Stray Hawkeye

This article on miniature models of cities is interesting, but I’ll admit that mostly I just wanted to type the title for this post :)

It’s getting to be that time of year here in Minnesota.  The snow is mostly melted.  The ice on the lakes is receding.  The potholes have returned.  And I even saw a V of geese flying North overhead.  Now, these are all good signs that the weather is starting to warm up, and that Spring is on its way.  But it’s always hard to tell when Spring is actually finally here to stay. Some of the geese come back a bit early, and until we hit 90 degrees, I don’t trust that we won’t still get another snow.  However, I’ve found one indicator that seems to be pretty good (which I’ll be paralleling here shortly) – the first day you wake up and hear birds chirping and singing, and you finally, officially know Winter is gone.  Granted, the ravens seem to stay around all winter (I saw a few hopping around outside my apartment on a day that it was -10F this winter), but ravens don’t really sing, especially early in the morning.  There’s just something about waking up and hearing song birds that gives you a certain lift of knowing that it’s going to be getting better from here on out.

And now, the parallel.

While I was still in college, I was walking back from class one afternoon near the end of winter.  As I was walking up Jefferson St towards the Pentacrest I saw a girl crossing the street that sort of stuck me off guard.  She was wearing a short skirt, and after a long Iowa winter, it just sort of struck me that, hey, it’s Spring.  The First Skirt of Spring.

A few notes of clarification, paralleling the first day you wake up and hear birds singing.  No matter how cold it gets outside, there’s pretty much always a few women around wearing long skirts with tights underneath, or in short skirts scurrying off to the bars.  Like the ravens.  But there’s something entirely different about the First Skirt of Spring, just like there’s something entirely different about waking up to song birds.  It’s that it catches you a little off guard, but after a second of stun, it makes sense, and fits, and makes you a little happy of the things to come.  It’s where you sort of realize that living in a cold climate and being single makes you sort of Amish for four or five months of the year.  (Visible skin above the knee?!?! Scandalous!!!!)

Now, admittedly I’ve had this post on my to do list for a while now, so I’ve been giving an undue amount of thought to what exactly qualifies as the First Skirt of Spring, especially given the slow yet sporadic warm up we’ve been having this year.  I haven’t come up with any really certain definition yet- basically, it’s just something you know when you see it.  At the same time in thinking it over, and watching for it (yes, even in my late 20′s I’m well on my way to becoming a creepy old man) I’ve come up with what I think are some loosely defined qualifications, any of which can be omitted if you know it when you see it:

• Must be outside.
• Skirt must be above the knee.  Preferably mid-thigh.  This is both to have enough skin visible to be entirely eye catching after the winter, and also for it to be really damn cold if it’s too early.
• Girl must not look cold or seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere warm.  This disqualifies winter bar whores and provides the requirement that it must actually be warm enough out for a short skirt, as the weather and the fact that this is just the first one of something that will become common shortly is a large part of the First Skirt of Spring phenomenon.
• No leggings or visible tights.  Again, it must actually be warm enough out for a skirt.
• It doesn’t matter if you happen to find this particular girl, or this particular outfit, attractive.  Bonus points if you do, but again, it doesn’t have to be the prettiest song in the world, just a reminder that birds sing and the flowers will be blooming soon.  (Welcome to mixed metaphor junction.)

Now, so far this Spring, I’ve seen several instances that were very close.  One girl with a very short skirt, but tights and a jacket.  Another with bare legs, but right at knee length.  A few others as well that were eye catching after an Amish inducing cold winter (I walked into my run club a couple weeks ago on a warm day, and everyone was wearing shorts, and upon seeing so much bared skin in public I had a moment of feeling like I had walked in on something entirely improper).  But none that have given that moment of, “Ah, it’s Spring.”  I think in no small part this is because I suspect that we’re still going to get one more snow before we’re totally out of it.  And even on the warm days, there has still been just a little briskness in the air that says, “not yet.”

However, it’s supposed to get into the 70′s later this week….

I also occasionally wonder if there’s a female equivalent to the First Skirt of Spring.  The First Biker Shorts Guy of Spring?  The First Shirtless Runner of Summer?  Ladies, help me out here.

I came across this post on Swissmiss about a company called Nutcase Helmets (their website seems a little hit or miss for actually coming up) that makes really cool looking hard shell bike helmets.  And with a name like Nutcase, and making hard shelled bike helmets, an idea occurred to me for a bike helmet that I think would be really funny (your sense of humor may vary).

