American Science & Surplus is probably one of the coolest stores on earth. They specialize in selling the kinds of stuff that you would never go looking for, but that you have to have when you see it.
Living in the Chicago area, I’m lucky to be only a 15 minute drive from their store. But I was double-lucky on my last trip there, when I learned of their annual warehouse sale. Clearly, a field trip to their suburban storehouse was in order.
Right away, I could see that we would be in good company… A fellow mad scientist’s car in the parking lot!
Upon entering AmSci headquarters, we walked past a series of cubicles decorated with the kind of stuff that I recognized from their catalogs and store: inflatable moose heads, misappropriated lab equipment, and plastic jeejaws of all descriptions.
From there, we passed into the warehouse proper, and I was immediately reminded of the closing scene from Indiana Jones. But instead of crates of ancient artifacts, the shelves were lined with everything from electronic components to discontinued toys to scientific and medical apparati of curious appearance and dubious application.
We grabbed a cart and started threading our way through the narrow aisles. I could feel the press of people lined up behind us, and since the aisles were not wide enough to let one cart pass another, I felt a bit rushed.
So after the first few times that Lydia asked if she could get one thing or another, I finally told her (and myself), “We’re not going to be saying ‘no’ to much of anything today. If you think you might want it, throw it in the cart!”
We ended up spending just over $100 dollars, and ended up with an enviable trove of goodies, including:
- 4 Gooseneck LED reading lights, in pieces
- A Halloween votive candle holder
- 4 sheets of magnetic sparkly paper
- 12 sheets of sparkly paper
- A new hot glue gun
- A combination laser pointer / gooseneck LED light
- A bunch of anti-static bags
- 23″ inflatable ghost with LED eyes
- 30″ inflatable spider with LED eyes
- 32″ inflatable bat with LED eyes
- Plastic vampire teeth
- 6×8 tarp
- Pair of boot liners
- 2x 115 volt stepper motors
- 24V and 12V cooling fans
- 4 packs of dripping blood window clings
- 4 small DC motors
- 5 velcro tie straps
- Pink, blue, and green gel-filled, prism-shaped ruler
- SOMETHING SECRET from the US Navy that I’m going to give my Dad at Christmas-time
- Prang air-hardening modeling clay
- A Transparent plastic anatomical frog model
- Harry Potter physics experiment kit
- 2 pieces of polished petrified wood
- 2 massive, plastic-coated, donut-shaped magnets
- A miniature disco ball
- A nice set of Dremel bits
- An eyeball straw
- A glow-in-the-dark 3d fossil puzzle
- 2 sheets of magnetic frogs
- A box of 64 quarter-sized ring magnets
- 8 bottles of white glue
- A pack of “Easy Squeezy” clay
- A pack of “base ten” cards
Funfunfun. Now, I can retire to my secret underground laboratory and continue my nefarious experiments…
I spent some time this morning examining the technology policies of Barack Obama and John McCain. Policies aside, I was immediately struck by the differences between their web sites. So what do the two sites say about the candidates?
Two Different Platforms
The candidates’ platforms could not be more different: JohnMcCain(.com) relies on corporate backing for his web site, which runs on Microsoft Internet Information Server and uses ASP. Barack Obama, in contrast, relies on widespread contributions from the community, in the form of open-source web technologies (PHP and Apache).
Preparedness
Ask McCain’s site for something that it’s not expecting, and it gets very confused. It readily admits that it has no idea what just happened: maybe the page moved, or maybe you mistyped the URL. This could even be the fault of a third-party web site operator. There’s helpful information provided if you happen to be the sysadmin for johnmccain.com, but if you’re John Q. Webuser, you’re pretty much out of luck.
Obama’s site is more willing to admit that mistakes happen, and it’s not laying blame on anyone. Hell, it even injects a bit of humor into the thing. The fact that even his 404 page is polished and provides navigation options shows that despite the claims of right-wing rhetoric, Obama is more prepared in case of the unexpected.
