I just bought a Griffin iTalk Pro, which is thirty bucks at Amazon. Apparently it can record 16-bit stereo WAV at 44.1 kHz. You can use built-in or external mics. I’ll let you know how it goes… too bad they don’t come in white!

Filed under: all talk, tronix · 7 Comments

The Global Geek podcast wrote a check to Steve Jobs for $1 AU to license the term “podcast”. Two months later the Apple Trademark Department returned the check along with a letter that states “Apple does not object to third party usage of the generic term ‘podcast’…”.

Filed under: all talk, no code · 1 Comment

DJ Chang is one of my favorite djs.. he played at the infamous Valentine’s Day party at the RaNCh so if you can manage to remember that night at all you might remember meeting him… His love of music is absolutely contageous!

He played in Warsaw recently with DJ Hagal, and DJ Hagel has a guest set on Chang’s Buddha Hash Cafe podcast. Have a listen!

Fortuntately for us he is returning to the US after a three-year residency in Bahrain. Chang writes about his worldwide DJ adventures on his blog, and you can find tracklistings of his podcasts on his podomatic and clickcaster pages.

Filed under: beats · 2 Comments

From Brewster:

Thanks to the hard work of two great law school students of Peter Jaszi of American University, Jieun Kim and Doug Agopsowicz, the Internet Archive and other libraries may continue to preserve software and video game titles without fear of going to jail. This is a happy moment, but on the other hand this exception is so limited it leaves the overall draconian nature of the DMCA in effect. A total of more than $50,000 of pro-bono lawyer time has been spent to just affect this exemption and its continuation. We hope that Congress, and other governments, will pass more balanced copyright laws to allow at least libraries, archives, research and scholarship to flourish without the current dark clouds of litigation.

Links to announcement, full recommendation (pdf, still reading through it..), mostly useless slashdot discussion, and Diesel Sweeties Play-Old-Videogames tshirt.

Filed under: archive, copyright · 1 Comment

Tom Waits, the legendary live performer who rarely performs live, will in fact be performing on the Daily Show tonight. I am assuming this is to promote his new album, Orphans, which is a 3-CD 56-song extravaganza of old and new stuff. I hoped this would mean there would be an upcoming tour, but so far it doesn’t look like it. His last tour was in August ‘06 and went unnoticed by me, I assume due to the unfathomable choice of tour locations such as Akron, OH and Asheville, NC.

When asked about the tour locations, he responded (in a press release):

“We need to go to Tennessee to pick up some fireworks, and someone owes me money in Kentucky.”

Enough said.

Filed under: beats · 3 Comments

Okay tikirobot audiophiles, I need some help. I’m looking for a pair of wireless headphones for listening to music when I’m in the office (b/c apparently my music is driving everyone crazy…yes even they can’t stand my bad taste). It should be compatible with both my powerbook or PC….I’m guessing it should be bluetooth. The wireless part is important because I don’t like being tethered to my desk and frequently get up to walk around. Small and light would be nice too. Oh and preferably under $100 (though i don’t know if that’s asking too much) Any recommendations???

Filed under: gadgets, tronix · 10 Comments

There is not other “RACE” or groups that are as sexualized as the generic “Asian woman.” Latina comes the closest. You can see for “Arab women” you can plenty of images of the stereotypes veiled woman. Then other during the presentation prompted me to type in “Korean, Japanese, black, African American, and etc.” = and as you can see “Asian women” win the most sexualized google image search. When you perform the search based on more specific cultures – like “Dominican” – it’s not as sexualized as “Latina.” Same for when you search “Japanese” – it’s not as sexualized as “Asian.” Sometimes sweeping stereotypes are easier for mass groupings of people – differences can be dropped as common denominators can be promoted.

Link

Filed under: bigotry, science · 2 Comments

You can’t really tell, but this guy is ony 20 inches tall..

Filed under: cycling, tronix · 2 Comments

I didn’t believe it at first… then I saw this! (via)

Update: well, they pulled it down.. but it was this rambling boxes-and-arrows doodle that spanned several whiteboards..

