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  • Have A Nice Day

  • Yagi Decorated


    You know, most New Yorkers don’t look up much. No matter how cool everything is around them, they don’t want to look like tourists. But I am secure enough in my New Yorkedness to walk around looking at skyscrapers and taking pictures with my touristy looking camera.

    This hideous yagi antenna is on a top of one of the old art deco buildings on 46th street. By the way, it turns out that it named “after Hidetsugu Yagi (1886-1976), Japanese electrical engineer” and not baba Yaga as I thought. Actually it should be called “Yagi-Uda” because he invented it with the help of Dr. Shintaro Uta.

    Looks like nobody cared much for Dr. Yagi’s work in Japan at the time. Of course, they regretted it after they discovered that it was used by the Allies as a radar antenna. This reminded me about how Pyotr Ufimtsev’s dense paper titled “Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction”, which was completely ignored by the Soviet military scientists, gave Denys Overholser, a Skunk Works radar specialist, all the theory needed to build F117 stealth fighter.

    Indeed, yagis are very useful. You can extend the range of wi-fi networks with a yagi made out of Pringles can (gotta build one) and I’ve heard of a guy that made a yagi for his cell phone, so that he could access weak cell networks while biking across America. They may not look very good, but they have a kajillion uses in radio and tv.

    Too bad there is no book about Dr. Yagi on Amazon, but here is a rather interesting site about Japanese inventors. Here’s Dr. Yagi’s statue and here’s an iteresting quote that I’ve found: “US War Crimes Commission witnessed that Professor Hidetsugu Yagi was the first Japanese “to speak proudly of his work instead of denying it all.”

  • Happiness, We’re All in it Together

  • ‘Sup, Yo?

  • Obesity is a Serious Problem for Snowpeople in America


    I snapped this on the way to work. He sits right near Times Square. Looks like either cops or transit workers came up with yet another creative way of using traffic cones.

  • Gutenberg Would Be Oh So Pissed

    I’ve recently read a very awesome book by Henry Petroski called “The Book on the Bookshelf”. It’s a book about the culture of storing an collecting books. In it he mentioned a dinner party that he attended, where owners of a pretty big library served appetizers on Taschen art books (probably purchased for a buck or so). But many of the guests did not feel right about using book pages (no matter that they carried no value) in this manner. Even though it’s probably a cooler way to use these books than letting them mold in a used book pile somewhere.

    Petroski also mentioned some readers who would tear pages out of cheap paperbacks as they were reading in order to lighten their bags.

    I feel, that eating over a book (unless it’s a rare edition) is ok. In fact, I don’t really care if any of the ordinary books in my library have dog ears, food stains or water damage as long as they are still readable. I have no qualms even about throwing out crappy books. But still would refuse to use a book as a plate.

    Now, here’s a project I have mixed feelings about: some ljusers wallpapered their library with book pages. It looks very cool. It will probably look like ass later, when acidic paper will start to completely deteriorate in sunlight. It’s somewhat cool. Maybe even a bit creative. I’ve seen this done with old newspapers in the Le Figaro cafe in the Village though. But still, something ain’t right about that.

  • The Saddam Hussein Reader

    I don’t really know much about everybody’s favorite contemporary mustached dictator.

    I didn’t know that Saddam’s full name is Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. I didn’t know that his wife Sajida, two years his senior, also happens to be his first cousin. That’s seems right, she is the one who gave birth to the abominable Uday and Qusay. Uuu – die. Brrr..

    Anyway, looks like Saddam’s biography shouldn’t be any less entertaining than “The Sopranos”. There’s a whole bunch of Saddamy goodness on Amazon:

    The Saddam Hussein Reader
    The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Understanding Iraq
    or this:

    What to pick, what to pick…

  • Titania-Mania

    My Titanium fetish is well documented in my journal. Well, here’s more titanium stuff:

    There’s this guy on an island off the coast of Canada who makes the best espresso machine tampers. A tamper is a little plunger that is used to pack coffee ground into a portafilter. Tamping is one of the most critical stages in making espresso. It’s almost impossible to get good espresso without proper tamping. In fact, I’ve never seen a barrista in New York do a proper tamp. The one reason why Starbucks coffee became more drinkable is because they use automatic machines these days that tamp the grounds themselves.

    I don’t own a Reg Barber tamper because I already had and Ergo Packer, which is also very finely made and instead of having a flat bottom like all other professional tampers or rounded bottom like all the crappy ones, it has a very slightly curved one. “Very scientific!” would cry characters from this novel.

    Anyway. Reg finally made a small batch of titanium tampers. Gotta get one.

    Moving on. In the book “Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed”, Ben Rich mentioned a special set of titanium shot glasses that his boss used for drinking with the generals. You see, the awesom SR-71 Blackbird was the first plane made entirely out of titanium. I wonder who has those glasses now.

    But these guys have excruciatingly pretty titanium stuff. Sake cups, mugs, beer glasses – all made out of titanium. Jewelry is also very nice.

    They can even make a street sign out of titanium for ya.

    You know, I don’t want a 1958 Plymouth Fury anymore. I don’t even want a 1948 Tucker Torpedo. All I want is a 1956 GM Firebird II, the first titanium body car with a gas turbine engine. Is that too much to ask for?

  • WML: How to Stop Biting Nails

    As I mentioned previously, I’ve had some success with stopping nail biting.

    I did not really start biting nails on my own. I picked it up from one of my childhood friends. You know, peer pressure. In fact, it was the same friend that cost me that front tooth which I will be replacing with an implant now. Two things to remember him by. Grrr.

    I analyzed my nail biting and came up with the following conclusions:
    a) I usually start biting a nail that is longer then the rest, has overgrown cuticle or jagged edges.
    b) I bite my nails more when my hands are dry

    Ok, so here’s how I stopped:

    I went to a Dwayne Reed drugstore and bought myself a whole bunch of manicure stuff:

  • a couple of nail files
  • nail buffer
  • nail cissors
  • cuticle sissors
  • cuticle stick
  • Orly No Bite bitter clear polish
  • Sally Hansen Problem Cuticle Remover
  • Sally Hansen Radiant Hands, Nails & Cuticles Creme
  • Sally Hansen Maximum Growth
  • Sally Hansen Thicken Up!� Strengthening Nail Thickener

    First I took care of the dry skin. I really like that Radiant Hands, Nails & Cuticles Creme – it almost doesn’t smell.

    Then I took care of the cuticles with the cuticle cream and cuticle scissors.

    Polished away jagged surface of bitten nails and buffed their surface.

    For a weekend I used the bitter nail polish thingy. It’s wasn’t very bitter, but it reminded me.

    More importantly, I kept a nail file at work, in my bag, near my computer and at my bedside table. The hardest thing is to stop after biting a nail. By polishing away the jagged edge as soon as you transgress it’s easiest to stop.

    I applied the “Maximum Growth and Thicken Up” thingies from time to time. Nails that are bitten for a long time do not grow very well and are thin. These two products help a little with that.

    I think at some point I am going to get a manicure and a pedicure. Maybe it’s not very manly, but I am very secure in my masculinity.

    [update] Even after all that I was not able to quit completely. These days I can go without nail biting for up to a month at a time, but I am a full blown nail biting recidivist. That moisturizer really helps though.

    If you are coming from Lifehacker link, please don’t forget to take a look at the rest of WML posts and other good stuff.

  • My Investment Strategery or Watch Out, Warren Buffet

    My investments remind me of this Seinfeld’s monologue :

    “I’m not an investor. People always tell me, you should have your money working for you. I’ve decided I’ll do the work. I’m gonna let the money relax. You know what I mean? ‘Cause you send your money out there – working for you – a lot of times, it gets fired. You go back there, “What happened? I had my money. It was here, it was working for me.” “Yeah, I remember your money. Showing up late. Taking time off. We had to let him go.” “

    The first stock that I ever bought was of a now defunct company called Molecular Biosystems that traded under the ticker symbol MB. Their only product was a special contrast agent for CAT scans or something like that. I bought the stock because of the name. It seemed cool. All scientific and such. And just two letters. I think the return on investment was something like -50%. I don’t remember.

    Since then I’ve read a bunch of investment books, and was very impressed with Warren Buffet’s investment strategies. I decided I’d buy only a few stocks of companies that I liked, knew and understood.

    The list came down to 4 companies. Palm [PALM] (actually 3COM when I bought it and later, after I’ve got PALM shares after the split I bought Handspring [HAND]), Gemstar[GMSTE] (I bought TV Guide shares, they were later converted to GMST shares), Krispy Kreme Donuts [KKD] and Berkshire Hathaway [BRKB].

    Out of the four, I invested in 2. Palm and Gemstar. And here’s how I did:

    Interestingly enough, at some point, when I was down about 15% (after being up 70%) I considered selling all the stocks and buying a La Marzocco instead. I didn’t.