Production of this year's state quarters is down from previous years. 648 million Tennessee quarters were minted; compare that to others on the mintage chart. The 2002-P Ohio quarter has the lowest mintage for one mint, 217.2 million. There has not been as much demand for coinage with the economy downturn. Also, the Pennsylvania mint was closed for six weeks, while they should have been producing Ohio quarters, to fix some OSHA concerns. Louisiana is out, so I'm losing ground fast in my hunt.
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Gilroy, California will probably hold the Garlic Capital of the World title for as long as it wants to claim it, but China is exporting garlic into the U.S. which sells at much lower prices than the local crop. Even with a 376% tariff, Chinese garlic is coming in cheaper and the produce is of equal quality; even the owner of Christopher Ranch says the cloves are "beautiful." Some Chinese garlic makes it way past the tariff by being sent through another country such as Thailand. It is easy to claim a different country of origin and the higher the tariff, the more reason to get around it. "Trace mineral profiling" can be used to verify where the garlic was grown, but Customs can't check all of it. I still have to get myself to the Garlic Festival one of these years. If local farmers are to be believed, I probably should not put it off too long.
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Thursday, May 30, 2002

Amazon has started a catalog and menu search which I've found to be very similar to Google's catalog search. Actual printed catalogs and menus are scanned in and the text is searchable. I'm not finding the menu search very practical yet, since it is currently full of ritzy places, but I suppose that could change as more are added. It would be most useful to me if it had local takeout and pizza places, not expensive restaurants who already have their own websites. A friend mentioned that a personal scan and search mechanism would be very helpful to him. Then he could have all the pieces of paper that he has accumulated digitized and catalogued for search. He was willing to pay good bucks for this too. Perhaps a service could be created where customers used their own scanners and then sent or uploaded the results to an online service for character recognition and indexing for search. The customer could log in and search their own set of documents as needed. Anyone done this already? I'm writing up the patent right now.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2002

This yummy Observer article about Britain's new wave of upscale Indian restaurants has some interesting details on the evolution of Indian food in Britain. "More than 90 per cent of Indian restaurants in Britain are owned and run by Bangladeshis." This, they claim, accounts for the homogeneity of Indian restaurant food. There are also details on the substitutions made for original ingredients. The new upscale places are trying to import the right raw materials, such as rock moss from Hyderabad, an essential ingredient for steaming up a true biryani. But the mainstream curry shops make do with jarred curry pastes and powdered food colorings. This formula is true for restaurants of all cuisines, though. High-class places use authentic ingredients. At the end of the article is a list of facts, the most disheartening for me being that chicken tikka masala, one of my favorites, was invented in the oh so Asian land of Glasgow. Ah well, bring on the chop suey and fortune cookies. Evolution is OK (and often more affordable). (via randomWalks)
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While Philadelphia's Kimmel Center (with acoustics designed by Artec Consultants) is designed with customizable acoustic panels and walls, the two concert halls in the Rome Auditorium were created for classical music. There is a third theater that can transform in size, but the acoustic engineers at Muller-BBM maintain that a more versatile space will sacrifice reverberation. So they made the compromise of designing the larger halls for symphony orchestras. However, "the largest hall exceeds the theoretical limit of a naturally acoustic hall." They built a scale model to determine how sound would track inside it and are hoping that the curved ceiling will funnel the sound appropriately.
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Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Jamie Oliver (aka "The Naked Chef") has a regular column in The Times and the archives of his chatty writing are available. Use the dropdown menu to access recipe listings. Alton Brown is out on his book tour. Check the listings carefully; some of the city headings don't match where the actual booksigning is (e.g. when did San Francisco move across the bay to Oakland?).
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Mexico used to be a leading vanilla supplier, but the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and discovery of oil near where the crops grew put a halt to much of the industry. Then synthetic vanilla and Madagascar's hefty vanilla crop created a price drop, prompting Mexican farmers to raise cattle or citrus and bananas instead. But prices have recently gone up after the cyclones of 2000 and political problems in Madagascar, so Mexico is aiming to ramp up production again, with the help of their already established orange trees which, fortuitously, provide excellent support for vanilla plants. They also hope to retain some of the workers who prefer to go to the U.S. for jobs. Caring for and harvesting the crop is labor intensive. Some clever marketing to the gourmet food crowd would help them gain an edge over Madagascar, Indonesia, and, also ramping up, Uganda.
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Friday, May 24, 2002