Update2: Here we go! It’s pretty bold releasing your master plan under a Creative Commons license!

Filed under: all talk, no code · 1 Comment

This looks like something rajbot might be interested in :-)

December’s San Francisco NetSquared Meetup will feature Richard Cave, IT Director, and Barbara Cohen, Executive Editor, of PLoS (Public Library of Science).

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS is helping to shape the global open access movement–which includes scientists, funders, publishers, librarians, patient advocacy groups, lawmakers, and many others.

Where:
Citizen Space

1. 300, 425 Second Street
   

When
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

More info

Filed under: library, medicine, upcoming · 2 Comments

Waking up early ….

Finding your way ….

Sliding down scree slopes ….

Rappelling dry (and wet) falls ….

Getting creative ….

Locking off mid-rappel and ….

…. taking a picture of yourself ….

…. and your lifeline overhead

“Ghosting”

Traversing green and yellow leaves ….

Link to Hastings Canyon Slide Show
Link to Supercloud Canyon Slide Show

Filed under: excursions, LA, transportation · 2 Comments

So last week, I got caught in a downpour on my ride home and accidentally drowned my sidekick device. After letting it dry out for 2 days, it still would not be resucitated, so I prounounced it officially dead and decided to get a new phone. I considered getting another sidekick 2 (from ebay since I’m not enamoured with the most recent version which seems cheaply made and poorly designed to me) but in the end I picked up this Pocket PC from Sprint.

I’m not going to rant about the horrible experiences I’ve had with Tmobile (that can be a whole other post), but for the most part I decided on this device because I wanted to switch to Sprint – they have the least expensive data plan out of all the carriers (only $15/month for unlimited data compared to $39/mo at both cingular and verizon and $29/mo at Tmobile) and this was the most sidekick-like device they had. It’s actually smaller and lighter than the sidekick and at $199, it ended up being $50 less, with a whole lot more features.

Whether these additional features actually work or not, I don’t know yet. I’ve had it for 2 days so far and these are my first impressions.

(more…)

Filed under: all talk, gadgets · 10 Comments

Filed under: cuuuuute, zara · 3 Comments

Here is a BBC science show segment from 1975 which shows Kraftwerk and their electronic drums! (via)

Filed under: beats, tronix, video · 1 Comment

Eric Lerner makes some beautiful video art. Check out Mr. City Men.. Quirky animated peoples interacting with thier urban surroundings… verrry cuuute! I like Mr. Fortune and Mr. Dreamer.

Eric also seems to be a bit of a tetris fan :) (via)

Filed under: cuuuuute, video · 1 Comment

Did you know there is a conference on drinky-making robots taking place in Vienna on December 5??? Well, there is, and once again, our invite was “lost in the mail”. We’re not going to give up hope, however. We’ll be waiting by the phone.. waiting for their call.. it’s going to ring any minute now.. i just know it……… (via)

Filed under: tikibar, tronix, upcoming · 2 Comments

We got a little tennis in on thursday. We estimated this to be the 13th (mostly) annual turkey day spectacular!
This year’s bonuses:
- no lights
- good weather
- continuous cop and ambulance action behind us
- new rackets
- a special appearance by the folding chair
- a brief stop at wal-mart that yielded this:

See the rest of the pics here. All in all, another success. Of course, it was followed by several hours of great coffee-fueled ideas at denny’s. Feel free to join us next year!

Filed under: rolla, tennis, why are we here? · 0 Comments

We played Telephone Pictionary last night, where you write down a sentence on a piece of paper and then pass the paper to someone else who draws a picture of your sentence. That person folds the paper over so the sentence is hidden and then passes the paper to someone else who has to come up with a sentence of the drawing. The round keeps going until everyone has either written a sentence or drawn a picture. It gets ridiculous pretty fast. I have no idea how we ended up with sharky here:

Now it’s your turn! Can you guess the sentence that goes with this picture??

