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The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
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Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
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making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
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Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
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(Monday, June 26)
Freaking Bodies: The Exhibition
I am sure that everyone around the Atlanta area has already heard about bodies, and most have probably already gone to see it, but if not PLEASE go check it out. It is only a $25 admission (Splurge the extra $5 and get the audio tour, but you only really need one per group of people) and well worth it. There are a few different "types" of body elements to it, first off all the specimens are/were real people at one point, so you are not seeing plastic models, there are real people who have gone through (from what I understand) 2 different types of chemical reactions to be preserved in the fashion that they were.
The first type (I don�t remember the scientific name, I am sure you can find it on the website) preserves the bones/muscle/tissue parts of the specimen and allows you to see in extreme detail those specific parts of the bodies. There are, of course, bone structures of almost every part of the body, but also muscle sets too. These were probably the most interesting to me just because they looked so freaky. There is one display which, when you first walk upon it, looks like 2 people holding hands and leaning back to support each other's weight. As you read/listen to the description you will see that the "2" people are actually "1" person, 1 side is the muscle mass of the body, the other is the skeletal structure of the same person. Very neat to look at. Although of course you cannot touch the specimens, you can get pretty much as close as you like to look at the minute details of the bodies. There are also about 4 or 5 other bodies all in various sporting poses which you can see how the muscles interact during the course of which ever sport they are playing.
The second "type" or preservation of the bodies is probably the coolest of the two for me. Basically (from a non-biologist/chemist standpoint) they inject this gas into the veins and circulatory system of the cadaver and then inject something else which causes a reaction of the hardening of the circulatory system. The hardening is all the way down to the smallest microscopic endpoints of the veins and circulatory system, so you get to see these amazing webs of blood delivery to almost all the parts of the body. The above picture (not the best, but pretty good) looks like a cadaver's shell, but it is actually an insane amount of blood vessels which have all been hardened so it still give the shape it once took of the cadavers body. All this is shown in a very dim room and the areas of the circulatory system have been colored so you see amazing organs and such exactly how the organs circulation looks. It is extremely cool and interesting.
There are other rooms with focuses on cardiovascular systems, male / female reproductive systems, child birth system, and a couple more. A couple of other highlights besides the circulatory system for me, where the complete nervous system dissection (complete with brain and eyes only the bodies nerve endings which makes it look remarkably like those aliens from the Muppets, "jib jib jib jib", those guys) also at the very end there is a horizontal dissection of a body into 88 pieces (the cadaver must have played piano).
The exhibit has a strict no camera, no purses, no talisman of the undead +3s, but all and all it is extremely cool and if you live in Atlanta, there is no excuse to miss this before it leaves town. It looks like it is also showing in Vegas, London, New York and the cultural center of the new world, Tampa Bay.
The Bodies Website:
http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html
The Atlanta Exhibition Website (Tickets):
http://www.clicknprinttickets.com/atlantabodies.htm
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Travis - The Boy With No Name
Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho. |
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Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross)
One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake. |
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Feist - The Reminder
I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice. |
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Catan - Xbox Live Arcade
I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game. |
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Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare
No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say. |
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Beautiful Evidence (Tufte)
Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting.. |
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Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better. |
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Game of Thrones (Martin)
I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more. |
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
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