My grandfather passed away this week in his sleep. I will always remember his sense of humor, his hearty laugh, his interest in people, his energy and his great love for his family.
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We Feel Fine is, according to the web site, “an exploration of human emotion, in six movements.” The creators, Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar, have written software which trolls the blogosphere and gathers statistics about how people are feeling. More precisely, it scans blog posts for occurences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling” and catalogs the results. At first it just looks like a random jumble of swirling circles (this mode is called “madness”), but it draws you in the more you explore. Click on murmers, and it starts showing random messages about how people are feeling, along with their locations and the time they wrote it. Eg. “i feel the sparks of a crush” or “i feel it is altogether more likely to happen than my other life ambitions.” Other modes tally up the feelings in interesting ways. Neat stuff. I’m a sucker for this kind of purposeless data mining of the ‘net.
Via Cool Hunting
A number of electronic music podcasts I’ve been listening to use the Mac’s built-in speech synthesizer to narrate or introduce the show (even Harry Shearer has a corny bit with one once in a while on Le Show) and indicate the song information. Even though I enjoy these shows, this cliche is incredibly irritating. Just because Radiohead got away with it in 1997, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. “Fitter Happier” is the one track on Ok Computer I always skip. Spring for a $20 mic. No matter how much you hate your own voice when it’s recorded, it’s going to be less grating than “Vicki” or “Bruce”.
That said, I think it’s very cool that Mac OS X has assistive capabilities built-in.
For most, the smell of sulfur is the epitome of noxiousness. For me it brings back fond memories of my grandmother’s kitchen. Not because her cooking was bad or that she particularly favored eggs, but because in Iceland hot water is pumped directly from geothermal springs, giving it that distinct odor. The cold water however is completely odorless and is some of the best tasting spring water in the world, straight out of the tap. You did have to remember to run the cold water for a few seconds before using it, otherwise that sulfur taste would sneak in from the last use of the hot water. For the first few days after arriving in the country, you’d practically have to hold your breath while taking a shower, but eventually you’d get used to it. On our last visit the only time we smelled it was on a day trip to see the geysers (side note: the largest geyser in Iceland is called Geysir, meaning “erupts”, whence the English word geyser derives). The trend in modern plumbing is to heat the nice, odorless cold water indirectly with the smelly hot water. Some day nobody will wax nostalgic upon smelling sulfur.
My second first post on my site. It’s been down for oh… a few months now. But now it’s back and better’n ever.
