firehose

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6x11RlwYtE

Original Source

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KKbCKWGS9k

Original Source

Anatomy of train games

Part 1: Connections http://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2013/09/09/anatomy-of-a-game-train-games-connections/

Part 2: Pickup and Delivery http://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2013/09/16/anatomy-of-a-game-train-games-pickup-and-delivery/

Part 3: Stock Holding http://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2013/10/07/anatomy-of-a-game-train-games-stock-holding/

In a story that promises to test the boundaries of your principles regarding intellectual property theft, as well as your human sympathies, Roseanne Barr has accused Chuck Lorre and Ashton Kutcher of stealing one of her jokes for use on Two And A Half Men, lending her argument the appropriate gravitas by presenting it as a three-day Twitter rant. It all began on Friday, when Barr relayed that her friends had informed her that a recent episode found Kutcher’s character making a joke about being elderly—“I’d imagine that you’re wet in the places you used to be dry, and dry in the places you used to be wet”—that’s noticeably similar to a line from Barr’s standup routine about menopause, as well as from your “List Of Things I’d Rather No One Say.” (It’s also pretty similar to a joke my uncle ...

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Historical Map: Rapid Transit for San Francisco: Monorail Alternative,1952

Well, thank goodness this never eventuated. Can you imagine an elevated monorail running down the length of Market Street?

From a 1952 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission report entitled Rapid Transit for San Francisco: Monorail, Elevated, Subway? A Report of Possibilities.

(Source: Eric Fischer/Flickr)

 

Asking random New Yorkers with headphones on what song they are listening to.

I think my favorite thing about this is nobody was listening to what you thought they might be except a very small minority. 

Also I loved the big smiles on everybody’s faces about being asked, makes me happy. 

I wish there was more stuff like this.

petermorwood:

effervescentaardvark:

Chainmail - signed with yellow alloy ‘maker’s link’, and decorated with yellow-alloy edges, denoting the high quality of the chainmail. (German, late 14th or early 15th century, weight 8.84kg)

source: “Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour in the Wallace Collection” by Tobias Capwell. ISBN: 9780900785863

Close-ups are always useful. This shows how a quick’n’easy way to draw mail is a series of parallel esses. It also shows the lack of “chain” in its construction; more mesh, net or even crochet.

So pretty.

"They kind of should have known this would happen," said Maria Aguilera, a student at one of the schools where games briefly replaced academia. "We're high school students after all. I mean, come on." The top game choices? Temple Run, Subway Surfing and an unnamed car racing game.

In the latest probably too-good-to-be-true Doctor Who rumors, a British tabloid is reporting that 106 previously lost episodes from the series have been found in Ethiopia. When Doctor Who premiered in 1963, it was BBC’s standard practice to erase episodes after they aired in order to save space, which means that many episodes of the show are missing—including 106 from the show’s first six years. Now, after years of rumors of two or three turning up here and there, The Mirror reports that all of those episodes—including “The Crusade,” “The Enemy Of The World,” and “The Ice Warriors”—have been found at the Ethiopian Radio and Television agency. Lending some credence to the rumor, many early episodes have actually been recovered through overseas broadcasters who bought copies before BBC wiped the originals—although finding all of them in one place would certainly be quite a stroke ...

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A Canadian doctor has treated 27 patients suffering from Clostridium difficile infections by giving them each between 24 and 30 handmade pills containing stool from one of their healthy relatives, curing each patient of their illness.

anthonygrey:

Breaking Bad Summary

Monsieur is a robot bartender that learns from your drink preferences and habits to serve cocktails customized to your taste. Users can choose what drink they would like from a list of cocktails complete with photos and information, and can also use a strength slider to tell Monsieur if they want their drink “lightweight,” “normal,” or “boss.” Over time, Monsieur will learn what drinks and strength users like and offer refreshments based on their habits. For example, the robot bartender can offer users a double if they’ve had a long day at work, offer cocktails for a date night, or offer a celebratory drink when a favorite sports team wins a game. Monsieur also monitors users’ drink consumption and will warn people when their blood alcohol content is high and help them get a cab. Users can also order drinks straight from the Monsieur smartphone app, and the machine will send its owner an email or text when it’s running low on cocktail ingredients. The project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

video and image via Monsieur

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

lukewadethompson:

From Sophie de Oliveira Brata’s Alternative Limb Project

An American screenwriter in London, the Bourne franchise scribe was taking part in the BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture Series when he unveiled these lessons for success. Among the things Tony Gilroy says aspiring writers need to do, according to BBC News: “Make stuff up, but keep it real,” “Learn to write anywhere, anytime” and “Don’t live in Los Angeles”. Here’s the full list, along with his Gilroy’s comments:

Related: Mike Fleming’s Q&A With Tony Gilroy

1. Go to the movies
I don’t think there is anything you can learn from courses or books. You have been watching movies since you were born. You have filled your life with narrative… and food. It’s already way down deep inside you.
Going to the movies, having something to say, having an imagination and the ambition to do it is really all that is required. You can learn how to do anything.

2. Make stuff up but keep it real
This is imaginative work – screenwriters make things up. Everything I have in my life is a result of making things up. There is one thing that you have to know that is a deal-breaker – human behaviour.
The quality of your writing will be directly related to your understanding of human behaviour. You need to become a journalist for the movie that is in your head. You need to report on it; every scene has to be real.

