January 23, 2005

You've probably seen them. Maybe you’ve wondered about them. First invented in 1979, The Wall Street Journal’s distinctive portrait heads, known as “hedcuts” or “dot-drawings” have attained the status of an American icon, readily identifiable with one of the country’s best-known business publications. See how they get made.
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/journal/intro2.htm

Johnny Carson, 1925-2005

Just an image I found in my mail this morning.

January 22, 2005

The last cigarette commercial (for Virginia Slims) was broadcast on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show at 11:59 pm on January 1, 1971. It was expected to be devastating for the networks when tobacco ads were banned by the federal government — but they did all right without them, in spite of immediately losing $220 million dollars a year in revenues.

I made seafood gumbo today and it turned out pretty good, It was suprisingly simple to make. The prep time, or Mise en Place, was a little bit longer than some recipes, but was well worth it. And I, er, ate it all.

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
Karl Wallenda, January 21, 1905 – March 22, 1978.It was during a promotional walk in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March, 1978, that the patriarch of the Great Wallendas fell to his death at age 73. Not because of his age or capabilities, not because of the wind, but because of several misconnected guy ropes along the wire.

Sidewalk Chalk Art. The Making of a Portable, Rotary Cell Phone. How to detect lies. The Saturday Night Live Archives

January 19, 2005

The Anti Caps Lock Site

Ever been in the middle of typing something and inadvertantly hit the Caps Lock key? And then you have to go back and correct all the capitalized text. Have you ever gone out of your way to actually use the Caps Lock key ? Neither have I. But there is hope. http://anticapslock.com/

The World City Photo Archive

January 17, 2005

Bush was AWOL

With all the wingnut crowing about CBS and 60 Minutes, you'd think they blew the story that Bush had been AWOL. Fact is, CBS got one piece of evidence wrong, from a whole truckload of evidence — the Associated Press did the most work on the issue, filing a whole slew of FOIA requests and lawsuits to get the necessary docs.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/12/132214/106

Stand by your statue.

I've brought back an old feature of RickWorld —Cooking with Rick — with all new recipes and features. Well, there was actually only one recipe and very few features, but I had always intended to include some more. Anyway, these have all been tested in the RickWorld kitchen and they all taste pretty good. And not only that, they are pretty healthy and use no sugar. Once you make your own marinara sauce and discover how simple it is to make and how good it tastes, you will swear off store bought sauce. Check out the recipes.

Twenty Five Great Calvin & Hobbes Strips
Bill Watterson drew thousands of Calvin & Hobbes comic strips between 1985 and 1995. Some people, like those who picked these twenty five strips, say Calvin & Hobbes is the best comic strip of all time. While that could be debated, it's nice to go back and re-enjoy some of the strips. http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm

Why paint cats? Tongue twisters. An online etymology dictionary. Cool optical illusions. (thanks Glenn L.) A different perspective on Google. (thanks Glenn L.) The exact time. Imagination cubed. Today's front pages. Airport Identifier codes explained.

typoGenerator is a random generator for 'typoPosters' — created from images and letters/text that doesn´t have any sense,just to look good. Wnen the user types some text; typoGenerator searches images.google for the text and creates a background from the found images, using randomly chosen effects. then it places the text, using random effects too.
http://www.typogenerator.net

Why Tourists get a Bad Name
A collection of pictures. Not safe for work. (Thanks Glenn L )
http://www.rickworld.us/bad_tourists.htm

Shoe Lacing Methods
How many possible ways are there to lace an average shoe? On an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets, there are 1,961,990,553,600 ways to feed a shoelace though those 12 eyelets — nearly two trillion.
http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm

3d Models of Escher's Impossible Drawings It may come as a surprise for some, but many of the so-called 'impossible' drawings of M. C. Escher can be realized as actual physical objects. These objects will resemble the Escher's drawing, of the same name, from a certain viewing direction. The link below presents models that were designed and built using geometric modeling and computer graphics tools.
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gershon/EscherForReal/

“She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon..”
—Dave Zobel, Winner of the 2004 Bulwer-Litton Fiction Contest