How To Make Spam Musubi
I was first introduced to the seaweed-wrapped awesome of a spam musubi by one of my volleyball buddies back in college. It is a complete meal in a conveniently hand-sized package. I lacked the foresight to get the recipe from my friend simply because he made it often enough.
Lucky, we have the interwebz.
Mike “Filthy Nickels” Hirakami, this post is dedicated to you.
via notes from the zeitgeist via BoingBoing
Robot Musician Improvises, Jams With Humans
This robot plays jazz better than I do. I love how it bobs its head in time with the music.
Now I’m going to set fire to my piano and weep in that corner over there.
Thanks for the link, Alex!
via CNNTech
Definitely Not a Casket
Well, that’s certainly one way to go. Maybe when my time comes, I’ll have my body in the middle of playing the piano.
From Cellar – Image of the Day:
Well, suffice it to say that the funeral directors at Marin Funeral Home in San Juan’s Hato Rey neighborhood have a flair for the unorthodox. For example, in 2008, they embalmed another young shooting victim and displayed his body standing up for the duration of a multi-day wake.
Back to the present: Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón’s corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4.
UPDATE: A video… if you dare.
Super Mario Crossover
This labor of love, by explodingRabbit, is a wonderful homage to 8-bit gaming. You pick your favorite 8-bit hero and run them through the first level of the original Super Mario Bros. Special abilities/attacks still apply.
via Newgrounds via BoingBoing
The “CSI Effect” – CSI TV Shows Teach Real Criminals
Being a huge fan of CSI: Las Vegas, I’ve idly wondered if actual criminals take notes from the hugely popular franchise.
Indeed, criminals do, in fact, watch television, and they learn. This is referred to as the “CSI Effect”.
via The Economist via BoingBoing
Four Laughing Babies
This should fulfill your cuteness quota for today, at least.
Thanks for the link, Tim!
Phylomon! Gotta Learn Them All!
An open source collectible card game that uses Pokemon-like game mechanics to teach kids about real animals? Very yes! This is a wonderful idea!
From BoingBoing:
Phylo (or if you rather use the preferred term of endearment, Phylomon) is an an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “artistic” wonder, and all via a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way. This means that it thrives on contributions from folks who are artists, folks who are scientists, folks who like games, folks in the business of educating children, as well as folks of other expertise as various situations arise. Essentially, every step of game development, from imagery to the rulebook(s), is an exercise in crowd sourcing.
On the site, you can even check out the phylo project’s origin story. Here, you’ll learn that it was essentially inspired by Andrew Balmford, a conservational biologist who in 2002 published a curious paper in Science that showed that children as young as 8 were able to identify and characterize up to 120 different Pokemon characters. Yet, by the time they entered secondary school, they still couldn’t identify half of the UK’s 100 most common plants and animals. In the paper, Andrew was understandably troubled by this, and simply asked “Why is this?” and “Is there anything we can learn from this?”
In any event, the project has just started off with 12 cards, so that people can get a sense of what the site is all about, but there are plans to roll out new cards at a rate of at least one per weekday starting next week. Anyway, do go check it out, tell others about it, or better yet, get involved. Currently, the two biggest requests is to have more artists submitting their work (drawing and/or photographs), and for gamers to have a crack at a prototype rule set, or to even come up with alternate rules.
Interestingly, there are some who currently estimate there being roughly 1.9 million different species that have been classified by humans. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a biodiversity card game with the potential to have that many cards?
namebench – Open-source DNS Benchmark Utility
Of the myriad number of ways to “speed up” your internet connection, one way is to find a DNS server that performs best for you.
namebench is a handy little open-source utility that will do all the dirty work for you. It comes in linux, os x and windows flavors. There’s even a command-line version.
via Google Code via Smarterware
Two Reasons for Me (Not You) To Get an iPad
Prior to marriage and children, I was an undisciplined gadget guy. I thought nothing of investing in bleeding-edge technology or the latest shiny thing. Now that I’m married with two kids, I’m a somewhat disciplined gadget guy. I have to come up with actual reasons to buy something.
Of course I’m excited about Apple’s iPad. In particular, here are two reasons for me to get an iPad (and I almost have my wife sold on these reasons):
1) Sheet Music – My wife and I are both musicians. We usually end up dragging (literally) a trunk of music books to parties. Having everything in a single device excites me. Observe this video and ponder the possibilities:
2) Interactive Books – My son adores the educational apps I bought for him on my iPhone. The iPad is a natural evolution of that. After reading Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age, the thought of having an interactive book for my kids to read amounts to nothing less than liquid awesome:
Of course, there are cons to consolidating these items into an electronic device. First off, when the battery runs down, its purpose ceases. Secondly, our wonderful airlines will no doubt classify the iPad as a terrorist, plane-crashing electronic device that must be shut-off during take off and landing–the traumatic book-ends to flying the friendly skies, and ironically, the time when you probably want to be most distracted.
Are we going to get an iPad? Not right now. The price is high and I’ve been burned too many times by 1st-gen releases. I’m watching, though… and waiting for my moment. When that moment comes, the heavens shall open and angels will be singing (reading their sheet music from their own iPads).
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