TT: Nerdcore

New on Monzy.com: it’s the rivalry of Persian Computer Science Gangsta Rappers. Nerdcore will never be the same. I say MC Plus+ should really bust a cap (apparently three is no clear consensus on the origin of this slang expression) in Monzy’s ass, at the very least for not using named A-tags or any other kind of advanced technology that would allow to link to individual articles. Yo.

(In related news, my Russian-speaking readers might enjoy this awesome birthday greeting)

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Another good photo over at travisruse.com. The number on the train is the unit number that uniquely identifies the car. This train is an R46, since they have unit numbers in the 5482-6207 range.Using nycsubway.org you can even tell if the train you were riding in was involved in a major accident. I mean to write a little palm OS app that will take a unit number and give you some info about the train, but I’ll probably never get around to that.

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Public service announcement. Have you backed up all your digital photos? By the way, Picasa 2 has an awesome backup tool.

TT: Planetdoes News

While buying coffee at hidden Starbucks I browsed through the little pamphlets that they have next to condiments and stirring sticks (did you notice that they have Splenda now?). What have I learned? Firstly, I learned that a Starbucks grunt’s official title is “hourly partner”. Cordwainer Smith’s rhyme comes to mind : “I need a temporary dog / For a temporary job / On a temporary place / Like Earth!” I kind of collect peculiar corporate job titles, as I’ve mentioned at the end of an earlier Thought Tally.

Secondly I learned that you can come into any Starbucks and ask for complimentary coffee grounds. As it turns out, coffee grounds make an excellent nitrogen fertilizer for your garden. I wonder if Starbucks coffee is a good fertilizer – it sure tastes that way.

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Why I drink the Starbucks fertilizer? Because my lunch break is short and Joe’s is in the Village. By the way, recently I’ve learned that there’s another good coffee place called Ninth Street Espresso. I need to pay them a visit.

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I also need to some other coffee and caffeine news. There’s a new trend in espresso making. The innovative barristas started cutting off the bottoms of portafilters. This lets them notice any minute imperfections in packing of grinds and have outstanding quality control of the extraction. It also looks cool as hell. I am thinking about doing the same with one of my spare portafilters.

I learned this interesting tidbit because these days there are several outstanding blogs kept by super high quality coffee house operators. There’s Victrola Coffee, Blue Bottle Clown College and Tonx Dot Org. I suggest that you subscribe to their feeds unless you can’t stand heartbreakingly beautiful photos of artisanal caffeinated drinks.

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In other news I seem to be totally addicted to matcha tea. I got some awesome “thick tea” from Japan and it rocks.

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

I am thinking about going to Japan for my next vacation. Time to tally my knowledge of Japanese. Let’s see…

Nippon – Japan
Sushi – Raw fish with rice
Sashimi – Raw fish
Sake – Alcoholic drink. Some call it Japanese vodka or rice wine, but what do they know. It’s technically a rice beer.
Yakitori – Kebab
Tempura – Stuff fried in batter
Nori – Seaweed for sushi
Wasabi – Pickled radish
Agari – Green tea (in sushi restaurants)
Miso – Soy paste soup
Mochi – Ice-cream (or other stuff) in a dough shell
Arigato – Thank you
So Des – So it is
Godzilla – Big radioactive lizard
Sumo – Along with competitive eation, one of the few sports involving a lot of fat people
Yokozuna – A champion wrestler. Tend to be overweight
Sarariman – Office worker, formerely a Samurai. Probably.
Samurai – A Shogun’s report
Shogun – Samurai’s supervisor
Bushido – Samurai’s Rules and Regulations Manual
Geisha – A woman who entertains Yokozunas, Samurais and Shoguns. As well as Sararimen with a good sarary.
Sensei – Teacher
Kohai – What Wall Street types call a Rabbi. One who helps out somebody less experienced.
Sempai – Someone who has a Kohai.
Karate – Pronounced Kara-tey.
Something-do – Way of something.
Kendo – Way of the sword. Somehow really means fencing dressed skirts with bamboo sticks.
Robot-san – Mechanical human being. Some take Samurai or Geisha form.
Kinokuniya – Japanese bookstore chain
Ringo – Apple
Ringu – Ring
Waifu – Wife
Chambara – Japanese movies about Samurai
Manga – What Americans call Anime
Jedi – Another word for Chambara; also a person with high midiclorian count
Terevision – A device for watching Chambara
Harakiri – A suicide method very popular in Chambara
Kamikaze – A suicide method not very popular in Chambara. Also a drink
Kohee – 8 dollar coffee
Yakuza – Legitimate businessmen with a lot of tattoos and missing pinkies.
Meiwaku – Trouble, disturbance.
Kawai – Cute
Pokemon – A very kawai little critter
Makdonurado – A fast food place where sometimes you get a toy Pokemon with you meal and your food tastes like it’s made out of Pokemons.
Katana – A type of Samurai’s cutting sword. Also name of Larry Ellison’s giant boat.
Katakana – One of sets of Japanese characters. Either the one used for foreign words, or the other one.
Hiragana – Same as Katakana.
Hai – Yes
Beero – Beer.
Ebisu – God of something good, maybe beer. Also a type of beer.
Kappa – Demon of some kind, I think lives in water. Also a character in Mario Bros. games.
Tanuki – A smart shape shifting demon with huge balls.
Futon – Bed
Tatami – Rug

