Stray Hawkeye

It was announced on Monday that the Star Tribune, one of the Twin Cities two major newspapers, has finally emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Not a whole lot of news there, they’ve been struggling for a while, had lots of layoffs, and as long as I’ve lived here there’s been speculation about their impending doom (you know, being a newspaper and all).  Especially with competition from bloggers, who can publish stories immediately and who can update their stories to be absolutely current as new facts come to light, where as, due to the printing and distribution process of newspapers, everything in newspapers is necessarily from the previous day.  Perhaps the traditional news industry could compete better if they just rebranded themselves as the recents.  The Star Tribune, one of our two major recentpapers.  That sounds about right.

But one of the things that has always struck me as a little odd since moving to the Twin Cities is that we have two major recentpapers here, the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.  It would seem that with the challenges that are facing the dead tree edition of the news, that it would make sense to combine these papers – half the writers / double the potential circulation for each.  It would seem like the smart business move.  I’m sure there are tons of reasons this hasn’t happened, and admittedly I’ve never really cared enough about ink on pulp action to really investigate why this is, but it does set my mind wondering, to the really important question facing the recents industry…

What would they name it if they combined the two?

Now obviously, they couldn’t just keep one name and let the other one die.  Too many hurt feelings that way, wasted name recognition, and it doesn’t really signal the new start they need.

No, they need a whole new identity, something that would really give them a presence that people would take note of.

The Star Press?

The Pioneer Tribune?

No, neither seems quite right, still pretty bland.  Maybe we could combine the names more…

The Stress?

No, though not bad.

The Piobune?

No, sounds like a new medication or a medical condition.

What about….

I’ve got it!!

Now that would put those pesky bloggers on notice.

Happiness:

That makes me smile, a lot.

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Side note – Sorry about the above media player, it only seems to work about one out of every five times, if that, and only after you’ve sat through some ad do you find out.  Why?  Because big corporate media giants are AWESOME and totally on top of that whole interwebs thing-a-mah-bob.  As an added bonus, CBS has been so kind as to keep taking down every version of the above song that I try to link to on youtube.  But, the internet being the hydra that it is, people keep posting it.  So, what I’m really saying here is that if the above doesn’t work, just search on youtube (or any other video sharing site) and you’ll probably find a freshly re-posted copy of it in it’s first couple thousand views before they take it down.  Typing in the exact name of this post should work quite well.  A few of the one’s I’ve found had annotations, which I’d suggest turning off.

Side side note – Yes, I’ve tried to contact Corporate Bull Shit several time to ask them to fix the video clip, which they even link to from the front page for Letterman’s show, and yet, no response (I’ve even been nice about it.  Well, the first couple emails were nice, it’s been over a month now that I’ve been waiting to post this with a working clip.)

Side side side note – The clip really is worth hunting down, especially this particular version, or I wouldn’t bother with all of this.  So, go searching and may you be well rewarded for your time.

Side side side side note – Now that I think about it, I was going to make another post about something else CBS related, and offering it in a very positive light, because I quite like it, however, I’ve now decided that I’m holding that post hostage until CBS gets a working clip of this song posted.  Submit your kindly complaints (hate mail) here.

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Update:  I looked around some more, and found this live version.  The audio quality is really bad, but it gives an idea of the happy fun-ness love:

I’d love to see these guys live.

Kind of cool for how simple it is:

Via Make

It’s not often at all that I get gadget-lust, but wow, the Nokia N900 looks AWESOME.  *drool*

• 800×480 touch screen
• Full keyboard
• Wifi
• GPS
• THIRTY TWO GIGS of internal storage
• FIVE mega-pixel camera
• and it goes on, and on

So, all of that is awesome in it’s own right, but the real reason this makes me salivates is that it runs a full Linux distribution as it’s operating system, which means it’s totally hackable, instead of the usual locked down cage that most cell phones come in (iphone, cough, iphone).  In other words, instead of being a vessel through which you can buy things from your phone carrier, or from a single corporate store – this is a real computer, you can really program.  And since it runs Linux, I would tend to guess instead of having an app store to throw money at, there will be a lot more free / open source apps for it so you can actually take advantage of the awesome hardware.

