Some dudes at Carnegie Mellon have devised a way to make dynamic buttons - like actual, physical buttons - in a touch screen interface. And they've done it without crazy expensive space-age polymers, which has been the best thing smart guys have thunk up thus far.
"But I can use my super sleek, totally flat iPhone just fine," says you, as you wonder if this news story is maybe worthy of moderate recommendation, but not HIGHLY recommended status. And you're right - but touch-screens with no tactile indicators take your total visual concentration. But people want touch screens all over the place - in cars, dark rooms while they watch movies, and places where they do really intricate surgery on baby polar bears - so they need to be able to feel a button without having to take their eye of the road/film/baby polar bear spinal cord. Try THAT with your iPhone, smarty-pants.
I found this over at Slashdot, and the first couple of comments are worth recommendation themselves:
Locke2005: Publishing the braille edition of Playboy suddenly makes a lot more sense!
Reason58: They already have interactive porn. The problem is you constantly have to buy it dinner and feign interest while it talks about its day.
:::rimshot::: - thanks folks, the Internet will be here all week.
I just paid more to see Cinematic Titanic live than I did for my last big concert. I think I'm ok with that.
Granted, I'm not sold on the show yet, but considering the almost 20 years of laughs I've had from Mystery Science Theater 3000, I'll be happy just to be in a theater full of fellow fans as Joel and the Bots/Crew do their thing.
Oh, and suck it, NYC, 'cause they ain't comin' there.
The Deep Red Film Festival runs this Friday and Saturday in Portland. The films are mostly new exploitation genre, with titles like Black Devil Doll and Zombie Girl: The Movie. I'm probably going to hit the original 1978 Italian version of Inglorious Bastards, which was the inspiration for Tarantino's remake, coming this summer.
An unrepentant ID thief was just sentenced to 13 years, which is the longest jail term ever for that crime. The guy was not only convicted more than a dozen times, but wrote gleeful shitty raps about the thug ID theft life, like this gem:
You know how we do it we make our money and run. If we ruiend (sic) your life just know we had fun.
Commenters on the story have started penning their own raps about this guy's future:
(flashin' west coast hand sign)
My name is Stephen, pro-nounced Steeeeeeee-Vehn, I gots thirteen years cause the law got even.
I can't believe I got caught Cause I Prolly shoulda been shot Now I'll be spoonin' on a jail cell cot.
yeah, yeah, yeah
(flashin' west coast hand sign and doing the body wave)
Ever since I heard Fatboy Slim boast that he made his records for the cost of coffee and cigarettes he consumed while recording them, I've had a festering desire to leave it all behind and record electronic pop music. Certainly my wit will shine through my selection of old school samples, intermittent movie quotes, and uhm, block-rocking beats.
Ironically, the digital age has robbed the electronic music scene of some of its verve, as actual pieces of noise making equipment have been replaced by computer-based representations of these things. From Rebirth to GarageBand... electronic music has become the audio equivalent of really good finger painting (not exactly what I intended with the link but too good to pass up). Still, I've been reticent to rave, as it were, wondering if there wasn't a better, EASIER way to gift the musical world with my electronic interpretations.
Perhaps, though, the genre need suffer without my unique brand of drum n bass no longer.
I played around with this for entirely too long given that someone is currently paying for the use of my time, and I gotta tell you, those dreams of being the third Dust Brother (there are only two now, right?) started to creep back up.
Then I saw this rack of old computer garbage, and knew I was totally outmatched.
Kanye West might not know much about fish sticks, but he still manages to continually find cool stuff on the web for his blog. Here's one of the latest, which I want want want regardless of the fact that no one probably wants to hear me try to create a badly mixed jam consisting of 70's King Crimson and Japanese Speed Metal.
I just moved into a new apartment. In the last place, my office chair wore the finish off the floor. I figured it would be wise to get a chair mat so this doesn't happen again. I should have realized that for some people, even chair mats are a good excuse to flame someone.
Many, many more photos of the reasons we're like this can be found on this site.
btw -- this is how karma works. Sure all that Star Wars stuff seems super dorky now, but in 1979 it was probably enough to make this kid an complete Mack. But what happens to him then?
