What Happened?

Mcoldtreeandsunsetatkin  T180 When CCDs go bad, accidental digital beauty. This reminded me of a series I stumbled across on LJWorld several years ago — the gorgeous results of having dropped a camera into a pond. Wonder how often people have this kind of accident and find themselves suddenly blessed with a “magic camera.” The only time something similar happened to me was when I was trying to shoot raindrops hitting the surface of the ocean in the middle of a tropical storm in Jamaica. Enough ambient moisture entered the camera body that everything it shot for the next few hours was distorted and smeary – not quite accidental beauty, just bad. And it cleared up by the next morning after leaving it open to dry overnight. Hmmm… I can find a few on Flickr, not nearly as many as I’d expect. Now I want to find a cheap/used digicam just to drown it.

Music: Tom Waits :: Murder In The Red Barn

Oobox

David Pogue, in the NY Times:

These are all actual Web sites that have hit the Web in the last year or so: Doostang. Wufoo. Bliin. Thoof. Bebo. Meebo. Meemo. Kudit. Raketu. Etelos. Iyogi. Oyogi. Qoop. Fark. Kijiji. Zixxo. Zoogmo.

And these are names coughed up the Domain and Company Name Ideas Generator:

Cojigo. Roombee. Kwiboo. Trundu. Oobox. Ceelox. Myndo. Ababoo. Vible. Yambo. Eizu. Twimba. Yanoodle.

So… are startups today really using a randomizing algorithm to poot forth their brand identities? Or are humans sitting around board room tables coming up with names that only end up sounding randomly generated? Either way, these name forms are only memorable when they’re alone in the field, like Google. When there are dozens of them, all recognizability is lost.

Music: William Parker :: In Case of Accident [Live]

Birdman

When base jumping isn’t enough… there’s always the wingsuit:

(Higher-quality version here. Lots more on YouTube).

What strikes me about the wingsuit, once I pry my heart out of my stomach, is its simplicity. With humans trying for millenia to fly like the birds, with the airplane having been with us for more than a century, it seems odd that the wingsuit is so simple, so elemental, and yet took so long to develop. “You need webs, like a bat!” Why wasn’t this invented a thousand years ago? Almost seems like it could have been made with deerskin and twine.

OK, I take it back. Wikipedia:

According to wingsuit lore, between 1930 and 1961, 72 of the 75 original birdmen died trying their wingsuits. Some of these so-called ‘birdmen’, most notably Clem Sohn and Leo Valentin, claimed to have glided for miles and inspired dozens of imitators.

In case you’re wondering, a wingsuit costs around a grand. Great photo gallery.

Music: Pinpeat Orchestra :: Somplov

Tsunami, Poroc-Poroc

Remember why you’re here. Unknown surfer on monster wave in unknown location, about as close to the immensity and awe of naked existence as one can physically be.

Also awesome: “In the Brazilian state of Amapa, on the full moon closest to the March equinox,” a set of waves form twice a day that ripple up through the Amazon jungle, providing surfers the opportunity to experience the longest rides of their lives – up to half an hour long.

Aside: Photography and film used to signal to us “truth,” while obvious animation signaled fiction. But while watching surf clips on YouTube with Miles this evening, he kept asking “Daddy, is that real?” Already, he’s so accustomed to photo-realistic special effects and the blending of live film with rendered characters that he’s utterly unsure what’s real and what’s not. Trying to explain the truthiness of a show like Prehistoric Park, which is scientifically accurate in every way and yet totally fictional, I never feel sure whether he’s making the distinctions clearly in his mind or not.

Be Stoked

Bestoked Former J-School students Anna Sussman and Jonathan Jones are traveling the world as backpack journalists, and shot this image of the Dalai Lama on a sticker on the dashboard of a taxi floating around Darjeeling. Sage advice to keep surfing those cosmic waves.

Jonathan recently wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle on how American Idol’s Indian counterpart Indian Idol has become a platform for rivalry between many of India’s 2,000 ethnic groups.

Comcast Hammer Granny

Monashaw As a customer just coming out the tail end of a week-long ordeal with Comcast and their army of incompetent technicians and telephone bank operators, I feel more than a twinge of sympathy for Mona Shaw, a 75-year old woman, frustrated to the point of insanity by Comcast’s “customer support,” who walked into the local Comcast office and started smashing computers with a hammer. Washington Post:

Shaw’s opinion of Comcast? “What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles,” she says. This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much ballyhooed “Triple Play” service, which combines phone, cable and Internet services, in Shaw’s brick home in nearby Bristow. But Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but left with the job half done. On Friday morning, they cut off all service.

My situation: A seemingly simple request to upgrade to digital cable with HD channels, and to have a dual-tuner cable card installed in a Series 3 Tivo. Long story short: Installation tech appears, says he’s never worked with a Tivo before. Installs card, checks out a couple of channels, and leaves, thinking he’s done. I realize that night that we’re only getting 10% of the channels we’re supposed to be getting – and far fewer than we got before the upgrade. Each attempt to call for support earlier than midnight results in being put on the call-back system, my calls being returned at least 90 minutes later. The two times I was put on hold, got disconnected after 20 minutes. Empty promises that they could fix it by sending “a special signal” to the cable card to “wake it up” (electroshock therapy?) They asked me to wait three days for that to happen, then to call back if no change. Waited, no change.

Tried to schedule another house visit and was told there wasn’t a tech available for two weeks. Raised hell and, magically, an appointment opened up for the next morning. The tech never showed. Called in, waited for callback, and was told the visit was actually scheduled for the next day (bull – we were going camping that day). Finally was able to schedule a visit during the work week, between 10 and 2. Should I work from home that day or not? Yep – tech didn’t arrive until 1. Armed with an array of multi-stream and single-stream cards, she babbled at length, placed endless calls to her own tech support system, tried to mix single- and dual-stream cards, placed them in the unit in the wrong order… She finally got a single-stream card working and got up to leave. “You’re going to leave me with a single tuner?,” I asked. “You have another tuner in the Tivo.” “But not one that’s connected to your service.” “Why do you need two tuners anyway?” She places another call to her tech support to confirm that I’m not lying to her. Kid you not. Issue finally resolved after two hours of in-house visits, uncountable time on the phone, and bottomless frustration. And oh yeah – at every turn, operators tried to get me to bolt the Comcast phone service onto my order. Right, I’m going to put our phone service into the hands of a company this clueless, brand new to the phone game. I won’t be walking in to the local Comcast branch with a hammer, but it’s not hard to see where the impulse comes from.

So was Mona Shaw a crazy lady?

From what we can tell, Mona Shaw is not, actually, a raving lunatic armed with construction tools. She is a nice lady who lives in a nice house. She and Don are both retired from the Air Force (she was a registered nurse). They have been married 45 years. She is secretary of the local AARP, secretary of a square-dancing club and takes in strays for the local animal shelter (they have seven dogs at the moment). The couple attend a Unitarian Universalist church.

Get more than your fill at ComcastMustDie.com.

Tip: Comcast lookups for seldom-visited sites going slow? Reconfig your router with DNS servers from OpenDNS.

Music: Sonny Rollins :: Strode Rode

Mysteries of the Deep

Deep4 Think you’ve seen all the fascinating pictures of trippy creatures living at the bottom of the ocean there are to see? The current issue of Smithsonian Magazine has an amazing photo spread full of truly mind-blowing photos of the gelatinous dwellers of the deep. The article is actually a review of a coffee-table book titled The Deep, comprised of more than 160 photos taken by bathyscaphe researchers from around the world. Most are proof of just how “head-shakingly bizarre life can be. The scientists who discovered the creatures were apparently as amused as we are, giving them names such as gulper eel, droopy sea pen, squarenose helmetfish, ping-pong tree sponge, Gorgon’s head and googly-eyed glass squid.”

I love this shot of Grimpoteuthis, a type of Dumbo octopus that grows up to 5 feet in length and looks for all the world like a Robert Crumb drawing of an alien jelly wearing a pair of hiking boots suitable for trekking the Marianis Trench.

The deep sea is the largest ecosystem on earth, plunging to more than 37,000 feet below sea level at the Marianas Trench in the Pacific. It accounts for 85 percent of the space where life can exist and holds an estimated ten million or more species. “But we’re still trying to figure out what’s out there,” says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Unfortunately, the web version of the piece has different – and less amazing – examples than the print version, and it’s tricky to find the slideshow (click the small round dots after clicking the main image). Pick up the dead tree version next time you’re waiting at the dentist’s office.

Music: Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake :: From the River to the Ocean

How to Handle Women

Thumb We Can Do It Coverage of Rosie the Riveter in Ken Burns’ documentary The War was excellent, but made no mention of the ways in which male employers had to adjust (or thought they did, anyway) to a sudden culture shift in the workplace. The same sexist culture that had previously kept women out of anything but secretarial jobs resulted in some jaw-droppingly sexist attitudes toward women newly involved in manufacturing. cf: 11 Tips on How to Handle Women Employees, originally printed in the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

Whoa. Or this:

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

Music: Mexican Institute of Sound :: La Kebradita