- From PantherModem@Flickr

‘los has posted his action shots from Hopu Ka Lewa 2009 via Flickr:

From: FFFFOUND!

Over the last week I’ve been updating PantherModem.com bit by bit. I’ve added links to my Innovis publications page, posted my visualization portfolio, and did some general house keeping. I think the renovations are now done, and I hope you like the changes.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with my new favourite picture (and my first HDR photo) which I shot last weekend:

If you were to ask me how the last few weeks have been, I’d have to let you that things are ok and this pretty much sums it up:

From FFFFOUND, posted by Shaz Madani.

My most anticipated movie of the summer is Moon staring Sam Rockwell, directed by Duncan Jones. I’ve been reading about it over at io9, so it’s been on my radar, but now after watching the trailer, Moon is has my complete attention. Let’s hope it doesn’t disappoint.

The film comes out in theaters on June 12, 2009.

Tired on a pair of Kicking Mule Workshop ‘Rocker’ jeans today, and damn do they fit well. Consistently snug from thigh to calf, these are the new evil jeans. {Capital E} is second best to this raw selvedge denim, made in Okayama, Japan.

My new favourite t-shit, care of McSweeney’s:

Orville

What’s that car on the cover of Out Loud?

I’ve been wondering about that one for a while now, so I decided the other day to put this question to rest. The album cover of Boom Boom Satellite‘s 1999 album Out Loud, features a Alpine A110 Berlinette rally car, circa 1961-1977.

Gallery 2 is dead. Long live Flickr.

In the past, Gallery 2 was my go-to-guy for putting my photographs online. I had found a theme to my liking and things were going smoothly. Well, sort of. Over time, management was becoming increasing annoying and general usability was plagued by insufferably low bandwidth. When my web hosting company performed a “server upgrade” and in the process broke my photo gallery, I began questioning if I wanted to continue using Gallery 2 for my online photo publishing needs.

Today that question was answered.

I dropped my Gallery 2 database tables and created a [Pro] account. Check it out at: PantherModem @ Flickr

Last September, I was in the market for an iPod speaker system. I looked around, read some reviews, and in the end I decided to go with Griffin’s Amplifi 2.1. The clean design of the Amplifi caught my attention immediately and the sound quality proved sufficient for my purposes (listening to podcasts and music in the kitchen while cooking or eating). The one complaint I have about the Amplifi is the rather inelegant iPod dock design: it’s functional, but it has a precarious and awkward feel to it. With everything considered, I’ve been very pleased with the system.

The speakers served me well for the last six months, but just last weekend that all changed. On Sunday night, I connected my iPod and turned on the speakers only to be met with a momentary burst of electrostatic crackle. Weird. I adjusted the volume control of the Amplifi, only to encounter the sharp crackle once again. On further inspection I discovered that the volume control, when operated via the blue LED knob or the IR remote, did not increase nor decrease the speaker amplification; and that each adjustment incurred the wrath of the electrostatic crackle. It was looking like this was the end of my Amplifi.

Decided to follow up on the unit’s manufacturer one year warranty, so I called up Griffin’s customer service line (615.399.7000) and talked to a very nice lady by the name of Currey. She informed me that Griffin will replace my defective unit free of charge. I didn’t even have to send the broken unit in! But there was one catch. Here’s a section of Currey’s email:

We handle exchanges for international customers a little differently. Rather than have you send us the defective product, we request taking a digital picture of the defective product destroyed. You can smash, burn or crack open in whatever way you would like, so long as you do so safely. Also, take a digital picture (or scan a copy) of your receipt.

Next, send us the pictures. Just reply to this email and attach the digital pictures of the defective part and the receipt.

Once we receive the email and verify the photos we will send a replacement to the address that you have provided us.

Wow. Griffin wants me to annihilate the unit. So be it. Pictures are forthcoming.

The Hipster Parietal Disgorgement Aid!! Or simply, the hipster PDA!!

This is “so two thousand five”–but it’s new to me dammit!

Check out the original hPDA artcile at 43 Folders.

A few years ago, back in my undergrad, I had a job interview for an internship position and one of the components of the interview was that I had to solve a logic puzzle right then and there. A friend of mine was asking about this particular logic problem and I managed to dig it up, so here’s it is:

Bridge-Crossing Problem

“U2″ has a concert that starts in 17 minutes and the group members must all cross a bridge to get there. All four men begin on the same side of the bridge. You must help them across to the other side. It is night. There is one flashlight. A maximum of two people can cross at one time. Any party who crosses, either one or two people, must have the flashlight to see. The flashlight must be walked back and forth, it cannot be thrown, etc. Each band member walks at a different speed. A pair must walk together at the rate of the slower man’s place, based on this information:

• Bono: – 1 minute to cross
• Edge: – 2 minute to cross
• Adam: – 5 minute to cross
• Larry: – 10 minute to cross

For example: if Bono and Larry walk across first, 10 minutes have elapsed when they get to the other side of the bridge. If Larry then returns the flashlight, a total of 20 minutes will have passed and you will have failed.

On a cold winter night, like the one last Tuesday, a single shot decaf mocha from Caffe Beano will get you as the Ship & Anchor Pub. That’s 0.9 km according to Google Maps, so: 1 Mocha Will Get You This Far

I’ve just posted my first programming how to guide.  This article covers Creating a Framework in Xcode 2.5.

PantherModem is now GeoRSS enabled thanks to GeoPress, the GeoRSS plugin for WordPress!

This post is coming to you from InfoVis ’07 at the Hyatt Regency in Sacrament, CA:

Update: For those RSS feed readers out there, you’ll notice that the above map is from Yahoo! Maps, yet via a web browser you’ll see a Google Map. I emailed GeoPress about this peculiarity and Andrew Turner got back to me (in two minutes after I sent my email), saying:

“The reason Yahoo is used is because it is the only service that provides an API for grabbing static images. This is so that the RSS doesn’t require embedding Javascript.”

Last week I was tipped off about an interesting web app called We Feel Fine. This app crawls blogs looking for posts that include the statements “I feel” or “I am feeling” and records these sentences. Age, gender, and geographic location of the blogger is also stored and through a nifty interface the databse of these records can be accessed and browsed.

Here’s an example of what I came up with for posts from ages 20-29 living in Calgary, Canada on October 2007 with no restriction on feeling, gender, nor weather:

Tonight I played my final Ultimate game of the season with my CUA team: Disconduct. Experience has proven that a respectable team name involves a pun based on jargon from the sport, e.g.: Disc-O-Balls, Huck Fu, Huck Norris’ Kentucky Fried Panda, Killer Wailers, Pulling for Pleasure, Spin Doctors, Too Drunk to Huck, Ultimate Kaos. You got it? Anyway… 2007 was a solid season. Thanks to all the great teams from the CUA and thanks to Disconduct for the fun times. See you on the field!