The latest elevator news from the Wall Street Journal. The acceleration of elevators is tailored to the city. "In a high-rise in New York, they want to feel the acceleration," says Ray Moncini, president of Otis North America. But in Japan, people like a smooth ride. And elevators have apparently become the latest place to hold people captive while they endure the assault of media. I guess the Muzak wasn't enough.
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Following its rebirth, Iridium has been doing well. In addition to their government contracts, deals with private firms have been increasing and now make up about half of their revenue. Their data transmission business is pulling a lot of weight and the company could have broke even this year had they not decided instead to invest in creating short-message service. But they are facing a dilemma. Iridium is required to sign a contract to build and launch a new batch of satellites, even though they don't need them until 2012. This is a regulation from the FCC to guarantee their commitment to use a reserved set of airwaves. Unfortunately, the satellite business is shifting to the ground. Competitor ICO, who had also struggled to survive, is turning to a terrestrial solution to cover more area and even bring broadband service to rural locations. Iridium could alter their satellite model to take advantage of on-ground repeaters as well, but they'll need to ask for flexibility from the government to keep their money from being tied up in this federally enforced contract.
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Thursday, May 23, 2002

Johnjoe MacFadden's "cemi field theory" proposes that "human consciousness is actually the brain's electromagnetic field interacting with its circuitry." Author of Quantum Evolution, McFadden's emphasis on the electromagnetic field as an entity that defines the human mind, rather than a side effect, as it were, of how our brains happen to work, is likely to be controversial. But there are benefits to his line of inquiry and potential experimentation to discover if he's correct. Even if he can not prove scientifically that this wireless field is what makes us conscious and human, finding the effects of magnetic fields on the brain may be helpful in treating those whose minds are not wired as properly as they could be. Hopefully it won't be as rash as shock therapy, but there is so much we don't understand about how our brains function that a new perspective is welcome. The article notes that McFadden's approach brings back philosophy of mind's dualism, although in a slightly different manner from the original.
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The NY Times article on exhibitors at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair is chock-full of nifty links to funky furniture designers. Fold Online has interesting wall-hangings and furniture with dramatic wood grain. Truck Product Architecture brings their name to life with pieces that are easy to ship, functional and appealing in minimalism. They were hoping to sell to Design Within Reach, a retailer looking for new items. Blu Dot was showing their stacking storage systems. Lolah has funky, whimsical shapes. C-Design Studio's pieces seem boxy. R&D Design gets my vote with simple designs in interesting forms. They have a circular steel table laser-cut into a lace pattern. It's named Doily.
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Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are the front-runner for replacing bar codes in grocery stores. The little tags can transmit an electronic product code to a wireless receiver, speeding up scanning, and making the inventory process almost automatic. They still need to work out a standard method of communication and bring the cost down from 50 cents to 5 cents per tag, but the Auto-ID Center researchers believe that is possible by 2005. The technology was developed by a joint team from MIT and Cambridge University (bridging the ocean that separates the two Cambridges). Radio tags are already used in many applications, including library security (low frequency) and toll-collection (high frequency). When they become standard for tracking all sorts of products, perhaps they will also help you find your keys.
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Perhaps you would have enjoyed living in the windows of Harrods for a week, your activities on view to passersby and Internet webcams. Mostly, though, you would be demonstrating how wonderful the LG Electronics appliances are, since they are the sponsors of this odd publicity stunt. Four unrelated people were picked to portray a happy family (or as happy as a family can be when they don't really know each other and are forced to spend 9 hours together each day on display in a department store window). They seem to be spending their time learning about feng shui, meeting minor celebrities, getting makeovers, and, ah yes, using those all-important appliances. I wonder what it would be like if my refrigerator got email. (via Nobody's Fool: What's for dinner?)
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Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Grocery shoppers in the U.K. will soon be able to bring home purple carrots. Next year the selection will include black and white and more colors. On this side of the pond, a Texas grower has been selling a carrot that was created to match Texas A&M's colors (maroon and white). Those were found to contain more vitamin A and 40% more beta-carotene. Not bad. Over at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they started looking into creating carrots with the aim of improving human health. The various colors of carrot contain different helpful chemicals. Red carrots have lycopene, which has exhibited antioxidant properties in studies on tomatoes. Purple carrots have anthocyanins, which is the same pigment that you see in fall leaves and blueberries. I call blueberries "cancer pills" (prevention, not cause!). The anthocyanins neutralize free radicals. Even pigment-less white carrots have phytochemicals.
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You could imagine that escaping gravity would be a dancer's dream, or at least a flight of fancy. Well, dancers with the Gravity Zero project are getting the chance to whirl about without the bonds that keep us tethered to the ground. It is for the benefit of science, an initiative to study the difference in dancers' control of their limbs and posture. Parabolic flights take the subjects through minutes of zero gravity while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) measures how the messages of movement are transmitted through the subjects' muscles. This information will help patients recovering from neurotrauma and also astronauts who have to live in zero-G for extended periods.
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Monday, May 20, 2002

Just as there is the popular Internet Movie Database, there is the Internet Broadway Database which contains data about actors, shows, and theaters.
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The Computer History Museum at Moffett Field in Mountain View is getting some publicity now as they are fundraising for a new building. The museum opened in 1999 in a creaky old warehouse that can showcase only a tenth of their collection. Much of it was actually the archives of the old Computer Museum in Boston which became focused on educating people about how computers worked instead of exhibiting the history. That museum eventually merged into Boston's Museum of Science and the collection of artifacts was moved to Silicon Valley. As visitors examine the evolution of the device from huge to tiny, some wonder what will happen next as chips become ubiquitous.
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Friday, May 17, 2002

Charles Nichols of Stanford has designed a "virtual bow" to allow violinists to create more musical expression with computer generated music. It captures the distance of the bow to the bridge, pressure, speed, and, of course, the angle to determine which string is (or strings are) being played. This also translates to the "vertical, rotational, horizontal and longitudinal motion of the bow." The hopeful result is a more emotional rendering from a computerized performance. Next up, a touch pad for the "neck" so that the full range of notes can be played. More info, including construction details and photos of the virtual bow are available in PDF format on Nichols' website.
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Things I've Learned From Bad Dreams (#2 in a series)

Using a tissue to apply mascara is inefficient and often ineffectual.

If instead of check-in counters they have little check-in kiosks in the middle of airport hallways, you can get a faster running start towards your gate. You'll still miss the plane, of course.

Asking your waiter to create a pink clam chowder for you by combining Manhattan and New England clam chowder may seem like a good idea, but the end result will be interesting -- the bad kind of interesting.
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Thursday, May 16, 2002

If a friend comes to you and asks "Can I build a Millenium Falcon in your backyard?" don't think it over too hard. Don't worry about what the neighbors will think or if you'll need some sort of permit. Just say "Sure, why not!" (more pictures).
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A couple years ago, I was fascinated to hear about the possibility that airplane contrails have an effect on the weather. Those seemingly harmless puffy lines in the sky can expand into impressive cloud cover. But do they significantly change the weather? Climatologists looked at the data from September 11-13, when most jet traffic was grounded. The difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures increased in areas where there is normally heavy contrail traffic. Within those regions of heavy air traffic, the smaller differences between day and night temperatures could affect the environment. For example, maple trees need temperature changes in order to produce sap. In another study, a scientists observed single contrails produced by military jets that were allowed to fly during those days. "He witnessed six contrails, each no wider than an airplane wing, evolve in a matter of hours into cloud banks that covered 20,000 square kilometers." I bet this doesn't help the reasons why it always seems to rain on weekends.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2002

A NY Times critic attempts to judge the acoustics of the new Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. The verdict: Carnegie Hall is still tops. Verizon Hall has "a tendency to favor bass tones, a brass-heavy imbalance among the instruments, a sense that that sound, though present, is diffuse." But there is still fine tuning that can be done. The hall's canopy and 100 acoustical closets are adjustable, not to mention the orchestra itself is adjusting to the new environment. And, the critic admits, there's a psychological difference that can't really be quantified. But not too many people will have the chance, as he did, to hear the same exact program with the same musicians, performed on consecutive nights in the two halls. Verizon Hall will probably do just fine. Bonus: Take a peek at the construction of their immense organ which will eventually have 6,465 pipes. It is scheduled to be completed in 2005; they had the façade installed early so it would be visually ready for the opening of the hall.
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And, as they say, now for something completely different... take a peek at rehearsals for Hairspray, the musical based on the John Waters movie of the same name, through the lens of photographer Jill Krementz. Harvey Fierstein plays Tracy Turnblad's mom, the role Divine had in the movie. Hairspray will have a run in Seattle before heading to Broadway.
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Tuesday, May 14, 2002

The earthquake was probably the worst I've been in (I moved here in 1991), and it was scary for a few seconds while we waited to see if it would get worse. But it subsided soon enough. I've usually experienced quakes from a few floors up, so it will be interesting to feel one from a ground floor one day. Remember: if the building is swaying, that's a good sign! They're designed that way.
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"redfox" and "snarkout" always create yummy vegetarian dishes, and now they are publishing their meal exploits in The Hungry Tiger. Who says tigers can't be satisfied without meat?
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Do the big cats (lions, tigers, panthers, etc) get hairballs like our little domestic kitties do? Questions such as this keep me up late at night. According to David Kipen, the book Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel includes a tale from Alison Wright who received a lion's hair ball "as a gift from members of an east African tribe who wear them as jewelry." Now I can sleep the sleep of the well-informed.
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Monday, May 13, 2002

There will be no more drive-bys of late night host David Letterman's New Canaan abode for the present and future students of my former high school. He's finally moved into the Westchester house he purchased in 1994. Some Connecticut columnists have pulled out their own top 10 lists to celebrate or mourn his departure. His new neighbors report that he doesn't wave back while he's jogging. Well, I know he did wave back a couple times in his old neighborhood, so maybe the wavers need to keep trying.
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The Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune printed an interesting article on how department store merchandise travels from the full-price displays down to sale and clearance racks, then on to discounters like TJ Maxx and finally charity organizations and the rag company. Retailers prefer to avoid the landfill because of the cost of dumping trash (good!). Some upscale stores don't like to have drastically reduced merchandise sitting next to their full-priced goods so they ship items off to their outlet stores as soon as it hits a certain price point. Retailers who worry that the merchandise they have unloaded on a liquidator will find their way back to their own returns counter often sell their remainders in a different area of the country. Beyond charities like Goodwill there are thrift stores that actually buy merchandise from charities (selling it for profit), and the "rag man." (via Bird on a Wire)
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Friday, May 10, 2002

Newly launched: A Pepsi Blue Weblog.
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At the end of this article about Bay Area hikers climbing nine local peaks in nine days was the tantalizing command "try a search on 'Dinesh Desai' to reach an amusing page on Desai's interactions with NPR's 'Car Talk' show." I couldn't pass up a chance to be amused by those Car Talk guys. So here is the easy-to-find page (why they didn't just link it I don't know) where you can hear the original phone call from Dinesh asking the guys what to expect from keeping three cars in the Death Valley for 12 days in the middle of the summer. And then you can follow along on his nice little hike through Death Valley (with photo captions provided by Click and Clack. I'm not sure they've figured out what his wife sees in him).
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From the era of the steamship, before jet airplanes eliminated the need for steamer trunks, comes the vintage luggage label. Designed to function as routing labels for hotels and oceanliners, the labels became symbols of wealth and status. Railroads and airlines also issued their own labels. But the advent of jets and faster travel times eliminated the use of trunks and their accompanying labels. Now coveted collectibles, these labels, like any collectible, vary in price according to condition, subject, and aesthetics. Richter & Co is a well-known printer of these little bits of art. How much will my boring bar-coded airport routing tags be worth in the future? (via dollarshort.org)
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Thursday, May 09, 2002

"Consumers connect Pepsi to blue. That light shade of blue is a Pepsi equity," so says their Senior VP of Marketing about Diet Pepsi's new look. Adbusters reported back in 1998 that Pepsi intended to "trademark the particular shade of blue that coats its products around the globe." That wasn't the same shade as Diet Pepsi blue, but their marketing project "Project Blue" had a clear goal of distinguishing themselves with a color. Now comes the news that they will be selling an actual blue-colored soft drink with the name Pepsi Blue. The target consumer is 16 year old males. The flavor is like cola mixed with raspberry. The color is reportedly "reminiscent of Windex." I can tell I'm not in the target market. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola debuted Vanilla Coke in a nice little Connecticut town after finding the local Vanilla Bean Cafe listed on the Internet.
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Perhaps as a unique side dish for your next dinner party you would like to serve potatoes carved to resemble Dutch wooden shoes? Or maybe you'd like to serve some seafood in a premade pastry fish shell. NextDayGourmet.com is actually the retail website for US Foodservice, one of the top food service distributers in the US. You'll find restaurant equipment in addition to foodstuffs like pasta, olives, and carved veggies.
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Wednesday, May 08, 2002

Time has some bits of information about the upcoming Matrix sequels. It notes that Gloria Foster (the kindly Oracle) did finish shooting her scenes for the second film before she passed away. A trailer will be in movie theatres this month. I believe I saw a Star Wars trailer when I saw The Matrix, so perhaps this time it will be the other way around.
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Powerpuff Girls: The Movie! July 3rd. (via BrainLog)
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London company Shazam has created software that can listen to a song and match it up to one in their database. With the user interface of a mobile phone in front of this application, subscribers can call a special number when they hear a song they like, no matter if it's in an elevator or on the radio, and be told the name and artist. Details about the tune can also be added to their online account so that users can easily make a purchase. The chief scientist for the music recognition algorithm is Avery Wang, formerly of Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music. The service will be launched in the UK this summer with a price of 50p a call. At the time of the demo for a Guardian article, the database had 300,000 songs and they hope to grow it to 1.6 million by August. Perhaps this is a technology that the music industry can finally get behind. But the privacy issues could be interesting. Combine it with GPS (or just a caller's cell location) and you have a spy application for the music licensing folks. (via Jish)
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Tuesday, May 07, 2002

Kevin Hoover brings the police logs of Arcata, CA to life with his prose and poetry (sometimes haiku). He is "celebrating the ridiculous." Some items are too serious to warrant light-hearted exposition, but many incidents in the small town are brought to life with wry observations and a rhyme or two. Read for yourself. (via both sides of Jim Romenesko)
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Coming in August, the Schoolhouse Rock Special Edition DVD! That's right, all the Science Rock, Multiplication Rock, Money Rock, America Rock, and Grammar Rock plus extras on two DVDs. A set of 25 "best of" songs will be released on VHS, selected by your votes, so don't let this democratic opportunity go to waste. (via NowThis)
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Monday, May 06, 2002

Each floor in New York City's Library Hotel is devoted to one of ten Dewey Decimal Classification categories, and the six rooms on each floor contain books from a specific topic in that category. The hotel is near the New York Public Library, where hotel management would probably prefer people to check their books out from. According to one article, book lovers are leaving with more than the towels from their rooms. Perhaps they need to have their 6,000 books catalogued into the honor bar system. (thanks for the tip Mark!)
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Every October I try to stop by the Bay Area Glass Institute's Glass Pumpkin Patch. It's a fun event with glass pumpkins of all sizes and colors scattered about the grass. I wasn't entirely surprised to find, as I was going through the MIT Glass Lab's pages, a link to their own Glass Pumpkin Patch. It's a great fund raising idea for a glass shop, after all. But I was surprised to find that the connection was tight. BAGI was founded by an MIT alum and glass blowers from the Bay Area traveled to MIT to work on pumpkins for a September sale. It's not just computer engineering that links the two locations together. (MIT link via Bifurcated Rivets)
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Friday, May 03, 2002

If you've met a lot of stereotypical computer geeks, you've probably met your share of Leathermans. I see them attached to belts everywhere in the Sili Valley. Brand Channel has a feature on this versatile tool. Written by a writer based in South Africa, it gives a unique perspective on how Leatherman grew its business in that country by forming personal relationships with retailers and providing over-the-top customer repair services. It was a trip in an ailing Fiat devoid of tools that spurred engineer Tim Leatherman to spend seven years creating the popular multi-tool.
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The first laptop I used regularly was a GRiD, not surprising since I was working there. I don't recall the exact model, but I remember I loved its pointing device which was an Isobar. I haven't seen one since and I have difficulty describing it to people. A web search revealed that the Outbound Notebook, a Macintosh portable "clone" (they could not legally sell the Mac ROMS so they were somewhat doomed), also featured this device. You can see the Isobar in the photos and there's a description: "a metal tube located just below the keyboard. It can roll forwards and back, or slide left and right." Because of the length of the tube, you could use either (or both) thumbs to control the movement, and you could press down for a mouse click. I became very accustomed to it and struggled with all subsequent portable pointing devices with the exception of IBM's Trackpoint.
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Thursday, May 02, 2002

Butterflies of North America and Moths of North America are "works in progress" from the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center. There are detailed listings by state and even checklists by county. Photos and particulars about habitat and life cycle help you identify any flutter-bys you've seen in your travels. The extensive references list everything from the Peterson Field Guides to master's theses.
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The situation at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco continues to go downhill. Even Spiderman, currently crawling down the side of the building, can't save the day because although the movie theatres are pulling in capacity crowds, that hasn't translated into retail store sales. The customer-relations staff has been let go and Sony may hand over the reins to a mall management firm. The Discovery Channel store is looking bare with cutbacks on inventory, MicrosoftSF left in November, and Sony isn't looking to duplicate this facility, once considered a model for future sites elsewhere.
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Wednesday, May 01, 2002

(Administrative note: May archive not working yet because of a Blogger bug.)
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This Japanese Sword Index has very detailed and thorough information about sword types, blades, tangs, even flaws. The interesting facts just keep going with details on swordsmiths and history. I was planning to link to this last week, but the ISPs data transfer quota had been exceeded, and I can understand why! Click early, but perhaps not too often.
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American Airlines retired their last Boeing 727 Tuesday with a customary water cannon salute. Not knowing what that was, I dug up a page with photos of the water sendoff given to another 727 a couple years ago. It is similar to the effect done by fire boats. Passengers were also given commemorative plaques; perhaps airplane memorabilia collectors will be checking eBay in a few days?
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