The Times Newsaic
My friend David Taylor started a very ambitious project this past January, he is creating a collage every day using the New York Times. Each piece has a certain structure and a theme or concept that was derrived from that days paper. Each piece is created from torn pictures and text from the paper and glued to a board cut to the size of a folded issue of the NYtimes.
He has just posted the first quarter of 2008 to his blog The Times Newsaic he created just for the project
One of David’s favorite pieces, and mine is the one from January 20
It is fun to see what David was thinking on certain days of the year like your birthday (this one scares me)
or anniversary, I love the coincidence of the placement of diamonds! Check out your notable days.
Get with the program folks
Airport security my be an oxymoron, I wonder all the time if the inconvenience is actually worth it.
But so long as we have to deal with the security lines, lets all get along together. 80% of the people making their way thru security are the ones screwing up the system, by creating some efficiency will make the user experience at best tolerable.
So a few tips:
Prior to getting to the table to place your stuff on, put all loose things in your carry on. You should have your carry on and your luggage if you are not checking your bags.
Grab 2 bins, If you need more that 2 bins, you are carrying too much stuff.
Get all the heavy metal crap outta your pockets before arriving at the line, how many times do you watch someone, beep, then empty their pockets.
Got a laptop? first make it accessible, second, put it in a bin by its self, and do that first, really do it first before removing your shoes
Shoes, ok how long have we been going shoeless thru the metal detector (way to long, upgrade the damn detectors, I digress) your shoes come off last, for those of you who decide that knee high tied footwear are the right thing for air travel, you are wrong, same goes for tied shoes, high top sneakers, and any other shoe that requires more than 2 seconds to remove both.
Place shoes in the second bin along with your jacket etc
Rolling baggage, does not go on the table, roll that until the last second and put it on the xray machine belt.
If you follow these simple rules the line will move fast and efficient making your fellow travelers much happier.
And finally, once thru the metal detector, collect your stuff and move, don’t put your shoes on, don’t put your laptop back in you bag, just grab it and move on, there are usually tables located right past the collection zone, that’s what they are there for, so use them.
This is crazy
My keyboard and trackpad went south, last week, so I brought my MacBook Pro to the Apple store and it magically all worked. ok. Then this past weekend on Sunday same shit no keyboard or trackpad, plugging in external works fine… but I’m stressing, and I don’t really need the additional stress, heading to San Francisco today, Tuesday ment that I can’t get it repaired in time. Solution, get the cute bluetooth keyboard from Apple, yeah it is like all Apple products, a very slick piece of industrial design, but I really don’t want to be wipping out my keyboard to work with my laptop. Fuck, this sucks.
A little twitter management
Last night I finally got to following peeps that have been gracious enough to follow me over the last few weeks. I’ve considered using a bot to auto-follow new followers, but I do have 2 criteria for following and I don’t know of a bot that you can assign these types of constraints to.
- No avatar=no follow, yes I’ve broken this rule in the past, hence why a bot can’t decide to follow someone just because the are a nooby
- does it look, smell, taste, like a spam bot=no follow, and yes I have broken this one as well. Twitter has enough flow of conversations during the day to make anyone’s head spin, and if you are working, it’s really hard. Spammers=block after one or two confirmed spams
That’s about it for my follow strategy, now for my current following strategy!
I just went thru all the peeps that I follow, but haven’t returned the favor, they were pinged with a new follow request. I’ll wait a few weeks and then remove them from my following list. of course like above there are exceptions, there are a few people that I enjoy reading their tweets and most likely, I will not move them to the deadbeat status.
Cottage Update
Wow it’s looking really cool! Siding is almost done, all the windows and doors are finally in. The plumber has plumbed and this week, electric.
Making Fusebox and Empressr just a little greener
Getting bottled water has always bothered me, it seemed like such a waste, between the processing and trucks delivering it, makes the water very unfriendly to the environment. So last week we got rid of the bottled water and installed a water purification system, the system feeds both the water cooler and the coffee machine. I’m pretty happy and bonus number one, the water tastes better. A residual bonus is a savings of almost $500 a month. cool, more for the Friday beer fund. (I also never liked the idea of drinking water that has been stored in plastic containers)
Today I am implementing a hard shutdown every night of all desktop computers, their monitors and all peripherals, including the printers. By doing this it will allow us to set the temperature of the HVAC units to 90º during the weekends and overnight. Being in the penthouse has its advantages, like lots of natural light, and a huge disadvantage is the heat from the roof and skylights makes it a cooker in here.
So two small steps, I feel a little better, and we’ll save a few bucks. Win, Win for us and the planet
Tags: ecofriendly water air conditioning green
Laura and Kassandra
Laura and Kassandra, originally uploaded by Bryan Thatcher.
Laura and Kassandra at Middle School Graduation
These guys actually get paid to write shit like this?
I love CNN, but I don’t get the purpose or the intent of this article! One the iPhone rocks, yes it is missing a few features I would really love to have. The usability, like no other phone or device, EVER. Need to get your email, you know exactly what button to click, need web, same, need sms or to make a call, simple, easy. The addition of 3g will be awesome.
So Ben Charmy and Roger Cheng seem to want more, actually they don’t say what feature or what more that they want, (they really don’t say anything worth substance) they reference Nokia, shit I love my Nokia also, but the user experience is total shit, terrible, almost unusable. I still have to think about what to do to make a phone call, forget about finding other features when you need them, the interface is dismal. Apple released the iPhone about a year ago, these guys think that for a “ground breaking” release apple should of done something like redesign the interface, what the fuck are they smoking, the interface is great, almost perfect. The addition of 3rd party apps, yes, the addition of 3g, yes, better battery life, yes. My only damn is, I wish is the iPhone had video, but today QIK and Flixwagon both announced 3rd party applications that will allow you to create streaming video using your iPhone. Is the master plan to let 3rd party developers create the applications that the iPhone lacks… YES. Thats why they exist and if the iPhone did streaming video, these guys wouldn’t have a viable iPhone solution.
Did either of you use any of the first, second, third or even forth generation devices from Palm or Rim? yeah they were ok, but not really, they kinda sucked, actually really sucked, I was an early user of both Rim and Palm and after what…8 years… they have products that don’t suck so bad. (I dropped Rim after trying their first product, was almost unusable, used a Palm Treo until the iPhone)
Wake up! you two are clueless, do you expect newborn children to pop out and head to an office to earn a living! Both Palm and Rim’s initial product barely walked, the iPhone was jogging, with the latest update it’s running, soon sprinting. (hmm I can’t believe it actually took 2 people to write this) An Apple bash without substance just to drive traffic to your post, grow the fuck up. maybe you should be looking for another job.
As a side note, I’m not referencing the article for a reason, Google it if you like to read slop
Graduation Day
Kassandra graduates from Middle School today, sniff sniff. On to High School.
Gary Vaynerchuk aka @garyvee closes Tech Cocktails
Gary is his classic closing talk stresses be a R.A.T — R.eal A.uthentic T.ransparent. Stating that social media is only at the National Anthem for an 18 inning game. Embrace the RAT cause life is only going to become more and more transparent. Be passionate and work your face off. Here is my Qik of his talk, the audio is a bit bouncy, but you’ll get the idea.
