Posts Categorized Stuff

Google Maps Envelopes

In Design, Stuff on Apr-2-2010 with
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Via Incredible Things:

Genius idea! Instead of sending out your snail mail in a boring old white envelope, print out the Google Map onto the envelope showing where it’s coming from and going to. So maybe it’s just a concept from Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik from the Industrial Design program at Syracuse University, but it’s genius.

[Found via Swissmiss]

Extreme Geek Love

In Stuff on Feb-1-2010 with
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[Found via Pop + Shorty]

Great X-Mas Stocking Suffer

In Household, Miscellaneous, Stuff on Dec-11-2009 with
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One of my best little things I ever bought for myself and also a wonderful gift for anybody you know that still uses a pen and paper, the Fisher Bullet Space Pen. The thing is amazing. It is compact, writes at any angle, underwater, over grease, in extreme temperatures, even upside down. It does all that for under 20 bucks.

Maserati’s Garage Competition Winner

In Miscellaneous, Stuff on Nov-23-2009 with
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The luxury car brand Maserati organized a competition to search for the finest architectural garage. Here is the winner.

Notefolio Notebook

In Stuff on Nov-20-2009 with
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I love me my technology, but I still find a legal pad and mechanical pencil is my favorite to jot down notes. I’ll be ordering a few of these.

You Are The CSS To My HTML Button

In Culture, Stuff on Sep-24-2009 with
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[Found via Swissmiss]

VW L1 Hybrid Concept Car

In Stuff on Sep-22-2009 with
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This is just amazing, from the Frankfurt Auto Show, and scheduled for mass product in 2013:

Called the L1 and feature a carbon-fiber body wrapped around a 0.8-liter twin-cylinder turbodiesel engine developing 36 horsepower and matched to a 7-speed dual-clutch DSG and a 14-horsepower E-motor hybrid electric drive system. With a curb weight of just 1,100 pounds and a super-slippery aerodynamic body thanks to its tandem seating layout, the L1 is claimed to return a fuel economy of 157.8 mpg (1.49L/100km)—we think this is low enough to warrant the L1 or ’1-Liter’ name.

The 800 cubic centimeter turbodiesel engine in the L1 is essentially half of the 1.6-liter unit found in the Golf and Polo BlueMotion vehicles, meaning it is a series-engine-derived mill. Performance isn’t as terrible as you might expect from a hyper-frugal hybrid, either: top speed is 100 mph and it can reach 62 mph in just 14.3 seconds—not so far behind some standard cars on the road today.

When Blog Comments Get Bizzare

In Humor, Stuff on Jun-15-2008 with
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Well a copule days ago I mentioned that for many popular bloggers they often find the comment section is where some of the most thoughtful and interesting things happen. Jeff at Coding Horror said:

I don’t mean your average Fark level of strange. I’m talking about category 5 weirdness, the equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot combined. I’m talking about comments that feel like they were teleported here from another dimension.

He goes on to say he carefully monitors his comment and about once a year he will find one so “mind-bendingly bizarre and wonderful that it defies description.” Well here is his best one of the year thus far, an attempt to define what programming means.

Programming is all about knowing when to boil the orange sponge donkey across the phillipines with an orangutang gorilla crossed with a ham sandwich to the fourth power of twelve across the nile with an awful headache from the previous night when all of alfred’s naughty jalapeno peppers frog-marched the nordic elves across the loom-lined geronimo induced swamp donkey over and above the fortran fortified kilomanjaro fence past the meticulously crafted anti disgusting sponge cake scenario where all the hats doth quoteth the milk which is not unlike the super werewolf from the infinite realm of ninja-step. it’s hard to define, really.

Middle Ages Survival Tips

In Humor, Stuff on Jun-13-2008 with
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As Jeff Atwood mentioned the other day at Coding Horror often the most amazing writing on his blog “begins where the blog post ends” and the comments begin. Here is another example of this in spades. Tyler Cowen asked his readers:

I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help.

He got a number of thoughtful and funny responses, like this one:

Find someone who will take care of you for a few days or weeks and then look for employment in the local church. Your marginal product is quite low, even once you have learned the local language. You might think that knowing economics, or perhaps quantum mechanics, will do you some good but in reality people won’t even think your jokes are funny. Even if you can prove Euler’s Theorem from memory no one will understand your notation. I hope you have a strong back and an up to date smallpox vaccination.

You got to love the Intertubes.

[Found via Kottke]

Mother Nature Doesn’t Like Illinois

In Stuff on Apr-21-2008 with
1 Comment

First it rained and rained. Then it rained some more. My basement flooded twice. I am now a sump pump and Rub Doctor expert. So early in the AM the other morning I am taking a shower and the house starts to shake.

I’m wondering if I am having a Grateful Dead related flash back or something. I hit the news and see we just had a 5.4 earthquake. This is a little troublesome, since I actually live on a fault line that makes the one in Southern California look like child’s play. In fact the last time (1811-1812) there was a major quake (actually four within a three month period) they were so powerful they reversed the flow of the Mississippi river. I expect locusts and frogs are in my near future. Oh and aftershocks that last for 20-30 seconds are a little unnerving to say the least.