firehose

Biggest Disappointment

For our Japanese readers planning to attend a baseball game today, here are some more useful English phrases you can yell out when things aren’t going well for your team. It’s perfectly normal to scream “biggest disappointment” and “clubhouse problem” when someone strikes out.

Also, here are the English words for items you’ll probably need the next time you’re at the store.

Once again, these screenshots are from a Tose-developed, Nintendo-published (only in Japan) language training application, Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwachou DS: America. This DS release probably would have gone unnoticed were it not for these screencaps posted by Zanxon.

BUY Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwachou DS at PlayAsia ($40, plays on U.S. DSes), Amazon

“The Shoemaker” is a short documentary about Frank Catalfumo, a 91-year-old shoemaker and repairer in Brooklyn. Catalfumo opened his shoe shop after returning home from World War II in 1945. Despite being well past retirement age, he still works five days a week (along with his son). The film was directed by photographer Dustin Cohen. Cohen has also posted a photo essay about Catalfumo and his shoe shop.

via The World’s Best Ever

The White House released a special video message from the President today, Kid President that is.

Back in March a tiny wooden door was discovered at the base of an elm tree in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The door has become a bit of a destination for park visitors, who have been leaving behind notes, coins, acorns, and other trinkets inside the tree. The mystery door is located in the park Concourse near the De Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences.

photos by Erica R.

via The Richmond District Blog of San Francisco, NBC Bay Area, Gawker

Your Tumblr du Jour: Times Haiku

Netflix, April 1st

hypnosec writes "Easter has brought some good news for Raspberry Pi fans in the US as the $25 Model A of the credit card sized computer is now available in the United States. Texas based Allied Electronics is the first local retailer selling the Raspberry Pi in the U.S. and has been selling the Pi through its online store. (There were companies selling the Raspberry Pi over eBay to U.S. users for a higher price tag earlier.) The Model A has sold out completely and as of this writing there is zero availability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This Evernote solution by Mike Vardy has almost everything I would want for a beer cellar system. His clever use of tags solves one of the big problems I had with Evernote for this purpose, contextual search.

I don't think this is for me though. I like structured meta data and Evernote provides very little of that. I want to be able to quickly search by Brewery, Inventory Date, Quantity and Rating. I know tags can work for this, but that's a square peg in a round hole solution.

It's too bad. Evernote provides some other great features like OCR of bottle labels and ubiquitous capture. Who knows, maybe I'll come to my senses and give it another shot.

Spoilers, sweetie…

If you didn’t catch the latest episode of Doctor Who, here’s the plot: Random people connect to strangely-named WiFi networks and later have their conciousness uploaded to the Internet with the help of spoonheaded robots. To the non-Whovian that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but [Tony Box] figured out a way to replicate the effect with a Linux box and a USB WiFi card, just in time for a great April Fool’s gag.

For the SSID, the folks over on reddit decided the best characters come from the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode block. [Tony] then set up a laptop with a USB wifi card with hostapd, and dnsmasq to change the SSID and DHCP leases. nginx serves up a simple web page with a short clip from the episode (of a spoonhead uploading a conciousness).

Here’s what’s really interesting: [Tony] is using a captive portal, so something like the webpage that shows up when you log on to the internet in a coffee shop or hotel. When the victim of this prank logs on to The Great Intelligence’s WiFi, they’re presented with a webpage containing the video of the spoonhead.

You can check out [Tony]‘s demo of his build after the break.

Filed under: wireless hacks

We’ve seen a fair number of hacks like this one that reuse a Kindle basically just for its ePaper display. [HaHaBird] has this device hanging on his refrigerator to display the weather and remind him about recycling day. It kind of make us wonder why we’re not seeing cheap ePaper modules on the hobby market?

The concept isn’t new, but [HaHaBird] does move it along just a little bit. He started by following the guide which [Matt] wrote after pulling off the original Kindle weather display hack. It uses a separate computer running a script that polls the Internet for weather data and generates a vector graphic like the one seen above. The Kindle then loads the image once every five minutes thanks to a cron job on the rooted device. But why stop there? [HaHaBird] tweaked the script to include a reminder about his municipality’s irregular recycling schedule.

Don’t overlook the quality of the hardware side of this hack. With its prominent place in the kitchen he wanted a nicely finished look. This was achieved by building a frame out of cherry and routing passages on the back to make room for the extension cable (so it could hang in landscape orientation) and a toggle to hold the Kindle firmly in place. Additional information on the build is available here.

Filed under: Kindle hacks

CBS News

Apple application to trademark iPad Mini denied CNET The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says the term "mini" is "merely descriptive" of goods or services sold in miniature form. Steven Musil. by Steven Musil. March 31, 2013 9:10 AM PDT Follow @stevenmusil. Apple's iPad Mini. Apple's iPad Mini. Apple denied iPad Mini US trademarkBBC News Apple Wants To Patent The Phrase 'iPad Mini,' But US Patent Office Says Term Is ...International Business Times How The iPad Mini Became A Stealth SuccessForbes Capital Technologies -AppAdvice -PC Magazine all 27 news articles »

NY1

Dolan: Catholics Should Oppose Gay Marriage But Include LGBT Community NY1 Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, is also publicly speaking out about the need for better outreach to gay and lesbian Catholics. On ABC's "This Week," Dolan maintained the Catholic Church's position that ... and more »

rileystark:

For the “Let’s Draw Sherlock” challenge.

BBC meets Granada. Awesome.

Available as a print here.

Animal tracks (larger)

ancientpeoples:

Bronze sword with bevelled edges. The hilt and guard are inlaid with turqouise in a symmetrical pattern of stylized curls. 

China, Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Warring States Period (ca. 475 - 221 B.C.)

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

tastefullyoffensive:

[mattoswald]

Dinner is coming

Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg


Steampunk Tendencies | Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg

petermorwood:

Viktoria Modesta - Alternative Limb - Stereo Leg

A-bloody-mazing. Elegant, imaginative and I-don’t-give-a-damn stylish. The rest of the site is fascinating.

Wow, this is fabulous!

“The over-all aim, the over-all goal is to be the largest network for young people in the world.”

Last night, three works by the infamous British street artist Banksy popped up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

"People my age expect to start at the bottom," says one 25-year-old. "But in this economy the bottom keeps getting lower and lower."

PHILADELPHIA—Following yet another season-ending knee surgery, Philadelphia 76ers center Andrew Bynum openly wondered Sunday if he will ever have the chance to completely waste his talent on a basketball court again.

The Pentagon is struggling to quell an epidemic of sexual abuse in the armed services' hierarchical culture.

Facebook co-founder and billionaire Sean Parker will marry his fiancée, Alexandra Lenas, in June during a medieval-themed costume party.

“I was an arrogant little f--- when I was in my 20s,” says Harry Knowles today, grinning. “Like nobody’s bigger than me.”

The Russian government in recent weeks has been making use of a new law that gives it the power to block Internet content that it deems illegal or harmful to children.

The Pirate Bay is now the most-visited file-sharing site on the Internet, taking over the lead from prominent one-click hosting sites such as 4Shared and Mediafire.

CollegeHumor illustrator H. Caldwell Tanner created a fantastic series of “Game of Thrones House Sigils for the Internet.” You can view all twelve of them at CollegeHumor.