J-Walk Blog: June 11, 2004 Archives

11 June, 2004

Kato Kaelin: A Decade Later

Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of O.J. Simpson's double murder.

Here's an article that explains what the key players in the trial are doing now: Famous names from O.J. Simpson trial. Many of them, of course, have gone on to write books.

But what about that zany Kato Kaelin guy?

Simpson's shaggy-haired houseguest has made a career playing himself on various reality shows and does charity and radio gigs. The 45-year-old Kaelin lives in Los Angeles and works in comedy development for National Lampoon. He now says he believes Simpson was guilty.

Kato fans might like this site: Brian "Kato" Kaelin - Actor, Hobo, Everyman.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Farewell To Very Important Things

One of my favorite sites, Very Important Things, has shut its doors. Well, it never really had any doors, and even it it did they would still be open. What I mean to say is that we won't see any more new posts.

Tim Dennis, the guy behind Very Important Things, writes:

So there's a waste of a year. Stay tuned for possible updates on future distractions, thanks.

The premise was simple: Dig up an old clip art image, and add a funny caption. About 68% of them were hilarious and 23% were pretty good. The remaining 9% were either completely lame or over my head. I like this one:

Thanks for the laughs, Tim.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Classic Books, Summarized In Five Words

Owen Goodyear's Literature for the Imminently Dead. Time-savers for those who will be dying soon.

I have experienced this myself, having recovered from a terminal illness earlier this year. Hours are precious; minutes tolerably valuable; days of great import, excepting vomiting-days. One does not want to waste time reading a long tome when a short would suffice. Neither does one want to waste time learning skills and information which will soon be as useless as hats for silt.

Spend a few seconds there, and you can read such works as Pride and Prejudice, Finnegans Wake, MacBeth, and even The Bible.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

In His Own Write

In the mid '60s, I bought a copy of John Lennon's book, In His Own Write. Now the text is available online (Warning: It's a Geocities site!).

DISCLAIMER This is for entertainment purposes only. I have transcribed these pages with no intent of copyright infringement. Just as song lyrics are shared on the internet, I wanted to share these stories as well.

I'm no lawyer, but this seems like a clear case of copyright infringement.

(via Incoming Signals)

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Coloring Bush

By Karen Ocker: The George W. Bush Coloring Book.

Here's an excerpt from a review at Amazon:

This is more than your standard political gag book....in fact nothing like your corny political gag book. It's a weird work of art based on the almost zen-genius like utterances of our president.

Karen Ocker's illustrations are dry, in the best sense of the word -- they don't yearn to be funny. They simply illustrate, dead on, the wacky and disturbing world of Bush, in coloring book form.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Baby Belly

From Drunken Monkey, one of the strangest images I've seen:

The human brain must be pre-wired to to have an odd response to stuff like that.

(via Grow A Brain)

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Not Again!

I just checked my email, and I had about 250 bounced messages. Another spammer is using my email address as a return address. This has happened several times in the past. I've gotten thousands of such messages.

I fully support the death penalty for spammers. I'm serious.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Alton Brown's Ribs

I saw a Good Eats show the other night, Alton Brown made some ribs in the oven (no grilling). Has anyone done anything like this: Who Loves Ya Baby-Back?

No BBQ sauce, just rub. The ribs are wrapped in foil and cooked (braised) at 250 degrees for 2-1/2 hours. Then the final step:

Transfer the braising liquid into a medium saucepot. Bring the liquid to a simmer and reduce by half or until of a thick syrup consistency. Brush the glaze onto the ribs. Place under the broiler just until the glaze caramelizes lightly. Slice each slab into 2 rib bone portions. Place the remaining hot glaze into a bowl and toss the rib portions in the glaze.

Sounds (and looked) yummy.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Clean Sweep

Are you ready to clean up your life? Try the Clean Sweep Program.

The Clean Sweep Program is a checklist of 100 items which, when completed, give one complete personal freedom. These 100 items are grouped in 4 areas of life with 25 in each group: Physical Environment, Well-being, Money and Relationships. These 4 areas are the cornerstone for a strong and healthy life and the program helps a person to clean up, restore and polish virtually every aspect of his/her life. The program takes between 6 - 24 months to complete.

My score is 76 out of 100:

Physical Environment: 20
Money: 25
Well-Being: 15
Relationships: 16

(via Steel White Table)

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Vidu Creator

Do some mouse clicking and create an avatar with Vidu Creator.

There are lots of possible combinations, and each part can be modified by clicking the Grusse button.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Organizing Your CDs

Here's an old discussion about how to organize your CDs. The methods thrown our are:

Alphabetically
Chronologically
By Genre
Autobiographically
Critically
Entropically
Randomly

If you have a lot of classical music, things can get very complicated.

Currently, I have about 1,000 CDs. They are organized by genre, and the CDs for each genre are in alphabetical order. The problem with this, of course, is that some artists and CDs spam multiple genres and assignment to a genre is often arbitrary. When we move, I'm considering reorganizing them into pure alphabetical order.

