Believe it or not, the only thing that I added to this picture was a border template and a crop. My guess is that blue tint comes from all the ultraviolet light – it was a very sunny day.
Blog
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So Very Blue
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Two States In One Picture
Wow, I never knew there were so many skyscrapers in Jersey City. -
And Lipstick Too
I have a small collection of cheap box cameras that my grandfather bough for my in his garage sale adventures. I decided to look into filling the rest of space in one of my bookshelves with specimens from eBay. One thing that I often do is sort the auctions descending by price. That way I often find most curious stuff. On the top of the search for “Kodak Brownie” were two amazingly beautiful cameras with striking art deco design:
And this wasn’t a fluke either. Kodak also made “Coquette”, which featured a lightning bolt art deco design and came with a matching lipstick holder.
Take a plain box, give it a new design and add some color. Everything old is new again, right?
I think Apple should try to add a matching lipstick holder.
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Italian Bullion
This here person wrote an essay on statues that get rubbed for good luck. He mentioned Dolly Parton’s statue , but forgot to mention the Wall Street Bull :
I always thought that there’s supposed to be a statue of a bear, but apparently it’s not so. I also thought that the bull was made much earlier than 1989. And I did not know that it was basically a Italian-born sculptor Arturo Di Modica’s equivalent of grafitti. Apparently the bull was involved in a traffic incident once. I would really like to see that dude’s insurance form.Also not mentioned there The Statue of Three Lies.
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Caped Crusader Architecture
I knew about the Batman Building of Nashville, TN, but recently I found one right here, in Manhattan:
I have no idea what it’s called.Update: it’s one of the numerous AT&T buildings.
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Mutants and Spaceships and Memexes, Oh My!
Let’s see.
Mutant superhero born. Check.
Private spaceship. Check.
Videoconferencing in airplanes on portable electronic computers. Check.
Portable Memex. Check.
Flying cars. Check
Sunken city of R’lyeh is about to be discovered.
What do I have to say? It’s ’bout time! -
Oh, Crap, Singing …
My favorite Simpsons songs:
Canyonero Commercial
Jebediah Springfield’s Theme Song
Hank Scorpio’s Theme SongMy favorite Futurama songs (get them here) :
Robot Hell Song
Poppler Commercial Song
Bureaucrat’s Song
Grunka Lunka’s Song
Xmas SongStrangely enough I liked Katey Sagal’s singing in Futurama songs. I learned that she recorded a CD called “Well“. The damn thing almost made me puke. I don’t even know how to explain it. Sachariny songs, terrible electronic music arrangements. Ewwww. Her voice sounded nothing like Leela’s singing in Futurama. I went to Amazon now to get the link, and low and behold – ten years after “Well” she has another CD called “Room” out. Do I dare to buy it? She does have a great voice…
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Perky Stuff
I’ve made coffee in almost every which way, except percolated. I also never owned a percolator. Alt.coffee news group FAQ which I always regarded as the highest authority in all things caffeinated, seriously disses the French-invented percolator. On the other hand, people who actually drank percolated coffee usually have good things to say about it. Because of that I think I’ll hunt for a nice percolator specimen on eBay. A glorious Art Deco instrument in chrome and Bakelite. Even if I won’t like it’s coffee making characteristics, it will remain in my collection as a sculpture.
(This particular auction seems to be reflectoporn free. -
The (Drive)way of a Samurai
Larry Ellison’s Japanese fetish is well known. He owned at different times yachts named “Ronin”, “Katana” and “The Rising Sun”. According to “The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison” Larry often flies to Japan for Sakura Matsuri. And now he is building himself a $60 million 3000 sq. foot replica of a 16th century Japanese warlord’s mansion.
The house will be built using traditional materials and without nails (good idea earthquake-wise), but I doubt that any warlord had a house that big, especially with an amazing master bath that will include “.. boulder that will be part of the master bathroom shower. The 30-ton stone (yes, that’s 60,000 pounds) was recently moved into place with a rented high-rise crane that was brought to the site expressly to move the “shower rock.” ”
A house like that needs a driveway to match. Larry wants it paved with natural hand cut stone. The stone is quarried in Japan and China (Larry chose China because the labor is cheaper there) and for some reason needs to be cut on site. This means that the architect needs to provide a template for each and every stone. It would take months to do this by hand, but luckily a CIS student helped him, making Larry’s driveway his CS270 Project. Random, but not too random, concave and convex, angles not too sharp, 5 to 9 sides to a stone – this is not as simple as it seems :
By the way, is it just me or does Mr. Scorpio from “The Simpsons” look very much like the samurai in question?
