My Hero Ron Popeil
My folks got me one of these when I was a kid. It was wonderful. The Walgreens down the street is selling this, the original Popeil Pocket Fisherman.
Ron Popeil, you are in my pantheon.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
Story Telling Wisdom
I heard this podcast the other day. It was a famous movie producer. He laid down this amazing piece of story telling wisdom in the middle of the interview. I wish I could recall the speakers in he interview. I recall that the producer had made movies of the ilk of Indiana Jones, though it’s not Steven Spielberg being interviewed.
Interviewer asking: So it’s all about, I mean for the audience you’re suggesting it’s this hunger to know what’s going on and why it’s happened.
Producer: No. It’s a hunger, that’s a very good word, to know what’s going to happen next. So we ask what’s going on in order to… that’s the only reason what’s going on. What we’re saying is in effect, “What am I rooting for?” That’s all we ever want to know.
Pollworker Inspector
I was the Inspector at Precinct 2006 in Visitacion Valley yesterday. I had 4 clerks to help me. It was good. The quiet, reverent sound of voting is 1 part library, 1 part church. And like both of those, when it gets really quiet in the middle of the day, your eyelids can get pretty heavy.
We had about 250 people over the course of the day. About 1/2 before 10am but it was a steady slow stream all day.
The biggest excitement was when I realized at 6pm that the steps up to the polling place were poorly lit. A bit of scrambling around and turning on lights inside the building (the exterior lights, we found are on a timer) remedied that.
Oh, and at one point, the ballot machine, called the “Optech Insight” stopped making the happy noise when ballots where inserted. Instead of “da-dum da-dum!” It would go “da-dum!” or “da!”. I called in and they said as long as the numbers on the front keep incrementing, it’s all good. I rebooted the ballot machine and it and it started making happy noises again.
There were a few people that had trouble with the machines, voting for 3 presidents and wondering why the machine kicked back their ballot. A calm voice and patient explaining got everyone through without a single real problem.
At the training class last week, I remember cringing and mouthing “Oh my god!” when someone asked if White-Out was ok to use on a ballot because that’s what she had been given when she had made a mistake on her ballot. The teacher kept her cool and calmly explained that Inspectors should give them a new ballot instead of using White-Out.
And I got this nifty pin :-)
My FED ([something] Election Deputy) was great, very helpful when I had questions. I called the Election Hotline a few times with questions and they knew their stuff. The pickups were funny… the first pickup, for the “important” electronic voting information was carried out by these cops that looked like… well they had all the cool cop equipment. On one officer I counted about 6 magazine holders and a utility belt that rivaled Batman’s. He was all shiny and “officery”. I got a glimpse at the grip of his pistol and man, did it shine! The second pickup was for all the paper ballots… 200 pounds of paper. These two officers were 8 inches shorter than the first-pickup guys. They had a more “down to earth” feel. Although I’m sure that bullets from any of these cops guns would stop bad guys, I’m sure that the first-pickup officers simply wouldn’t have to draw their guns as often since their appearance forcefully puts forth an “I am in charge” vibe. Interesting.
And to make the image of the second officers complete, since they had to haul so much paper, they drove a mini-van.
X-Prize Lunar Lander Challenge
You know those myriad science fiction stories with rocket ships flying around…
It won’t be science fiction forever.
This is so exciting!
http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge
Even better to watch the videos in high quality here and here.
It’s Like Printing Money
Zimbabwe has 231,000,000% inflation.
The wikipedia article on the Zimbabwean dollar reads like a Keystone Cops comedy.
A Reuters article reads “The country’s largest bank note, a 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar bill introduced on Monday, cannot buy a loaf of bread…”
On July 24th 2008, a “Second” 100 billion ZWD note could buy 3 eggs.
Of course since then the currency was devalued by 8 decimal places. And continuing inflation has moved things along another 6 decimal places. Their currency has been devalued a couple times.
A little quick math (that’s probably wrong, I’m no wiz at such things) tells me that 1 US Dollar could buy 32,145,960,000,000,000,000,000 (yes, 3.2 x 10^24) “First” Zimbabwean dollars from back in 1983.