I’d like to see a bike helmet that looks like a giant walnut shell.  You could even make it the sporty kind with vents to have the bumpy texture of an actual walnut shell, and the rounded front and slightly tapered back would be the right shape too.  And then you could look like when a cartoon mouse is riding a motorcycle or a race car and they have buttons for wheels, and match sticks for handle bars, and a walnut shell for a helmet.  For that matter, you could make a whole custom bike to go with the helmet so it would look like the whole thing was made out of over-sized tiny things – button wheels, match stick handle bars, a walnut helmet, a pleasantly ironic hamster wheel for the gears, toothpick pipes, a thumb tack seat (pointy part down!!), clothespin brakes, the whole deal.  Insert your own gag about joining / leaving the rat race here.  In short:

Do the math.

A good bit of perspective:

A bit of a creepy, sort of tongue in cheek, sort of not tongue in cheek, thought provoking video about how to start a mind control cult (feel free to substitute in any of a host of other words there) :

Via Ovablastic

A few weeks ago the US Mint revealed a new design for the back of pennies.  From what I’ve seen so far, every story that has covered it (two examples) feels the need to wonder aloud why we still have pennies at all, especially since due to the wonders of inflation, it’s worth far less than other coins (such as the half penny) which have been phased out.  To my mind, there are two really obvious reasons to keep pennies.

The first is a simple matter of aesthetics, it seems silly to have the second decimal place when denoting our currency but to only use it for a 5 or 0 (which you would be stuck with, because I’m imagining people will continue to want the ability to pay with cash for a while yet, and will get bitter about being screwed out of 4 cents every time they don’t have perfect change).  Having just a 5 or 0 there breaks the whole base ten system, because the second decimal place becomes base 2 modulo 5 (I think, bit of number theory there for you).

The second is taxes.  People fight back (and rightly so) when a single cent sales tax increase is proposed for something they don’t like.  Can you imagine trying to pass a local option sales tax for schools or roads or whatever if instead of a 1 cent increase, you had to make it a 5 cent increase?  (Admittedly I don’t really understand how they calculate sales tax currently, which in Minneapolis is something like 7.775% (thanks new Twins Stadium for that last .015%). )

And aside from all of that, there’s some incredibly successful people out there with a certain, shall we say, affinity for pennies, and I for one don’t want to make some one like this angry:

A side note – a roll of pennies is 50 cents, so $30 in pennies is 60 rolls, a day.  Ow.

Also, I still like my strategy better.

Really cool effect from just putting a well spaced model on a record player:

It’d love to see one of these done with Lego minifigs.

Via Ovablastic

It came to my attention a little while back that there was the potential that this coming season, Iowa would have a few more players at the running back position than is usual for a team.  Now granted, with our history with running backs (including a training regiment which I can only imagine from the results involves hitting each of them in the knee with a crowbar after every play in practice), I can see where we might want to stock up a little at this position.  But, ummmm,… NINE OF THEM?!?!?

Now, that number has trimmed down slightly, and there’s always potential for injury and suspensions/legal issues, but if you actually count all the players listed in that first article that could play running back, we’re still at something like 13 or 14 guys who could play the position.  Which got me thinking, why could we possibly want that many running backs?

And then it struck me, this could be nothing other than the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’Keefe finally coming to fruition.  (In case you were wondering, yes, it was actually physically painful to even ironically type the phrase “the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’ ahhhhhhhh.)

Obviously, while Ken was watching tapes of the Georgia Tech’s unstoppable Triple Option offense to prepare for the Orange Bowl, he saw something he liked, but saw room for improvement.  (Yeah, I don’t know why an offensive coordinator would be watching tape of the other team’s offense to prepare for a bowl game, but it’s Ken O’Keefe we’re talking about here, so let your mind float a bit, it’ll help.)

During the Orange Bowl, we saw the much praised Triple Option of Georgia Tech absolutely stuffed, held to a mere 155 yards of total offense.  And with this, O’Keefe’s suspicions were confirmed.  He had seen the fatal flaw in Georgia Tech’s otherwise perfect offensive scheme.  It wasn’t that, as many have claimed, the Triple Option is a gimmicky offense which relies on poor defensive tackling mixed with ill-prepared opponents being caught off guard by it’s novelty.  No, as Ken realized, the its one fatal flaw is that it’s not gimmicky or novel enough.  It’s not that focusing almost exclusively on lateraling the ball makes a team one dimensional.  Well, actually, it is, and that’s where the genius comes in.  Don’t be one dimensional.  No, no, not what you would think- actually having a balanced running and passing game.  That’s crazy talk.  We need to be not only two, but three dimensional.  We need to be not just twice as good as Georgia Tech, we need to be exponentially better.  And that’s when our new offense crystallized in Ken O’Keefe’s mind.

