Time to get some re-training

If you're relying on one of these skills for a living, you might look into classes at your local community college to learn something new. The list of "obsolete skills" includes:

Adjusting rabbit ears [not vetrinary medicine]

Asbestos installation

Calling collect on a payphone

Drive a manual transmission (hey! That's *me*!)

Formatting a floppy

It fascinates me to see how many of those "skills" the average person my age learned how to do in a lifetime...that aren't at all useful, now.

Time to get some re-training

If you're relying on one of these skills for a living, you might look into classes at your local community college to learn something new. The list of "obsolete skills" includes:

Adjusting rabbit ears [not vetrinary medicine]

Asbestos installation

Calling collect on a payphone

Drive a manual transmission (hey! That's *me*!)

Formatting a floppy

It fascinates me to see how many of those "skills" the average person my age learned how to do in a lifetime...that aren't at all useful, now.

Admiring v. Coveting

There's art you look at and say, "My, that's well done work," and then there's art you covet and think, "My, I'd like to see that in my dining room." For me, Faberge eggs, the legendary jewels of Tsarist Russia, have always been in the former category.

But I'll admit that looking at so many of them at DarkRoastedBlend, there are a couple of them I like more than the others. (Mostly, they're way to fussy for my personal style.)

Still, if I owned one of those, it'd have to be dusted and insured. Life is simpler without.

Admiring v. Coveting

There's art you look at and say, "My, that's well done work," and then there's art you covet and think, "My, I'd like to see that in my dining room." For me, Faberge eggs, the legendary jewels of Tsarist Russia, have always been in the former category.

But I'll admit that looking at so many of them at DarkRoastedBlend, there are a couple of them I like more than the others. (Mostly, they're way to fussy for my personal style.)

Still, if I owned one of those, it'd have to be dusted and insured. Life is simpler without.

Speaking of Yestertech

As this post on Engadget shows, if life gives you yestertech, hack it.

Here, someone has hacked a 35 mm slide viewer and used it to make a screen enhancer for an iPod nano.

Speaking of Yestertech

As this post on Engadget shows, if life gives you yestertech, hack it.

Here, someone has hacked a 35 mm slide viewer and used it to make a screen enhancer for an iPod nano.

Nooooooo Reservations

Anthony Bourdain is very much a New Yorker...but we like him anyway. His Travel Channel show No Reservations is a fascinating look at different cultures through the eyes of a celebrity chef (who started as a dishwasher) who eats and cooks his way around the world. He has an absolutely amazing sense of wonder, coupled with a brutally wry sense of humor (and he really doesn't take himself too seriously).

Here is his recent (*marvelous*) interview at Google:

Via Grow-A-Brain.

Nooooooo Reservations

Anthony Bourdain is very much a New Yorker...but we like him anyway. His Travel Channel show No Reservations is a fascinating look at different cultures through the eyes of a celebrity chef (who started as a dishwasher) who eats and cooks his way around the world. He has an absolutely amazing sense of wonder, coupled with a brutally wry sense of humor (and he really doesn't take himself too seriously).

Here is his recent (*marvelous*) interview at Google:

Via Grow-A-Brain.

Why, yes, I remember them

Which Beatles song are you? Your Result: Eleanor Rigby   You live life through your interactions with others, and you often find yourself analyzing these relationships. You appreciate beauty, so you should be careful of prioritizing aesthetics over real substance.
Hey Jude
The Space Between
All You Need is Love
Here Comes the Sun
Twist and Shout
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Yellow Submarine
Which Beatles song are you? Quizzes for MySpace

(Swiped from supergee.)

Why, yes, I remember them

Which Beatles song are you? Your Result: Eleanor Rigby   You live life through your interactions with others, and you often find yourself analyzing these relationships. You appreciate beauty, so you should be careful of prioritizing aesthetics over real substance.
Hey Jude
The Space Between
All You Need is Love
Here Comes the Sun
Twist and Shout
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Yellow Submarine
Which Beatles song are you? Quizzes for MySpace

(Swiped from supergee.)

Eating the video game

How do you make the rows go away in Waffle Tetris? (I assume it would involve syrup...)

Eating the video game

How do you make the rows go away in Waffle Tetris? (I assume it would involve syrup...)

Since the future seems to be coming on...

...at a fair clip...and since eBooks of some sort look like they will eventually be available on readers that I'd rather like, one day soon an eBook reader will make its way into my house.

Neither Mike nor I are "first adopters" for most tech, however, and with reason. In our youth, we watched electronic calcultors go from more than $250 for a cheap TI model the size of an old mechanical adding maching (and with few bells & whistles other than some basic log calculations) to one with 10 times the processing power that cost me a buck at Staples and hangs on my keyring.

