letter to santa

Nik Honeysett has posted a great letter to Santa on the Musematic blog.

If enough of us ask for that image format, will Santa grant our wish?

photoshop ui rendered in real-world objects

Via BoingBoing, the UI for Photoshop recreated with real objects, created by the agency Bates 141 in Jakarta for Software Asli. Follow the links to the image and to the "making of" flickr set.

tiny faces

This struck me as hilarious -- Someone noted that a box of Cascadian Farms frozen broccoli had teeny, tiny faces worked into the image on the label:

http://bread-and-honey.blogspot.com/2008/10/wtf-broccoli.html

A comment in another blog said this (unsubstantiated):

"They've been putting tiny faces of employees, family and friends on the labels since at least 1995, which was when someone first showed me this on the labels of Cascadian Farms jams when I was first working at Fresh Fields (later bought by Whole Foods). CF has since been bought by General Mills, but it seems the tiny faces continue."

A bulletin board thread from 2007 claimed that the creamed corn packaging had a little hidden baby's face. Strange. That thread described it as a version of an "easter egg" in a video game or DVD ... an undocumented feature that you have to really try to find. That's pretty apt.

grapes need a eula?

From Serious Eats, an image of an empty bag of grapes ... with a EULA.

The recipient of the produce contained in this package agrees not to propagate or reproduce any portion of the produce, including (but not limited to) seeds, stems, tissue and fruit.

To me this is particularly amusing because they're seedless grapes ...

the omnivore's 100

The blog Very Good Taste has come up with a list of 100 items that every omnivore should try in his or her life. Not surprisingly, it has turned it into a meme that I found through Serious Eats. Basically, you copy the list from Very Good Taste's The Omnivore's 100 and post it to your blog, bolding the items you've tried and striking through any you would never try.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile [I've had alligator on a number of occasions -- would that count?]
6. Black pudding [I'll eat it but I don't seek it out]
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras [I've never understood foie gras worship]
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese [my mother loved it but couldn't convince me to eat it growing up]
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper [there was the incident with some peppers past their prime, the disposal, and the resultant evacuation of my kitchen]
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin [I don't much care for it, and Bruce is allergic to it]
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads [not a favorite, but I will eat them if I know the preparation will be excellent]
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette [are you noticing a trend that offal is a category I don't much care for?]
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail [only once, when a donor at an event handed it to me and I felt I had to eat it]
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant [a 2-star, yes, not yet at a 3-star]
85. Kobe beef [actually, wagyu, but I'm counting it]
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake [I had iguana once in Mexico ...]

i am rich

The brouhaha over the $999 "I am Rich" iPhone app is very amusing. Eight people bought "I am Rich" -- which presents a glowing, animated red jewel -- before Apple pulled it from the App Store. Is it a scam? Conceptual art? Just something funny to do if you've got the money to burn? Is it an apocryphal story that one of the purchasers didn't mean to buy it?

The best article I found was at the Los Angeles Times. Read it quick before it disappears behind a wall ... There's also this posting on Silicon Alley Insider and this article in the Times.

Wordle

Everyone else has been playing with Wordle for weeks now. I kept thinking about what I might pipe through it, and finally landed on the UVA Repository Case Study that I submitted to Open Repositories 08. I like what it produced:

ask a person next time

From BoingBoing, a very funny pointer to a Chinese restaurant that relied on an online translation service when they shouldn't have ...

where did all the stuff in my office come from?

Having been happily ensconced in a series of offices during my 6 years at UVA, I seem to have accumulated way more stuff than I imagined. Even after recycling many years of personal journal subscriptions that the Library didn't need or want, the contents of pretty much every file folder in my file drawers that wasn't important enough to give to someone else, folders and binders full of conference programs and attendee lists, and returning all the books I had checked out except for the one I am reading right now, I still have 4 boxes of stuff. Some books of my own, conference proceedings that I want to keep for now, files for some committees and publications, old backup CDs that I keep out of paranoia, personal desk organizers that work well for me, and way too many gewgaws that I seem to have accumulated. And some framed posters, not all of which are hung on the wall of my current office, but have been in past offices so I've moved them around with me.

Hi, my name is Leslie, and I am a packrat. I thought I was a recovering packrat, but apparently I've been deluding myself.

1994 again

There is something so charming about the first sites on the web with their white backgrounds, lists of blue underlined links, directories of the internet, and requests to "Click Here."

