I remember walking with my friend Kevin past a woman whose long hair had fused into a single filthy dreadlock, like a thick spout of vomit that had been bronzed. We were dumbstruck. We had no witticisms to offer. It’s a city that defeats efforts to ironize.
This woman used to stagger through my old neighborhood during the summertime; her hair was some kind of beehive that had been encased in decades of product until it was a hard waxen shell hanging off the back of her scalp. (Via The New York Times)
My Hamilton watch is on its way to Secaucus, New Jersey this evening. I was in the shower last week and pulled my towel off the sink, carrying my watch onto the floor, where it stopped working. From what Rob tells me, high-quality mechanical (winding) watches are delicate beasts; the spring and moving parts are held together by millimeters and don’t respond well to shock. While I won’t hide the fact that I’m disappointed, I suppose it’s understandable.
Hamilton is owned by the Swatch Group, who also own the high-end brands Breguet, Longines, and Omega, among others, but their service procedures are straight out of the back of a comic book: You mail your watch to a nonspecific address and hope it gets there, then pray someone acknowledges receipt. No RMS number, no automated service; no way of notifying them you’re sending your expensive timepiece in advance. I’ve had better returns service from counterfeit sidewalk vendors in New York City.
Rob still has my Field Watch, and promises to get to it when he’s not pulling so much overtime. I miss old faithful.
At WRI, I’ve been working on a web project, which has been a lot of fun: I’m building a workflow to port all of the content from an InDesign file to HTML. I’ve been pushing to get all of our reports online in mobile-ready format, and built a template version using an open-source framework, a handful of jQuery tools, and some elbow grease. I’ve figured out how to get inDesign to spit out basic formatted HTML that gets pasted into the template, cutting back on the tedious work of formatting tables and boxes. The most time-consuming element now is formatting live charts, but I’m tempted to just use images. It’s been a lot of fun, having been away from pure web production for two years, to dive back in and get my hands dirty. I remember more than I give myself credit for, and after some initial roadblocks I got a lot of new technologies hooked up and working correctly. Not bad for an old man.
Often, long magazine pieces are simply posted online in all their text-heavy glory, but in this case editors on the print side worked in tandem with the digital team for months in advance, holding joint meetings to discuss how the work would live online.
One other thought: Paul Ford is an extraordinary writer who has had a strong presence on the web since the birth of blogs. His network is larger than most, and I’m sure that extra push made a difference.
Source: Bloomberg’s ‘What Is Code’ Feature Was A Massive Hit — Here’s Why
Annoyance is digging through the bones of a website I built in 2009 and trying to remember how I put it all together when GoDaddy wouldn’t let me update my FTP access, I realized my CSS wasn’t written as well as I thought it was, and I suddenly remembered I built the gallery on the homepage in a Flash application.
Huh, I wouldn’t have chosen Chris Thile as the new host of a “A Prairie Home Companion,” but the selection certainly is inspired. He has the performer’s chops; I hope he can carry off the sketches, or hire someone who can.
The studio’s founders understand the fundamentals of animation and storytelling, even when they’re just moving brightly colored shapes around on a screen.
Pixar’s films put technology and storytelling hand-in-hand, via The Dissolve
As many long-time invitees are already aware, the Lockardugans decided 2015 was a skip year for the parade party. After 10 straight seasons, we needed a break, and so after making sure the lawn was mowed and the cat was boarded, we got the fuck out of town.
Friday was a holiday so we cut out across the bridge to Easton, where our good friends the Morrises were ready to receive us. After enjoying some drinks and a laid-back dinner on the deck, we all packed up and drove to the waterfront in Oxford, where the town was lined up along the beach to watch fireworks at dusk. It was a beautiful night, and apart from a light drizzle the show was fantastic.
Saturday we packed up and headed back to the same beach to sit by the water and watch the kids play. I’m happy to report Finn is now diving, swimming, and jumping underwater with no fear at all; this year, in fact, she asked me to pick up and throw her repeatedly and has now decided she wants to try a diving board. Okay!
Regretfully, we packed up and left at dinnertime, as lack of sleep and exhaustion from spending five solid hours in the water took its toll on the kids. She crashed out in the car at six and went straight to bed when we got home. We enjoyed the peace and quiet until the Catonsville fireworks show started up, which we’re now able to see almost clearly through the new gap in our treeline behind the greenhouse.
Sunday morning, to celebrate the CR-V hitting 100,000 miles somewhere between Oxford and Easton, we did what all God-fearing, patriotic Americans do on a national holiday: we cleaned out the grotty interiors of our cars. Finn earned some money by manning the vacuum while I scrubbed the sills and cleaned the plastics, and between the three of us we made short work of it.
Mama set up some coleslaw and then we stopped over to Bear’s house for a visit. He was in good spirits, alternately eating, sleeping, farting, and staying awake for brief periods of time to study the chandelier. After dinner, he and I retired in the living room to nap and watch the first half of the Women’s World Cup final. One of their cats jumped up to join us, and I had a great time juggling a baby, a cat, and my beer with only two hands.
Then, we packed up and got Finn back home and into bed at a reasonable hour. After getting everything ready for Monday morning, I hauled my gear up from the basement and got the batch of Irish Stout from last November bottled and racked in the basement. The last batch of Session is kicked, so I’ll clean the keg out this evening, and then transfer the new batch in to finish.
A nice fella on the Binder Planet had these stickers made up and offered them to the community. They were too groovy to pass up.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
How astronaut Garrett Reisman found a match made in the heavens thanks to two trucks—an International Harvester Scout II and a Ford Bronco.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.