A quick poll

THE coolest car

I am not a car person. To me, a car serves a function, and form is something I usually don't care about. There are exceptions of course. The Delorean (time machine or otherwise) The spinner from Blade Runner, the Mach 5 and a few others. Sure.

But in general most cars, modern or classic, fail to get my heart running. I can apprciate them, but not crave them. This is not the case with Bugatti's Veyron. Watch this video and see for yourself.

I am well aware that the way they shot this sequence is half of what makes it so cool. This is a car show for gods sake! Yet it has the visuals of a movie. Outstanding.

Cog-y goodness

As you may know, I have a love of SteamPunk. I just found the site of an artist who's work is quite nice. Metal scultpture and found art.

Joe Pogan

A Gentlemans wager

After catching the latest Pirates movie was had dinner nearby. The discussion turned to the show 'Lost', which has gotten a contract for three more years. I do not believe that it will go that long and have made a gentleman's wager of dinner with my friend Ed over this.

It's not that I don't enjoy Lost. It's a pretty damn good show. But it does have one serious fault working against it. These writers have no clear idea of where they are going. There is no set arc or master story. Anyone who tells you there is, is wrong. Oh there may be some broad, nebulous idea thingy in the producers mind somewhere. But a solid plan? No. JMS had a pretty damn solid plan for B5 that made it a great Space Opera. Even the X-files eventually settled down to a central backstory. Lost? Not so much.

And how long can this show continue to pull shit out of its ass? How much weird shit can happen on this island? How long can these characters continue to do dumb things and never ask intelligent questions? I believe that the show can have a good ending. But three seasons worth? We will have to see. I suspect it will go the way of several other shows that had similar motifs. Anyone remember John Doe? Or the Running Man show (I thank that's what it was called). Great premises wasted.

While pontificating on Lost I somehow blurted out that Lost isn't that original. It's basically The Prisoner with a warmer climate. Never saw the show? Don't worry, it first ran in the 60's on BBC. But the parallels are freaky:

Lost: People wake up to find themselves on mysterious island
Prisoner: Spy wakes up to find himself on mysterious island

Lost: Island inhabited by Black Smoke, that can kill
Prisoner: Island guarded by Rover, a mysterious device that can kill

Lost: Others controlled by no. 2 who answers to unseen no 1
prisoner: Island controlled by no. 2 who answers to unseen no 1

Lost: Main characters have secrets they don't want revealed
Prisoner: Main character has secret he doesn't want revealed

Lost: Areas of the island are under video surveillance
Prisoner: Areas of the island are under video surveillance

Lost: Other try to get characters to join them
Prisoner: No 2 tried to get No 6 to join him

Lost: Dead people occasionally show up alive.
Prisoner: Dead people occasionally show up alive.

One could go on and on.

Very very cool

Anyone here remember the early days of the web browser, or windows 95? Remember how they tried to make "Virtual" malls and "Virtual" desktops? But most of these ideas pretty much sucked. The computer doesn't match up well to real world motifs. Sometimes you need a long list of information. And the graphics power to pull this sort of thing off simply didn't exist.

But I just saw a pretty slick website and set of videos for something called 'Surface' from Microsoft. Some of the things shown in the demo have been played with before in various tech demos available on youtube, but this is the first I have seen a system that takes the desktop metaphor and makes it work. Put your camera on the table, and pictures fall out, grab some and send them to your phone or email them by dragging them with your finger. Browse a restaurants menu and divide the check visually. You pay by placing your card on the table. It recognizes it! The usability here is pretty slick. Date of arrival is Winter 2007 but what does that mean? All kinds of hardware will need to be developed to take advantage of this kind of coolness. But I don't care. This is the future, shiny and full of touch displays that I want.

Kicking Science in the Yam-Bag

Why do we do this to science? If you don't believe in Evolution, fine. But masking your whacked out religious beliefs under the flag of a "Science Fair" is not just wrong, it's counter productive in every imaginable way. These people aren't just ignoring reality, they are actively working to teach children the opposite of reality.

Check out this winner in the Middle School division:

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"

Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

What...the...fuck?!?!?! We'll be seeing him on Jerry Springer one day no doubt.

You may want to go and see this train wreck for yourself. These people will some day be voters and work in government. I weep.

What's in a symbol?

