Friday, September 29th, 2006 | 2:29 pm
Good: I’m in Florida with the wife visiting her parents. It’s a beautiful day.
Bad: Things went awry at work this week and I’m stuck in the inlaws’ kitchen (probably technically a breakfast nook) working away on my laptop today. It’s kind of a bummer, compared to all of the relaxing and non-work things I could be doing.
Good: I’m not in the office. I’ll finish putting out fires and can have a relaxing weekend without any calls from work. Then, we can enjoy the 11th Annual EPCOT Food and Wine Festival properly.
The phrase “Over the course of the Festival, there will be 1200 beer and wine seminars scheduled with complimentary samples” resonates pretty well with me…
This morning, I read a photoessay on Chittagong, a Bangladeshi beach that is one of the world’s longest. It’s not your typical beach: this is where half of the world’s tankers go to die.
When the tide is high, vessels are driven at full speed toward the shore. Once the water recedes and the ships rest along the muddy beach, the salvage crews move in, emptying the vessels of everything on board.
There are some incredible photos in this essay, but the data are equally fascinating and startling:
- The work employs over 200,000 Bangladeshis
- The scrap metal from the scavenged ships provides 80% of Bangladesh’s steel
- Most of the workers working on this toxic, dangerous site with sharp metals and unknown chemicals do so without gloves or shoes
- It is estimated that one worker is killed each day
The economics behind two hundred thousand people making their living handling titanic cast-off detritus is mind-boggling to me. What a huge, strange world we live in.
link: Foreign Policy: End of the Line
(via mental_floss)
There’s a lot more info on this phenomenon known as shipbreaking over at Google Sightseeing.
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 | 12:53 pm
After work yesterday, I dashed up to Buckhead to attend the book signing for Brainiac, the book Ken Jennings wrote about his experiences with Jeopardy! and as a paean to trivia in general. I highly recommend the book and the blog.
Maybe the best test of a well-composed trivia question is how you feel when you don’t know the answer. Anybody can enjoy getting a question right, even if it’s poorly written or dull. It’s fun to show what you know. But the ideal trivia question is so good that you even enjoy getting it wrong: you liked the mental exercise of rooting around for the answer, and you like the surprise of hearing the right answer after you gave up.
[…]
I took apart trivia questions and interviewed trivia writers hoping to find the “quintessence,” the life-giving force, that made trivia tick. I wanted to hold in my hand the mysterious Element X that differentiates a humdrum run-of-the-mill fact from the kind of sparkling, brilliant memorable fact that spawns trivia questions, the hidden factor that separates trivia from minutiae.
Well, defining “good trivia” turned out to be elusive, but the more trivia I look at, the more I realize that, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about porn, I know it when I see it. And at least you don’t need to hide trivia under your mattress so your mom doesn’t find out.
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 | 10:53 am
August was a horribly neglectful month for the blog. I haven’t had much to say, and for that I apologize. A quick rundown of what’s been going on with me:
Early August: In Destin for a long weekend earlier this month, to sit on the beach and do nothing for 48 hours. Saw Jurassic 5 in concert. (Highly recommended.)
Mid-August: Work outing at the lake. Think I want a boat someday. Another work outing at Dave and Buster’s a week later.
Late August: My buddy Josh got married. This was a great time.
Throughout the last month or so, as you may have noticed, I’ve been playing a lot of NCAA Football 2007 for the Xbox 360. I highly recommend it, even with EA’s innovation-stifling monopolies and ridiculous pricing.
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 | 4:24 pm
I finally got around to making some changes to how I combat comment spam. Now, you simply need to check a box indicating that you are not a malicious robot, and your comment will jump across the internet and straight onto my blog.
This will allow a much greater sense of satisfaction for you, and hopefully a greater sense of frustration for spammers.
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I’m working on geotagging all of the photos in my Flickr account. It’s hard work manually, but once I get my hands on Sony’s
GPS-CS1, this will be an automat
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I don’t actually care how many people read what I post here. (Or don’t post, as the case has been recently). But these are good tips for keeping a blog interesting, regardless of your readership or lack thereof.
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After meticulously geotagging 700 (so far) of my photos, this has jumped to the top of my wishlist.
Friday, September 1st, 2006 | 1:31 am
As an experiment, Rusty and I are going to attempt to predict the outcome of several key college football matchups using nothing but our Xbox 360s and our copies of NCAA Football 2007. We’ll simulate the games and attempt to determine how accurate this $60 testosterone simulator really is.
Notre Dame (#3) vs. Georgia Tech (#25)
The trusty Xbox has Georgia Tech opening up with a field goal in the first quarter, but our virtual Notre Dame hammers the NATS with four touchdowns in the second quarter alone. Tech outscores Notre Dame 18-10 in the second half, but it isn’t enough.
Notre Dame wins 38-21
Tennessee (#18) vs. California (#15)
The boys in prison jumpsuit orange are on top until the fourth, when Cal mounts an impressive comeback. Unfortunately for the Golden Bears, Tennessee has a comeback of their own up their inbred sleeves, putting it in the end zone twice in the last 3:30 to squeak by. Cal posts 496 yards of total offense to Tennessee’s 378.
Note: We would have actually played this game, and perhaps others, if our online action hadn’t been cock-blocked by a flaky network connection.
Tennessee wins 36-33
Florida State (#12) vs. Miami (#11)
Miami lets FSU score 20 unanswered points before, er, answering. Another close one.
Miami wins 24-23
USC (#4) vs. Arkansas
The Trojans run up the score on the Razorbacks this week, passing for 447 yards on their way to 740 yards of total offense. Incredibly, Southern Cal only punts once in sixty minutes of play, despite never converting on 4th down.
USC wins 51-27
Auburn (#7) vs. Washington State
This one looks like a pretty boring game on the Xbox 360. Nobody converts on 4th down, nobody fumbles the ball, and there are only three trips to the end zone all game. Neither team even kicks a field goal. Come on, people spice it up a bit! These games had better be more interesting in real life.
Auburn wins 35-21
Speaking of keeping up interest, I can’t really say whether I’ll do this every week throughout the season. I guess we’ll see how prescient the simulations are.
Uh oh, I have to go… The Insider is showing the wedding videos of a couple who died in the Kentucky plane crash over the weekend. That’s just classy.
Update: Rusty posted his results. His Xbox predicts fewer nail-biters, and predicted Cal to win over Tennessee. Let’s hope it’s mine’s right.
