April 2005 Archives

1. Two thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or rather, were passing through each other.
2. The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.
3. 1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.
4. Why myths?
5. I have a collection of teapots.
6. I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you, he's the One.
7. It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair that flows beneath his shoulders is milk-white.
8. A monk lived in solitude in a temple beside a mountain
9. The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village
10. Hari Seldon -- born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069.

A picture is worth a thousand words, in addition to listing 10 first lines from books, I decided to also scan in some first pages from some of my favorite manga that I own.

(The other four are in the extended entry)

The Sushi Master 3000
,
capable of making 3000 pieces an hour. I think this invention is fairly revolutionary, as it means that sushi vending machines are a possibility.

Aquaplastics 2005

Clicking on the site donates cash from the European Plastics Industry into helping deliver clean water to Ethiopia. The goal is 1.5 million clicks by June 22, 2005

While searching for reviews on Japanese restaurants, I came across
Kaygetsu, a Japanese restaurant in Menlo Park that is a Kaiseki-style restaurant. When I was in Japan years ago, I experienced a restaurant in this style. I'd like to try it again someday, and Kaygetsu's menu looks pretty enticing.

One of my sisters from out of town is visiting this weekend. While we were talking this evening about plans, she mentioned that she had heard that marlin makes good sushi. I've never had marlin as sushi, and I'm not even sure of which places in the SF Bay Area serve marlin as sushi. (Yes, me, the foodie is stumped). I'm hoping that some of the gourmands out there might have some places to suggest.

I'm also taking suggestions on good sushi restaurants in the Palo Alto area. Has anyone eaten at Higashi West before?

Update: Apparently Higashi West is closed now.

Homegrown Star Wars, with big-screen magic intact (CNET)

Fan films have been a part of Star Wars fandom of late, and the latest fan film Star Wars: Revelations, is an independently produced fan film of scope not ever seen before. With a running time of over 40 minutes, and special effects just short of what ILM, it is setting a new gold standard for what a fan film could be.

Frontline: The Persuaders: Neuromarketers

"Montague had his subjects take the Pepsi Challenge while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers' choices. Now, there appeared to be solid neurological proof."

Am I the only one who finds it silly that of all his research subjects there were not those who could tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke?

San Jose Library Art Exhibit: Recolecciones

My Art 1 Lecture on Monday was on Public Art in San Jose, and one of the exhibitions featured was the project in the San Jose MLK Jr. Library. I've extolled the virtues of this library in the past before, I think, but one of the things I didn't notice was the thought behind all the exhibits in the library. This site documents many of the exhibits and their locations within the library. One of these days, I'll take my camera and snap a few photos.

Taking a page from kwc's language through DVDs, I acquired a region 3 DVD of the Incredibles for the purposes of practicing my Chinese (They have both Cantonese and Mandarin on the same disc). Instead of watching it in English with the Chinese subtitles, I've been watching it in Chinese with English subs (eventually i'll move off of that for Chinese with Chinese subs) (It's pretty interesting how they've managed to change the film for an Chinese release (some of the text that scrolls across the screen in the news reel and newspaper segment is in Chinese instead of english). They did a marvelous job on this DVD, matching the voice actor to the proper part

Some of the words and phrases I've learned already:

xiao fei = small flight = Dash

chao na = incredible

dim gai lei m hoi sam a = why are you not happy?

Starship Dimensions, which puts to scale starships from various science fiction series all on a identification chart.

To Rule the Earth...
, a site which lists the various empires throughout history and the approximate area of their territory.

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Produce from cloned cattle 'safe'

I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to clone cattle. It's not like there's any shortage of cows in the world, and even when the cow is cloned, you still need to raise it to adulthood, meaning you still need to feed it and have land for it to graze on. To me, it seems like a rather expensive way of procuring additional cows, and seeing as it is not the sci-fi version of cloning (where clones are instantly sprung out at full-grown adulthood), it seems rather wasteful.

SEGA Fantasy VI

This is a flash cartoon that takes all the systems from the last 15 years or so and pits them against the PSP in a Final Fantasy 6-esque final battle.

If anything, it reminds me that as great as these consoles were, the PSP has the possibility of absorbing media in a way that no console has yet done. As long as SOE doesn't have Pokemon, the world is safe...

