Instead of having its components screwed into a case, this homebrewed computer is held together with spray-on polyurethane foam. "Disclaimer: DON'T do this at home kids, any modern CPU or GPU will generate too much heat to remain operable in such tight and highly isolated environments such as a PU-foam case." Oh, and it's not upgradeable and difficult to repair too. (via Larkfarm)
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“Progressive Men Employ Progressive Methods” The text of the 1931 edition of "Songs of IBM" is online thanks to someone who understands the amazing power of the Internet as an archival medium. The site includes a wav file recording of employees singing "Ever Onward". Some of the tunes may no longer be familiar, but there are plenty of lyrics written for well-known classics such as "Over There", "Glory Glory Hallelujah", and "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Times have certainly changed. (via /usr/bin/girl)
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Thursday, March 28, 2002

A couple of years ago, I lamented that American Express was not actually producing their Blue card as advertised with see-through plastic because of problems with ATM machines. Well, I held a recently issued one in my hand yesterday, and it was most definitely clear. So if you have an opaque Blue card, you may want to accidently misplace it and call for a new one. Or, perhaps, they have already sent you one you can peer through.
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I was a big fan of Pirate's Booty for a while last year. It's a puffed cheese snack and it fueled late night Diablo II sessions without puffing up the fat cells. After I had eaten too much of it, though, it started reminding me of those new environmentally friendly packing peanuts that dissolve in water. So I haven't had any in a while. But William Grimes of the NY Times recently tried it out, after having been pestered by acquaintances about it. Turns out Good Housekeeping verified his disbelief that the product was as low-fat as it claimed. The Good Housekeeping Institute sent bags out to independent labs for analysis. One ounce of Booty contained 8.5 grams of fat and 147 calories. The bags were labeled as having 2.5 grams of fat and 120 calories per serving. Oops. When contacted, the company claimed that they knew about the problem and the cause was a new manufacturing process and the bags would be relabeled. They then recalled the misleading bags. Currently, the information on their site claim 5 grams of fat and 128 calories. Ah well. I am much more enamored of Good Health's Rosemary Olive Oil Potato Chips. They are so full-flavored that you can be satisfied after just a few chips (though you may find yourself eating up the entire bag).
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Wednesday, March 27, 2002

The latest fashion statement from the bio-tech industry is jeans dyed blue by genetically altered bacteria. These little buggers, none other than a strain of the well known E. coli, take in sugar and produce tryptophan (also well known for its Thanksgiving Day nap-inducing properties) which is converted to indigo. This is a more environmentally friendly way to create our favorite blue denim color as it does not create toxic by-products.
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There's hope for tinnitus sufferers with a new therapy method based on differentiating between computer generated tones. This practice actually reduces the disproportionately large areas of the auditory cortex that are believed to be the cause of the ringing noise. (And I apologize to those people who now hear a ringing noise because of the fact that I made them remember they had one.)
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Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Keeping kosher? Want your dog or cat to keep kosher too? KosherPets was founded by a Florida couple who started feeding kosher meat to their dog for health reasons. Their high quality homemade pet food impressed their Jewish neighbors who kept asking for it even upon their return to summer homes. A business was born, and they are now certified kosher for Passover.
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Russel Wright brought modern design to the masses with flowing styles that are still fresh today. With his wife, Mary, Wright pioneered the concept of an entire lifestyle marketed via the Russel Wright brand. Martha Stewart's branded empire pales in comparison, after all, she is no designer, but a shrewd tactician who merely passes her tastes along to the public. Wright's designs appealed to the changed post-depression lifestyle and tracked perfectly with the more minimalist tastes of the post-war years. The Cooper-Hewitt Museum is running a retrospective of his work. And if you don't want to shell out collector's prices for the originals, Oneida is releasing updated versions of popular pieces from his dinnerware collection. An added plus, these reissues are microwavable and oven and dishwasher safe.
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Monday, March 25, 2002

Ever wonder where those Oscar statuettes come from? Not from a rare hidden tree in the Hollywood Hills. R.S. Owens & Company casts, electroplates, and buffs each 8.5 pound Oscar. They also make the Emmy and the MTV Video Music Award. Encore Awards makes the Golden Globe Award.
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A NY Times article reports that Chinese-language newspapers in America have recently been switching from up-down printing to left-right. This also means that what used to be the front page is now the back. Immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong were accustomed to the vertical positioning and also traditional characters. Communist China uses simplified characters and horizontal printing. The switch therefore, has an unintentional political overtone to it. Recent immigrants from mainland China are more likely to pick up a paper in left-right style. The publishers state that printing English terms is easier that way, and they are, after all, American newspapers. As can be expected, readers from different backgrounds have different reactions. One man states that children will be more inclined to learn Chinese if the paper is left-right, since it makes it easier for them. The article also mentions that most Chinese language websites use horizontal orientation as did many of the papers' ads. It's a strange experience to have the format of your reading material drastically altered. The fact that it also brings up cultural evolution and political divisions makes it a poignant one as well.
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Friday, March 22, 2002

