June 2005


Convertible 7-series BMW?

Convertible BMW 7-series

No BMW never made a convertible 7-series, but that didn’t stop this guy from cutting the roof off his car. Of particular note is the roll bar fashioned out of plain old “water grade” thin steel pipe. Sure, he might be an asshat for forging this frankencar out of a perfectly good sedan (stick-shift 7-series are rare!) but he’s going to be safe!

Well, maybe not. Should be rollover, that 2+ tons of German metal is going to obliterate that pipe onto the guy’s head. But only if we’re lucky.

Morse vs. SMS part 2

The Morse Code input meme is apparently getting some steam courtesy of O’Reilly.

iTunes 4.9

Great Cthulhu people! With all the verbiage expended on today’s release of iTunes 4.9 you would think that something important happened. So iTunes has support for podcasting built in… big deal. Support is fledgling at best, roughly equivalent to the feature set of iPodder 1.0 or so.

The iTunes RSS internal plumbing is being dissected pretty thoroughly so I’ll skip that part, but the most annoying thing I’ve discovered is this:

  1. Begin downloading a podcast.
  2. Quit iTunes.
  3. Restart iTunes.
  4. Attempt to find some way to restart the download.

Refreshing the subscription doesn’t work because iTunes assumes that you’ve downloaded the file even if it’s only a partial download. Anyway, NetNewsWire is still top of the heap of these things and there’s no reason to switch.

This week’s news by Roger Corman

Somewhere out there, Charles Fort is snickering…

First up: “Flesh-eating aliens were chasing me when I caused fatal car crash

A California man facing life in prison for crashing his car into a UPS truck will not dispute that his actions resulted in the death of the driver when his trial opens Monday in Nevada County Superior Court.

Instead, Scott Krause’s defense will argue that the defendant believed he was trying to escape man-eating subterranean beings when he ran into Drew Reynolds’ truck on Jan. 6, 2004.

And then

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — A young mother found at the scene of a car crash near Tokyo in which her husband and infant son were killed had been dead for at least a day before the accident happened, police were quoted as saying on Sunday.

Finally

Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

That pesky Rugby font again

Years ago when I was spending much more time on the various Spacemen 3 pages I had up, I needed a copy of the font used for much of their album covers. I couldn’t find one, so I fired up Fontographer and made my own… The font is called Rugby and you can find it here.

Every so often I would see “Rugby” font somewhere, but here’s a new one… and a great cover connection courtesy of Ben of spiritualized.com

spacemen3-soundofconfusion.jpg

keefhartley-overdog.jpg

Provence Boulangerie

Tarragon chicken at Provence BoulangerieWe interrupt this series of airport cafe pictures for the following…

Are you in Long Beach? If so, go directly to Provence Boulangerie in Belmont Shore. Order anything on the menu, it’s all good so you can’t go wrong. Personal favorites are the turkey brie sandwich and the tarragon chicken salad (pictured), but everything there has been superb.

Provence Boulangerie
191 Park Street
Long Beach, CA 90803
562-433-8281


Fullerton Airport cafe

This week’s visit was to the Fullerton Airport (FUL) cafe a.k.a. Tartuffles. I’ve been there dozens of times before so it wasn’t any big surprise - yummy food, direct view of the tarmac, and pretty reasonable prices (the whole breakfast was $7.00 including coffee).

Fullerton Airport tower Breakfast at Fullerton Airport Breakfast at Fullerton Airport

Goats

This morning I woke up to the sound of goats bleating outside and, yup, the goat herder on the hillside moved the goats directly below the house. It’s all in the name of fire-prevention - the hillside is overrun with dry brush and the idea is that the goats can get into places where human brush-clearers can’t. The effectiveness is still undetermined, though after the big 1993 fire anything that reduces overall brush is a Good Thing.

Of course since it is Laguna Beach someone always has to complain.

Goat below house Goats below house

Jocko Homo

alden-jocko_homo.jpgYour weekend crank literature reading is F.W. Alden’s 1924 pamphlet “Jocko Homo-Heavenbound” a antecedent to Akron’s favorite spud boys. Read the annotated version on the web or download a PDF.


Hawthorne Airport cafe

I’ve been obsessed with airport cafes lately (yeah, I know I know… “lately”) and I finally have a chance to catch up on some of the local places. First up is Nat’s Airport Cafe at Hawthorne Municipal Airport (a.k.a. Jack Northrop Field). The corned beef hash was perfunctory but amazingly inexpensive - breakfast barely cracked $5.

HHR’s terminal building is classically 1970s civic down to the zig-zag walkway shade out front and the big Saturn mural on the side. There free wi-fi if you need it and a small museum on the northwest side of the field.

Hawthorne Airport terminal HHR corned beef hash

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