Via /.

• Getting ready
• Sounds about right
• Train ride
• Same goes for gitmo

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Via Swiss Miss

Dominos by The Big Pink:

Seems like it would be great entrance music for something.

The ‘59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem:

Has a certain Springsteen-esque-ness to it.

I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers:

Here (the player is off in the upper right hand corner of the page).  Very sing-along-able. I especially like the line: “Tell the ones that need to know, we are headed North.”

Androgynous by The Replacements (a local band, who though long defunct, seem to have a continuously spreading influence):

Here is the only version of it I can find online where the audio quality isn’t terrible.

There’s a certain bit of a relationship theme between all of those now that I listen to them all in a row.

• This may be the coolest semi truck ever. (Via WebUrbanist)
• This made me smile.
• I never knew this before, but Twin City Photos points out (and photographs), when there’s a double rainbow, the colors in the second one are reversed.
• This and this both made me laugh, a lot – that’s a +2 for Black Heart, Gold Pants, which may still be my favorite name for a blog ever.

Previous Savage Chickens praise here.  More recent favorites:

• Inglorious chickens
• Rawr
• Moondays
• Sell it
• And…. quite possibly the hardest I’ve laughed at a comic in months -  here.

A few days ago I was thinking about age differences in relationships.  Specifically, what is the culturally acceptable age difference between two people in a relationship.  I think everyone has a general idea of what’s okay, and it tends to fall along the lines of a couple years of age difference as teenagers, a few more as twenty-somethings, and the older you get, the more of an age range is okay.  But there’s also that fuzzy range.  The “not all out creepy” range, but where it still raises a few eyebrows and makes your close friends a little guarded and hesitant to offer any encouragement.

So, in thinking about this, it occurred to me that a better way to measure this would be the percentage of the age difference.  I’m calling this the Relationship Creepiness Index, or RCI for short.  To calculate it, take the age of the younger partner, and divide it by the age of the older partner.  If this value is between 100% and 85%, it’s pretty socially acceptable.  If it’s between 85% and 75%, you get into the makes your best friend uneasy range.  If you descend below 75%, you might as well get an unmarked white panel van and start hanging out down by the playground.  Okay, don’t actually do that, but that’s how people are probably going to see it.

In playing with the ranges a bit, percentages seem to work relatively well because they account for the fairly narrow dating range of teens and twenty-somethings, while still broadening out for the 40+ crowd, and even more so for senior citizens (though let’s not dwell on that).  The below graphic gives a thumbnail overview of the range, showing ages 14 to 95 on both axises:

The very, very large version of the above image is here. If you want to tweak the formulas or play with the numbers, here is a copy of the spreadsheet in ODS format.

The formula and bounds are still pretty rough, but it seems like a reasonable and simple equation.  To give a few examples:

• 20 and 23 year old dating = 39 and 45 year old dating = 52 and 60 year old dating = 87% = outer edge of the green zone, but fine.
• 18 and 23 year old dating = 35 and 45 year old dating = 47 and 60 year old dating = 78% = well into the yellow, pretty creepy
• 17 and 23 year old dating = 33.5 and 45 year old dating = 44 and 60 year old dating = 74% = go straight to creepytown.

It could probably use some tweaks, but it’s at least a starting point for measuring and comparing creepiness of age differences in relationships.

Over the weekend, the Hawks won (yay!) and are now 3-0 (three more to a bowl game).

USC lost (double yay!) (I really, really hate USC, not because they win a lot, but because they have the absolute worst college football fans that I’ve ever encountered.  And we play OSU almost every year.  USC’s fans are far, far worse.  And good teams can have good fans, in fact, Texas has some of the best fans (outside Iowa) that I’ve ever come across.  Thus, I revel in USC’s misery. And given the number of people I’ve met that share this sentiment, I’m pretty sure you could start a profitable niche business selling vials of the tears of USC fans.  Just saying.)

