story of a man barricading himself in the Harrod’s Christmas light control room and spelling out naughty words is funny. The quote from the Gary, Indiana grandmother who witnessed it? Pure comedy gold.
“Honestly, I am disgusted, ” said Irene Rider, 59, from Gary, Indiana. “I was with my grandchildren. We had just gotten off the bus. I said ‘look everybody’ and pointed up to the lights...
2 tags
Songs of the Years
Ben Greenman created a special playlist for the New Yorker holiday party this year. He chose one track from each year of the New Yorker’s existence and played them in chronological order:
At the party, the mix worked like a charm. Jazz and blues greeted the early arrivals, and as the party picked up, the mood became romantic (thanks to the big-band and vocal recordings of the late thirties...
3 tags
Unwrapper
Did you know that, when used on food packaging, words such as “healthy” and “low-calorie” have specific definitions regulated by the USDA and FDA? If you’ve ever been wandering the aisles of a grocery store and wanted to know exactly how a giant sack of potato chips can get away with being labeled “light,” wonder no more.
The guys from Salt & Fat have...
November 2010
10 posts
Socialist Pilgrims
According to the New York Times, Tea Partiers apparently think that the Pilgrims who first celebrated Thanksgiving were socialists. My mind has been racing with replies to this nonsense, but I just can’t say it any better than Samara:
Who F-ing cares if the Pilgrims were Socialists? The article goes on to discuss why the pilgrims were not, in fact, Socialists. But even if they were, who...
1 tag
Bread People
No further description needed. Go there now.
(Thanks, Matt)
2 tags
Meet the Mets (New Manager)
When I first moved to the NYC area, I felt like the Mets would be a good local team for me to cheer for. Their second-class status in New York (to the Yankees) reminds me very much of the way the White Sox exist in Chicago. They play in the NL, so I don’t have to worry about them playing the Sox unless both teams make the World… err… never.
My first season as a prospective Mets...
1 tag
Harvest Summit
Twice a year, Harvest brings the four members of our remote team into NYC for a team summit. Our team has grown considerably this year and, despite the fact that we work together every day, many of us were meeting for the first time. Having an opportunity to share a meal and a drink (or perhaps a few drinks) and converse in person is really awesome.
I already miss Dee (Romania), Barry...
2 tags
No Translation
This list of 20 “untranslatable” words is quite enjoyable (particularly numbers 16-18):
16. Hyggelig (Danish): Its “literal” translation into English gives connotations of a warm, friendly, cozy demeanor, but it’s unlikely that these words truly capture the essence of a hyggelig; it’s likely something that must be experienced to be known. I think of good friends, cold beer, and a...
2 tags
Lucky Guy
Apparently, Dick Van Dyke was saved by porpoises after falling asleep on his surfboard. Lucky for him, the porpoise was a former Baywatch cast member who knew exactly how to handle the situation.
Cue sad trombone (at least I was able to avoid an awful porpoise pun).
(via Marginal Revolution)
2 tags
Holocaust Fund Defrauded
A group of New Yorkers has been accused of defrauding a fund which offers reparations to Holocaust victims.
Over 16 years, the suspects used fake identification documents, doctored government records and a knowledge of Holocaust history to defraud the fund of more than $42 million, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara.
Every day,...
Derek Jeter Wins Another Gold Glove
I just can’t resist. Here are Rob Neyer’s thoughts on the occasion:
It’s his fifth, which means he’s now won at least four more Gold Gloves than he’s deserved. By any stretch of the fever-crazed imagination.
Congrats, I guess?
2 tags
Really, Mr. President?
Tonight, I watched George W. Bush’s first major interview since he left the White House nearly two years ago. In the interview, Matt Lauer asks him about a passage in his book where he refers to the “worst moment of his presidency.” Can you guess which event he was referring to?
In case you’re having trouble remembering the Bush years, here’s a list of things that...
2 tags
The Google War
When the media writes about technology companies, the word “war” is tossed around far too frequently. Apple is at war with Google. Microsoft is at war with Sony. Tumblr is at war with Posterous. Etc, etc, etc.
With all of the hyperbole out there, the words “Google” and “invasion” appearing together in the same headline didn’t totally pique my interest...
April 2010
3 posts
2 tags
The right-hand traffic diversion
Kungsgatan, Stockholm on Dagen H
How do you switch the driving side of the road for an entire nation? Let’s just say it’s quite a process — a process so involved it gets its own logo and name:
Dagen H (H day), today mostly referred to as Högertrafikomläggningen (“The right-hand traffic diversion”), was the day, 3 September 1967, on which traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand...