The Big Think

Good luck to Patrick on his iPod auction.

Take this online reading test to find out. I’m at 350-400 wpm. I tend to be a little slower than I could because I don’t like to skim. You miss details that way.
I’m really curious about my friend Scott’s reading speed. That guy is a freak of nature.
Comment your speed here once you know it. (no cheating!)

See the US by Segue!

This looks like a cool magazine.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, died yesterday at the age of 88. Apparently, he had good genes.

After only 3 days with a For Sale sign, and no ad in the newspaper or on the internet, we sold Erin’s Corolla tonight to a couple from Nigeria who live in our neighborhood.

Zen and the Art of the Macintosh by this guy (check out his cool illustration examples).
Thanks to Giles for this great birthday gift a few years ago. I’m finally getting around to reading it.

Good design depends on good timing. If you freeze it too soon, it’s still unformed and incomplete. Premature. But if you play around too much, you’ll wind up with something over-worked, baroque, or wifty. You lose touch with the vitality of the original impulse, or cover it up so that no one else but you sees it. You have to catch the moment on the wing…

And you thought it only happened in the cartoons. There goes the neighborhood. Literally.

An inside look at the Apple Product Cycle. very funny. G&M, you guys should like this.
Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal.

It’s not just a bad word in media circles. Black and Decker, long known for their merely-adequate home-job-type tools, has recently announced that they are going to purchase Pentair Tools.

Included in Pentair’s Tools Group are the Porter-Cable, Delta, DeVilbiss Air Power, Oldham Saw and FLEX brands .
To my knowledge, all B&D tools are made by the lowest overseas bidder. And the quality often shows.

With fewer tool manufacturers in the industry, and with evidence of quality falloff’s once consolidation takes place, now may be the time to buy some good tools. Remember when Dewalt was a truly professional brand? Their quality has fallen off considerably the last few years…. since they were bought by Black and Decker.

Sigh. The Wal-martization of America.

Ludlow Music seriously needs to get over itself. Sheesh.

I’m a tech junkie, but this has really crossed the line. Crossed. The. Line.

Man, I can relate to this kid. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it…
Way to go, little guy.

As the film reel turns. The winners of the 48-hour film competition have withdrawn their submission from the contest! The title of Best of Austin is up for grabs again! I’ll let everyone know the results when I find out.

Bless NetFlix. Erin and I just finished watching the documentary Sound and Fury. It’s an incredible view of deaf versus hearing culture, and how modern technology, in the form of the cochlear implant, is effectively destroying deaf culture. Is the implant good or bad? The doc doesn’t make value judgements, but it does give both sides of an issue that I never really thought much about. Granted, we’re biased in that we’ve devoted our lives to something that requires hearing (although I did know a deaf percussionist in college), but this film gave us a lot to talk about. I never thought I’d become a hardcore documentary watcher, but subscribing to Netflix has really changed that. I’ll miss it after our free period is up.

SpaceShipOne will try the first of two flights to space required to win the X-Prize on September 29th.

I downloaded Firefox today. Very cool. Solid, reasonably fast (though it takes a bit to start up), and extremely extensible. I can see why people are attracted to this.

Funny, short anecdote here. A presenters worst nightmare, but I’ve gotta hand it to this MS guy. He really thought on his feet.