Document Types
Despite his carefully cultivated “maverick” image, McCain is playing it traditional and conservative by using HTML 4.01, the W3C spec from 1999.
However, it’s clear that he’s not following through on his commitment to even this aging standard:
Obama shows himself to be much more progressive, adopting the 21st century XHTML 1.0 transitional standard:
But alas, even Obama has trouble conforming to the standards.
Maybe this is true of all politicians? And not to be an apologist here, but Obama is clearly more valid than McCain, and both are more valid than I am. But shouldn’t we hold public officials to a higher standard?
Transparency
Both candidates claim to support transparency in government, but only one clearly supports transparency (of the PNG variety) on his web site:
Obama is inclusive in his support for PNGs, accommodating even disadvantaged (Internet Explorer) users.
Navigating the Issues
Obama makes it easy to find out what his technology policies are:
John McCain does not provide a clear link to his technology policy:
Instead, you have to ignore the drop-down menu, click on Issues, scroll down near the bottom of the page, and follow a link that’s tucked in between talk about judicial policies and fighting crime. What’s more, take a look at how each candidate identifies his technology page:
Not only is John McCain promoting case-sensitive URLs, he also prefers to hide his page names behind meaningless jargon like `cbcd3a48-4b0e-4864-8be1-d04561c132ea.htm’.
Obama is obviously the more RESTful candidate. His URLs are readable by both machines and humans, easy to remember and type, and clearly communicate both the content and context of a specific resource.
Which site will you support in November?
The choice is clear: a Microsoft-supported, business-as-usual site that clings to last decade’s HTML standards? Or an Open Source-powered site, that not only does a better job adhering to standards but embraces change, transparency, and clear communication?
While cleaning up one of my old machines, I came across this little artifact.
My challenge was to re-write the opening paragraph of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as it may have been penned by other writers. So without further ado…
The Metamorphosis by H.P. Lovecraft
My name is Gregor Samsa, and if the world discovers this manuscript, then perhaps it can save others from the fate that even now confounds my reason and leaves me gibbering at the edge of sanity. One morning not long ago I awoke from troubled dreams filled with the otherworldly ululations of strange voices and the insistent piping of flutes from the swirling chaos at the very center of the universe, and found myself in my bed, horribly changed– dare I say it?– into an unspeakable, sanity-blasting form. I lay on what seemed to be an armour-like back, and as I lifted my head a little I could just see the brown, non-Euclidean curve of my brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. My multitudinous legs, pitifully gaunt compared with the unnaturally bloated shape of the rest of my new and terrible form, waved about helplessly as I looked on in abject horror.
The Metamorphosis by Ernest Hemingway
It was morning. Gregor Samsa awoke. He had been transformed in his bed into a cockroach. He lay on his back. He could see his brown belly, domed and divided into stiff arches. The bedding barely covered it. His legs waved.
The Metamorphosis by Walt Whitman
I sing the body carapacious;
The sprawl and fullness of its shell,
Stiff domed arches engirth my belly, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off my back until I embrace them, accept them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
The expression of the face defies description;
But the expression of a man made a bug appears not only in his antennae;
It is in his many legs also, it is in the joints of his carapace,
It is in his crawl, the carriage of his thorax, the flex of his abdomen–
The bedsheets do not cover it;
The strong, thin legs he has strike through the bedding;
To see him conveys as much as seeing a cockroach, maybe more;
You linger to see him on his back, waving his legs at you.
O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of parts of you;
Head, neck, hair, ears, eyes, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, nose, cheeks, forehead, chin;
And not head, thorax, abdomen, carapace, mandibles, antennae, compound eyes!
The Metamorphosis by E. Allen Poe
Mr. S___ was in one of his fits — how else shall I term them? — of enthusiasm. His brother Gregor had in his sleep transformed into an unknown bivalve, and, more than this, he had been hunted down and secured; he was now clearly visible as a scarabaeus which was believed to be totally new, but in respect to which S___ wished to have my opinion on the morrow.
