concrete concrete concrete
i feel so tired and beat
upon you i lay down and rest my feet
how you suck away my heat
leaving me to be one cold stick of meat
concrete concrete concrete

Is there some group of people that like to go around and jump from rooftop to rooftop like in the movies?

It would seem to be some sort of extreme sport. "Roof Jumpers" might be a better name, but then that sounds too much like you are jumping OFF the roof. This is leaping from roof to roof--whether it's with a leap, a handy rope, or mabye or even a spidey web.

Being a die-hard Cubs fan who roots against the White Sox, I expect to hear crap from the White Sox fans when they win the World Series. It's expected.

BUT instead what I hear more is complaints from people that I don't root for the White Sox! Um, sorry. I don't like the White Sox, why would I root for their team?... They're from Chicago? um, yeah. and? Yes, I love my dear city of Chicago. But I'm not going to be fake and pretend to like the White Sox.

Now yes, I do believe our world needs more love and less hatred. I will admit that they are a good ball club that took advantages of opportunities in the playoffs. They are fun to watch. I just can't wait for their lucky team to totally fall apart next year.

Do you know what you like
or
like what you know?

Does anyone know of a Demolition derby in the Chicagoland area? There's this calendar for the Demolition Derby Drivers Association (gotta love the URL "wecrash.com"), but they don't have any events listed for Illinois.

I was searching for some cool posters that featured interesting diagrams, tables or charts. Here's twelve. Which is your favorite?

Basic Nunchaku Kata poster from martial arts supermarket	First Maps of the Internet from thinkgeek.com	Weather Wizard's Cloud Chart & Poster Set from froogle
Map of the Universe (Northern), Art Poster from Amazon	Genalogy of Jesus poster from Rose Publishing	Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum Poster from thinkgeek.com
Pokemon Evolution Chart Poster from froogle	Diagram of Shaolin Muscle Tendon Change Classic (Shaolin Yijinjing) Poster from MartialArtsmart.com	2006 Moon Phase Calendar poster from astrosociety.org
Bible Timeline Chart from Bible Lights Publishing	Firsts in Science & Technology Wall Chart from synchronopedia.com	"Death and Taxes: A visual look at where your tax dollars go" from deviantart.com

I think my favorite is the moon phase calendar for its simplicity.

The criteria I used for this list was I asked myself, "Would I want to hang this on my walls?" If you find any interesting diagram posters, please leave a link in the comments. Thanks.

Back in September 2003 I posted about Armored vehicles the next SUV. Now it's becoming much closer to reality.

SYN US concept for secure urban parking and driving

Detroit January 7, 2005 Somewhere between an armoured car and a sporty bank vault, the Ford SYN US concept is compact enough to manoeuvre through congested streets yet bold enough to look like it can look after itself. It was designed as an exercise to see what the urban vehicle of the future might look like, with a strong emphasis on security, as the majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2010.

A couple weeks ago I changed desks at work, and got a G5 computer (zippy!). Instead of turning it on via the keyboard, I reach down below my desk to hit the "on" button on the computer tower. Every morning I start off my work day by bowing down to my computer, which seems a bit odd. Instead I'm using that bowing action as a reminder to say a prayer to God to start off my work day. :-)

Got some boring business cards? Here's an idea to spice 'em up.
1) Buy an animal hole punch at a hobby/art store.
2) Punch the animal into your business card.
3) Look up some trivia or jokes related to that animal for fun, or even something business related.
4) When giving away your business card, if someone asks about the animal shape, share the trivia/jokes.

I've been punching cows into my business card for a few years now. People always find it fun to have that animal shape in there. When they ask why, I just tell them it's to do something more fun with the card. Recently, I've been looking for more specific reasons, so I looked up some cow trivia: A business related one is "the word cattle is closely related to 'chattel' (a unit of property) and to 'capital' in the sense of 'property.'"

And then there's the fun trivia like: "There are 350 squirts to a galloon of milk." and "A cow doesn't bite the grass that feeds her, she curls her tongue around it and rips it out of the ground."

This post was inspired by seeing the Showoff Cards on Scott's site.

Because, this wasn't enough. Here is another photograph of adorable baby porcupines.

(thanks to lisa for sending this to me)

As promised in my previous post on dodgeballs, here's my dodgeball and kickball's team logo designed by artist Cef Grima.

From Metroblogging Chicago:

The deal with the Bean is that you can take a crappy camera and sort of wave it in the general direction of the Bean with your eyes closed and you take, every time, a freakin' awesome picture. It's magical.

Comic strips and comic books have such drastic size differences.
A comic book page is 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 inches. That's 67.5 square inches of space.
A comic strip is 5-3/4 x 1-3/4 inches. That's 10 square inches of space.