The Triple Option… Squared.

Here’s how it will work.  The ball will be snapped directly to a running back, who will in turn have a running back on either side of him.  He’ll have the option to hand it off to either of them, keep it himself, or start running with it, and then lateral it to one of them, who will then have all the same options.  Sounds just like the Triple Option so far, but you’ve forgotten that we’ve raised this offense to the second power.  This is where those 9 running back start to make sense.  They’re all going to be on the field at the same time.

After the first three running back do their magic, if somehow the defense hasn’t completely fallen apart by this point, there will be another row of three more running back behind the first three that we can lateral the ball back to.  Oh, and it doesn’t stop there.  Oh no!  Yes, there will be ANOTHER row of 3 running backs behind the second row to whom the second row can lateral back to.  Or maybe one of them will pass it forward to one of the first waves of running backs.  You just don’t know do you?  It will be like D-Day on a football field.  Wave after wave of running backs crashing over the defense.  Chaos and bodies flying everywhere!!

Now you may be saying, “Don’t you have to have at least a few guys on the line of scrimmage?  I mean, it’s in rules.”  Why yes, it is, and we will.  Some of the running backs will actually line up on the line of scrimmage, and then run backward to get behind the first wave to form the second and third waves.  Or will they?  See how confused the defense will be?  Nine potential guys to carry the ball, some running forwards, some running backwards, some doing jumping jacks in place just to fuck with you.  And wave after wave after wave of bodies crashing and lateraling and faking and running and passing and reversing!!!  There’s just no way to defend against this!!!!

You may also be saying, “Triple Option Squared…  Nine Running Backs… but… who will the other guys on the field be?  We need 11, right?”   Well, isn’t it obvious?  First we need someone to snap the ball.  And there’s only one guy who can make this offense any more terrifying than it already is – Adrian Clayborn.  You just wet yourself a little, didn’t you?  Just imagine what defenses will do.

Okay, that takes us to 10 players.  We need one more.  And this is where we get practical.  At some point, in all likelihood, with all the confusion, and defensive players’ tears getting on the ball, it’s going to get slippery and pop out.  And as we saw this season, there is no player better at magically appearing under, or magnetically attracting, a loose ball than Tyler “Jimmer-Jamming” Sash, so, we’ll line him up at wide receiver.

With that offense, and most of our 2009 defense returning, I predict the 2010 college football season will actually end not with Iowa in a BCS Championship Game, or the introduction of playoffs, but in week three when all 118 other college football teams decide to universally forfeit the season to Iowa.  Further play will be suspended until enough running backs can be recruited by all opposing teams so that they can implement the new scheme as well to have any chance at competing.  This will lead to Iowa being declared National Champion by collective forfeit in 2011 as well.

Thus it has been said, thus it shall be done.

Adam and Jamie from the Mythbusters show the difference between how a CPU and a GPU process graphics, using paintball guns. Generally a good demonstration of serial vs parallel processing.  Plus, the last slow motion shot is awesome.

I’m not entirely sure why, but it strikes me that The Big Lebowski and The Catcher in the Rye have a fair amount in common.  I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is, and I may be off as its been several years since I last read The Catcher in the Rye.  Sort of a wandering, semi-aimless main character / protagonist who is easy to relate to, but not necessarily look up to.  He’s both profoundly self assured and entirely shake-able.  Quirky and largely driven by impulse and outside influences.  A certain reoccurring metaphorical theme around falling or feeling like you’re falling.  Brushes with the sex industry and art/artists.  Unfulfilling / odd sexual encounter, include ones centered around a certain voyeurism and also one night stands.  An attempt at denying or avoiding responsibility for the majority of the piece, but ultimately sort of accepting it, but mostly meditating on it.  Questions about identity and the inability to correctly identify it and phonies both real and perceived.  Being beaten and left curled on the floor by a stranger.  A conflict between the real and ideal worlds that the character imagines himself in.  Lots of religious overtones that are never really directly addressed.  Lots of profanity, to the degree that it occasionally seems purposely excessive.  And as much as all of that, the fact that I really like them both, but always end them feeling like I didn’t totally get it.  Like there’s something I missed, or that even though I pretty much know what it’s about, I can’t really put my finger on it or explain it.

I’ll preface this one by saying I keep going back and forth on if it’s a really good idea, or an absolutely, profoundly terrible one.

