Monthly Archives: April 2005
Dept. of Cool Shit, Disqualified Division
We think a literal Lightning Field sounds like a cool place to visit — or, rather, that it would be, if they weren’t such jackasses about photography.
Dept. of Terrible Ideas That Nevertheless Make Us Giggle
How about a 3U 19″ Rack-mounted Wine Rack? Hold four of your favorite bottles in the cool confines of your server room. Excepting, of course, that while the room itself may be cool enough, the space in your racks likely is NOT. (As of this writing, the internal temp of one of the boxes Chief Heathen is responsible for is a cool 95 degrees, or about 25 degrees higher than ideal cellar temp. Actually, that’s the ambient temp around CPU 1; its internal is 107. And this is with fans running at better than 4,000 RPM, so there you go. (How much do we love Apple’s Server Monitor? [HDANCN?]))
Hunter gets his wish
As requested, his remains will be shot out of a cannon. Said cannon will be atop a 53-foot Gonzo-fist sculpture, according to his widow. From the AP:
“It’s expensive, but worth every penny,” Anita Thompson said. “I’d like to have several explosions. He loved explosions.” She said planning for the fist has been guided by a video of Thompson and longtime illustrator-collaborator Ralph Steadman, recorded in the late 1970s when they visited a Hollywood funeral home and began mapping out the cannon scheme.
Godspeed, Hunter.
(Via BoingBoing, which is running pretty much exactly the same entry, graphic and all.)
Egghead-Simpson Collision
A linguistics blog provides for us an excellent (and hilarious) summary of language jokes on the Simpsons.
It’s not just “different” in eastern Europe. It’s also cheesier.
Or, at least, that’s what we take away from the web site of Belinda Bedekovic, Croatian remote-keyboard virtuoso. (Don’t miss the press pages, where she’s pictured with Steve Vai in an article that also name-checks Joe Santriani and Robert Fripp.)
Sailing 101
“The big pole with the fabric on it? Yeah, that should point UP.”
We kept waiting for the punchline.
It turns out, there is no punchline: Worst. Video. Evar.
Dept. of Selective Luddism
Them what know us know we’re gadget-happy here at Heathen Central. We get a new phone every year. We have a Tivo, and we’ll run on at length about it at cocktail parties. We live out of our Powerbook. We had three Newtons, for the love of Mike.
That said, there are certainly places where we prefer the old to the new; most all of our watches (and all of them that matter) have springs, not batteries. Our pens have nibs and are filled from bottles. Our cars have clutches, and one of them doesn’t even have a radiator. We like them this way.
Ergo, it comes as a bit of a surprise to us that we’ve not yet heard of or adopted this trend, but we have spent part of the afternoon window-shopping here, and considering if perhaps this isn’t all that and a bag of chips after all, especially if we replace it with one of these.
Well, this is sort of interesting
Heathen Central from Space (Actually, it’s a little off — Heathen Central is closer to one block west of the arrow.)
More Format
This video from DJ Format and friends has an amusing conceit. It’s not as fantastic as his prior work, but it’s still fun.
Slacktivist on Scalia
Fred Clark’s “The Scandal of the Originalist Mind” is a great view into Scalia’s mental tradition; we’ve been meaning to get it up here for days, but, well, we’re busy. Enjoy.