What if you took all the pages from the comic book and laid them out to make one huge poster. And that poster would depict one large scene. So when you initially read the comic book in book format, you are actually exploring around one large scene. So a 25-page story would yield a 33 by 50-inch poster. (of course there's the problem that you have pages printed on both sides, so you'd need two comic books to achieve this).

The same method could apply to a comic strip. Take six weeks of daily comics (not including the sundays). That would yield a 17.25 x 21-inch poster. Newspapers would love this, because it would encourage people to
A) Buy the newspaper
B) Go to the funnies section
C) Read the comic
D) Cut out the comic
E) Collect the comics
F) Display the comics
G) Others will see the comics, because they are displayed.

I've had my eye on the Sony Librie before it was released in Japan in March 2004. But it only had a Japanese operating system. Back in July 2005 a hacked English OS version was released, and now I'm tempted to get one, but here's what the Librie needs:

bigger screen
I wish it was 8.5x11 screen size to fit the large library of 8.5x11 pdfs I already have. Right now the screen size is 3.5 x 4.7 inches, much too small.

pdf support
It only takes its proprietary format, .lrf, not pdf files. You have to go through a confusing series of steps to convert anything to this format (which involves a PC, not a Mac)

better notetaking
It would be nice if there was some sort of notetaking feature in this. With paper I can underline text and highlight it. This librie seems like it only lets you take minimal notes in the margin. Which might work, but could certainly be improved.

cheaper price
At $479.00, this is way too much for an ebook reader. Sure it's the first e-ink reader ever. And e-ink will truly REVOLUTIONIZE the marketing and publishing industry. If anything, it will become a collectible. But have the Apple Newton's--the first true PDA device--become a collectible? I would pay the $479 if I could just drag and drop pdfs onto it. But the whole rigamarole of converting the files sounds like too much work.

Ever print out an article because it's too hard to read the entire thing on screen? Would you like to be able to read your articles on one piece of paper that can just magically change its ink? This does exist, and it's called e-ink.

e-ink is as thin as a sheet of paper and it's embedded with millions of tiny balls. Each of these balls has one side that is white, the other is black. The sheet they are embedded in has an electronic charge that tells the balls which way to face. So with one push of a button all the balls can line up to form an article. Or a black/white photograph. Since they don't emit light, they are easy to read. It's literally like reading ink on paper.

Plus when you are reading an article, there is no energy used to keep it on, because the balls just sit in their spot. The only energy used is to change the balls position--like when you change pages. There's a lot of stuff this e-ink can be used for and tomorrow I will cover the new ebook reading device called the Sony Librie.

The ultimate collection of links for importing bookmarks from firefox into del.icio.us:

Does anyone know of any programs/scripts/sites that can import firefox bookmarks into the del.icio.us bookmark system? There are a few, but none of them are very easy to use:

del.icio.us loader
A website where you can
1) upload your bookmarks.html file
2) Then it will present you with a page of all your bookmarks, with a field underneath each one, so you can MANUALLY add the tags to each bookmark
Problems:
• This program doesn't automatically adding tags based on your folders
• It can only do about 40-50 bookmarks at one time
• It takes one second for each bookmark to ping the del.icio.us server
• If a bookmark in your bookmarks.html file doesn't have a ADD_DATE field, the program will skip over it. So you have to MANUALLY search for those missing ADD_DATE field and add it yourself. (this affects about one-third of my bookmarks)

Brian Del Vecchio's del.icio.us import script
Problems:
This thing is a PERL script that I guess you have to upload to your site. I've installed a few PERL scripts, and they always feel icky to me. But maybe I might explore this some more. I just wish he would host the script on his site to make it easier. Or at least give step-by-step instructions on how to install it.

Buzz Anderson's Cocoalicious
A Macintosh client for Delicious
Problems:
Ok, so this is a client for Delicious, not exactly an importer. But maybe it might make entering bookmarks easier. NOT.
The site doesn't even explain anything about the client or how to use it. All the site has is a changelog.

Jon Dowland's Mozilla bookmarks.html to del.icio.us
Problems:
This thing is powered by Ruby. Huh? I have to hand it to Jon, he does give specific instructions on how to run his script. Steps 1-4 make sense, but then I get tripped by step five where it says to "Run it." But I'm a fool and don't know how to run Ruby, I'm assuming it's like PERL, but I don't even think my server supports Ruby.

There's all the current solutions to import bookmarks from Firefox into Delicious that I could find. Got anything easier to use? If so, please leave 'em in the comments.

Yahoo auctions have RSS feeds...

...but only in the japan version. WHAT! Gimme some of that RSS action on the USA version of yahoo auctions.

OK, I gotta hand it to yahoo. It's free to post auctions for 10 days. And if your auction doesn't sell it will automatically repost it five times. That's 50 days of free posting. Not like eBay which charges um... a lot.