But what really brought back memories was Michigan State losing to Notre Dame.  Not just losing, but blowing a lead late, and then throwing away (literally, with an interception) the chance to win, or at very least tie, the game.  In short, having the chance to shine, and blowing it.  It reminded me of 2006, and more specifically, of this (specifically the mp3 at the bottom of the post).  As the original post authors so well describe the Michigan State vs Notre Dame game from that year:

And then, there are soul-crushing, ball-busting agonizingly excruciating losses that plunge you through the looking glass into a deep, dark spot in your sportsfan soul that is frightening to even think about. Trust me, I’ve been there before. This week, Sparty was on the receiving end of one of these, and the results… were not so pretty.

You don’t need to remember the game to appreciate it, the audio pretty well describes what happened.  It was far, far worse than this year’s loss. The clip is really funny, and bizarre, and a little painful for loyal sports fans.  It’s also incredibly quotable.

Now, to make clear, I don’t hate Michigan State.  In fact, I don’t even really particularly dislike them.  And I don’t like seeing a Big Ten team lose a non-conference game, nor do I often make the practice of reminding others about when such a thing happens.  After all, when the Big Ten loses, it makes Iowa look bad, and that’s who really matters in the end.  But…. the clip is just so good, and terrible, and great, that it has to be shared.

Oh yeah, probably as NSFW as broadcast radio gets.  Probably best listened to with fellow college football fans, while fairly drunk.

MAKE PLAYS!!!!

I really like the work of Emma Hack.  So much so that I’m linking to her despite my hate of flash websites.

This is where I would usually post a sample image of her work, so you could get an idea of what it’s like, and decide if you want to spend 10 or 15 minutes browsing her site or just move on.  But, again, flash.

I really like the way that her work plays with things like objectification, perception, etc.  A few favorite collections:

• Wallpaper – NSFW (nakedness)
• Wallpaper 2 – also NSFW
• CowScape – suitable for work, and kind of funny

I hate websites made in flash.

You can’t link to it.

You can’t really direct people to what you’re talking about.

You can’t make small excerpts to show your readers that it’s actually worth their time to visit.

You can’t bookmark the parts you really like and find them later.

They use a different control structure so they’re harder to use (link aren’t blue and underlined, things generally don’t behave the way you’d expect), showing, in my opinion, that the people who use flash see themselves as more important than their readers/users – i.e. my way is better than what you’ve learned.

It’s not supported on nearly as many platforms, which limits its audience (Flash is one of the few things that still doesn’t work very well on Linux).

It’s a proprietary technology, though that’s a rant for another day.

Search engines can’t search it, which makes it even harder to find it.

Artists and designers are generally the most guilty of using flash for website design, because it does give a very custom feel.  Generally, when I open a site and see that it’s flash, I close it immediately.  There’s a lot of great artists and designers out there that I’d love to share, but won’t because they make it too hard to link to their work.  A lot of great content doesn’t get spread because of a really simple unfortunate design choice.

About the only place where flash is an appropriate design choice: games.  The end.  Nothing that’s not a game should use flash.  Ever.

I’m making an attempt to contain my rant / soap box posts.  I’ve found the I frequently allude to a few of my pet peeves (graffiti, flash web sites, pretension, bad grammar / lack of even basic attempts at proof reading one’s own work, socialists, crappy music videos, etc), but don’t really ever flesh them out.  The main result of this is that I end up with weird mixed posts of “I like this, and I’d like it more it weren’t so <insert pet peeve here>”.  So, in an effort to decouple a specific instance of a pet peeve (someone made a website using flash and I can’t link to their work that I really like), and the broader pet peeve (I hate flash websites), I’m going to try to separate the two out into a rant post telling why I hate flash websites (for example), and a post about the actual site I’m posting in spite of my hate of flash, with a link to the post about why I hate flash.

Not a big change, and we’ll see how well I stick to it, but I thought I’d mention it.

45 foot, 8 ton dead whale + 1,000 pounds of dynamite =

I am I odd for thinking, “Why not just drag it back out into the ocean and let nature deal with it?”