In honor of the ten year anniversary of the Mozilla project, home.mcom.com, the web site for Mosaic Communications Corporation in 1994 is now back online, as is their earlier site at http://mosaic.mcom.com/. And check out the archive of vintage Netscape browsers!

Read about the trials and tribulations required to make this all live again at http://jwz.livejournal.com/856745.html.

great headline

From an article in the Times of London on a new genus of Madagascar palm:

"Picnicking family stumbles on a suicidal monster palm tree."

how did I miss this?

Apparently today was "Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day."

The Wired geek dad blog had some great suggestions.

I love this one: "Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say 'In thirty years dial this number. You'll know what to do after that.'"

what if google had to optimize its design for google?

Web developers have a lot of hoops to jump through to optimize their sites for discovery through the Google search engine. Getting good Google index placement is paramount, so it is apparently increasingly difficult for designers to offer the uncluttered user experience that they'd like to while building needed content into their pages. Here is a funny look at what would happen to Google's uncluttered look if Google had to design for the Google Search Engine. Not sure how accurate it is ...

career meme

Jerry blogged about the results he received from a test at Career Cruising. Since I was sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon, it seemed the thing to do. I dutifully answered the questions and the follow-up questions, and I just about fell off the sofa when I got the results:

1. Anthropologist
2. Video Game Developer
3. Multimedia Developer
4. Scientist
5. Picture Framer
6. Political Aide
7. Computer Animator
8. Interior Designer
9. Business Systems Analyst
10. Website Designer
11. Market Research Analyst
12. Librarian
13. Medical Illustrator
14. Artist
15. Real Estate Appraiser
16. Computer Programmer
17. Set Designer
18. Cartographer
19. Animator
20. Costume Designer
21. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
22. Illustrator
23. Mathematician
24. GIS Specialist
25. Epidemiologist
26. Dental Assistant
27. Statistician
28. Economist
29. Graphic Designer
30. Desktop Publisher
31. Historian
32. Archivist
33. Curator
34. Web Developer
35. Public Policy Analyst
36. Esthetician
37. Hairstylist
38. Technical Writer
39. Makeup Artist
40. Webmaster

I have no idea how their questions led their system to tell me that I should be an anthropologist. Apparently I did select the correct course of study in college and graduate school! Archivist, curator, web designer and developer, and tech writer are all familiar activities to me. I did my share of amateur theatrical work years ago. This was uncannily on target.

But where did dental assistant come from? Or esthetician? Picture framer? Political aide? I just cannot imagine any of those are for me.

blogversity

Rachel threw out a meme challenge on five non-Library blogs that we read:

Boing Boing: Where else is there a single feed that provides updates on books, intellectual property law and privacy, science, technology, and popular culture?

Cinematical: All the news you could possibly ever want about films -- whether planned or in production -- plus great reviews.

if:book: From the Institute for the Future of the Book, a New York-based think tank dedicated to discourse on reading, publishing, and the media.

Manolo's Shoe Blog: While not a frilly girl by nature, I cannot deny my inborn admiration for all sorts of shoes, especially when paired with extremely clever writing.

Slashfood: Named as an homage to Slashdot, a group blog about food trends, products, and restaurants.

5 things you don't know about me

I don't often do memes, but ...
1. My first library job was in the 4th and 5th grades. I had to pass a test on alphabetization and the top level Dewey Decimal classes to work as a shelver and at the circ desk at my elementary school library.
2. During my freshman and sophomore years of college I worked at a Baskin Robbins in Los Angeles. Among my duties were cake decorating and making ice cream cakes and pies. I could still make a grasshopper pie if asked.
3. The previous item wouldn't be peculiar if it weren't for the fact that I'm lactose intolerant.
4. I trained as an archaeologist in graduate school and worked for museums for many years before moving into Library work. All my work was focused on digital collections and automation so my transition to digital libraries is not so odd. My first job while in graduate school was a recon project to transcribe written acquisitions records into a database, and to create digital images of a major Moche pottery collection. In that previous life I also spent seven years on the board of the Museum Computer Network.
5. I collect Mexican folk art. Not in a systematic way, but when I see things that I really like it's hard to stop myself from buying them. I'm looking forward to hitting some galleries while in San Antonio for the Open Repositories 2007 conference.

haiku

Carrying on from the meme started at Confessions of a Mad Librarian and continued by Dorothea, here is the haiku Digital Access Services mission:

information with
as little impediment
as is possible