Amanda Hesser continues to garner attention from her fellow journalists as the Boston Phoenix jumps on the bandwagon with a feature article. It covers a few of the controversial aspects of her rise to fame such as the criticism that her "Food Diary" column is too much about her life, not enough about food. But her writing makes the topic accessible, as she says "I’d like to reach some people who don’t normally read about food." The article also takes a slight dig at the NY Times itself: "And as the New York Times reportedly seeks a more populist readership — as evidenced by recent articles on Botox and Mariah Carey on the paper’s front page — it’s no surprise that Hesser has received such a prominent platform for her work."
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I stumbled across a nicely done guide to Mountain View, CA. Not only does it have current information, it also has has a great historical perspective on the city that I've spent much of my working life in. On this page is a photo from the construction of Mountain Bay Plaza. This is the tallest building in Mountain View and for many miles around. I worked on the 7th floor for a few years. I had been told that it was designed to withstand earthquakes because the building was hung off of the top of its two shafts. A cafe that used to be on the ground floor had photos from the construction, so I was able to see how it was built. But my husband, who coincidentally worked in the same building for a different company (we did not know each other back then), had never seen photos of the construction, though I had told him how the building dangled off the top. He was really surprised when I showed him the photo. The building sways viciously during an earthquake, and that's a good thing.

I often heard people refer to Mountain Bay Plaza as "The Dog Building", and the origin of that is chronicled in the text under the photo, except the term used there is "Dog City". The building remained vacant as it was completed during a recession. The owner put some dogs in the ground floor for protection and they would jump and bark at people going by. Sometimes the tale was exaggerated to claim that there were wolves loose in the building. Downtown Mountain View is still changing these days, with new construction, as usual, started in the boom and ending in a recession. The city planners are trying to maintain their downtown's character with very specific plans for the future.
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Thursday, March 21, 2002

My earlier mention of the closing of Impromptu Gourmet and opening of FiveLeaf generated more reader interest than I anticipated. Readers contributed the following meal delivery services: Dining By Design will deliver healthy meals, designed by nutritionists. They offer meals for restricted diets and popular diet plans. bibikitchen (warning, loud music from Flash animation) ships all-vegetarian Indian dishes via FedEx. Main dishes such as chana masala and vegetable kofta come with basmati rice you cook yourself or near-Eastern bread.
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Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS) is holding their annual Petchitecture benefit this Friday. Bay Area architects design fanciful pet abodes which are auctioned off. Pet owners can also pay to be paired off with an architect who will design a custom house for their pooch, feline, fish, fowl, etc.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Did you know the U.S. had an official National Atlas? I didn't, nor did Mike of Larkfarm from whom I swiped it. There's a varied mix of maps in different formats. You can view Shockwave maps that track active volcanoes, the West Nile virus, and avian cholera. There is a printable map of Presidential Election results, 1789-2000. Enjoy the educational browsing.
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Here's another news item on the fun phenomenon of synesthesia. The results of a study done on a man, W.O., who sees colors when he reads and hears words (even when they are in a different language!) have been published (abstract here) and Wired News wrote a piece on it. The researcher, Thomas Palmeri of Vanderbilt University, verified that the subject was able to consistently associate the same colors for words or parts of words. Numbers took on different colors when they were written out instead of represented as numerals. "An image of the number 5 made up of much smaller number 2s, W.O. saw the whole image as a five and it appeared green" ... "when he looked at the small 2s that made up the image, each of the numerals was orange." It is fascinating to consider the richer experience W.O. has when reading the same things I do.
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Tuesday, March 19, 2002

The European Commission is planning a standard sizing system for clothes which would use centimeters instead of the various dress sizes that are currently in place. There are four different dress size systems used in Europe, and all are different from what is used in the U.S. Member countries will conduct national size surveys so that the new measurements will match the population. Size UK has measured 11,000 U.K. residents. Their study utilized high-tech 3D body scans and the old-fashioned tape measure to track 130 separate measurements for each participant.
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Material ConneXion runs what its founder calls a "petting zoo for new materials." They have a library of 3,000 unusual materials which architects and designers use to find the latest nifty gel, resin, foam, laminate, paneling, etc, for their projects. A recent addition to their archives is a plastic sheeting made with recycled coffee grounds. "You can imagine how much coffee waste there is in America." (from a NY Times article)
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Monday, March 18, 2002