While I was at the dentist last week, I noticed that depending on the angle, I could look at the little glasses / visor thing my dentist was wearing (I would assume to keep any splash or bits of scrapped gunk from flying into her eyes) and see a reflection of what she was looking at.  It was sort of cool to see the different perspective on my mouth than I usually see, but especially for being able to actually see exactly what it was she was doing.  Now, I didn’t check to much, because the reflection, being on her glasses thingy, was directly over her eyes, making it sort of a weird making eye contact but not really thing that just seemed awkward.

However, it made me think that since they’re wearing these glasses/visor/headset thing anyway, they could easily put a little camera on there, and a little cheap lcd screen next to the light that they use to shine in your mouth, and you could watch what it was they were doing as they did it.  Dental Cam.

It would be especially handy for showing you which spots you really need to focus on brushing more, and why.  Or what happens when you don’t floss.  Or if there is some spot that they say they’re keeping an eye on, they could show you why.  And just for the general interest of seeing what exactly it is they’ve been doing in there all these years.

Now for if this is a really good or a really bad idea I think would depend in large part on how good or bad both your teeth and your dentist are.  If your teeth and dentist are good, I think it would be utterly fascinating, and make what’s generally a fairly dull half hour of laying around an educational experience that makes you feel more in control of and connected to your own health and care, and let you actually see first hand the results of the health choices you make.

On the other hand, I could also see where if you had some seriously bad dental issues and a dentist that was less than gentle, it could also turn into your own personally customized horror film.

I went to the dentist last week.  While most people seem to dread dentist visits, I actually kind of look forward to mine.  So, I thought I’d recommend mine in case any of my fellow Minneapolis residents, especially fellow transplants, are looking for a good dentist – Isles Dental.  They’re in Uptown along Hennepin, and they have a website, though it’s, um, a little less than awe-inspiring, but useful for getting the address and phone number I suppose.

Anyway, they’re always really nice and fairly upbeat, especially their receptionist, who may be the most consistently pleasant and chipper person I’ve ever come across.  Their equipment is new and clean and seems very up to date.  For instance, when they take x-rays, they show up on a laptop right next to you, and they can pull up past ones and compare them side by side, and show you what they’re looking at.  They’re also pretty good at having it not be painful (though admittedly I haven’t had any cavities recently, so I might not be the best gauge of that), and are good at having some pleasant conversation leading up to the exam, but letting it trail off just before you get to that whole trying to have a conversation with your mouth hanging open while someone hold a sharpened pick in your mouth thing that some dentists do.  They’re also just generally considerate of the small things like if the light is shining in your eyes, or if you need to swallow, or if they’ve gotten all the crunchy gunk out of your mouth.

Thought I’d pass it along in case any of you are looking for a good dentist.  I dig them.

On the flip side, does anyone know of a decent optometrist in the Twin Cities?  I’ve been to two different ones since I moved here, and really, really, disliked both of them.

A few more great comics from XKCD:

• Nowhere
• Bag Check
• Creepy
• Spinal Tap Amps
• Tornado Hunter

As it’s lent, McDonald’s has brought back their Filet-O-Fish sandwich for a limited time (aka, until Easter), and they’re running a new round of derivatives of this commercial, with the same singing fish song:

Yes, I know, it’s not only annoying and a little creepy, but it will get stuck in your head until you want to kill yourself by, in an ironic twist, driving to McDonald’s and actually eating a couple of those sandwiches so your heart clogs up with enough grease to sputter to a slimy, sludgy stop.  Clever advertising ploy that is.

Anyway, I have to say that when I first heard the song, it got me thinking.  The lyrics go:

Give me back that Filet-O-Fish.

Give me that fish.

Give me back that Filet-O-Fish.

Give me that fish.

What if it were you hanging up on this wall?

If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn’t be laughing at all.

It’s particularly those last two lines that got me thinking.  What if it were me in that sandwich?  I mentally pictured a rubber-ized cheesy Lazytown version of myself on a plaque, singing that song.  And, being the (sometimes overly) logical person that I am, my next though was of course that the song ceases to make sense.  (Right, because it made so much sense before, but hang with me here.)  It wouldn’t make sense to be singing about wanting a piece of fish back, I would need to sing about wanting an equivalent piece of myself back.  And thus the song started running through my head with the word “fish” replaced by “human”.

Give me back that Filet-O-Human.

Give me that human.

Give me back that Filet-O-Human.

Give me that human.

What if it were you hanging up on this wall?

If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn’t be laughing at all.

Kind of takes it to a whole new level of weird and creepy, doesn’t it?  And now, every time I see one of those commercials on TV, I can’t help but mentally substitute “human” into the song.

Just thought I’d share.