random: November 2007 Archives

Sometimes, people do some touching things:

Yes, I'm aware I did not post on Monday and it's the first time I skipped a day, but I promise to make up for it by posting double my usual two posts today.

Continuing my tradition of following lots of politics/heavy posts with cute breaks, I bring you, via Cute Overload, the purring kitty page.

Perfect for people like me who love the purring kitty sound but are either allergic or aren't allowed to have their own cats. (*grumble*)

Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the weak insipid modern (presumably electric) light and switch over the the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago.

Capturing a shot like this is tricky because the lens itself actually rotates, which looks great but is tough for long exposures. But for the first 5 minutes they leave it static to indulge all of the photographers who turn out and want this shot (this highly unique and one-of-a-kind shot of course).

Click to enlarge:

That is one powerful light.

The public transportation system here in Miami is less than optimal, leading to low usage and this "Only in Miami" moment:

According to Ignatius Carroll, a woman driving her three teenage children and a teenage friend to meet another family member were heading west on Northeast 13 Street around 7:40 a.m. in a Ford Explorer when they crashed with a bus heading south on Northeast First Avenue.

The bus driver and his three passengers were uninjured, but the driver was shaken up.

(Thanks Clarke.)

5 hurt as Dade bus, SUV collide [Miami Herald]

/film has photos of the coolest theme home theatre ever:

Someone thought it would be a good idea to model their home theater after the Enterprise NCC-1701D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The result is super geeky, but actually rather cool. Named the best theme theater installation at CEDIA 2007, this Palm Beach County, FL home features motion-activated air-lock doors with series sound effects, and a “Red Alert” button on the Crestron TPMC-10 controller to turn all of the LEDs bright red and flashing. The system also features “one of the largest Kaleidescape hard-drive based storage systems” ever created, amassing eight servers with 3,816 DVDs.

Hit the link for an even more impressive accompanying bar.

Via /.

Reuters has photos of a school in china that's been built in a cave:

Children attend class at the Dongzhong (literally meaning "in cave") primary school at a Miao village in Ziyun county, southwest China's Guizhou province, November 14, 2007. The school is built in a huge, aircraft hanger-sized natural cave, carved out of a mountain over thousands of years by wind, water and seismic shifts.

WARNING: The link will automatically resize your window. I hate it when sites do that.

Cracked.com has a list of the 25 "most baffling toys" (mostly from Japan, of course), including the "Pee&Poo" plushies pictured:

Making toilet training fun and approachable is an admirable goal, but this seems like a good way for your child to develop an unnatural affection toward their own waste products. At a bare minimum, the sympathetic "Why me?" faces on the waste products will make flushing the toilet a psychologically jarring event.

Mice Age reports on the rising trend of relatives spreading ashes of loved ones at favourite rides in Disneyland, with the practice having started at the Haunted Mansion ride and spreading to others around the park. It's even added its own lingo to Disneland employee talk and the purchase of special HEPA filter vacuums to clean up the remains:

Sometimes however the cremated ashes aren't found until the end of the night when the Cast Members close down the rides and walk the tracks looking for lost and found. Just last month that situation occurred when a Cast Member at the Haunted Mansion found several piles and a trail of ashes alongside the ride track. The Anaheim Police and Disneyland Security were summoned, and judging by the large amount of ashes this deposit was likely a small group of deceased people, or perhaps a very large married couple. The police identified the substance as human remains, and the custodial crew came in for the clean up.

To respond to this growing problem, Disneyland's custodial department recently had to purchase special vacuums with very sophisticated HEPA filters that can capture the gritty ash of human remains while also capturing the small bone fragments that can also be present after cremation. The Cast Members who work in Attractions know the code words when calling the custodial hotline, and they tell the custodial dispatcher that they need a "HEPA Cleanup" as soon as possible.

There's been a couple of heavy entries lately, so to lighten the mood I give you double dutch jumping dogs, brought to you by the masters of cute, the Japanese:

Via Cute Overload.

I gave my parents the link to this site, so they can keep up with my writing. My mom wrote an e-mail a few days ago that's the equivalent of blogging gold:

Ed,

I like your blog. I had a good time today reading it. I love the xkcd cartoons. Is there a way of you sending me the video of Na being dumped in the lake? I would like to show it to my students.

Love,

Mom

That's right: my mom likes and now reads XKCD. My geek bloodline is strong.

College Humor posts what T.V. series 24 would look like if aired in 1994.

Ah, memories of Lycos search, Prodigy, AOL 3.0, and Windows 3.1. The college freshmen around me kept asking why I was laughing so hard, and then I realised they were at most 5 years old in 1994 and wouldn't understand the references in the movie. I was using the internet when they were 5... it made me feel a little older:

Deputydog posts a look at some of the more interesting staircase designs out in the world, including a musical staircase that plays notes as you go up or down.

The staircases on the right can be found in the new Longchamp store in New York, designed by Thomas Heatherwick. The steps are formed by continuous steel ribbons that stretch the length of the building and to the ceiling.

Heartbreaking photos of a dog, loyal to his human companion even after death.

WARNING: Graphic photos.

Via Digg.

Stopped Clocks is a blog that collects locations and photos of publicly visible clocks in Britain that are no longer functioning:

This site is a hub for my thinking on stopped clocks, a place to aggregate images and locations of stopped clocks in the UK, as well as a focal point for people to collaborate in actually getting public clocks fixed.

Via BoingBoing.

Michael Zoellner has made a screen saver for Mac OS X that displays images from publicly accessible security cameras:

SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screensaver that shows live images of over 600 network surveillance cameras worldwide. a haunting live soap opera. it is the first release of my ongoing experiments with network surveillance cameras.

Certainly a way to satisfy your inner voyeur. Via BoingBoing.

Friendly reminder to all my readers living in the U.S. that due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time falls today. Set your clocks back one hour!

This change to the start and end times of daylight saving time has been implemented this year as an effort to save more energy. Congress reserves the right to change back to the old dates when an energy consumption study is completed regarding the change's effect.

G4's Attack of the Show has created a funny parody of Ken Burns style documentaries by relating the story of LOLcats:

My TV geek genes are fired up over the announcement of Joss Whedon's (of Firefly and Buffy fame) new T.V. series Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku and airing on Fox (the same network that killed Firefly, unfortunately.) From Fox's show description:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

There's an interesting interview at E! Online with both Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku regarding the genesis of the show. Tim Minear, the writer/producer behind Wonderfalls, Angel, and Firefly will also be joining Joss Whedon for Dollhouse. The premise sounds good, and they've been given the green light by Fox to create seven episodes. Now to hope they don't kill it by moving air times and showing episodes out of order like Fox did with Firefly.