When we moved Rossana's father to Ohio there was a box of old papers that was left in the trunk of our car. When I pulled it out I found old deeds, family pictures, immigration forms from Rossana's great grandfather. And a dagger.

It was old, the blade was about five inches and had a slightly rusty metal sheath. I pulled it out and noticed that it was made in Solingen. Good steel. It was dull, with no point whatsoever. I thought that with a bit of cleaning it would make a nice utility knife. I turned it over in my hands, wondering where it came from.

And then I saw the Swastika.

It was small, set into well worn and dirty handle. It seemed so incongruous. The knife didn't look particularly threatening at all. I googled 'Nazi Daggers' and found an image that matched it exactly.

The knife was a Nazi youth dagger, given to members of the Hitler Youth. When it was new, it would have had "Blood and Honor" etched on the blade.

I took it to my wife.

"I found this in that box in the trunk. Do you know where it came from?"

She looked at it and smiled. "I remember that, I think dad got it from Uncle Lou. I have some fond memories of that knife."

She saw the look on my face. I handed it to her and told her what it was.

"I don't remember the Swastika. We used to use it when we'd go to Atlantic city when I was a child. I used it to pry open Oysters. It was just a handy knife. I guess my Dad kept it because he thought it might be valuable some day."

I took it out to the shop and put it on a table. I looked at it. I honestly didn't want it in the house. I didn't want it near me. I checked militaria sites and found that in good condition it could be worth a bit of money. I considered selling it, but stopped myself.

Who would buy this thing? Who's hands would it go into? Some mild mannered military history collector? I know at least one person who collects and sells WWII models and toys, including a fair number of German items that have the same symbol on them. He's no Neo-Nazi. My own step-brother had a love of WWII era tabletop strategy games and German military models when he was a teenager. He certainly didn't turn out to be a racist or a holocaust denier.

But I didn't sell it. I couldn't.

Humans tend to imbue inanimate object with meanings and powers they simply don't have. We believe that items in close proximity to people are 'infected' by that persons personality. Their essence. Witness people who collect autographs, or items owned by famous people, or Christians. They believe that a piece of bone or a sliver of wood is holy and might even perform miracles, simply because Jesus, or someone who lived three hundred years after Jesus might have touched it, even when we almost certainly know that the item never came within a thousand miles of him.

So this knife, which very likely was never involved in harming anyone, is just a thing. It has no 'bad mojo'. Except that that's bullshit. The rational mind is over ruled by emotion all the time. Say someone killed your mother with a knife from your kitchen. Would you want the knife back? Hell no you wouldn't. I don't know the history of this knife, but I know the history of the Nazi's. I know very well what they did and the very symbol of that evil is set in the handle of this knife.

So what's in a symbol?

Rossana told me I could do whatever I wanted with it. That was six months ago. It still sits in the shop in a drawer. Do I sell it, praying that it doesn't end up in the hands of some fucked up skinhead? I could use the money right now. What if I sold it and donated the money to the Holocaust museum? Would that be wrong? Should I just destroy it? That way no one profits from it. The world isn't loosing anything important here. This knife won't add anything to our understanding or the war and its horrors. This should be a hard decision. But it is.

What would you do?

Yes, no,no,yes,no,ye-no YES!

This weekend Lindsey and I were supposed to attend Pennsic War Practice (an SCA event). It's not big, but it's close, I have some friends there and we made a podest profit last year. Rossana would be staying behind to oversee work being done at the house.

At 2am last night I had some kind of strange premonition and I checked the event website. In all previous years, you would just show up. All you needed was a valid PA sales license. Not this year. The property owners now demand that all merchants carry a 2 million dollar liability policy. Also, you had to pre-register for the event. I felt ill. I fired off an email to the merchant coordinator asking if there was anything that could be done. In the morning I tried to call the Autocrat (who runs the event). No luck.

Lindsey arrived and I explained the situation. It just didn't look feasible. Plus some guys never showed up at the house to do prep work and I might be of more use at the home front. We spent the day doing errands, writing off the event. Then I got a call from the merchant coordinator. It seems like we could do the event if we showed up with the paperwork. Crap. The insurance requirement had forced several smaller merchants to withdraw from the event. There were about half the normal number of vendors this year. Fewer merchants means fewer places to spend money. This can conceivably lead to increased sales.