Uh… Yeah, I think I am done.

Lunchtime TT : Thought Tally

* I purchased and used caffeinated soap (nice and minty, but I don’t think soaping up provides a viable caffeine absorption pathway). You think I am not going to try caffeinated steak? I’ll let you know how it is.
(See my old posts Enema of the State and Steak ala Deadprogrammer)

* lynspin came up with a perfect answer to “YOURE GOING TO DIE FROM ATKINS”.

* Coca Cola marketoids were giving out cans of Diet Coke With Lime. This kind of reminded me of Pepsi Clear years back. I wonder what it would take to get a can or a bottle of that stuff these days. Just out of curiosity. Also I remembered a story about “Marshall Zhukov .. getting a stash of Coke smuggled into Stalin’s USSR with the caramel coloring removed, in clear bottles with a red star on the cap”. One of my co-workers told me about Pepsi Kona, a coffee flavored Pepsi which never made it into the wild from marketing studies. The whole cola flavor distribution thing is kind of weird. New York area for instance is not getting Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, but it’s available in Florida.

TT : Thought Tally : Dude, Where’s My Biochemistry Degree? or Kinky Crew Superstar

is going to like this. As I learned from TV Guide Magazine, Ashton Kutcher majored in Biochemistry.

According to one of the most annoying things a customer can do at the checkout line is to say “He heh. I guess it must be free” when the scanner beeps and refuses to scan the code. See, I could never come up with that stupid and apparently common joke. A Null is not a zero.

This kind of reminded me about a dude who was playing an electronic one arm bandit in Moscow when the machine crashed with 999999 rubles in the payout window. He stayed at the gaming parlor for days guarding the machine, but in the end the machine was rebooted and he wasn’t given any money. Or so I heard.

Coca cola definitely tastes better when it’s sold in those glass bottles. You know the ones that are probably based on the shape of the cacao pod (which was mistaken for the kola nut by the designer or something). They still make those in Mexico and sometimes they are sold in a few bodegas in NYC. I always thought it tasted better because of the glass, but finally found out the true reason:

“She told me that they were bottled in Mexico and I nodded since I already knew that and said, “I think it is because they use real sugar.”
She shook her head, “No, no, not the sugar. It’s the water.”
She leaned in like she was telling me a secret, “Mexican water is the BEST water in the entire world.”
Just then a smaller woman leaned in beside her grinning with a single eyebrow raised and whispered.
“It’s MAGIC water!”

Apparently it is not Montezuma’s revenge that assails unsuspecting tourists, but the magic waters that sour in the bellies of the unimaginative, somewhere South of the border.”

Many big corporations in order to retain employees use powerful “cult team building” techniques. One thing that I noticed is that worker ants usually have very peculiar job titles. For instance at Kinko’s the official title is “Co-worker”. At McDonald’s – “Crew Member”. From Gig I learned that Kinko employees unofficially use “Kinkoid” instead of “Co-worker”. And from an lj user in I learned that a McDonalds crew member who has formidable years of experience, but isn’t a manager is called “Crew Superstar”. I guess it’s kind of like “Research Fellow” at Microsoft :)

TT : Homer Shrugged

1) The trilogy that I actually care about is complete. The Golden Transcendence : Or, The Last of the Masquerade is here, and it doesn’t dissapoint. I’ll write my review soon.

Is it just me, or did the book jacket’s designer rip off Zhaan from Farscape?

(image from http://farscape.bittersweetblue.net)

2) Ebay auction: The Simpsons Homer as Atlas A La Carte Statue

Very impressive.

3) How a google search for video drivers helped ‘s mom grow her vocabulary.
Isn’t technology wonderfull?

4) Learned about this in “This Old House Magazine”. There’s a company that makes a table saw that senses the change in capacitance between wood and human (and as this demo shows, pigeon) flesh and stops momentarily.

Watch the videos here. would probably get a kick out of that.

5) There was an article in the Bulletin about Atoms for Peace.
Dammit, where’s my Ford Nucleon?

(image from conceptcarz.com)