Catching up with the characters for the sequel.

0 comments | humor, movie, theatre |

Chemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars—it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of one inventor's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses color.

0 comments | color, science, toy |

5 comments | hacks, Video, xmas |

Picard: LaForge, please give us factor nine. / LaForge: But, sir, the engines are offline!

2 comments | humor |

Last night Jeff and I caught the new still-in-previews Andrew Lloyd Webber show, The Woman in White. It’s not up to the level of his other shows, but it’s interesting to see what is basically the prototype of the modern detective story (the original novel was written in 1860).

What’s really cool about the show is that all the scenery is projected on cycloramas around the stage (I’m sure Jon would be horrified). The buildings and landscapes are 3D computer animated and the camera’s eye flies to each new location. It was like watching a walkthrough of Myst, and I got a little motion sick due to the constantly spinning turntable.

On the “inappropriately fancy physical production vs. quality of the material” scale, the show sits snuggly between Wildhorn’s Dracula and In My Life.

Update: Here’s an article from the NYTimes about the scenery.

3 comments |

Why anyone would want to put themselves through the rigors of living in NYC...

0 comments | NYC |

“Find a penny, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck.”

Jeff and I got into a discussion last night about penny-related luck. He had never heard that you should only pick up a penny if it’s heads up.

There was a penny sitting right inside my office door this morning, but I left it there since it was tails up (which would bring bad luck to the picker-uper). In the course of opening and closing the door all day long, it managed to flip itself over to heads up.

I instinctively grabbed the penny before pausing to consider whether it was bad luck, since my hand connected to the door which turned the coin over could be construed as me flipping the coin over on purpose.

4 comments |

The combination washer/dryer we bought was delivered on Wednesday. We did a trial load of socks that night and it seemed to wash and dry fairly well. The only problem was that the detergent kind of clumped up in the dispenser tray and the liquid fabric softener never got sucked down into the wash.

We ran the socks a few more times, but the softener from that first load never did empty out into the wash. I’ve been playing voice mail tag with the service line since then, who hadn’t’ heard of that problem before. I resolved that I would call them again on Monday if I couldn’t figure it out on my own.

I played around with the knobs to the water outlets in back tonight and realized that the cold water tap wasn’t turned on the whole way. I guess I hadn’t noticed because I had run the socks on hot. I threw in a few towels and fired up the washer again.

About halfway through the wash, I checked on the machine and noticed that there were a LOT more suds than in previous washes. I checked again a few minutes later and found suds spilling out onto the floor. I quickly stopped the machine, threw the soapy towels into the laundry basket, and carted them to the bathroom tub. I mopped up the suds and then ran the washer empty through the rest of the cycle.

Afterwards I checked the dispenser tray and the fabric softener was gone! I guess that the cold water flow is needed to flush out the detergent and softener. My mistake was in adding more detergent to each load, because it apparently wasn’t fully used each time and was building up.

Unfortunately Jeff wasn’t around to help me document the events in real time, but I managed to Flickr a few shots afterwards with my cellphone.

1 comment |