dennis yang dot com

This comic just about sums it all up. Hooray for dating. It sure is fun. yah.

Anyway.. more good stuff from this dude can be found at ingredient x and his YouTube page. Enjoy.

[Found at sfist]

1. WITHOUT anyone watching you they will think you are GOOFY and while sitting where you are at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction.

[Thanks James]

Kekeke.. Andy sent me this page about beatbots and it’s so frikkin cool. Watch the beatbot dance to Spoon — it’s not just a simple “move to the beat” algorithm either — the little guy has a few different dances as the song progresses. Kekeke. I want one.

(Kekeke is very appropriate here cuz the robot, Keepon, is Japanese.)

Kekeke.

Neat.

[hat tip, willo]

Whilst having lunch at Golden King (mmm. tasty vietnamese food) today, we noticed that there was a midway setup right across the street right on the edge of Portsmouth Square right in Chinatown. How odd. Why would there be midway games? They had most of the classics — “shoot out the star”, “balloon dart toss”, “football through the toilet seat”, “basketball shoot” and “ping pong ball in the fishbowl”.. I was sad that they didn’t have “shoot the water gun in the clown’s mouth” game though — that was always my favorite, although now that I think of it.. that game isn’t really found in the traveling midway, just the more permanent ones at like Cedar Point and the like..

Anyway, $5 for a whole basket of ping pong balls seemed like a pretty good deal…

And after that whole ordeal, the group only got ONE ping pong ball in a bowl (good work, James). The prize? 2 goldfish, of course. In a plastic ziploc bag.

Meredith has named them Ping and Pong. I believe the over/under on their lifespan is.. um, 2 weeks right now. We’ll see how they do.

Yah, so I guess it’s Valentine’s day or something around these here parts. Hooray, I suppose.

So, if you’re looking for a card, this guy made eps versions of the v-day cards that were on that Simpsons episode — you know, the one where Ralph gives Lisa the “I Choo Choo Choose You” card, and Lisa gives him the “Let’s Bee Friends” card.
Ouch. Yah. Ralph is on the friend ladder. Get used to it brah. It sucks. His cat’s breath also smells like cat food.

You shouldn’t be downloading and printing free cards off the interweb, you should be buying them from American Greetings (shoutout to Dan in Ohio — hope you’re enjoying the snow).. Hmm, that reminds me.. remember “Print Shop” on the old Apple II? Man, those cards were awesome.. you’d print them out on your dot-matrix printer and then you’d fold them up in 4 and they’d be a sweet little card. Someone’s had to have made a web version of that, no? Hmmm… Anyone? Anyone?

Uh.. I digress. Just remember, shit bitch you is fine.

Psst. This Wednesday, Justin Hermann Plaza, 6pm.

Pillow Fight.

Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day. Extra points for anyone dressed up as Cupid.

Ok.. this is frikkin cool. I saw Jeff Han’s TED Presentation about touchscreens last week, but this is an even better demo of the capabilities. Ooo. [Thanks James]

Wait, so now I like touchscreens? Yes, I know I’ve been going around trash talking the iPhone for its lack of tactile feedback.. But, maybe I’m warming up to the idea. *If* the UI can provide sufficient visual feedback, then perhaps it will work… That said, the awesomest visual feedback will do me no good if i’m trying to use my phone without looking at the screen. Walt Mossberg’s initial impression of the iPhone was favorable, so.. who knows.. we’ll see.

Anyone remember the Atari 800 & Atari 400? The 800 had a real keyboard, and the 400 had this goofy membrane keyboard thing that was just awful. Yah, touchscreen is very different, but I’m just sayin..

Man.. Atari 800. Rock on.

Whoa.. this is so meta..

Oh, and the iPhone? Enh. I’m gonna wait and see how it turns out in real life first.. I’m skeptical about how the whole no-buttons approach is gonna work out. I didn’t get an iPod until the 3G-no-click-feedback model, and that interface wasn’t exactly the best. True, I love my nano now, so I’m thinking I’ll give Apple a few years to work out the kinks in the phone before I make the leap. That said, I’ve been a Nokia loyalist since 1997 (ok, with one slight motorola lapse, but only for a few months) so hopefully Nokia will get its act together and make a good phone again.

