Thinkcorps

Yesterday, I scored a lot of 12 step switches on ebay that I’m going to use to make some floor lamps. I couldn’t believe that google couldn’t help me find any decent step switches. I know they are out there, I see lamps with them everywhere. I figure that with a lot of 12, I’ll definitely never need to find more. And they were only $25 total. Me love ebay.

This morning, I discover the picture below, which conjures up ideas about how easily you could decorate a lamp shade – not with stupid shiny trim pieces – but with stencils and spray paint. (Not a new idea, I’m sure, but new to me.) You could paint the shade any color you want, and create any type of stencil you wanted: letters, bugs, cutlery, etc. Lots of cool ideas there.

So, this is actually the first time this has happened to me, but I suspect it’s already happened to others.

You email someone a question, and instead of replying to your email, they choose instead to blog a response—veiled enough that it apparently addresses not only your question, but those of others as well.

Now, I’m assuming a lot here: I don’t know the person I emailed except through their blog, I don’t know what other questions this person gets asked throughout the day. I do know that I had established an email conversation with said person, and I feel that I was polite and professional in my dealings. The question I asked was an entirely separate matter (based on said person’s domain expertise), but I feel that if you want to know something, you ask someone who knows.

The problem with email being impersonal, of course, is that said person could have inferred just about anything from my question, though I tried my best to phrase it properly. And so, the blog post, which I have to assume was in response to my email (the timing was uncanny), ended up pretty flip and dismissive, in my opinion.

This pissed me off, since I believe that it was rude not to respond directly, and it didn’t answer my question at all.

The fact is people, Google is not some all-encompassing panacea that can answer all questions. Some questions demand an informed human opinion. I had researched my question extensively on the Net and through friends, and hadn’t found a suitable answer.

So I had the opportunity to ask someone who might actually have a good answer, and they blogged me. I have to admit, I didn’t see it coming.

These chairs are interesting to me, not because of their construction technique—sewn threads that create backs and seats—but because of how the sides/arms are a simple, non-descript square shape that is then defined by a pattern or line drawn on the side. You could essentially draw whatever chair profile you like on the side of this chair, melding their images together in a viewer’s mind. It would almost create an optical illusion, which profile (real or drawn) is the real chair?

http://mocoloco.com/archives/001159.php

Yay! Dogster.com won a Webby for best community site. Congratulations Ted and team! This is the first Web site that I’ve been involved with that’s won such an award, as far as I know. It’s pretty cool to be associated with it, even though my role is small. I’m so glad for Ted and hope this will further help propel him and Dogster down the road. Woof!

DialedIn was an experiment in aggregating local bloggers to provide an alternative view of city life. I built the system to run more or less automatically once the data sources have been picked. The system as it stands now pulls in blog feeds, news feeds, Flickr photos, and iCal calendars. It’s kind of a one-stop shop for local community information. [update: i shut the service down until i find a new webhost.]
What I ended up with is very similar to the FeedWordpress project. There are some things that I’ve done differently, and some that I would have added in if I’d been seriously pushing the system the way Charles has been. But it’s good enough for me as a proof on concept, and I don’t like releasing code to the public because I’m not willing and/or able to support it.

This project combined my love of RSS feeds and Wordpress, and gave me additional insight into how flexible Wordpress is. As I continue to understand WP’s API, I really like how you can extend the program’s functionality through plugins (leveraging both PHP and Javascript).

Oh, and if you look, you can see that I integrated a cool weather plugin right into the interface. I think I’m actually most proud of that. The simple design I developed uses a prominent feature of the cityscape in the header and puts a current weather image right over it. I love the idea of infographics integrated into the site design—and it’s so basic! If you mousover the image you get additional data. It certainly doesn’t show off any programming skills, more dumb luck really, but I’ll take it. :>

So I just got through cleaning the crap out of my garage, and there’s this image of Darth Vader in my wall! I swear it wasn’t there before! Where did it come from?? I guess because I work at home and I’ve been having doubts about, well, stuff, and now I feel like he’s brought the dark side to me so I can wish for things and stuff. w00t!

I told my friend Rod about it and he came over and was like, no way man, that’s crazy, that’s just a big water stain, but I don’t believe him. I emailed a copy of the picture to George Lucas, and some other people I thought might know him—6degrees!—but I haven’t heard anything back yet. [fingers crossed]

I invited some other folk over to look ‘cause Rod is a hoser, and the tv news too. “When you come down here—that’s why I wanted to come down here and see for myself—when you come down here and you see it, it’s real,” Joanne Grabnik, of Alderan. “It is beautiful.” That’s a quote, man! She was at my house!

People are saying that I should have people over and charge them like $5 ($10!!) to see Vader and maybe pray and they can give me some cool figurines (no ewokZ! or JarJar StinkZ!!) but I don’t know if that’s sacrilicious ‘cause Vader vs. Jesus and all. (tho that’d be supercool kung-fu-fightin!!) Plus there’d probably be haters like Rod and they’d be hasseling me and the neighbors and the TRU BELIEVRZ!! I don’t care what they think anyway.

I know it’s Vader and it’s awesome!! I can now smite all my enemies and snuff out all my problems. HAHAHA!! Watch out!

Also, I haven’t seen Revenge of the Sith yet, so maybe I should go do that soon.

Big picture:

Here’s one that I enhanced: