remember VH1′s PopUp Video?
Friday, October 6th, 2006with my newfound freedom, the result of working for myself, i’ve found i have a good deal more creative energy than i have paying clients. as a result, i’ve started working more on my own pet projects, like the sudoku solver. i’m working on a new project these days, another one of those ideas that came to me in the shower.
for some reason, i was thinking about music videos, probably along the lines of “video killed the radio star, but then MTV killed the video, so all we’re left with is crap”
anyhoo, it got me thinking of VH1′s PopUp Video. somehow, that led me to the idea of a PopUp-Video-like overlay for YouTube.
so, that’s what i’m working on. a means of annotating any video on YouTube, Google Video, or other similar services. the interface and implementation are fairly clunky at this point, but when it’s a little more polished, i’ll post it either here or on ClickHereDammit.com.
Posted in media, random stuff | No Comments »>flash sudoku solver
Monday, September 25th, 2006my latest experiment in flash: an actionscript sudoku solver. given a valid puzzle, it attempts to parse it for its unique solution.
it’s still fairly rudimentary as solver programs go, but it’s getting better as i get better:
http://clickheredammit.com/sudokusolver.html
share and enjoy.
Posted in fun stuff, random stuff | 10 Comments »>she said yes!
Monday, September 4th, 2006in case you haven’t heard, i’m engaged. w00t!
Posted in fun stuff, people, random stuff | 2 Comments »>Steve Jobs looks unhealthy
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
Note the before and after shots above.
Steve Jobs isn’t looking so hot these days, even compared to just seven months ago, at MacWorld San Francisco, 2006. The above “after” shot is a screen capture from the WWDC 2006 keynote stream. See it for yourself.
His appearance, as well as the fact that he left the majority of the keynote presentation up to several other presenters, leads me to believe that his Steveness isn’t in the best of health. And I’m not the only one. Considering that he underwent surgery two years ago for pancreatic cancer, and has been healthy since his recovery, it’s odd to me that his appearance has gotten so much worse so quickly.
Steve, I know you’re a vegan and have probably never weighed more than 180 in your life, but man, you look thin. Have a sandwich. Or a ribeye. We’re worried about you.
Posted in media, random stuff | 8 Comments »>reruns
Thursday, April 6th, 2006it looks like my letterman episode will be on again tonight. i wonder if i’ll get royalties?
anyhoo, as promised, images from my trip:
the .mac photo album
the Wahoo Times newsletter from that night’s show.
Posted in random stuff | No Comments »>today’s million dollar idea
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006today’s million dollar idea, for the benefit of the companies that make hotel soaps.
compare the size of a typical, budget hotel’s soaps to those you probably buy. your average bar of ivory soap, for instance. the retail version fits comfortably in the hand and is designed to last through many showers and still retain its shape and usefulness.
hotel soap, on the other hand, is designed to last through only one or two washings, then be thrown away. this it does admirably – the part about being thrown away.
its size and shape, being a miniaturized version of a real bar of soap, is cumbersome and borders on uselessness. it’s nigh impossible to get a good lather up. and if you drop it, there’s a good chance it will cling to the bottom of the bath resisting all attempts to recover it, or get washed down the drain entirely.
there are some hotels, though – higher-priced ones generally – that eschew the tiny soaps in favor of slightly larger, less cumbersome “specialty” soaps. these are generally the kinds of soaps you might find in a boutique, some are even “hand made”. they’re the more expensive cousins of the motel 6 soaps mentioned above, but they’re still flawed.
consider that these bars of soap can withstand multiple washings, but are usually thrown out after just one. that’s pretty wasteful, even for a luxury hotel.
the solution, and my million-dollar (can you tell i came up with this one in the shower) idea is this:
make hotel soaps full-sized. the same size and shape as the soap most people use at home. brilliant! right… but more wasteful than ever.
the tricky part is this: only put soap on the outside. just enough for one or two showers. within this layer of soap lies a soap-bar-shaped block of filler, designed to provide the heft and shape of a “real” bar of soap. the filler can be made of something recyclable or biodegradeable. better yet, so that the hotels’ trash isn’t filled with the things and the cleaning staff doesn’t have to bother even touching used soap (a serious health hazard, to be certain), make the filler water soluble. hotel guests finish with their shower and leave the soap in the bottom of the tub, there to be washed down the drain by housekeeping as part of their cleaning routine.
in the end, the soap manufacturers can use their existing retail packaging, molds, and eqipment instead of a separate line just for mini-soaps. the hotels that use expensive products can continue to offer the boutique soaps, but waste less of their soap budget throwing away a week’s worth of unused soap for every day’s showering.
all so i can take a shower in a hotel and not have to scramble on all fours, trying to pry up a tiny, reticent minibar of slimy, cheap soap.
johnson & johnson: you’re welcome.
Posted in random stuff | 4 Comments »>new york state of mind
Sunday, March 19th, 2006we (myself and two other people i work with) have been invited to new york by worldwide pants, david letterman’s production company, to perform a live install of a post-it mosaic on the Late Show.
it should air either monday night or wednesday night, depending on how scheduling goes.
watch this space. i’ll be documenting the experience :)
Posted in fun stuff, media | 2 Comments »>the evil genius strikes again
Monday, March 13th, 2006my latest creation is online now:
http://www.capstrat.com/el2al/
after some extensive research on google and wikipedia, i managed to find a number of connections between Elvis and Einstein. the flash doohicky linked above documents this social network of sorts, and links to the video we made when dismantling the Elvis post-it mosaic, and put up a new one of Einstein.
that video is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6897798324374195195
new PDA
Sunday, January 15th, 2006i guess it’s almost time for me to get a new PDA:
http://www.tow.com/2006/01/14/wwnc-2006/
my newtons are getting a little beat up, and the batteries aren’t holding quite what they used to, but they still have a hell of a lot over the other PDAs i’ve tried out. plus, i’ve got enough backups that i’m willing to hack them a bit without worry for breaking anything. witness the iNewt.
Posted in random stuff | No Comments »>how did i not see this before?
Thursday, January 12th, 20061. systemic shortage of arab translators in the US intelligence agencies.
2. more than 500 mostly arab-speaking detainees in guantanamo and secret US prisons elsewhere in the world.
3. potentially millions of conversations (something on the order of 500 simultaneously) subject to illegal warantless wiretaps of US citizens’ overseas phone calls by the NSA, many of those in arabic.
4. “we do not torture.”
so, what are we to do with all those arab prisoners sitting around (in black hoods and ball gags) not getting tortured, with nothing better to do than read the Koran they fished out of the toilet (again!)?
it’s pretty clear to me now: all those “ghost detainees” are being put to work translating the backlog of NSA wiretap fodder. it’s like a sweatshop, only instead of getting paid four cents an hour to make Nikes, they have to patiently explain the difference between the pronunciation of “milk” and “yogurt” (again!) while a technician wires up the electrodes to the nipple clamps.
Posted in media, random stuff | 1 Comment »> « Previous Entries