9 posts tagged “qotd”
What was your favorite road-trip of all time?
Submitted by bodhibound.
I've had a lot of great road trips, but I think I can pick a favorite based on how fun and absurd it was. In March of 1997 I rented an economy sized car with three other people, two of whom I had never met before, and we drove non-stop from Durham, North Carolina to Austin, Texas to see "The Unexpected Destruction of Elaborately Engineered Artifacts : A Misguided Adventure in Risk Eradication, Happening Without Known cause, in Connection With Events That are Not Necessarily Related", a show by Survival Research Laboratories. That's 2,623 miles round trip to see a group from San Francisco that we'd only read a little bit about on the web manipulate industrial sized fire-breathing robots through a field cluttered with provocative art and cow carcasses. We arrived a few hours before the show, had our minds blown and then drove back right after the show. On the way back we swung through New Orleans to spend about 6 lusciously drunken hours on Bourbon Street before heading back to North Carolina. We never stopped driving except to get gas, see the show and drink on Bourbon Street. That little car got a bit funky.
The entire trip took 72 hours. With the stop in New Orleans it was over 2673 miles.
I'll never forget the look on the rental car agent's face when I turned the car in and she checked the odometer. Priceless. Seeing SRL in action played no small part in making San Francisco attractive to me. I moved here in October of 1997 and in June of 1998 I worked for SRL on their What is Real show held under the highway in SF.
If money were no object, which five luxury items would you rush right out and buy?
Submitted by lorilyn.How timely! I just posted about one of the items, the Phoenix 1000 Luxury Submarine. Hmm, let's see, four more.
- The Tesla Roadster. A 100% electric car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds and goes 250 miles per charge-up.
- A house on the north slope of Potrero Hill with views of the Bay and a two car garage.
- Yahoo!
- A cruise around the world for Mie, Tesla and I on the Queen Mary 2
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Inspired by Stephanie.
What's one of your favorite quotes?
Submitted by Georgie-boy.
I've been collecting these in Notational Velocity, here's what I've got (yeah, screw one, ok, well I guess my favorite one here is "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine,but stranger than we can imagine"):
The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted. - Ortega y Gasset
----
If the most interesting stuff happens at the borders, then make lots of borders - Mike Love (Future Commons)
--------
" with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil; - that takes religion."
- Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg
---------
In other words, embarrass and shackle the progress of improvements of tomorrow by recording and registering as law the prejudices and errors of today.
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who responded to an 1847 proposal to regulate the design of bridges
----------
Sitting in front of your computer and using a web browser --- calling that surfing is like balancing a shared checkbook and saying youre f*cking - Rudy Rucker
----------
Super profundo on the early eve of your day. - Louis, reoccuring dream character in Waking Life
--------
five relaxed people are a hall of a lot more likely to run into trouble than two nervous people. - ninjalicious
----------
democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance - H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) was a twentieth century journalist, satirist and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche".
-------
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. - Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (from danah)
--
"I'm always most attracted to the project that feels most like I'm totally wasting my time and just having fun. " - Rudy Rucker
----------
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-William Ernest Henley
"The handles of a craftsman's tools bespeak an absolute simplicity, the
plainest forms affording the greatest range of possibilities for the
user's hand. That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates
outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."
- William Gibson, All Tomorrow's Parties
"as above, so below"
- Emerald Tablet of Hermes, one of the most ancient and revered foundational documents of the Western Mystery schools
(reality is fractal)
The reason that biologist Ernst Haeckel could say "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in only three words was that he had these powerful words with highly specific meanings at his disposal.
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein
1.) "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine,but stranger than we can imagine" - J.B.S.Haldan
2.) "Your theory is crazy, but not crazy enough to be true" - Neils Bohr
3.) "When an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is very probably correct,when he says something is impossible he is very probably wrong"- Arthur C.Clarke
4.) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
5.) "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" - Shakespeare
"dead is the natural state of the human being. everything else is cleverness." -dreww on #geo
If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?
Submitted by J.T.
The MacGuyver-like power to construct comfortable hammocks out of anything, anywhere in minutes.
What's your method for calculating a tip?
I used to be a waiter, so I start at 20% and go +/- 8% from there depending on service, but it's a bell curve distribution.
The Question of the Day box is a neat idea. It would be nicer if it were AJAX enabled too though, so submiting doesn't force a page reload. It should feel like a low cost interaction as much as possible to get people to participate without necessarily switching away from whatever they were intially doing on the page that contains the QOTD form. On slower connections (there's still lots of dialup in the Mom and Pop world) AJAX really improves the user experience. Comet seems to have multiple personality disorder when it comes to this issue.
Also, how can I see everyone's posts tagged with qotd? There needs to be some sort of "View all public items tagged xxxx" when looking at an individual's tag screen.
A 300 baud modem for my Commodore 64
