I must admit to a certain fascination with ancient Egypt, so it was kind of cool to note that the Library of Congress has a number of nice photographs in their collection for download, including stereo pictures like this one. A dab of the Gimp, and you can repair some of the minor tears and clean up the background so it looks nice on your webpage. Fun stuff. The Gimp is worth learning.
Daily Archives: 2/3/2005
Greetings World Travelers!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve begun to use statcounter.com to help figure out various statistics about people who visit my blog. It’s somewhat fascinating to realize that less than half of my visitors come from the United States. Look at the pie chart on the right which shows the nationality of the last 100 visitors to brainwagon. The Internet (and apparently my own appeal) is somewhat more broadbased than I might have imagined.
And of course, the search terms that people use to find brainwagon are equally as varied, the last 36 queries are somewhat representative:
- hacking linksys router rt31p2
- daily show dr. baugh
- hand shadows pictures
- man powered helicopter
- build a smoker from a trash can
- the painting from the dodgeball movie
- pvc flamethrower
- simple telnetd
- boots of escaping file quality
- treo podcast
- autochrome world war 2
- gadget silly
- through-wall surveillance
- ark of the covenent
- drivers aiptek dv 4500
- scheme compiler
- mythtv freebsd
- squarpent
- harold yahoo.com harold
- cg podcast
- configure thttpd
- mindstorms balance
- hipster pda
- recording podcasts on windows
- earthquake 9-12-2003
- aiptek dv4500 poor
- pongmechanik
- doom3 hints
- autochrome color war
- origami crane eps
- tablespoon individual lists of usa 2005 @yahoo.com
- sillyusb devices
- weight watcher points joes crab shack
- os-tan john
- 3d tour chernobyl
- audio 101
I’m obviously a nut.
InformationWeek on The Weblog Question > January 31, 2005
Information Week is running an article on weblogging and the workplace. It seems mostly common sense to me. For instance:
Forrester Research advises companies to provide guidelines not only for company-sanctioned Weblogs, but also for employees who do them on their own time. The IT research firm even recommends that managers occasionally view the personal Weblogs of subordinates to see what they’re saying. “Respecting existing confidentiality agreements and companies’ secrets is a no-brainer–and not doing so should clearly be grounds for firing,” Li wrote.
Well, duh. I’m sure that many people would like to hear about the inner workings of the place where I work, but since I’m not certain exactly what the boundaries would be, it’s simpler (and frankly, more fun for me) just to not blog about work related issues.
The article goes on to discuss the copyright issues and the problems that RSS syndication create, unfortunately without shedding any real light. Still, interesting to read for anyone working on blogs…
Sushi Prepared on a Printer
I’m about as much of a technology geek as you can imagine, but when I read the Slashdot headline Sushi Prepared on a Printer I must admit, my inner geek packed it’s bags and ran away, leaving the inner gourmand to merely shake his head.
You see, I have a philosophy about food. Take good fresh ingredients, do as little as humanly possible to them, and serve them in a basic, straightforward way. Sushi is close to the apex of this basic philosophy. Rice. Vinegar. Fish. Soy. Wasabi. What could be wrong with that?
Sushi is all about the important stuff. The size. The cut. The texture. The aroma. The freshness. The combinations. Whenever I get an assortment of Nigiri, it’s always about “which fish is the freshest”. Here in California, we often get good salmon (sake). Not the stuff that’s been lightly smoked, but real fresh salmon. Most of the time it beats the maguro, but maguro is nice too, and if you are in a high class place, can be better. I also am a fan of hamachi. There is a place I frequent that makes good negihama rolls, which are maki with hamachi and green onion. The combination is one of my favorites. I also rather like Ebisu’s saba and ginger maki.
Sushi can, of course, be obsessive and extravagant, but I tend not to go to those places. To me, it’s all about the basics. Fish. Rice. Soy. Wasabi. Tea.
Mr. Cantu believes that restaurant-goers, particularly diners who are willing to spend $240 per person for a meal (the cost of a 20-course tasting menu with wine at Moto) are often disappointed by conventional dining experiences. “They’re sick and tired of steak and eggs,” he said. “They’re tired of just going to a restaurant, having food placed on the table, having it cleared, and there’s no more mental input into it other than the basic needs of a caveman, just eat and nourish.”
At Moto, he said, “there’s so much more we can do.”
Frankly, I just want my caveman needs met.