(that number calculated from here. Here’s the ratios: First ZWD:Second ZWD = 500,000:650. Second ZWD:Third ZWD = 758,000,000,000:1,780. Third ZWD:current US dollar = 98,300,000,000:1)
Thanks for the pointer Trav and thanks for providing my RDA of absurdism Mr. Mugabe.
update 11-2-08: Hey would you look at that. Someone on Wikipedia made a chart for the most part agreeing with my 3.2×10^24 estimate. :-)
update 11-13-08:
Take a look at this screenshot I took of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe I took today.
How to Pronounce “Wiktionary”
First, ask yourself how you would pronounce the word “Wiktionary”. Ok, now proceed.
In April I commented in the Wiktionary wiki about…. well, I’ll let you read:
(archive)
There is quite a consensus that the pronunciation for “Wiktionary” in the logo of this site is not definitive. Why then is this contentious pronunciation displayed on every page of the site? A look through the archives of the discussion rooms, FAQ and entry discussion shows that the issue appears time after time without any resolution. This has caused me to lose faith in the process Wiktionary’s Administration uses to agree on subjects. Since I cannot trust Wiktionary, I will not be using Wiktionary. For the betterment of all, I hope this issue is resolved. I will check back in 6 months. —Gadlen 22:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The responses were… well, less than compelling.
Apparently everyone is perfectly happy that the logo of this wordie website is an incorrect pronunciation of the name of the site.
Feh.
Sure, encyclopedias are more exciting than dictionaries but it’s interesting to compare the popularity of the two sites…
wikipedia Active users 157,889
wiktionary Active users 995
For posterity, here is the rest of the discussion from above:
Star Wars Ma Na Ma Na
Here is the -original- “Ma na ma na” song… the Swedish soft-porn version, with Star Wars visuals.
As mentioned on Wikipedia
“Mah NÃ Mah NÃ ” is a well-known pop music song, written by an Italian musician Piero Umiliani. It originally appeared in the Luigi Scattini‘s Italian film Sweden: Heaven and Hell, but in the U.K. its most famous version was on the first episode of The Muppet Show.
I like this :-)
Found on Youtube… somewhere. There’s a bunch of similar versions. I couldn’t tell you which is the original.
PS, I still think the 3 newer Star Wars movies are crap. I watched Star Wars “Return of the Jedi” a while back and even that was pretty crappy. Han smiled too much among a milltion other things.
PPS. Han shot first.
Went to Berkeley Juggling and Unicycle Festival
On Saturday. It was great fun! I rode (well, almost) a unicycle for the first time. I learned some “claymotion” juggling moves”, and got to see some really amazing acts at the show in the evening. It felt good seeing the acts here because I knew that they knew they were “among friends”.
Take a peak at the fun sign they put on the bathroom door.
And Charlotte even won a door prize! She won a set for 35 juggling rings! And she had been mumbling about how it didn’t matter what she put in for, should doesn’t ever win anything. Well that’s not true anymore! We’ll just have to put this prize in the closet next to the Lady Ada Mini-POV kit she won at Instructables last year :-)))
Berkeley Juggling and Unicycle Festival website
At the Saturday night show was:
Kevin Axtell – who f’ing rocked.
Baby Doll – who has a terrific act and is certainly not just another hooper. Professional, fun, good choreography and sexy too :-)
Pink Man – who is wonderfully insane
A young juggler named Noah who can juggle balls behind his back and clubs behind his back via his legs… wow! (he’d throw them down through his legs and they’d wrap and he’d catch them at his shoulders or somesuch)
John Foss – a class act!
the Humboldt Jugglers – had such a tight act… it was beautiful seeing the four of them work together.
The Stanford Juggling Research Institute
Dan Holzman, Matt Hall, Curt Carlyle, Iman Lizarazu, and Mountain Mischief, Ashley Foster…
Oh and thanks to Marc Hertlein who invited me!
Greek Food Festival
Just before I left to visit family, Charlotte and I made it to A Taste of Greece at Annunciation Cathedral. Man, galaktoburikos (spelling?) is an incredible desert! And tiropita! Wow.