“And why not to-night?” I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarabaei at the devil.
“Ah, if I had only known you were here!” said S___, “but it’s so long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met Lieutenant Gentarme from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug– that is to say, my brother; so it will be impossible for you to see him until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send down for him at sunrise. He is become the loveliest thing in creation!”
The Metamorphosis by Kahlil Gibran
And a man said, “Speak to us of metamorphosis.”
And he answered saying:
You would know what it is like to awaken, transformed, from a troubled dream.
You would gaze with compound eyes on the naked curve of your brown belly.
You would touch with your antennae the slight bedding that barely hides your form.
You would kick with your many legs and free yourself from the prone position you find yourself in.
But let there be no helpless waving and fearful scurrying from the light.
For like the soul, the insect is a creature boundless and beautiful.
Say not, “I have metamorphosized into a bug,” but rather, “The bug has metamorphosized into me.”
For the soul walks upon all paths, whether on two legs or six.
I don’t remember what initially inspired this, but I’m pretty sure that a combination of alcohol and IRC were involved.
Update: I submitted this to McSweeney’s and got a very nice rejection letter:
This is fun, but I’m afraid we’re not going to use it. We ran a piece about Kafka and another about Lovecraft not too long ago and we’re not quite ready to return to them. Thanks for giving us a shot, nonetheless.
I haven’t attempted to submit anything non-technical for publication since I was a teen, because I don’t handle rejection well, but hopefully I’m old enough now to deal with it. I’m going to try again sometime. For real.
I recently discovered a treasure trove of yearbook photos that look remarkably like me. Take a look, and ask yourself how this came about: Clever Flash application, time machine, or incredibly strong genetics? You decide. (Hint: check out yearbookyourself.com and prepare to lose an hour.)
1956
1958
1960
1964
1970
1974
1988
The 70’s were definitely not a good time for me. As for that 1988 photo… well, it does look pretty accurate, actually. I graduated high school in 1989, and that’s pretty much how I looked back then. My hair was a little longer, and I was definitely not in a sweater-over-collared-shirt combination; but still, quite close.
Boing Boing Gadgets did a great post yesterday on 101 classic computer ads. Looking through the grainy images of futures past, I saw my own history of computing writ large.
I was really lucky as a kid to have so much technology at home. It started with our first computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80:
My dad taught me the BASICs of programming on that thing. When I ended up monopolizing the silver plastic beast, he got me a computer of my own, the Timex Sinclair. It plugged directly into a TV and had a membrane keyboard with BASIC commands printed right on them.
While my school was well-equipped with Apple ][ computers and the first Apple clone that I recall, the Franklin Ace, we ended up with a Commodore 64 at home. That opened up a lot more programming possibilities for me, and I ended up teaching myself assembly language so that I could render “hi-res” graphics. I also did my first hacking/cracking on that machine.
My school got its first Macs in 1984, which I immediately adopted for graphics and layout. I remember waiting for Aldus Pagemaker to catch up with my typing as I worked furiously on a variety of zines.
In college, I didn’t have a computer of my own, but I worked at a print shop and had access to top-of-the-line Macs. After college, when I was in Austin, my friend Dave from Team Fat was kind enough to give me his Atari ST, the first (only?) computer to have MIDI ports built right in. The machine had a modem, and I used it first to dial in to local BBS systems, and finally, the Internet… So this is the box that I used to create my first web site in 1993. Remarkably, I’ve still got it stored up in the attic– the computer, not the web site.
I eventually replaced this with my first personal Mac, a 33 MHz Performa, and discovered Adobe Photoshop. I used to start Photoshop rendering an effect, go to dinner, and come back to see how much progress it made. Amazing that my bloody phone has more processing power than that thing did.
Once my career got going, I treated myself to higher-end machines, but always sticking with Macs. Now, of course, our house has three times more computers than people, and that’s only counting the ones that we actually use.
Maybe when I retire I’ll open a museum or something, since I can’t bring myself to actually get rid of old tech.
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