" /> Primordial Ooze: January 2008 Archives

« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »

January 27, 2008

Construction coming to a close

Our year-long, nay, over a year construction project is finally coming to a close. Today, we had the pleasure of celebrating my son’s birthday with my family and one of our closest friends. The latter, of course, being the man who did all of the construction over the past year.

Here are a few pictures of our new kitchen space:

Kitchen

Kitchen

Dining

Dining

Although fairly cold, I went outside and took a few shots of the back of my house. All aspects of the back is complete now, aside for the swing-set area which we intend on finishing u p with some astro-turf. Here are a few shots of the back:

Backyard

Porch

We hope to make good use of the porch this coming spring! You might wonder what’s left. Well, we’re putting in a new floor in our living room, a new entertainment center, and we’re replacing all of the doors on the first floor. The door to the basement and the boys’ rooms are all very old and don’t work so well. Here is a picture of the cutout for the new TV:

Cutout

January 26, 2008

You can write to her, too

This is yet another video site that supports video embedding. Golly, it’s so commonplace now. via haha.nu.

A few college humor videos

I don’t know how this guy didn’t break his own leg:

Is this kid old enough to talk, let alone solve the Rubik’s Cube?

And… Rubber Girl!

Quadruple Variable McTwistaroo

January 25, 2008

Johnny Chung Lee's Wiimote Projects

If you want to see some amazing projects that utilize the Nintendo Wiimotes, check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/. The demo that inspired me to write about this at all was, hands down, “Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote”. When you watch that, you’ll essentially wonder what the heck the gaming industry has been wasting their time with for the past 10 years!

Here it is:

It looks like his projects are based on this managed library for Nintendo’s Wiimote hosted over at Codeplex. Too bad I only have a Mac at home now. I almost regret shutting down all of my Windows machines, almost. I suppose I could run Windows under Fusion.

Thanks Koson!

Trunk Monkey Compilation

You have to wait for 1:30 and watch the guy who breaks into the car. OMG, I almost wet my pants.

This is great!

Thanks Rob!

January 23, 2008

links for 2008-01-24

January 22, 2008

links for 2008-01-23

January 21, 2008

links for 2008-01-22

January 19, 2008

links for 2008-01-20

January 18, 2008

Yum, Monkey Drinks his own Pee

I must admit that College Humor is a secret obsession of mine. This one just had to be let out of the wild.

What the hell is this monkey thinking?

Yesterday, I posted a few

Yesterday, I posted a few photos of my new office. One of my friends wrote to me and suggested that I burrow the ugly wire hanging down from my old clock into the wall. When I thought about it I realized all at once how unbelievably dense I had been.

The clock was specifically placed there to cover up a cable jack and, sigh, an AC outlet!

The first thing I did when I got home was pull my son from watching SpongeBob SquarePants on his computer. I brought him into the office and said, "Giovanni, what's ugly about the clock?"

"It's brown."

Grumble. "Anything else?"

"The cord."

"Yes! That's right." So I showed him that there was indeed an AC outlet behind the wall and we wrapped the cord up, bound it with a wire tie and proceeded to plug it in. We were both very excited.

ZAP! Sparks flew and I blew a circuit downstairs. My computer fell silent just as the glowing electrical ambers settled on my desk and disappeared with a faint wisp of smoke.

Giovanni didn't know what to say.

The clock was dead. I tested it. I have to admit that the clock was very old. The cord had a distinctive 1960's grainy feel to it. The brand name is Telechron. I googled it and it seems like Telechron was one of the original, if not THE original, electric clock companies. I found a website dedicated to Telechron clocks. There are even forums. So, I figure I'll post a link to this entry and see if I can't find a way to repair or replace the motor.

Updates to come.


January 17, 2008

New Office!

Some of you may know that my house has been under construction for quite a long time. We did some major work such as:

  • Redoing our basement
  • Redoing our bathroom
  • Putting in an in-ground pool
  • Installed pavers instead of grass in the backyard
  • Tore down our garage and back extension (where the old office was)
  • Redoing our kitchen
  • Redoing the office

Well, all of that work is essentialy complete. We’re re-doing one more room, our front living-room, but compared to everything else  the living room will be a minor job.

Anyway, the Office went online yesterday so I spent the night moving in. here are a few pictures of it:

Great Flash-Based Physics Toy

Go check out the amazing Doodle thingy over at screamingduck.com. It’s a flash-based physics “toy” much like the Falling Sand Game (which is also awesome).

2008-01-17_0814

Red sets up static walls. Black blows bubbles that float. Blue creates rigid structures that fall. Green sets up squishy structures that fall. This is a lot of fun. I can’t wait to show my kids.

BoomShakalaka (down on the same page) is also a lot of fun.

Tags: , ,

January 16, 2008

Building Stonehenge

I saw this a while ago and I can’t forget if it was online or on TV. Anyway, it’s fascinating stuff and pretty convincing that this is how Stonehenge went down:

Google Developing OS X Version Of Picasa

Picasa_logo…and the best part is that it will be available this year. Not having Picasa is one of my last regrets about switching from Windows to a Mac over the past year (the other is BlogJet… Dmitry, please!).

iPhoto has some fantastic innovations, such as the “Event” concept, yet Picasa is the superior application.

Picasa is faster and had far better integration with photo upload sites, particularly shutterfly and snapfish.

My favorite line from the original link is this:

I asked if Picasa for Mac was coming, and as luck would have it I managed to pick the Google employee with the least amount of media training and immediately put her on the spot. Her response: Picasa for Mac is under-development and will be launched later this year.

My only hesitation will be whether Picasa will force me to lose much of the benefit I see in using iPhoto, mainly it’s integration with the rest of the Mac (screensavers, iMovie ‘08, iPod photo sync, etc.) Losing all of that will make me think twice about re-embracing Picasa on OS X.

Thanks John!

Bloody Omaha

This is an incredible video showing how you can reproduce D-Day with 3 guys and 4 days of shooting and editing (actually, not sure if that’s a total…).

Really fantastic. A new era in filmmaking. (Credit)

January 8, 2008

links for 2008-01-09

January 7, 2008

links for 2008-01-08

January 6, 2008

links for 2008-01-07

January 5, 2008

101 Impersonations

This is definitely worth the watch!