Today, I went to APE (Alternative Press Expo). It was my first time there, and I guess one can consider it training for the San Diego Comic-Con. I didn't pick up too much, but I did get to meet a couple of the artists, and I ran into one of my former co-workers.

It was good to see so many talented artists living and thriving in the world of independent comics.

My war against comment spam on this blog is over. I have won. The combination of plugins seems to have effectively stopped the unwanted comments from entering the system. It has been three days since the last junk comment, something which has not happened ever.

* Any further work I do on this is merely a peacekeeping action

** The plugins will remain as an occupational force until democracy can be established

*** There is no insurgency here. Move along.

The remarkable similarities between Oz and Middle-Earth

The first film version of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz was released in the summer of 1939, less than a month before World War II officially began. Though started as early as 1937, The Lord of the Rings was largely composed during the war years, but not published until somewhat later.

Therefore, it is by no means impossible that J.R.R. Tolkien saw the magnificent MGM movie before he wrote most of his magnum opus. Could Oz have influenced his tale somehow, consciously or unconsciously?

Man is arrested for using $2 bills at Best Buy

$2 bills are legal tender. They are uncommon, but they are legal. Personally, if I was him, I wouldn't have used $2 bills. I would have used nickels and dimes to stage the protest.

I saw one today as I was coming home which read:

3D STUD

NPR: Brad Bird, Director of the Incredibles

When someone told me about the 100% Chocolate Cafe (Japanese Website), I immediately had images of a artwork which would have been a 1:1 scale reproduction of a Cafe done in Chocolate. Sadly, the 100% Chocolate Cafe is not 100% edible, but it is a chocolate shop in Tokyo (designed by the Japanese interior design firm Wonderwall

This weekend, I went to work on my taxes. For those of you who don't drop them off at H&R Block and who prefer to do them yourself, I recommend TurboTax. I finished the Fed Tax return today, and there was one major new thing I was surprised at. They now give you the option of deducting either state income tax or state/local sales tax. Incredibly useful for those of you who bought new cars or hybrids this year.

Yesterday when I woke up, I found that I had mangled my glasses by laying my laptop or a book on top of them (I'm not exactly which it was, I didn't discover this until much later in the day when I had moved both of them). I went to the optometrist to get my eyes examed while I was there, since it's been two years since I've had them checked, and he gave me some new contact lenses to try out.

They are called Toric Lenses and they correct for astigmatism. I have a very slight case of astigmatism, so when I view the world through contacts, there's a reduction in clarity in comparison to my glasses, but these toric lenses adjusts for some of the angles of astigmatism, so it's not quite as crisp as viewing the world through glasses, but it's pretty darn close.

Wearing them seems to tire my eyes a bit more than the normal contacts, but since it'll be about a week or two before my glasses arrive I'll have ample time to test between the two.

If you haven't figured it out by now, yesterday's post about going pro was simply an April Fool's Joke. I have no plans on quitting my job for a life of instant ramen or outsourcing the farming of World of Warcraft Gold to players in India.

I did buy the Lego Star Wars game yesterday which is very fun to play (but more fun to play co-operatively, since the AI partner sucks). There is friendly fire in the game, and the Jar Jar AI got in a way of Qui-Gon's lightsaber accidentally a few times....

Videos from Lego Star Wars: The Video Game

Seeing all the models in LEGOs makes me want to break out the LEGOs and construct some of these things.

I've decided to quit my job to fulfill my dream of exploiting the internet full-time. First, I've decided that I'm going to become a professional blogger. I figure if Jason Kottke can make a living doing it, I should be able to do the same. A Paypal account is in the works for micropayment donations so that I can continue to have a roof over my head and boxes of instant ramen to live off of. I'm a bit worried about the US treatment of professional bloggers going through customs, but it's not like I'm not already flagged as a "troublemaker" for my many anti-Bush statements.

Second, I've decided that when I'm not blogging, to further supplement the ramen fund, I will be Managing a World of Warcraft Gold Farming Business. I've already worked out some of the details of outsourcing the actual playing of the game to kids in India. It's insane how many kids you can buy for a dollar, who can then play this game like a pro.

In addition, I also have managed to acquire a couple of Google Gulp caps (amazing what you can find digging through the trash at Google's campus). They'll be on eBay shortly, but if you can't wait, leave me a comment and I'll see about getting you a couple of caps.