Granted that we both bought our first calculators much earlier than the Staples version, but we waited for the prices to come down and the reliability and functionality to increase, first. (In the meantime, there were sliderules.) (Whattya mean, sonny, "What's a sliderule?")

So, eventually (once they are affordable, and once they are more comfortable to use), we'll buy eBook readers. (No, not one. We'd get awfully pissy with each other if there was only one of them.)

eBooks (for us) will have some serious advantages: (1) give back a whole room in the house, eventually, should we want (unlikely that we'll get rid of our paper and cow books, but once there is greater availability, we *could*)...at the very least, slow the bookshelf creep to a modest level; (2) ensure that, so long as we could find the file, we wouldn't have to re-buy books we've read the covers off (yeah, I know -- some people don't re-read books...but those people don't live in this house); (3) make it possible for me not to have to buy the hardcover when I want a new-new book...would I pay a premium for an eBook if I could get it at the same time the hardcover came out? Oh, yeah. And then I wouldn't have to find a place for the hardcover afterward.

Sure, I saw that Star Trek episode. I know about real books. They feel good; they are old friends; if something short-circuits my electronics, there are always books; they don't need electricity. And, of course, if I'm reading in the bathtub and drop the book, I've only lost the book...not a mumpty-dollar eReader. (No, I do not read in the shower.)

But. Remember when you were 12 and your parents told you to go to bed and sleep and put the book down and not a peep and no lights...so you got out your trusty flashlight, pulled the covers over your head, and read your book with the black-out comforter? eBook readers will make that need obsolete. :-) That alone would have saved my parents the cost of the reader (vs. the new glasses I needed for reading under the covers).

However...the #1 insufficiently-touted advantage for eBook readers: travel. Last May, we went on a two-week cruise vacation, and we spent a pretty bit of our carry-on allowance on 10 or so books. With an eBook reader? We could have thousands of books readily accessible at a wicked space and weight savings. The very thought is almost (but not quite) enough for me to buy now.

Since the future seems to be coming on...

...at a fair clip...and since eBooks of some sort look like they will eventually be available on readers that I'd rather like, one day soon an eBook reader will make its way into my house.

Neither Mike nor I are "first adopters" for most tech, however, and with reason. In our youth, we watched electronic calcultors go from more than $250 for a cheap TI model the size of an old mechanical adding maching (and with few bells & whistles other than some basic log calculations) to one with 10 times the processing power that cost me a buck at Staples and hangs on my keyring.

Granted that we both bought our first calculators much earlier than the Staples version, but we waited for the prices to come down and the reliability and functionality to increase, first. (In the meantime, there were sliderules.) (Whattya mean, sonny, "What's a sliderule?")

So, eventually (once they are affordable, and once they are more comfortable to use), we'll buy eBook readers. (No, not one. We'd get awfully pissy with each other if there was only one of them.)

eBooks (for us) will have some serious advantages: (1) give back a whole room in the house, eventually, should we want (unlikely that we'll get rid of our paper and cow books, but once there is greater availability, we *could*)...at the very least, slow the bookshelf creep to a modest level; (2) ensure that, so long as we could find the file, we wouldn't have to re-buy books we've read the covers off (yeah, I know -- some people don't re-read books...but those people don't live in this house); (3) make it possible for me not to have to buy the hardcover when I want a new-new book...would I pay a premium for an eBook if I could get it at the same time the hardcover came out? Oh, yeah. And then I wouldn't have to find a place for the hardcover afterward.

Sure, I saw that Star Trek episode. I know about real books. They feel good; they are old friends; if something short-circuits my electronics, there are always books; they don't need electricity. And, of course, if I'm reading in the bathtub and drop the book, I've only lost the book...not a mumpty-dollar eReader. (No, I do not read in the shower.)

But. Remember when you were 12 and your parents told you to go to bed and sleep and put the book down and not a peep and no lights...so you got out your trusty flashlight, pulled the covers over your head, and read your book with the black-out comforter? eBook readers will make that need obsolete. :-) That alone would have saved my parents the cost of the reader (vs. the new glasses I needed for reading under the covers).

However...the #1 insufficiently-touted advantage for eBook readers: travel. Last May, we went on a two-week cruise vacation, and we spent a pretty bit of our carry-on allowance on 10 or so books. With an eBook reader? We could have thousands of books readily accessible at a wicked space and weight savings. The very thought is almost (but not quite) enough for me to buy now.