I thought I’d share a little gem that i came across today…
http://www.cayugaswaiters.com/new/downloads/mp3/harvard.mp3

omg. scary. wow. simply. stunning.

And why, pray tell, was I looking for acapella.. Well, the xmas party I’m going to tomorrow just emailed everyone saying that the evening’s entertainment is going to be provided by this super hot acapella band (yah, I know you’re jealous.) And well, yah, one thing led to another, and I found this track… to think that in almost 10 years, i hadn’t thought about acapella, and in an instant, I was transported back to Cornell Night. Whoosh.

See all you kids at reunion, right? (well, I guess not *all* you kids, but all of you Cornell ‘97 kids, I guess.. although I think Kim’s coming and she didn’t even go to Cornell)

Ok.. this is like the 2nd Techdirt plug in like a few weeks, but I thought this post Mike wrote today was particularly good… Economics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention.. So yah, go read it, it’s good stuff… He quotes Thomas Jefferson, after all, so it’s gotta be good.

And if you’re wondering why I’m still up, this might have something to do with it.

Wow… so tonight the subject of Geocities came up in conversation, so I decided to see if my old Geocities page was still up… Amazingly, it’s still there… but, the coolest thing that I found was this…

Some sites that Dennis found.

Back in 1995, I worked for a summer at a pharmaceutical company, but my job was to investigate new technologies that could be useful to them. So, I basically spent the entire summer surfing around what was a very young web. And, whenever I found a cool site, I would add it to my list here.. My little list of sites actually got a good amount of visitors (for back then), and I was even named the “Beverly Hills Internet Site of the Day”..

But, the summer ended, and I went back to school, and neglected this list, and went on to spend most of my time at school building cars instead of internets. Ooopsie.

It’s quite amusing to look through this list of stuff… A ton of URLs on here are at .edu domains and live in people’s user directories… Neato. Funny to see the original urls for stuff like Lycos (http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/lycos-all.html), SavvySearch (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.html), and IMDB (http://www.msstate.edu/Movies/)..

So yah, this list is a little over 11 years old, so most of the links don’t even work anymore…

Well, that was a fun little trip down memory lane…

Teehee.. that ad should warm your heart.. Originally found here.

[thanks doug!]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

So.. the fantastic folks over at Shine have this neat-o photobooth in the back that takes your pic and automagically posts it onto flickr.. Yah, it’s kind of geeky.. but what would you expect from a place that is at 1337 Mission… (and if you get THAT reference, then you are truly geeky).

Anyway.. Brian made a kickass timelapse video of the photobooth.

I’m in there somewhere.

So that last post about my crazy sleep schedule got me to thinking… why are we constrained to this whole 24 hours per day, 7 days per week schedule anyway? I mean, our biological clocks run on more of a 25-hour schedule, so the 24-hour day isn’t even what our bodies are dictating..

So, I remember a few years ago, I stumbled upon this proposal of the 28 hour day.. It’s an interesting concept:

Basically, instead of the 24/7 week, you have a 28/6 week (no more mondays!!).. And, the idea is that this schedule maximizes your daylight, non-working hours… It’s a pretty cool idea.. it’s kind of a waste to spend most of the daylight hours (for those of us with day-desk jobs) behind a desk… so, this way, you’re working when it’s dark out 10 hours a day for 4 days, and then you get a 36 hour weekend in the daylight… woohoo!

Anyway.. thanks to Thomas Edison, we no longer have to structure our day around the rise and set of the sun… hooray technology!

So, I’ve been working from home for a little over a year now, and while I do appreciate the commute, the best part of this gig is that the schedule is ultra-flexible. I only have one scheduled meeting a week, and the rest of the work week basically just happens whenever. I mean, there’s more than enough work to do, and yes, I typically do need to be working during the middle of the day, and I have deadlines and stuff, but for the most part, it’s nice to have the flexibility to, say, go for a bike ride in the afternoon or something.. That is, of course, I get my work done, which is cool, cuz then I can chill when I’m typically brain dead (like right after lunch) and work when I’m most alert (late at night, like now, for example).

The most interesting thing that this work flexibility has affected is my sleep schedule. The only time I really have to set my alarm clock is on the weekends, but otherwise I just wake up whenever my body says “wake up”.. And, if I get too tired and lose focus during the day, then it’s cool to just veg or take a little nap for a bit. But, when I add all of the hours of sleep up I typically get during a 24 hour period, it works out to about 5 or 6 hours, and I’ve actually been feeling a lot more alert than I recall feeling when I had to set an alarm before..

