Posts from — January 2011

As many of you know, Louis CK is my favorite comedian. If you’re a fan of his standup (not just his Letterman appearance), then you’ll probably find this long interview with him to be really interesting, funny and periodically awkward. It’s as not-safe-for-work as his standup.

Part 1 · Part 2

Thanks to Chris for the pointer.

I write all of these posts on magicspatula.com, as I have been doing for about 5 years. In the last several months, I’ve found that a larger portion of my readership is through syndication through Facebook and Buzz. The clearest effect of this shift has been that the comments left are now divided among at least three places: the original post itself, the Buzz/Reader items, and the Facebook note. This isn’t really a huge problem, but it does cut down on the interaction via comment as well as make it a bit more work for me to keep up with (especially since I try not to be on facebook too much).

I wish Facebook did a better job of attribution when it imported my blog posts. You can find a link to the original post if you try hard enough, but it’s not obvious… several friends have mentioned “oh, I read that facebook note that you posted” which had me quite confused for a while. It’s quite understandable that they were mistaken this way, but for some reason it bothers me. Maybe it’s because I don’t want my mode of communication to be compared to Sarah Palin’s.

From CBS News:

It still amazes me that people whose job it is to visualize data would abuse the y axis like that, making it look like the debt had tripled. Nobody can comprehend trillions of dollars, so I think in this case the relative change is far more important than the raw numbers. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of the debt, of course.

I went to the trouble of repairing the chart for them:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0)

I haven’t seen Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, but I have watched and read a lot of his other work and enjoyed it immensely. If you’re a fan of Sagan’s work, you’ll enjoy this video.

Sometimes I wonder if space exploration is all that important given all the problems back on Earth, but the more I think about it the more convinced I am that it may be the most important thing.

(thanks to Marc for the pointer via NdGT)

This video from NPR describes how humans tend to walk in circles when blindfolded and trying to walk straight. Weird!

A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

If you like this sort of thing, you should listen to RadioLab. It’s awesome.

Mr. Plinkett’s twisted, hilarious, brutal and fascinating reviews of the Star Wars prequels is now complete:
Episode I
Episode II
Episode III

These long videos are in parts not safe for work, but are absolutely worth your time. I learned a lot about movies while watching them, and they made me appreciate the original trilogy a lot more.

Still waiting to get my pizza roll…

The Atlantic made a bunch of recession statistic graphics that are worth a look. Most interesting/surprising to me? The average minutes spent reading per weekend day for 15-to-19-year-olds went from 16 to 5 from 2007 to 2009.

I saw this ad on Facebook:

Over 6,000 people have liked Oakland International Airport?! I’m at a loss.

You kids stay off my lawn.

My 2011 goals are somewhat similar to 2010. A lot of these aren’t too vague, so maybe this title isn’t quite right.

• Try 20 new restaurants in San Francisco.
• Write 100 blog posts.
• Run a half marathon.
• Learn new recipes.
• Visit at least 1 country I haven’t been to before. (Italy, …?)
• Visit at least 2 U.S. cities I haven’t been to before (Portland? Chicago? LA?)
• Read 20 books, including some fiction.
• Learn a new programming language. (Go?)
• Learn the basics of a new spoken language. (German?)
• Write something fun with HTML5 or other new web stuff.

Collecting a bit of data today, here’s my usage of vacation days over the last few years:

I used less than half of my typical amount of vacation time last year, even though my rate of accrual actually went up in February. This trend will reverse in 2011.