Writing here would be so

Writing here would be so much easier if I were given topics. That’s why I like the {fray}: a new topic arrives periodically (like the recent “what’s the stupidest thing you did as a kid?”), and I get to prattle on about it.

It’s my dad’s birthday today.

It’s my dad’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Dad.

Fisher Price people dressed up

Fisher Price people dressed up as Futurama characters. And there’s more where that came from.

On the personification of numbers:

On the personification of numbers:

- Supposedly, 1 is the loneliest number. But wouldn’t 0.5 be half as lonely as 1? And what about poor little 0.00032? He’s so lonely that he’s hung himself by now.

- 7 is lucky. Then 14 must be twice as lucky, right?

- 13 is unlucky. 26 is twice as unlucky?

- But what about the number 91? 7x13=91. Is 91 13 times luckier than 7 or 7 times more unlucky than 13?

In celebration of Amazon’s most

In celebration of Amazon’s most recent redesign, Dack presents Amazon 2001. How much longer before Amazon becomes the Web version of everyone’s favorite piece of bloated software?

There’s a lot of cool

There’s a lot of cool DHTML out there, but the stuff over at assembler.org is a bit different. It’s designed to work cross-platform, and Brent coded the whole thing from “first principles”, using only a text editor and a DHTML book for reference…no code pilfering or anything. In the days where a redesign is only a view-source away, that’s pretty impressive. And one more thing: Megaman!

This NY Times article on

This NY Times article on superstrings is most interesting, with multiple universes, metaverses, multi-dimensional spacetime, and the like. Superstrings are little vibrating packets of energy which are hypothesized to make up everything in the universe. How little exactly? According to a graphic accompanying the story, the size of a string compared with the size of an atom is the same as the size of an atom compared with the size of the solar system. That’s pretty small.

Nude pictures of Jenni from

Nude pictures of Jenni from JenniCam are up for auction on eBay….and are already up to $620. If you think that’s strange, her bed is also up for auction….but you need to bid higher than $2,760.00. (!!!) I guess owning a bed that people have seen other people having sex in is pretty important to some folks.

Everyone is all concerned about

Everyone is all concerned about what will happen to the stock market if Microsoft get broken up. I don’t get it. If Microsoft gets broken up, there will be two or three smaller, more nimble Microsofts running around, each of which will have the market cap of the original company in five years or less. And no big Microsoft means more competition in the marketplace, and competition is good for business, right? I really don’t see the need for concern.

And anyway, why doesn’t someone come up with a creative solution to punish Microsoft….like them open sourcing their browser or something. Are you listening, Tim? You could make something like this happen. At the very least, it would make an interesting discussion.

A very interesting article in

A very interesting article in New Scientist about the possibility of miniature black holes being at the center of “dark matter” atoms. The article basically describes these little black holes as being charged particles that are able to interact with other charged particles in unique ways.

Saw a couple movies recently:

Saw a couple movies recently: Stigmata and Hard Eight. Stigmata was obviously directed and edited by someone who had been watching too much MTV…all the quick-cutting and Profiler-style flashes made me dizzy and contributed nothing to the story or feel of the movie. Clumsy.

Hard Eight, on the other hand, was very good….and even better with the director’s commentary. My respect and admiration for P.T. Anderson grows each time I see one of his movies. P.T., if you’re out there, I wanna be just like you when I grow up.

Speaking of P.T., he uses a lot of “three name” actors in his films:

Philip Baker Hall
John C. Reilly
Samuel L. Jackson
William H. Macy
Philip Seymour Hoffman
“Marky” Mark Wahlberg

I added a (somewhat annotated)

I added a (somewhat annotated) listing of archives to kottke.org. Now you can skip back to the different months without having to cycle through all of them. I was going to add a calendar-type thingie to the bottom of each “notes” page on the site, but then I thought, “why would anyone need to get to my scribblings for July 1998 from every page on the site?” Now I’m wondering why other sites do it that way….

My pal Mouser would probably

My pal Mouser would probably have nothing whatsoever to do with this MIT non-hack. He’s never even heard of Godel, Escher, Bach, or Magritte.

I had no idea there

I had no idea there was an official Rubik’s Cube site. You can even order a brand-new Cube, solve the Cube, or check out the history of the Cube online. Poking around the rest of the site, I discovered that the world record time for solving the Cube is 16.5 seconds and that there was a “Rubik, The Amazing Cube” TV show on Saturday mornings that I remember watching. You may also buy an original, still-in-the-box Rubik’s Cube on eBay.

When I was in high

When I was in high school, I gave a presentation on black holes, wormholes and time travel for my physics class. There weren’t many people in the class who had ever heard of wormholes and the like, but it was neat to see people who normally wouldn’t be interested in such things asking questions about it and trying to get their minds around 4-dimensional spacetime. I wanted to scream at them: “See, science *is* fun and interesting!”

To all those who decided

To all those who decided not to pull an April Fools joke today: thank you.

Twernt has a “which heretics

Twernt has a “which heretics rock the hardest?” poll going on his site. Hee hee.

Tomorrow, April 2, is the

Tomorrow, April 2, is the last day to enter the 5K Award contest. Entries must be in by 5pm PST. I’m really looking forward to seeing what people came up with. Should be fun.

I have no idea what

I have no idea what Mark is talking about. Honestly. That’s *my* design, I did it, it’s all mine. That being said, Mark, if certain photos of a certain person would find their way onto the Web somehow (not to mention spread through Usenet), that would certainly be a shame, wouldn’t it?