..Braces with headgear.
ps -- I'm really worried that as I click through this site that I'll be on there somewhere.
Alright, this is for history buffs or business fans. I'm mildly obsessed with history. WWII- read about it endlessly as a kid. Silicon Valley- read about Jobs, and Gates, Fairchild Semi, and Xerox Parc (Fire in the Valley is highly recommended). Stanford, wanted to go there, couldn't afford it- wish I'd listened to Otto Phanstiel and gone anyway.
Anyway here is a fascinating lecture that takes about an hour:
In this day of Newspapers dying left and right under diminished readerships and increasing obscurity versus the immediacy of Internet communication, it's good to see someone still has the sense of humor enough to continue to play the violin while the rest of Rome burns.
Nero, in this case being The Washington Post -- one of the few old battleships that is most likely not to sink in this recent mess, and this awesome feature displaying reader-submitted dioramas made of Peeps.
If I told you that Dan the Automator (Dr. Octagon, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Lovage, Gorillaz) were producing a Leicester band (Kasabian) who sounds a bit Mad-chester would you listen?
What if the video had Noel Feilding (Mighty Boosh) and was directed by Richard Ayoade (IT Crowd)?
What if all my pop media suggestions came together? Well it wouldn't be quite as good as I had imagined it, but it was still pretty good.
He can teach you to make ridiculous amounts of money in a tiny amount of time. The description of one of his two-hour courses suggests that he can teach you to make $100,000 in 90 minutes.
Not mentioned is why Mr. Bauer would spend 120 minutes teaching if he could make $100K in 90 minutes. That's all part of the mystery, I guess.
Below, he berates you for having a crappy business card. Before you click play, you should know that Joel Bauer is completely serious.
I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated by this. Maybe it's that I've met guys like Joel, and been sad for them. I think maybe I feel like it's a kind of public service announcement. If you go through your life believing something ridiculous like "life isn't about being liked, it's about being effective", take a moment to look outside your wacky world in which your sheer chutzpah and willingness to say ridiculous things keeps people from telling you how much of a nutter you really are.
The cheap way to get great local food in Portland is at food carts. This is no mere turnpike cure for alcohol poisoning. I've counted three parking lots so far where food carts pay rent, setting themselves up semi-permanently.
The carts are also regularly inspected by the health department so you don't have to worry about foodborne illness every time you want a gyro.
My favorite so far is Brunch Box, which has breakfast sandwiches on homemade English muffins.
So now, thanks to the fine, fine folks at Disjecta and Willamette Week, there is a Food Cart Festival. Next weekend, you can sample wares from a swath of carts for the grand whopping total of $5. Yes, that includes the food.
This has been pretty publicized but it's a great story so one more retelling won't hurt it. Thinkgeek.com played a little April Fool's Joke by putting up an ad for a Tauntaun sleeping bag designed after the scene in The Empire Strikes Back.
One problem though -- people loved it.
The orders and inquiry emails were so overwhelming that ThinkGeek is now in talks with Lucasfilms to try to get a license to make these things for real. They are sorta cute -- but this is where that line between your Star Wars geekdom and your childs need to rest will probably clash, especially when they find out what the lining of this thing is supposed to be made of..
I had been saving up finds from my new hometown of Portland, OR to produce an all-in-one post a la San Francisco. However, I'm sort of getting a life (who knew?), and I'm not seeing a disposable hour coming up any time soon.
What's important is that you ask me what kind of car my parents got me. What's important is that any town worth its salt needs a fine, fine doughnut-making establishment.
So I'm leading off the Stumptown recommendations with Voodoo Doughnut, which combines the wonders of a nearly all-hours donut joint with a Mexican Day of the Dead/stoner aesthetic.
And yes, the doughnuts are amazing. I had one with chocolate and fresh coconut. I didn't have the maple doughnut with a strip of bacon on it, but please, don't let that stop you.
Obviously the times they are a changing. And in light of Monster's ad post, The Guardian, in partnership with HRToM is announcing the shift to new media:
I had been saving up finds from my new hometown of Portland, OR to produce an all-in-one post a la San Francisco. However, I'm sort of getting a life (who knew?), and I'm not seeing a disposable hour coming up any time soon.
