Knowing .NET

This is a photo by Wayne Levin, an incredible photographer who stars in a new video for Hawaiian tourism

While I’m at it, this is one Wayne took of Tina, bluewater freediving near a fish-aggregating buoy:

I’m now reading Dan Simmons’ The Terror on my Kindle. He’s a very competent writer, and perhaps it’s his very slow, very claustrophobic build-up (which he’d d*** well better pay off) that makes it so noticeable, but I have to say that I’m very aware of a certain “running on a treadmill” sensation when reading on the Kindle.

I turn pages, click click click, and the story progresses, but the only token of my progress is a bar at the bottom (the same length for all material, no matter the word count) that occasionally deigns to darken another pip. Like the animated plane on the in-flight display, this is almost worse than no indicator at all (“We still aren’t past Nebraska?” Wait for it… wait for it … tick it moves a single pixel…).

Especially with thrillers, the book-reading experience includes the sensation of the story moving from right-hand to left. It includes the canny appraisal of the upper-right corner, when the remaining pages become individualized — “An hour more, then! I can miss the sleep!” The force of will to read every clause as the thumb holds down only the last 3 pages…

U. of Arizona researchers have built a robot that’s guided by the brain of a moth. I assume the resulting rampage can only be stopped by cantilevering a lightbulb over the rim of the Grand Canyon.

While reading the latest ThinkGeek ad copy, I find:

[W]e’re jealous of today’s students. They can now go online to find out if any washers are open, pay for the laundry with their student ID, and then receive an e-mail alert when the washer and/or dryer is done.

Is this true? If so, that is the greatest freaking innovation since the relational database!

You’ve got friends visiting. They’re in town for 9 days. One day involves driving 4 hours to go to a botanical garden which you’ve been to before and flowers aren’t really your “thing” anyway. Do you do it, because, you know, they’re your friends, you’ll enjoy being with them, etc.? Or do you not do it because, you know, it’s a day of travel and affirmatively nodding every time someone says “OMYGOD LOOK AT THOSE LEAVES!”

What do you do?

Just hypothetically, I mean.

Apple is apparently refusing to accept cash for iPhones. I have a feeling this policy will last less than 24 hours, as there’s significant intersection among the set of people who would purchase iPhones and the set of people who will get into quite a snit about “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”

Update: Neil Bartlett points to this Wikipedia article that says companies can refuse cash if the debt doesn’t already exist at the time of payment (as would be the case when purchasing an iPhone). That’s what I get for getting my legal advice from 30 Rock.

My nephew Jake went to a friend’s bar mitzvah at the Radisson in Scranton, PA. Apparently, the cast of The Office is in town doing a little goodwill and presumably shooting some exteriors (although I don’t know why they need to — the scenes they’ve been using look totally like Northeastern Pennsylvania. (Sarcastic smiley tk) ). Jake spots Craig Robinson (Daryl the Warehouse Guy) tickling the ivories on the Radisson piano and snaps this EXCLUSIVE photo:

Via Sue Schmitz comes the sad word that Alex, the amazing Gray Parrot whose cognitive abilities were literally incredible, has died. Supposedly (there I go with the doubt), he had a vocabulary of 150 words, could count recognize quantities up to 6, could identify 50 objects, understood concepts such as “bigger” and “smaller,” and knew better than to call virtual methods within constructors.

I’m not surprised that Wikipedia has criticisms, but even there it only actually quotes one direct criticism, which in context (in the referenced NY Times article) is pretty clearly simply skepticism, not a repudiation.

I know I should qualify this with “of course, it’s terribly irresponsible. If someone had died, what kind of possible excuse…” etc.

But he didn’t kill anyone, so I’ll just point to the link:

http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun?currentPage=all

This must have been bitter-sweet. Sure, you want to get your rocket back, but talk about going out in a blaze of glory…