The L.A. Times has a round-up of "roaming gnome" pranks, where objects are taken from their owners and sent around the world, periodically sending postcards and photos back to their home. Marvin the Singing Monkey and someone's right shoe are featured.
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Here's an uplifting scene from Leigh Weimers of the Mercury News. A man is stopped at LAX by National Guardsmen and told to hold out his hands, palms upwards. Panic strikes. Is he about to be handcuffed? Suddenly, his hands are filled with Hershey's Kisses and he looks down and realizes he is wearing a t-shirt that reads "Hand Over the Chocolate and Nobody Gets Hurt."
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In the middle of Rome, near the spot where Caesar was stabbed, lies a partially excavated ancient Roman temple. If you're thinking of adopting an Italian kitty cat, or just meeting a few of them, you might want to pay this location a visit. The Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary makes its home in the underground ruins. It is a no-kill shelter whose sign attracts many cat-loving tourists down to see the cute occupants. Some even leave with an Italian kitty of their own. (original source: Seattle Times article)
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Friday, March 15, 2002

Immediately after I read that Impromptu Gourmet was shutting down, I noticed a plug in the Mercury News for FiveLeaf. Both services offer(ed) cook-it-yourself gourmet dinner kits designed by top chefs. Impromptu Gourmet's roster of chefs consisted mostly of New York City stars like Michael Romano. FiveLeaf's biggest star is probably Thomas Keller of the much lauded French Laundry. They have his fabled "Mac and Cheese" (lobster with orzo). You can also order the creations of Daniel Boulud and Charlie Trotter. FiveLeaf has already outlasted its competition, but it actually replaced it, so it will be dealing with very similar conditions. Perhaps their chefs will be better recognized across the country by foodies who have no desire to recreate the dishes from scratch themselves.
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Paul Brians, Professor of English at Washington State University, has compiled a list of "Common Errors in English." It includes such oldies as "the principal is your pal" and new gems such as "PIN number". He states that the term "'PIN' was invented to meet the objection that a 'password' consisting of nothing but numbers is not a word." I thought it was a clever marketing gimmick. He also has a list of non-errors, which is just as handy as the errors. (thank you Kathryn!)
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Thursday, March 14, 2002

Alton Brown was accused of shoplifting at the supermarket where he usually films portions of "Good Eats" (he ate some donut holes and forgot the box in the soda aisle). He kindly does not mention the name of the store, but most fans will remember the name that flashes across the screen when he's out perusing the aisles for frugal cuts of meat or the perfect blend of flour. Alton's book will be released very soon and his book tour will bring him to San Jose on June 15. (thanks for the heads up, Backup Brain).
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I was pleased as punch to hear that Mark Anderson's lending library was mentioned in the New York Times! And there's a nice quote from Judith Zissman! Steve Cook and Vera Tobin helped get the booklend site up and running. The NY Times! Very cool! Great job!
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The Columbia Newsblaster "uses natural language processing techniques to read what is written in published news reports" and writes summaries. It is able to identify which category it should place the news item in, and also gathers relevant photographs. This program is not intended to be a replacement for a reporter, but is more of a tool to manage the information glut we can find ourselves in. Trickier things it has to contend with are differences in reported facts, differing numbers of casualties, for instance, and dealing with tone. Improvements are planned. It will be interesting to see if any news summary sites take advantage of its features. (info culled from an OJR article by a not so artificially intelligent being)
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Wednesday, March 13, 2002

The Internet Museum of Flexi / Cardboard / Oddity Records has records on postcards and stamps. Hey, you could put a record stamp on a record postcard. (via Plep)
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Search a database of 30,000 kosher foods. You can even search by rabbi name. (via Library Stuff)
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Frying an egg on a CPU. 11 minutes on a copper coin heatsink. (via misnomer)
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Tuesday, March 12, 2002

A Korean couple met and fell in love while playing Diablo II. They got married this past Sunday. (via eatonweb)
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The Guerilla Girls have taken their Anatomically Correct Oscar, designed for The Nation in 1999, and put him up on a Hollywood billboard. Whether or not you agree with their poster campaigns, perhaps they will make you stop a minute and think about why women are under-represented in the positions of power in the arts.
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I caught live views of the New York City skyline from the Staten Island webcam. They have streaming video and still image shots. The 88 beams of light that form the two towers of the "Tribute in Light" memorial will be lit from dusk until 11 p.m. every night until April 13.
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Monday, March 11, 2002

