Shiny Things

Stuff that the magpie in me can’t resist.

• Upside-down Champagne
• Levitating salt and pepper shakers
• Pencil art, sort of
• Hanging chain wine bottle holder
• Hip Hop Violin
• Mr. Gilligan
• Fujitsu Fabric PC
• Super cool decals for your kids walls (or for your own)
• Water Table
• MONSTERS! (I like macho the best)
• Karaage

If I Was A Hot Chick

If I was a hot a chick, I’d totally be a science groupie.

Scientists are my heroes. They are among the most important people in modern society. The expand the bounds of not just the known, but the knowable. And the best part of it is that for ever answer they give us, they give us 10 questions. And they do so out of a shear desire to know more.

I’m not smart enough to be a scientist, nor do I have a particular desire to be one. I don’t feel driven in that direction. But I do love those folks who are driven to science and research. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with them. My circle of friends doesn’t include any, but videos like this make me sure that were I a hot chick, I’d totally be a groupie for them.

Breaking Bad

I watched this new AMC show last night.

Bryan Cranston (best known to me as the father in Malcolm in the Middle) plays a Walter White, a wimpy high school chemistry teacher who finds that he has terminal lung cancer. He decides he’ll spend his last time on earth making a ton of money by cooking meth. Hijinks, as they so often do, ensue.

It’s a good start to a series. Bryan Cranston is the perfect guy for this role. He’s the prototypically put upon loving husband. From his real enthusiasm for science and love for his family and utter discouragement at fate, he’s convincing. The supporting cast are all good, with his young partner in crime being the weakest. He’s a fairly run of the mill smart ass reprobate, but it’s one episode, so I give that the benefit of the doubt. This first episode set up everything in a fairly straight forward way. You get to see the players, and the action starts off with a bang as out hero kills two drug dealers (it was self defense, sort of).

The show is clearing cashing in on the popularity of Weeds. But it doesn’t ape the Showtime show much. It’s a lot grittier and way more manic. Which is perfect a show about meth, I suppose. My one sort-of critique of the show is that there’s no time given to Walter’s decision to “break bad”. You’re given the reasons, sure. His family is badly cash strapped and he knows his time on earth is limited, so why not make as much cash for the wife he loves and his disabled son (cerebral palsy) while he can. and then he happens to see the chance on a ride-along with his brother-in-law. But that’s not enough for me. But I think for someone, even in those circumstances, to go to such extremes, there needs to be more. Maybe there is.

Comics, Vol. 3

It’s been a while so I have a lot of books (for me).

• Ultimate Power No. 9 of 9:
  I forgot to cancel my order for this book after last issue, and thank GOD! Because I would have missed out on the chance to write the following sentence: This book is a great big steaming pile of garbage, offal, dung, tripe, and shit. The real pity is all that paper used to print the thing could have gone to a good cause, like banners in support of Brittany Spears, postit notes used to make a witty and ironic larger sign that self referentially mentions postit notes, or institution grade toilet paper capable of scrapping off several layer of skin. Alas for what might have been.
• The Goon No. 20:
  
  Man-eating bird-women are killing idiots who owe the Goon money. This will not stand! So naturally the Goon goes and tries to beat the crap outta them and anyone else in the vicinity. I heart violence.
• The Boys No. 12 – 14:
  This wraps up the story of Nina, a sex crazed homicidal midget and ends in a scene showing a few hundred heads exploding (it’s Garth Ennis, what else could happen?)
• Jack of Fables No. 17 and 18:
  This is still a fun book, but I hope it gets on track with a story soon. These two episodes have been a bit light on story. No. 18 set up some good stuff to come.
• Powers No 26:
  I really love this book. It might be my favorite straight comic right now. It’s half hard boiled detective and half superheros. And the whole thing works because you get to know the characters as people first. This is great writing.
• Fables No. 67 and 68:
  Ambrose the Frog Prince keeps stirring the pot in the Fablelands. First he defeats then recruits the champion of his enemies, then he sicks ghosts on them, then he surrenders and is apparently hacked to bits. Dude has a plan.
• Hellblazer No 238 and 239:
  238 is a stand alone issue. John helps his old… friend? Map, an incarnation of the City of London, only to have his good deeds turned to shit. You know, if Constantine wasn’t such an utter asshole himself, you could start to feel sorry for the guy.

There are a few collections as well, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. I guess it wasn’t as many books as I thought.

Howard Rheingold: Professional Cool Person

I’ve been using the net since ’92. That’s longer than most people, but far from extraordinary. But in all that time I’ve never much cared about the culture of the net, except in as much as I was a part of it. I never read any of the studies about it or books on the subject.

It’s a shame I didn’t, because I might have learned about Howard Rheingold earlier. I knew of him, I even read the SmartMobs blog for a while. But I never read anything about the man. And I’ve never read any of this books. I’ve taken steps to remedy that. But a quick look on amazon doesn’t show any biographies of him. If anyone knows of one, let me know in the comments.

As for what makes him cool, well, he seems like a Charles Stross or Cory Doctorow character. He sees further and faster than the rest of us. He wrote about virtual communities in ’93 when most people had only heard of the net, not used it. And his life appears to be scattered with stuff that I could only dream about, like working at Xerox PARC and editing the Whole Earth Review.

His latest effort is a vlog updating A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community, the article he wrote in ’88 and first updated in ’92. He’s decided it’s time to update once again, and this time use all the available media, hence the vlog. It’s a series of short videos titled A Re(slice) of Life Online.

Now I’m off to read the original article.

Dangerous Kids

There’s a video of a talk by Gever Tulley posted at TED titled “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do” and it’s pretty good.

The list includes: play with fire, own a pocket knife, throw a spear, deconstruct appliances, break the DMCA, drive a car.

It’s a good list, and he makes great points about them all. I’m sad to say that Rowen has done few of these. I’ve let her “throw a spear” for values of spear that include other potentially dangerous throwable items. I think “spear” should probably be very loosely interpreted for that item. But her closest brush with fire is throwing balled up paper into a fireplace. To my knowledge she has never even lit a match. I know for sure she doesn’t have and has never used a pocket knife or anything resembling one. We’ve never taken apart any appliances together. She does break the DMCA, and when I taught her how to rip her CDs for listening on her mp3 player, I took that opportunity to give a low pressure talk about rights and responsibilities. And she hasn’t ever driven a car, but I do think I’m going to let her have a go at that soon. I used to do that with my Dad at her age.

That talk has a lot of resonance with a couple of books out recently. The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls. I got the latter for Rowen a month ago. We haven’t had a chance to do any of the really good stuff in it yet, but Rowen likes it and digs reading about the various women included.

If you have kids under 16, you should check out the video and those books.

Posthumous Post From a U.S. Soldier in Iraq

Andrew Olmsted was a blogger, and more importantly, a soldier. This is his last post ever, as he was killed.

Read it.