Blogging since 2002
There is a pretty cool Centennial of Flight exposition in Rockefeller Center. It’s on until the 18th of August. Among other cool things they have full scale models of the Wright Flyer and Red Baron’s Fokker (heh, heh) , a backup Apollo bell module, a predator drone, a Harrier II, a Shuttle cockpit mockup and piece de resistance: a full scale model of a Redstone rocket!
JWZ posted a link about a trained hawk that attacked a Chihuahua in Bryant Park. The hawks were used for scaring away pigeons. The hawks were well fed, but still tried to kill a pigeon or two. And of course they could not pass up Mexican food. Yeah, it’s tough to be a lap dog in NYC. If the swans in Central Park won’t get you, the hawks in Bryant Park will.
Of course ratbirds are annoying and a health hazard, but in this case we are talking about the exact spot where Tesla fed pigeons. These are the descendants of Tesla’s pigeons! I guess he’d be pretty pissed about the hawks.
So now it looks like the hawk program will get canned because of the stupid lap dog. That’s too bad – trained hawks are pretty cool. Too bad I didn’t know about the hawks before, or I would have taken pictures. In fact I think I saw the hawk dude in the park, but I thought that he was in for a renaissance fair or something.
Hawks are not the only critters that keep New Yorkers safe from bombs. On my way to work I pass up a guy with a bomb sniffing dog standing in the area where trucks are unloading in the building where I work. In fact, there are a few of these dogs around. I wonder if they found a single bomb.
My favorite modern science fiction writer, John C. Wright, Esq. , also started a livejournal,
I strongly urge you to buy Year’s Best SF 3, a book containing a short story called “Guest Law”. This story made me a big fan. Copies of Year’s Best SF can be had for as little as 50 cents + shipping at Amazon.
Unfortunately Mr. Wright’s other short stories are rather hard to obtain, but you absolutely must get his Phoenix Exultant trilogy books. I’ve read the first two volumes and I can’t wait for the third one to come out.
The only thing short story of Mr. Wright’s that is available online is a William Hope Hodgson’s Night Land tribute titled “Awake in the Night“. Now, I am a staunch detractor of the fantasy genre. And I absolutely hate fan fiction. In this case I am willing to make an exception. Yeah, yeah, you heard me say that. But even though
“Awake in the Night” is a very good read and it revealed to me Night Land books which I will definitely pursue, I still wish it was an original Wright story instead of a tribute.
News in photography from
From
Now, store display, design and marketing always fascinated me. So I did a bit of digging around:
Apparently this is a gondola (the long shelves) with end caps :
(from http://www.leggettsfg.com/)
Tandems seem to be Sears specific type of shelving. I wonder, who invented gondola shelves and why made that person name them so.
I found Glossary of Aftermarket Terms and dug this stuff up:
SKU: Stock Keeping Unit. Refers to each single item carried by a retailer. Every color, style and item having its own vendor or vendee number has its own SKU.
Keystone: A markup of 100% or more.
Loss Leader: A high-demand product such as motor oil or spark plugs, sold at cost or below to draw customers into a store.
Velocity Price: Pricing system based on relative movement within a product line (usually discounting faster moving items more deeply than slower movers).
Ad Slicks: Black and white reproducible artwork used for packaging and advertising.
When I was working on online stores, I once asked in a meeting what SKU stood for. Interestingly enough nobody knew the correct answer. I looked it up on the Net later.
You know those strings of items that festoon the shelves that we now know are called gondolas?
(image from http://www.hubert.com)
Apparently those are called “impulse strips”. When will they come up with warp strips?
Now, this is an interesting name for a suprmarket layout:
(taken from http://www.discountshelving.com)
(Illustration 1) Racetrack Layout
Racetrack Layout consists of a main aisle that will lead customers from the front area, around the whole store, and leads them at the check out counter. It is designed for two-way traffic that directs customers to what they are looking for.
On Saturday I’ve got the Engineer’s Itch. You know, the itch to take apart something that is working perfectly well and try to improve it. To scratch it I added a second video card and a monitor to my computer.
All I had in my box-o-junk was an old video card and a crappy 15 inch monitor, but even with that a dual monitor desktop is absolutely awesome. It works really great with Photoshop – I can move all the annoying toolbars to the left screen. I also moved the mess of shortcuts, install files and folders with junk to the left. Now my main desktop is very clean and organized.
It’s great for having multiple browser windows open, doing some reading during long and annoying installs (you can have a non-resizable window on the first monitor and another one on the second). Ok, next step is to buy decent lcd monitors and setting them up like that. I don’t want to go back to a single monitor setup.
The scary thing about the newer Rockefeller center buildings is that from Times Square they look kind of like the perished World Trade Center towers. If you add outright “satanistic” “999 Pharmaceutical” and “DOG” ads and a jet plane trail, the picture becomes even scarier.
One of my favorite places to eat out when I feel depressed is the row of Korean restaurants on 32nd street. My life seems to be saturated with tsures lately, so I dragged my wife there on Monday.
That area is known as K-Town, Koreatown or Little Korea even though it’s just one city block (32nd between Broadway and 5th). It’s a very interesting place. Towering over it is the Empire State Building.
The street is composed mostly of traditional Korean restaurants,
gleaming cafes (I wish I could have some bubble tea or other types of the sweet sweet goodness that they sell there)
and other businesses sprinkled in between.
What I usually go for is Korean BBQ. It works like this: you sit at a special table with a fire pit in the middle. The waiter places hot coals into it with a well practiced movement. Every time I see that maneuver I think about how much their insurance must cost them. Then they bring you your choice of raw meat, seafood or vegetables and you proceed to grill it. You also get a ton of little side dishes, souses and very fresh lettuce leaves to wrap your grilled food in.
I really like food wrapped in lettuce. I even thought about opening a little street vendor cart selling lettuce wraps. Lettuce wraps in my opinion are much better than burgers. They are Atkins friendly too.
Korean BBQ is not extremely cheap – expect to pay $15-20 per dish (and even though you don’t get a lot of meat, combined with side dishes and lettuce it’s a filling meal). You also have to order at least two dishes to be seated at the grill table. I highly recommend marinated tongue.
Another unusual food that I tried there is raw beef. It’s very fresh and is served marinated and very cold. Great stuff.
Ok, remember, when working with LN2 do not wear open-toed shoes. Otherwise there is a high probability of you having to perform LN2 ballet.
Sunday’s Foxtrot comic is about LN2 icecream.
