Learn how to TYPE again!

I was a little sceptical in the beginning, but after playing around with this app for an extended period of time I have to admit that it is a great little app. Remember typewriters? Well, I do. And one thing I remember was: if you make a mistake, tough luck, my friend, it’s RE-TYPE TIME!. So, moving on to word editors on the computer was a blessing. Everything could be erased, the bliss of the DELETE button!

However, the grass is always greener on the other side. This is where Typewriter comes in, which is just that — the terror of the linear line! No deleting, no moving around, just writing. Which is horrible, because it rubbed my bad typing right in. But after you get over this, there is actually a benefit: totally unconfined stream-of-consciousness, which is incredibly freeing. Give it a whirl, it’s great!

Posted via web from Bearded Dave

Filed under: Blogging, Technology, Vintage Stuff , software, typewriter, writing

Yellow Fluff

I have been subscribed to RadioLab for a couple of weeks now, but have never really had the chance to really listen to it. (I also am developing a backlog of This American Life episodes, but let’s not talk about this…) So, this morning, I’ve finally gotten around to listen to the episode Yellow Fluff & Other Curious Encounters (aired: 01/12/08) – and it is amazing!

Me = excited.

Posted via web from Bearded Dave

Filed under: Blogging, Science, Technology , discovery, Documentary, exciting, podcast, posterous post, Radiolab, Science

The Pitfalls of Cryonics

While drinking coffee this morning I read the current issue of WIRED and came across their advice column. Usually I don’t read advice columns, but the one in WIRED is kinda interesting and this one is just to good not to be shared. Somebody wrote that their mother had just passed away and they were wondering what to do with their father, who had died a couple of years before and, thanks to his wife’s belief in cryonics, had is head cut off and stored at a cryogenics facility. Here’s a snip of the answer:

Let’s first consider why Ma put Pa on ice. Was it because she genuinely believed that a cure for death (and decapitation) was imminent and that the lovebirds would someday be reunited? That seems improbable, because she didn’t arrange for her own remains to be frozen (or “vitrified,” in cryonics industry lingo). The more plausible explanation is that your mother never made it through the five stages of grief. Maybe she got stuck on bargaining, two steps away from acceptance. Arranging for the “neuropreservation” of her husband—a process that costs $80,000 and up—probably helped her evade the terrible finality of her beloved’s death.(via Mr. Know-It-All : WIRED)

This makes a good point. Even more so as I thought that cryogenics were, well, sooo 1990s (see if you can find the documentary Synthetic Pleasures (NYT review) somewhere. It’s a great trip down memory lane. Plus: it’s very interesting to see what counted as cutting edge 14 years ago).

Funnily enough, just a couple of weeks ago a friend pointed me towards a great episode of This American Life (which I’m recently becamse addicted to, by the way) called “Mistakes were Made“, which deals with cryonics and the shady characters involved in the trade of freezing humans. It’s a great listen, if you have the time, give it a go.

Filed under: History, Science, Technology , advice columns, complications, cryonics, dilemmata, freezing, This American Life

On wasting a lot of time

Now, up to about two weeks ago I handled the time-dump known as the internet really well. Up to the point I started looking at Friendfeed, that is. I have to admit that I was really impressed by the way the news from the earthquake in China hit the internet via Twitter minutes before major news sites picked it up. It was freakish, seeing the news of the quake almost in real time on Friendfeed and checking CNN or the New York Times website and not finding any info. Granted, there is a lot of noise on FF and it is bound to increase as more and more people sign up, but I do enjoy spending a few minutes checking on new items and I just love the way flickr feeds into it. I think I’ve discovered way more interesting photographers on flickr via FF than on flickr’s site itself. All in all it is pretty neat and feel free to follow me on FF (or @TheGrumpyGerman), if you are so inclined, that is. 

Speaking of flickr, yeah yeah yeah, I know, I ranted and complained about it and now I crawled back into its lap like a beaten dog to its owner. You know the reason? There is just much more interaction going on on flickr than on SmugMug. SmugMug gives you stats, but you have no idea who looked at your photos and it is really difficult (or unintuitive) to discover other people. Don’t get me wrong, SmugMug is great, it just feels like an isolated island while flickr feels like sitting on a stone in a really fast river and things are flashing by left and right and you can barely keep up with it. Hm, that’s a weird image, but aptly describes how I feel about the two services.  

On the front known as ‘life’ I had a guy sieg-heiling me in the subway for no known reason. Then he tried to hit on a chick. As you can imagine, that didn’t work out so well. With the blossoming of weeds and leaves and flowers my allergies also blossomed. They are so bad that I have to take pills to keep me from scraping my eyeballs out, something I didn’t have to in the last few years. 

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Filed under: Life, Technology , allergies, Blogging, friendfeed, Life, social network, twitter

Spy Guns

(image taken from Club Littlegun)

Again, my blogging frequency has dropped substantially again and, again, it is due, at least partly, to spotty internet access. This is so annoying that sometimes I feel like beating up the internet. Literally. Anyway, I always had a knack for tiny itty bitty thingies, like miniature cars, miniature dioramas, etc. But the masters of small and hidden yet neat things are the spies. So here is a website of a gun collector who has a whole bunch of hidden and miniature guns displayed online and, God, they are awesome. They are all here, the Cannon Hand, the Belt Gun, the Whip Pistol (pun probably intended), an, of course, the Knife Gun.

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Filed under: Art and Stuff, Crafts and Modification, History, Technology, Vintage Stuff , crime, custom, weapons