Thanks to Thea for suggesting the game! Both these pictures were drawn by Jess :)

Update: You can find more at Eat Poop You Cat, and an online version at The Sentence Game.

Filed under: doodles · 1 Comment

I don’t think this was for me:

11/23 11:55am
MESSAGE from

• -***-****
  

The turkey
says HAPPY
THANKSGIVING!
Ok, sorry,

or this:

11/23 3:21pm
MESSAGE from

• ******
  

Happy t day!
Super stoked
to have u in
my life.
Looking
forward to
seeing u soon!
A

There seem to be lots of examples of TXT misdirects, but it’s even weirder when it’s someone you know.

Link to some pretty funny stories

Filed under: all talk · 2 Comments

To some of you this may feel like any old Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving, but here at TikiRobot! Studios we are having a wild and rampant party. Old Skool TR fans may recall that at the beginning of 2006 I reporting TikiRobot! having the remarkable attribute of a single Google Unit. (In those times they were called “Googlewacks”). You can see the evidence in the screen capture to the left. Today we have well over 10,300 Google Units and no sign of slowing down.

Even more amazing is our track record with The Pineapple Audience Model. The chart below shows that our Audience Model predicted almost exactly 100,000% growth-to-date compared with our initial launch last spring . As you can see, if our servers can continue to handle the traffic, 2007 is going to be huge. We look forward to all of you buying lipstick and diapers from our innovative and helpful advertising engine over in the sidebar.

Link to 10,300 Google Units
Link to Pinapple Audience Model Projection

Filed under: all talk, meta, science · 1 Comment

When I was at Giant Robot last Saturday, I picked up this adorable book called The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow. It’s the kind of book that makes me want to learn about all the deities. If only my math books were this gorgeous when I was in school, I’d be a genius (okay, maybe not…nonetheless, i wish all books were this beautiful). I remember meeting the author at APE a few years ago and seeing the illustrations before the book was out, so was really happy to finally find a copy.

He’s also got a website called GheeHappy where he sells super cute prints and tshirts too!

Filed under: books, cuuuuute, design, doodles, tshirt · 1 Comment

Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng are going to be at Herbst Theatre next month! (Dec 11 at 8 pm)

Eggers’ new book What is the What is based on the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of a 1000-mile exodus in Sudan. I haven’t read the book yet, but rajbot has and apparently thinks it’s really good so I’m going to read it :-)

You can get tickets for the lecture here.

Filed under: books, upcoming · 1 Comment

I received a curious email today. This morning his website said “I am the 5th …” but now it says “I am the 6th known person to walk around San Francisco Bay.”

Link to some pretty cool info about the Yay Area

Filed under: bay area, cartography, excursions · 2 Comments

Threadless is having a $10 Tshirt sale, so forget about the laundry, it’s time to stock up on new tees. and stock up now because the nice ones tend to sell out fast (like this one which is no longer available in girly sizes unfortunately…but all you boys can get it if you want girls to stare at your chest…well, nerdy ones like me at least.) If I were from the midwest, I’d be inclined to get this super sweet one…but since I’m not, I think I’ll make do with being a smooth criminal.

Oh and if you CLICK HERE TO ORDER your tee, you’ll be supporting TikiRobot because we’ll get a referral or something like that…which means if you order 3 shirts, we’ll almost be able to get ourselves one too (and won’t have to walk around naked). yay!

Filed under: design · 5 Comments

Kate Bingaman, a professor of Graphic Design at mississipi state university, draws pictures of the things she buys every day and posts them on Obsessive Consumption. Dorothy Gambrell, who draws Cat and Girl (my fave comic), draws comics of how she spends the donations that people send her, and posts them at Donation Derby.

People send pictures of the views outside their windows to Kirsty, and she posts them at The View From Your Window. People send in their anonymous secrets on homemade postcards to Frank Warren, and he posts them on PostSecret.

I find these kinds of sites facinating. My current favorite is brownpeople. No commentaries, no biographies, just pictures of brown people.. All macaca all the time :)

Filed under: comix, doodles, photos · 7 Comments