Here's a related article From the Zen Organizer: 8 Ways to Organize Your Music Collection. Some good advice:

Men usually have fairly complicated organizing systems for their records, CDs and tapes. If you have such a man in your home, let him take the reins on this project. Or you might ask a male friend what kind of system he created and borrow some of his ideas.

The best CD racks in the world are made by Boltz.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

The CapsLock Key

A movement to ban the CapsLock key: AnticAPSLOCK.com. Their mission:

Our goal here at anticAPSLOCK.com is to have the capslock key removed from keyboards that are manufactured in the future.

We will try to achieve this by spreading the word of anticAPSLOCK.com (not to mention spreading the url) and we will always appreciate any help we can get in this task.

I'm down with this idea. The only time I ever use the CapsLock key is when I hit it by accident.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Spab Sounds

Spab Sounds: Free music downloads from a J-Walk Blog reader. Some of these are pretty good.

I asked Spab if he's the sole artist on these songs. He said:

It's almost all me (despite what the completely fake discography implies) but on a few songs a few friends have done the odd lead break and vocal line. The compositions are all mine.

As you can see in the photo below, Spab Sounds uses state-of-the-art recording technology.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Alliterative Photoshopping

A Photoshop contest from Worth 1000: Alliteration.

Incorporate at least three things that begin with the same letter into an image in an amusing, interesting or creative way.

Shown here is a hedgehog hitch-hiking to Hawaii.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Overwhelmed Worker

From BBspot: Error Reports Overwhelm Microsoft Worker.

"You know when Windows XP has a problem and it asks if you want to send an error report? Well, if you click the 'send report' button that message comes to me," said Wendy who has been the Error Report Wrangler at the software giant for the past two weeks.

"After six days, I had about 14 million unread messages in my inbox and I knew I probably couldn't catch up, so I set up some filters. That was only a finger in the dam. Now, I am deleting all the messages until I've sorted through these old ones," said Cudahy.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Batteries

Everything you need to know about batteries: Battery University.

Battery University is an institution that provides practical battery knowledge for engineers, educators, students and battery users alike. The papers address battery chemistries, best battery choices and ways to make your battery last longer.

No tuition. No degrees.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Go Get Me A Beer, Max

From Wired, something dog owner have known for years: Dogs Understand Human Language.

A clever border collie that can fetch at least 200 objects by name may be living proof that dogs truly understand human language, German scientists reported on Thursday. Rico can figure out which object his master wants even if he has never heard the word before, the researchers say.

The findings, reported in the journal Science, may not surprise many dog owners. But they are certain to re-ignite a debate over what language is and whether it is unique to humans.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Message On A Label

From Snopes: Washing instruction tags on Tom Bihn bags carry a hidden message in French.

It's true.

In April 2004, someone called attention to the fact something was a little odd about the care instruction tags found on backpacks and laptop cases produced by manufacturer TOM BIHN of Port Angeles, Washington.

Specifically, what was unusual was that the English and French statements on those tags didn't quite match - while both versions included the usual admonitions not to use bleach, not to machine dry, and not to iron the bags, the French-language version included an extra phrase: "NOUS SOMMES DESOLES QUE NOTRE PRESIDENT SOIT UN IDIOT. NOUS N'AVONS PAS VOTE POUR LUI." Roughly translated, this statement reads in English as: "We're sorry our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."

It's not clear how and why that message got there, but we certainly can't rule out a good old fashioned publicity stunt. Sales of Tom Binh products are stronger than ever.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

Time Travel Books

A question posed at Ask MetaFilter: Who can recommend some good time travel fiction? (Yes, I'm a geek).

Lots of responses, and lots of book recommendations. I like this genre, but I doubt that I'll find a better time travel novel than Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

IBM Typewriters

Once the backbone of modern business, now a useless antique. History of the IBM Typewriter. It covers the period 1930 - 1993.

The one I'm most familiar with is the IBM Correcting Selectric II (circa 1973):

Posted on 11 June, 2004

A Good Start

From The Register: MS sues 200 for spamming.

Microsoft has filed eight lawsuits in the US against nearly 200 accused spammers, saying that the defendants had used false information to conceal themselves, and had deceived consumers. Each of the lawsuits "names" at least 20 unidentified defendants, as well as one John Hites, identified by anti-spam campaigners at Spamhaus as one of the world's ten most prolific spammers.

Microsoft is seeking injunctions against each defendant, using the CAN-Spam act, and could be awarded up to $1m per spammer in civil fines. THe company said it hopes to unmask the anonymous spammers through the legal discovery process.

Posted on 11 June, 2004

A Company In A Day

Is it possible to create a Dotcom company in 24 hours?

Right now we are at the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin to make a performance art/business project. The mission is to create a dotcom business from scratch in 24 hours. That means designing and programming a complete and useful web application, recruiting people, doing marketing, creating investment programs and much more. After 24 hours, the complete business will be sold on an eBay auction, and everyone involved will be rich!

Here's the schedule:

19:00 Building the Office
19:30 Kick-off party
19:45 International expansion
20:00 Concepts and planning
14:00 Alpha release
16:00 Beta release
18:00 Final candidate
18:30 Release Party
18:59 Launch, IPO on eBay

Posted on 11 June, 2004