3. Start small
Big ideas don’t work. Start with a very small idea that you can build on.
With Bourne I never read any of the books; we started again. The very smallest thing with [Jason] Bourne was, “If I don’t know who I am and I don’t know where I’m from, perhaps I can identify who I am by what I know how to do.” We built a whole new world around that small idea.
You just start small, you build out and you move one step after the next and that’s how you write a Hollywood movie.
Gilroy directed as well as wrote The Bourne Legacy, the fourth Bourne film

4. Learn to live by your wits
My father was a screenwriter but it’s not some pixie dust creative family thing. I learned from watching how hard he worked and learned about the tempo of a writer’s life – you have to live by your wits.
If you are living with someone who lives by their wits, it seems normal to you, it doesn’t scare you as much and you understand the rhythms of it.

5. Write for TV
It’s getting harder and harder to make good movies. TV is where the ambiguity and shades of reality live, it’s where stories can be interesting.
A lot of writers are very excited about TV right now and it’s a writer-controlled business. When writers are in control, good things happen. They are more rational, they are hardworking, they are more benevolent.
Every time writers have been put in charge of entertainment, things have worked out, so with TV maybe we will see a writer-driven utopia.
House of Cards is seen as part of a new era in quality television

6. Learn to write anywhere, anytime
I have an office at home, I’ve written in a million hotel rooms, I can write anywhere now. My whole goal is to want to be at my desk.
If the writing is going well, I don’t want to quit. I’m older and wise enough now that if something is going well, I don’t stop. I call and say I’m not coming home for dinner and just keep going.
More than anything else, I want to want to go to my desk and to not be afraid of going to work.

7. Get a job
I spent six years tending bar while I figured out how to write screenplays.
If you want to write, if you are a young writer and nobody knows you, find a job that pays you the most amount of money for the least amount of hours, so that you have the most amount of time left over to write.
You want to live some place where you have some sort of cultural connection and can see as many films and be around as many people as possible. You want to be some place where you can just write and write and write.

8. Get a life
If you don’t have anything to say and if you haven’t done anything except see a bunch of movies, then what’s the point? You can only write what you know about and that will either limit you or open the possibilities to everything.
Be interested in lots of things and stay interested. My knowledge is very wide and incredibly thin. It’s much more interesting when journalists and cops and doctors and bankers become screenwriters than 20-year-old film students.
There are some exceptions, of course, but if you don’t have anything to say, then why are you here?

9. Don’t live in Los Angeles
I don’t think there is any reason to live there, I think LA is probably very bad for you. It’s a bad place to feed your head.
In LA you are driving around all the time, surrounded by people who are making you depressed. I don’t think Hollywood really helps a young writer feel any sense of romance about their life.
Even if it’s a delusion, you want to feel special when you go to work in the morning.

10. Develop a thick skin and just keep going
I have assumed both positions of the Hollywood Kama Sutra – top and bottom.
It’s very important to be able to handle rejection. I think one of the reasons writers are shy is because we are all very suspicious of our own process because it fails so often.
It’s no different from being a novelist or a composer or a painter. When you get rejection from the outside world, you either move on or you don’t.
But I think the hardest times are all the days when nothing happens and everybody who has ever written anything knows what I’m talking about. A great day of writing tops everything.

Making homemade cheese crackers has never been very high on my must-do baking list, but with entertaining season rapidly approaching, I decided to give it a try to see just how vastly superior they are to their store-bought cousins.

I’m happy to report that they are better anything I’ve ever had out of a factory-sealed package. They have a much better texture with more crunch, and way more real, cheesy flavor. The only thing they have less of is ingredients; like by 45 to 5.

Our love of all things BRAUN is more than evident and for good reason: the creative direction of Dieter Rams from 1961 to 1995 lead the way in simple, purposeful design. The BRAUN aesthetic will continue to be studied, borrowed and celebrated for generations to come.

In recent years, BRAUN has reissued many of their iconic designs in various forms, with their archival watch products leading as a gateway into the brand for today’s generation. BRAUN’s stainless steel mesh band watches, available in black and white, are strong examples of clean watch forms that remain understated and functional. Each features a 40mm face with a quartz three-hand date movement with scratch resistant glass tops. Best of all, they price in nicely at $150 (white) and $235 (black) over on Amazon.

 

Braun Stainless Steel Mesh Strap Watches – 2 Ways is a post by Jeff Carvalho on Selectism.

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BBC current affairs shows have long been about their own adversarial tone, and there's something to be thankful in that: Britain's media culture forces politicians to subject themselves to grillings in a way that just doesn't happen much in America. But the fearless, no-nonsense style is often so affected that it relies upon the anxiety and obedience of interview subjects. When one comes along who knows what the deal is, the hosts are left to "yes, but" their way through trivial and poorly-prepared interview scripts.

A perfect example unfolded on BBC Newsnight yesterday, where The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald faced off against an interviewer, Kirsty Wark, so hopeless that she didn't even know the good questions to attack him with.

laconicllama:

zarggg:

env0:

aisleylikeszebras:

To me, this post might be just as important as the bible.

One of my classes. My elderly teacher taught us this because he really cared about books.

Why does no one teach us these things anymore?

I get so uppity when someone breaks the binding on my books.