So since yahoo is trying to catch up to eBay, yahoo should totally offer RSS feeds of their auctions instead of this stupid email alert thing.

Having images for posts on blogs are very helpful.

We like to think that the main meat of a blog is content/text. But it's hard to skim over a blog with no images.

Images serve more than to just illustrate. They serve more than to just provide visual interest, they also function as a reference for the reader. We all visit so many blogs and websites, that it's nice when we can easily recognize what we have already read (yes, there is RSS, but that's another issue). When there is an image alongside a post of text, the reader can very quickly identify if they read that post already.

Anything that makes it easier for the visitor to read your site will help to keep them as a repeat visitor.

I'm looking to buy some official dodgeballs used in the National Amateur Dodgeball Association (from: http://www.dodgeballusa.com/gear.html) Does anyone want to get one too? They cost $20.00 each with $3.50 to ship an individual ball. But the shipping is only $7.70 for a set of six balls. If you want to buy just one ball, I'll get a set of six, but all you have to pay is the $20--I won't charge you for shipping--as long as you live in the Chicagoland area.

I'm planning on buying two balls to practice with. I just need to get rid of the four other balls. Any takers? If so, any preference on the color? White, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. I'm leaning to blue, because my team colors are blue.

I like hitting the return key
It's like bam!
Done!
More satisfaction from the return key than the exclamation key!
Slam that return with my pinky
Or if i really want to punctuate my return hit, i do it with my middle finger! bam!
No other key on my keyboard gives me more satisfaction than the return key!
bam!

Ever wanna have some fun? Do a search yahoo auctions CHINA! WHOA. it's like a warp zone.

When you change clothes in your work bathroom, do you:
A) Change right in the middle of the washroom
B) Go inside a stall, but don't close the door
C) Go inside a stall, and close the door

A man might chose option A, because a bathroom is a place for just men, so you can treat it just like a locker room. But I opt for C, because bathrooms are not locker rooms. When I enter a locker room, I expect that there will be men standing in their underwear. But when I enter a bathroom, I don't expect to see someone running around naked.

I want this in my backyard: Banzai Falls QuickSet Waterslide.

Right next to my trampoline.

Underscorebleach.net had a nice link to graphs of Chicago's traffic in real time throughout the day. Most sites just have the travel time for that particular time of day. But not only does this site have that, but they show the trend of the traffic throughout the entire day as well as the average time it takes. It's sweet.

Wanna know how long it's gonna take you to get somewhere in Chicago. You gotta use this site: www.gcmtravelstats.com.

Does anyone have any idea how much it would cost to buy a bunch of Segways?

Does this thing have any windows? Or are the tulip shapes clear windows?

United States coins have always featured protraits from the side. The new 2006 Jefferson nickel will be the first to have a front-facing portrait.

Why have all the previous coins had profiles for the portraits? Here's some thoughts:
A) Coins are flat.
Doing a side portrait reinforces the nature of the coin's flatness. A frontal portrait adds more depth and contrasts the flatness of a coin.

B) Coins are not flat.
Since coins have a slight 3d effect to them, perhaps coin designers found it too odd to portray a full 3d object. Like a person's nose would appear smushed.

C) Side portraits are more serious.
Coins are serious business.

Do you have any thoughts why coins have always featured side portraits? Leave them in the comments below.

After nearly 100 years of depicting presidents in somber profiles on the nation's coins, the Mint is trying something different: The new nickel features Thomas Jefferson, facing forward, with the hint of a smile.

The forward-looking 2006 nickel front was designed by Jamie Franki of Concord, North Carolina, using the Rembrandt Peale painting of 1800, the year Jefferson was elected President. (see image above. If you ask me, the painting shows him smiling, but the coin does not).

Jamie Franki’s forward-looking image of Thomas Jefferson was selected from 147 designs submitted by the United States Mint sculptor-engravers and AIP artists from throughout the country. Franki also designed the reverse image on the 2005 American Bison nickel.

You can download the nickel's front hi-resolution image and back hi-resolution image.

Sources: Yahoo and United States Mint Pressroom

Here is a comparison of the 1800 Rembrandt Peale painting and the 2006 United States nickel. (Here's a slightly different animation of it with the coin at a lighter opacity: animation 2)

It's rather incredible that Saturn has a moon made of sponge floating around it. Maybe Saturn is a planet of maids, and one of their sponges got loose.

Do waiters and cashiers get hungry when they see so much food go by them on a regular basis? Or do they just become numb to it?

While riding the CTA, someone was carrying a globe with such indignity. In the same hand was a newspaper and our precious planet. Upside-down the earth was as if it were some handbag. A huge dent in one side from banging it all about.

But what the most striking was how the stand pierced the heart of my beloved continent Antarctica! What brazen boldness!