So, my typical schedule is something like:

8am - wake up, eat some breakfast and start work…
10am - mind starts to wander, go downstairs and play some MLB 06
noon - go forage for food and chill or (not lately, admittedly) work out or something
2pm - back at work, ok, maybe lie on the couch and rest my eyes for a few minutes
6pm - take bailey to the park and run her around a bit, then have dinner and go out and do something social or play softball or something (or, if I don’t go out, I might fall asleep on the couch for a little bit after dinner)
midnight - back at work, this is when I get my best coding done
3am - force myself to go to sleep, cuz if I don’t, I’ll just keep going

So yah, it’s a little bit of a weird schedule, but it’s been working out for me quite well I think. I get plenty of work time in, and I still am able to fit in work out time (ok, not lately, I’m getting fat) and social time.

Anyway, I’ve never really heard of it before, but there’s this thing called Polyphasic sleep that sounds really interesting… Instead of this kind of ad hoc sleep schedule I’ve been subscribing to, the Polyphasic plan puts you on a specific, regimented sleep schedule of 20 minute naps spaced every 4 hours throughout the day. You end up getting about 2-3 hours of sleep daily.. Sweeeet. Imagine if you had 22 hours of waking time a day… That’d be awesome. AND supposedly you get to eat 4 meals a day on this whole thing (or you lose weight, which could be another benefit)..

Supposedly the main drawback are that it’s actually hard to stick to the schedule and if you go off it, then you get really really tired. (hey, it’s nice hanging out and all, but I gotta go take my 20 minute nap) And, some people actually report that they get bored with all of the extra free time (great, I’m up at 4am, but nobody else is..)

Anyway, There seems to be lots of people trying it though, so hmm.. I’m intrigued.. Maybe I’ll give it a try…

I mean, it’s gotta be better than just popping Provigil, right?

It’s friday.. and Dana im’d me a funny link to a Dane Cook clip.

So, I looked around YouTube for some more comedy, and found a few clips of one of my favorite comedians, Demetri Martin..

Here’s one of them…

Woo.. good stuff… Anyway, I’ve made a list of the good comedy videos I’ve found on YouTube.. enjoy.

A few months ago, a friend of mine that used to work with me at CNET, John Roberts, left to join a startup called OpenDNS. DNS? Really? The last cool DNS project I heard about was EasyDNS (correction.. EveryDNS — thanks Mark!), back when I was frantically trying to find someone to be my authoritative name server. Coincidentally, the EasyDNS dude went on to found OpenDNS.

Anyway, I think get how the Internets kind of works, and while speeding up DNS lookup really would in theory make the general experience better.. But I always assumed that DNS lookups were cached like crazy in just about every spot that used them, so I was frankly a little doubtful as to how noticeable a faster DNS would be..

Well.. I’m now convinced. It’s faster with OpenDNS.

Upon immediate installation of OpenDNS… all of a sudden, everything sped up.. Installation is slighty techy — you have to go and configure the DNS settings in your router.. but they provide easy step-by-step instructions, and after installation, I had to hard reboot my router after a harrowing 10 minutes *GASP* without an internet connection.

I was starting to get accustomed to the laaaaaag of certain sites when you first type them into the browser, but I had always assumed that it was the slowness of web servers that I was accessing.. I guess I was wrong.

Not convinced? If you like charts and numbers, this dude measured the speed difference with OpenDNS and published the results. (ok, no charts, just numbers.)

OpenDNS also claims to help make the Internet safer by blocking out domains to phishing sites and such… but I haven’t seen how that’s going to work just yet… I wonder if another revenue source for them would be to block out adult sites and such (for parents watching over their kids’ surfing and such)..

But for now, I’m using it mainly because it makes my Internets faster (cuz, you know.. the Internet is a series of tubes [thanks Audris!])..

Props to John and the OpenDNS folks..

Happy summer solstice! It’s soooo nice here today in SF, so go outside and play.

But, if you can’t, enjoy this SWEET display of turntablism by these 4 french DJs, winners of the DMC World Team Championships..

kick ass. If you like that one, check this out too… spin dj is a god. Hooray for YouTube.