Flash

I’m not really sure what is about Flash that gives me so much trouble. All the other applications in the Creative Suite I can handle, but Flash gives me fits. The phrase “knows enough to be dangerous” sort of works here, but really “retarded five-year-old on crystal meth, wielding a hammer” more accurately describes my user experience.

A quick googling of “i hate flash” leads me to believe that I’m not alone in this.

Helvetica vs. Arial

A Quiz. Can you tell the Microsoft rip-off from the classic. I scored 7/10.

Robert Capa

Capa practically invented the image of the globe-trotting war photographer, with a cigarette appended to the corner of his mouth and cameras slung over his fatigues. His fearlessness awed even his soldier subjects, and between battles he hung out with Hemingway and Steinbeck and usually drank too much, seeming to pull everything off with panache. William Saroyan wrote that he thought of Capa as “a poker player whose sideline was picture-taking.”

A cache of Robert Capa’s negatives have been recovered. This is what worries me about the massive and rushed transition to digital – no one will ever find and print an ancient cache of flash cards, and even if they did, it’d be from only one shoot. (via Kottke)

Trains

Cap metro’s first rail cars are here all the way from Switzerland.

Lego Facts

2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour. That and more Lego facts.

Typos

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I fully acknowledge my propensity to fat-finger a keyboard (I even bought one with special huge keys), but at least I don’t make road signs. I checked and the rest of the street signs are spelled with a “c.”

On Funeral Rites…

Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.
– Mark Twain

Funerals are a weird thing. I’ve decided that my heirs, if I have any, or barring that any friends that I might still have, will be required by my last will and testament to construct a trebuchet or catapult like-device out of whatever available materials they might happen upon in the inevitable-post-apocalyptic-era (which could very well start tomorrow), test fire said siege engine, then hurl the lovely crockery urn that contains my ashes onto some great abyss, canyon or cliff. Something with a good view and nice weather. Some place where my particulate matter has space to roam. After this I expect people to drink copiously. And maybe burn the catapult, because that would just be cool.

Ridiculous? Of course. But that’s the point. Greet the afterlife with the same gusto with which you lived your life. The Irish got it right with the wake tradition. Mourn the passing, but celebrate their life.

At Cafe Mundi

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Since the demise of Things That Go Pop, I’ve kind of lost my connection to the low-key music scene. Sure I still make it to bigger shows, but last night was the first time I’d been to Cafe Mundi in a good long while.

A guy and guitar, with a small room filled to capacity, with the only occasional interruption from the hiss of the espresso machine. A good way to see a show and a good Friday night.

UFO

Yet more irrefutable evidence has surfaced today from Stephenville TX:

Steve Allen, a 50-year-old pilot, was at a campfire with friends and says the object was a mile long and half a mile wide. “I don’t know if it was a biblical experience or somebody from a different universe or whatever but it was definitely not from around these parts,” Allen said.

That’s right. Proof positive that the entire northeast corner of the state should be forcibly given to Oklahoma, Arkansas or anyone else who would take it. Really. We don’t want it anymore.

As if having Dallas and a town called “White Settlement” wasn’t bad enough now we have a cluster of UFO spotters talking to the national media? I saw it in reddit yesterday, but then I got I heard about it on NPR this morning. Oh my god, this is Texas for christ’s sake, we’re not supposed to do things like this. If you really did see a UFO, do the same thing you did when you ‘accidentally’ kissed your cousin – shut the hell up about it. And if you were absolutely overcome with the desire to discuss this could you please consider not using ‘bigger than a Wal-Mart’ as your primary descriptor? Please?

At the Mall

I was making my annual trip to the mall to buy my yearly pair of jeans, when I happened upon what is clearly a sign of the end of all things good.

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So we have become some fat and lazy as a country that our mall security gaurds need Segways. Seeing this made me want me commit a mall-crime, so as to initiate some kind of low-speed-segway-police-chase, prefereably ending in this dude executing some kind of flying tackle off his ridiculous scooter, in front of the build-a-bear store (another sign of the endtimes – the mall is full of them). To be fair, the only reason he’d catch me is because I’d be laughing so hard. Maybe he could use his really spiffy helmet as a weapon.