The Humanities Media Interface Project at Keio University in Japan has been producing high-resolution digital images of old texts, such as the Gutenberg Bibles at the British Library. They are now working on a first edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The creation of the digital images is surprisingly swift. 1,300 pages of the bibles were photographed in just 4 days. The team can obtain even higher resolution results using scanning cameras instead of "single shot". (Note: The web pages displayed fine on my browser without installing Japanese characters.)
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Many of us have specialized knowledge that can clutter our movie-watching enjoyment. When I'm watching movies or TV shows I pick up inconsistencies and mistakes in portrayals of instrumentalists and use of computers. Many people in the Silicon Valley audience laughed as we watched Tom Cruise's Macintosh and Laserwriter make noises they were incapable of during "The Firm." And I am still trying to figure out how Sigourney Weaver managed to play the cello in "Ghostbusters" with her tight skirt on. But Mike Simonson has knowledge that can apply to many a movie. He's a graphic designer with a special fondness for typeface design. His article "Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies" points out movie bloopers that I would never have picked out in a million viewings. Film makers may pay attention to authenticity of costumes and props, but modern typefaces have found their way into films that took place before their time. (via xBlog)
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Friday, March 08, 2002

Looking for a classic apprenticeship? How about learning about the art of casting type? Lewis Mitchell is seeking to pass on his knowledge in the area of typecasting. It's a profession that should be kept alive in our age of electronic presses. Letterpress printing is a niche luxury market, so learning to cast type could keep you clothed and perhaps not too shabbily if you market your wares well. (via rebecca's pocket)
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Many orchestra and band musicians, particularly in the Silicon Valley, have envisioned an electronic sheet music display system, preferably networked to the conductor and other members of your section. It would allow you to easily share annotations, bowings, fingerings, changes, and even keep time, if that is necessary! Well, many have talked about it, some may have even sketched it out on napkins, but Harry Connick Jr, went ahead and implemented it. He even patented it. US Patent 6,348,648 covers "A system and method for coordinated music composition and display among musicians." His system uses G3 Power Macs and had the help of his neighbor, David Pogue. His patent also covers the handwriting recognition aspect of his system where the score can be edited and quickly shared with the other players. Connick has a big advantage over other performance groups since he is writing his scores himself on Finale. Transferring the classical orchestral repertoire to electronic form is very possible, but a daunting task when you consider all the different versions, markings, and copyright issues involved. Hopefully Connick will be lenient with his licensing fees for the good of cash-poor orchestras everywhere. (from NY Times Patents column)
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Thursday, March 07, 2002

The Museum at Old-Computers.com has 535 computers catalogued in their online collection. The photos are accompanied by technical details, and a paragraph or sometimes much more of recollections, often from former owners, of the model's life and times. (via memepool)
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XM Radio has patented a "Method and system for providing geographic specific services in a satellite communications network" (#US6347216) and the National Association of Broadcasters is very upset. They are expecting XM Radio to honor their pledge to stay out of the local radio programming business. But the technology covered by the patent allows them to determine a listener's location with local repeaters and, presumably, offer local information and compete directly with broadcast radio. XM Radio says it still plans to offer only nationally syndicated programming. I'd venture a guess that local traffic and weather would be a nice future addition. (Note: the US Patent Office's online database is down at the moment, so I used the database at Delphion, IBM's intellectual property spinoff company)

Here is a PDF of the NAB's official complaint to the FCC (854KB) which also has the complete patent attached to it. The FCC allowed XM to install the repeaters, something the NAB fought against.

How Stuff Works has detailed explanations of all three satellite radio providers and their technology. XM Radio has two Boeing satellites, named "Rock" and "Roll", in parallel geostationary orbit. Sirius has three Loral satellites in "an inclined elliptical satellite constellation." WorldSpace has a satellite over Africa, Asia, and plans for one to cover Central and South America.
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Wednesday, March 06, 2002