So at 10:30pm we threw a show load into the van. Lindsey is doing the show solo. She's worked without us before, but with a minion of her own. We still don't know if our insurance will cover the event. It's a crap shoot. We're trusting that everything will go the way we hope and no one will be a dick. Keeping fingers crossed.

More gooder...

Remember that blasphemous video "PG-13 300"? Well there's something even gooder now. Flight 300

I really give it to these guys. A lot of work went into this.

Flickrvision

Totally addicting. See what people are uploading to Flickr and where they are uploading from.

Chair Day!

The event went off pretty well. There were about 10 of us cutting, ripping, routing, chiseling you name it. We put in a solid day and got 8 chairs cut and test assembled. We couldn't get them finished and stained, we simply ran out of energy and time. With one more work day we can get these done and I know they will look great. The days of ugly Wal-Mart chairs in our camp are numbered.

Here are pics of the event.

Website wierdness

The site is redierecting for some reason. I'm check into it.

Beam me up. Har har.

When contemplating a home improvement project, there are three distance phases:

• Phase 1- Concept
  
  "Honey, if we're going to stucco the house, we should have stone lintels over the windows like an Irish cottage. That would rock."

• Phase 2- Modification due to budget
  
  "Holy crap, there is NO way we can afford stone. But I found this cool company on the Internets that makes faux wood beams. They'd be perfect"

• Phase 3 - Settling for something else (due to the intrusion of reality).
  
  "They want HOW much just to ship a fake wood beam? Ok, what have I got sitting around the yard that I haven't burned yet?"

I really put entirely too much thinking into what should have been a pretty straight forward problem. How do I make it look like the windows have antique beams above them. I contacted companies that sell old barn beams and tried to figure out complex cuts so that they would fit into the window frame. I stressed myself out because I couldn't make it work. Eventually I had to walk away from the problem. Too much thinking. Thinking bad.

They yesterday I picked up a scrap piece of 6X6 left over from the roof project. I held it over the window and heard the sound of Angels blasting trumpets. I could use chunks of WOOD!!!!

I know, it seams pretty obvious to YOU. But I'd been trying to figure out ways to cut materials to replicate a lintel exactly. Using an actual beam would not be perfect, some of the existing window frame would be visible, but it would certainly work, and time is a big factor here.

And since our budget won't allow for buying real 200 year old hand worked beams I had to come up with my own. The solution was simple and very effective. A super tough wire wheel on a 4" angle grinder. The wheel strips away the softer wood fibers, leaving the harder wood in a great raised pattern. It's just like sandblasting. I also took chunks out at random spots and rounded the edges to give the appearance of having been hand worked with an adze.

Voila! Instant antique beams. They look great and didn't cost an arm and a leg. Rossana loves them and now wants to know if I could do the same to the main beams for the roof. That would be about 20 times the work. Plus the beams would be dark whereas the rest of the roof is pretty light colored. Maybe I could use a lighter stain. We'll see. I'm just grateful to get something off my to do list.

Balls

According to Wikipedia, today marks the anniversary of the attempted theft of the crown jewels of England in 1671 by Thomas Blood (yes, that was his name).

Have a read, it's short and simply amazing. This guy not only tried to steal the Crown Jewels, he told the King the jewels were only worth 6,000 pounds, not the 100,000 they were valued at.

Then he talked his way into a pardon!
He're to you, Thomas Blood. And your 15 pound balls.

Point of no Return

This is me taking an air hammer to my house. This seemed like a good idea at some point. The theory is to round the edges of the doors and windows so that when the stucco is applied we soften everything up a little. Knowing this doesn't make it any easier to take a chisel to a perfectly good brick wall. I mean, I'm past the point of changing my mind here. That ship has sailed.


Then there are the repairs to the roof. When the orginal repairs were done, a huge industrial strength ruber sheet was installed to prevent leaking. Alas, it wasn't installed quite right. When we get too much rain, the water creeps over the edge of the ruber and seeps into the cinderblock leading to small leaks. But small leaks take their toll. Plus the material doesn't drain away from the house enough and the topsoil isn't thick enough by our garage. So we're digging, adding new material, sealing it, covering it and laying new topsoil. Joy. The first job was so close, but just didn't get it right. Everything about this house is a learning experience, sometimes a painful one. The good news is that they're bringing over a kind of mini Bobcat front loader. I'm hoping to get them to level out some of the pits in the yard and clean up by our burn pile. I very much doubt they will let me operate this machine, but a man can dream can't he?