I Spill Drinks

Band Name

2008-09-24T08:43:00.001-07:00

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

Band Name

2008-06-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Feral Cat Room

Which is it?

2008-05-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

"The Braxton Peeler"

Band name, sexual position, or farting under the sheets?

Good Band Names

2008-04-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

What's that? Start posting things I hear that would make a good band name? You got it.

The Best ISP in Isreal

Bed time.

2007-08-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

The hypnogogic call of slumber hums in my computer speakers.

Capable of Love

2006-12-18T22:58:00.001-08:00

Case Study: Build-A-Bear
The Build-A-Bear company, founded in St. Louis, strives to create an enjoyable experience for a child building a stuffed animal (or in some cases, adult).

Taco John's?

2006-11-10T21:51:00.000-08:00

I think you mean Taco Juan's.

Grab your ladder

2006-11-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

As a follow up question to an earlier post, What do they call "Peeping Tom's" in other countries? (I know cats and dogs don't say "meow" and "woof", which is also amusing)

Not Candy

2006-11-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

I wondered why I got so much fake Advil for Halloween.
[link]

Stick with me here...

2006-11-07T23:23:00.000-08:00

"Try to keep up as I demystify the creative process..."

Two-headed animal exhibit in St. Louis

2006-08-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

[ link ]

Very Cool. Reminds me of a story I heard about the guy who lived in the dorm room next to my friends Matt and Brad in college.

Tell Us What is In Your Pantry

2006-08-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

...and we'll tell you what to make

Konichiwa

2006-06-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

"[In Costa Rica] Making a fist with the thumb sticking out between the middle and index fingers is obscene. This gesture is known as the 'fig.'"

"In Japan and South Korea, visiting executives are usually invited to participate in after-hours drinking bouts."

[link]

What customs should I be aware of if my clients are from around the greater St. Louis area, Clayton, Chesterfield, St. Charles and such?

Signed, Allan Bartner

2006-06-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

This false identity generator is great. If it had API hooks someone (probably not me) could create a browser extension that fills web forms with the generated information.

[ link ]

'Star Wars' Creator Becomes Storm Trooper

2006-05-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

[George] Lucas thought it was a "fun" idea, said Lucasfilm spokeswoman Lynne Hale.

"He laughed because he never imagined he'd be a Storm Trooper," she said.

Yeah, because that guy has a real shitty imagination.

from: http://tinyurl.com/nxzna

My New Drink

2006-03-17T15:03:00.000-08:00

O'Douls & Wild Turkey

Stew on this

2006-02-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

What do you call a female Peeping Tom?

Fair is Fair

2006-01-10T19:27:00.000-08:00

The big insurance companies have lawyers on their side; you bet I count on Matt Jensen.

You know what would be awesome?

2005-11-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

A place where you could get a massage while getting your oil changed.

Mechanical Turk

2005-11-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

"Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it."

"HIT stands for Human Intelligence Task. These are tasks that people are willing to pay you to complete. For example a HIT might ask: "Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?" Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer."

Amazon.com is facilitating a distributed, human API... clever! But is it useful? I imagine would require a fairly rapid response for it to be useful to them. Rapid responses will require a rather large, ravenously active distributed team. Active devotion necessitates desirable rewards in exchange for participation. Currently, the reward is change added to your Amazon.com account balance.

The Language Log has some interesting insight:

I also wonder how Amazon prevents this from being used for the most obvious single application, namely helping spammers circumvent captchas?

A post at Bitporters media gives one Turk-worker's experience:

"So four days and 505 HITs later I'm sitting at a cool $6.84. Note: More than half of my HITs are still in the pending state. I'm getting pretty quick at cracking these off, with my tabletPC I'm down to < 5-10 seconds pet HIT. At 3 cents a hit, I'm not really sure if this is a waste of time or not, for now I'm just going to do enough to buy a book I've been wanting."

If you can really keep up 10 HITs per minute at $.03 per HIT, that's $18/hour, which would appeal to a lot of people, especially for a job that you can do from any location, whenever and for however long you like.

How might your use it? Clever friends and strangers alike, please weigh in!
http://tinyurl.com/7typb
http://tinyurl.com/d6xt9

More info and a photo of the original Mechanical Turk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

10 Year High School Reunion

2005-11-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

It has been a decade since the Fountain Hills High School class of '95 graduated. About 12 of the 90 some-odd students in my class attended and not much has changed. While many have become parents, not much else has changed. Nobody was even fat. Here are the pix to prove it:
[photos]

Props to the Devil ('s Advocate)

2005-10-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

I often give my close friend Abram (aka Defective Guru) grief for playing the roll of devil's advocate. Truth is, he's one of my strongest advocates. Everyone should be lucky enough to have a friend like him. Thanks, dude.

Contact with the Practical

2005-10-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm the guy who floats lofty, underdeveloped ideas only to have them dismantled before they have a chance to blossom. I hate it. I react poorly to it. The problem isn't that that happens; it is a necessary part of the process, the part where you objectively examine the idea and filter out the bad ones. What frustrates me is when such contemplation tends to bury ideas instead of simply bringing them down to earth.

These posts offer insight on maintaining the spirit of an idea in spite of the devil's advocates, naysayers, and poo-pooers:

Death by Devil's Advocate
The Concept Clarification Effect
Keep the sharp edges!
Because that's the way we have always done it...

"Imaginative ideas are subject to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical."
~unknown

Boston 2005

2005-10-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

Jill sprang a surprise on me — tickets to celebrate my birthday in Boston for an extended weekend with my sister, Katrina. I had a surprise for her too...I asked her to marry me (she said yes), so we made it a dual-purpose celebration weekend.

[photos]

Next weekend is my ten year high school reunion in Arizona. More pix to come!

Can Ya Spare It?

2005-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

"Do you have any spare change I can have to use the payphone?"
- Woman in The Loop, standing near this payphone.