IKEA won the East Palo Alto vote.
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Women Who Ruled: Queens, Goddesses, Amazons 1500-1650 is an exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. It uses the visual arts of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to study how women of power were portrayed and depicted during those times. These works of art relate both the struggle of women to define their own images as well as artistic interpretations outside of the subject's influence. (via Yahoo's Picks)
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Gourmet coffee at the office is a lingering afterglow of the "dot boom". Rumors of expensive cappucino machines still float around. But not all high-tech companies provide free caffeine. Intel's employees have to buy their own coffee, and over at WorldCom they voted to eliminate free coffee and $25 of free long distance calls per month instead of increasing their insurance payment contributions. Starbucks, Peet's and FilterFresh have become the main players in supplying gourmet coffee to offices. Starbucks and Peet's sign up partners to manage the delivery, while FilterFresh continues to buy up smaller vendors to increase its market share. Some people say coffee at work just isn't the same as at the cafe, though. There's a lack of consistency and quality control, not to mention the vastly different atmosphere.
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Tuesday, March 05, 2002

What happens in your brain when you reach a meditative state? By using brain imaging on Buddhist monks, Dr. Andrew Newberg has discovered that meditation can lead to a decrease in activity in the part of the brain responsible for orientation and an increase in the area that is active when you focus on a specific task. This can certainly match the meditative experience of being outside of space and time. Dr. Newberg has been using research such as this to explain why humans continue to believe in the mystical and, indeed, in God. "Our brains may, in fact, be naturally calibrated to spirituality." This trait may have been essential to our survival. Our reality of knowledge and emotions can be a scary place without faith, whether you place it in yourself or others. (This article reminded me of a Wired Magazine piece called "This Is Your Brain on God" which described Michael Persinger's quest to invoke spiritual experiences by tickling people's temporal lobes.)
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My brother sent me an interesting article from Andante (a site I noted in September but promptly forgot to keep checking). It is about John Rockwell's stepping down as editor of the NY Times' Arts & Leisure section. Respected internationally as the definitive source for commentary on the performing arts, Arts & Leisure concentrated on an audience of both amateurs and professionals with "love and passion for the arts." But Howell Raines, the new executive editor of the paper, apparently wants to appeal to more general audience. The section does cover pop culture along with what may be considered the more sophisticated arts, but culture editor John Darnton would like it to be more mainstream and provocative. Some are worried that the leadership shift will dumb the section down. I hope they realize that covering trends and being trendy are two different things.
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Monday, March 04, 2002

From the vigilant NY Times, an update on the lack of TV reception in the Manhattan region. New York City is anticipating a hefty increase in franchise fees from the rise in cable subscribers following the loss of the World Trade Center antenna. With viewers signing up for cable instead, broadcast networks have felt less frantic about settling on replacement plans. But "in order to comply with federal mandates for over-the-air service and to house their digital transmitters" they will have to put a tower up somewhere, sometime.
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Food writer Amanda Hesser is a recent favorite of mine, coming in for me on the heels of M.F.K. Fisher, with a refreshingly more modern bent. After noticing her NY Times Sunday Magazine "Food Diary" column, I poked around for every new Hesser article in the Food section and eagerly awaited her Sunday dispatches. I based our new coffeemaker purchase on her researched opinion and linked to her articles here at least twice. A couple weeks ago I had the epiphany that perhaps she had already written a book and discovered her lovely memoir/cookbook, "The Cook and the Gardener : A Year of Recipes and Writings for the French Countryside", at the local library. I tried her asparagus risotto recipe. Yummy.

A man has been making frequent appearances in her "Food Diary" columns. She gave him a cute nickname at first, "Mr. Latte" (reminiscent of Fisher's Chexbres). As the relationship progressed for the better, he became Tad (he's actually New Yorker writer Tad Friend). And this past weekend, in a cleverly constructed column on the relationship between her cooking and her moods, she revealed that he was now her fiance. I shed happy tears.

More from and on Hesser:
Foodie to Watch
Finding Success (hard work and a little luck)
Corby Kummer on her cookbook
Hesser on Pilates
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Friday, March 01, 2002

Hooray, here is a well-researched article on trans fats from the SF Chronicle. It includes newer information I had not yet heard about. Trans fat may be a large contributor to the oddly named "Syndrome X" which has been linked to a cell's inability to process insulin. It is almost impossible to avoid trans fats in the American diet. Out of "140 varieties of crackers on a typical supermarket shelf, only three brands had no partially hydrogenated oil." It is in "70 percent of cake mixes, 75 percent of chips and other salty snacks, 80 percent of frozen breakfast foods like waffles, and 95 percent of cookies." Fifty percent of breakfast cereals have some. Keep reading those package side panels!
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I did not realize that Sony owned a controlling interest in Aiwa. It is probably a lucky thing now, because they are not doing so well. Sony intends to buy out the remaining percentage it does not own and turn it into a subsidiary. This will probably mean more layoffs for Aiwa manufacturing, but the brand has a chance to live on.
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