Follow-Up Graph
By Brian | June 10, 2009
As a follow-up to this, we have this:
(Hat tip: Jeff Porten)
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
ISBS Movie Review: Angels and Demons
By Brian | June 9, 2009
With Angels and Demons, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks take on another Dan Brown novel that deals with high drama in, around, and about the Catholic Church. Like The DaVinci Code before it, Howard and Hanks turn out an excellent movie – gripping in its drama, engaging in its many action sequences, and satisfying in its ability to wrap up all the loose ends with a satisfying “reveal” at the end. This is one of those movies that seems to end soon after it started, until you look at your watch and find out that more than two hours have flown by. It’s the kind of movie where you walk out of theater talking to your date/spouse/friend about the intricacies and implications of the plot.
Especially if you’ve read the book.
Seeing this movie after reading the book is like reading the Fodor’s book about England cover-to-cover and then getting off the British Airways flight in Rome. It’s like being hit in the face with a bucket of cold water, drying off, and then having it happen again. Like walking into your favorite Chinese restaurant and finding out that the special of the day is Chicken Parmigiana. Like whiplash, only with popcorn.
Categories: Movie Talk | 2 Comments »
The ad Palm wishes it could run
By Brian | June 9, 2009
Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »
Drinking Game
By Brian | June 5, 2009
By now, just about everyone has seen the put Mentos into Diet Coke so it explodes bit in one form or another. But this takes it to a whole new level.
To summarize:
- Fill an ice tray halway with water & freeze
- Put a mentos candy in each compartment, fill the rest of the way with water and freeze again (now you have ice cubes with mentos in the middle
- Mix an drink that contains both diet coke and these ice cubes (the link says Manhattan’s, even though they don’t have diet coke in them. I’m thinking Rum & Coke? Anyway…whatever you fancy)
When you’re done, what you basically have is a drink that’s also a ticking time bomb. If the person can drink down the diet coke before the ice melts, he/she is fine. If he/she waits too long, though, ka-blooey!!!
(Hat tip: Willow Gross)
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 2 Comments »
Unfortunate Icons
By Brian | June 4, 2009
The Calendar view in Microsoft Outlook 2007 uses a clever set of icons to give the user key information about his/her meetings without opening each one. Recurring meetings, for instance, show up with curved arrows in the lower-right corner. If you modify a single instance of a recurring meeting, it puts a diagonal line through the arrows, which gives the unfortunate impression of a script “x”. Hence, you get meeting descriptions like this:
I assure you that opening the appointment is not nearly as exciting as the message above implies.
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging, Tech Talk | Comments Off on Unfortunate Icons
ISBS Review: Facebook
By Brian | June 1, 2009
As some of my readers are aware, I have been resisting joining the two newest social networking trends – Facebook and Twitter – for quite some time now. Twitter has been easier to avoid (only a couple of my friends use it, and given that SEC regulations prohibit me from using it in the office, I wouldn’t be much of a “tweeter” for most of the day anyway). Facebook, on the other hand, has been hounding me. It started with the “Hey – you’ve got to join” e-mails, and then moved on to the “click <Facebook link> to see this great picture of my kids” and the “that reminds me of that awesome story I read on Joe’s Facebook page” messages.
Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »
ISBS Movie Review: Star Trek
By Brian | May 31, 2009
I realize I’m a little late to this party, having finally acquired a babysitter and convinced my wife to go, but I just returned from seeing the Star Trek movie. My first order of business (aside from paying the babysitter) was to finally read both Ilya’s review and Jason’s pre-review, review, and post-review, all of which I’ve been saving for this moment.
We’ll start with my thoughts on the movie, and then move on to my thoughts on my friends’ thoughts. Before I even begin, though, I can see how this will take a while, so I offer a page-fold for those who don’t have the time nor the interest to go further.
And oh yes, there are spoilers. Lots and lots of ’em. Trust me – if you haven’t seen the movie yet, just move along.
Categories: Movie Talk | 17 Comments »
New York City Sights – The Hotel Pennsylvania
By Brian | May 30, 2009
As promised last week, here’s a look at what is directly across the street from Madison Square Garden:
(Excuse me while I channel James Lileks).
It’s the Hotel Pennsylvania, who’s famous phone number is (212) 736-5000. Why is that a famous phone number? Well, until the late 1960s, phone numbers were referred to in the 2L-5D format, where the first two numbers were expressed as letters, using the letters that appear above each number on a telephone keypad (yes, kids, they served a purpose before text messaging). If you check your phones, you’ll see that “73” translates into “PE,” making this phone number “Pennsylvania, 6-5000” immortalized in song by the one and only, Glenn Miller, who frequently performed in the hotel’s Cafe Rouge ballroom:
It’s also, according to Wikipedia, the oldest continuing phone number in New York City.
My wife and I had occasion to stay in the fabled Hotel Pennsylvania once, when she had a two-day professional conference to attend in New York. The room was, well, what you’d expect from an old and historic hotel, I guess. It was old. Very old. And it showed it. A lot. Bottom line: you’re much better off looking at the Hotel Pennsylvania from the outside or from the lobby.
Categories: New York, New York | 2 Comments »
Hugging Epidemic?
By Brian | May 29, 2009
From the New York Times’ Style section:
There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type:
There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there is also the bear claw, when a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out. There is the hug that starts with a high-five, then moves into a fist bump, followed by a slap on the back and an embrace. There
Categories: The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Hugging Epidemic?
The four states that sank the world economy
By Brian | May 28, 2009
A commenter over at Asymmetrical Information pointed me to some mind-blowing facts over at Scrivener.net:
From March, 2009:
- The national foreclosure rate rocketed up 81% in 2008, to 1.8% (from 0.99% in 2007).
- Only nine states had foreclosure rates above the average — and just four had rates seriously above the average: Nevada at 7.4%, Arizona and Florida at 4.5%, and California at 4%
- Fully 41 states had below-average rates.
- Subtract those four states and the median foreclosure rate in 2008 was only 0.90%.
Also:
- Home prices increased in 28 states during the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the federal OFHEO State House Price Indexes (click on “State HPI Summary”).
- In most other states price declines were modest.
- Prices declined in Arizona by 2.91%, in Nevada by 2.66%, in California 2.61%, and in Florida by 5.47% — annual rates of decline from over-10% to over-20%.
Another Scrivener post has some other illuminating data which compares these four states (along with Michigan, which is almost as bad, but not quite as bad as these four) to New York (which is doing comparatively well) and the national mean.
With all the discussion of housing bubbles and credit crises, I’m amazed that I’ve never heard how localized the problem was. I also wonder if our federal government’s response would have been different if the general public knew that mortgages & housing prices in 45-46 of the states were actually doing fairly well.
Categories: Money Talk | 2 Comments »