GlitchNYC.com

I'm Hooked.

Today was officially one of the strangest days of my life. That's becase today I was the emergency room oddity, sitting in the waiting room of the Urgent Care Center with little kids hacking up lungs, worried moms with babies and people limping and otherwise hobbling in, and I was at the bottom of the triage totem pole.

I can't say that I blamed them. I was in very little pain, didn't have a serious injury, and wasn't going to get worse as they let time go by, so I happily played my new Game Boy SP as others filed in before me, sitting there with a fish hook sticking out of the very top of my scalp.

I felt much like one of the people in the waiting room at the end of Beetlejuice, each with some strange affliction such as a shrunken head or being chopped in half, calmly waiting their turn.

How did I get here you ask?

Let's begin not with my journey, but with the trip the hook took on it's way to being embedded in some poor schmucks head in a waiting room.

Imagine you're a fish hook, happy to finally be free of the tacklebox you've spent most of the summer in and finally be used. You get cast out a few times, but the fish aren't really biting today, and after a while, it's time for you to go back in as a different bait comes out. But wait! Instead of making it back into the box, you're separated from your friends and stuck to a pair of jeans, embedded in the denim.

That night, you find yourself tumbling around with the jeans in the wash and the finally, in the dryer, you're free!

Until, that is, you're smothered by a great white towel. Instantly, your barb catches, and you're impossibly tangled in the terrycloth fabric. Once the tumbling stops, you're folded a few times, and finally find yourself in the dark of the bathroom closet.

So now, we've followed our friend the fish hook into its lair, where it waits for some unsuspecting prey to carry it to freedom.

This morning, I was that prey.

As Sara so wonderfully put it, "Thank god you dry your head first!"

As soon as I began to vigorously towel my head off, the hook sank its barb into the top of my scalp, hoping to ride me to the great unknown. The towel, which had by now grown quite fond of the little hook tangled inside it decided it wanted to come along too.

My thought process, as this happened, went something like this.

Huh, the towel is stuck. Must be gum in it. Who puts gum in a towel? Wait a second, it's really not moving. Huh, it feels like one of mom's quilt needles, yup, i can feel the head, and there's where it goes into MY head. *YANK*

OW ow ow. bad idea, bad idea. I think the pin must be bent. Time to call mom up. Wait. I'm naked. Towel first.

From there, we realized that it was actually a fish hook and proceeded to try to extract the sucker, but in trying to remove it by myself I'd set it in quite firmly.

Our stroke of brilliance was to go to the local Urgent Care Center rather than the ER, because I only had to wait an hour with the hook sticking out of me like My Favorite Martian, rather than the 6-8 hours I probably would have sat in the ER at a hospital.

Medi-call's doctor was great, and we all had a sense of humor about it so it really wasn't that bad at all. Kate called right after I'd done it, and we were all in hysterics.

"Hi, it's Kate. Is it Ok if we get there around 4:30-5ish? We're leaving now"

"Umm, well, here's the thing. I've got a fish hook in my head"

"What? I'm sorry, I don't understand"

"I've gotten myself stuck with a fishhook! It was in a towel, and now it's sticking out of my scalp. It doesn't really hurt at all, but I'm going to have to go to the ER, so I might not be back by then. Who knew this would be my first piercing?"

"... ... Ahhhhhhh hahhahahaha! I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but that's hilarious"

"No no, i know, I'm laughing too!"

"(Still laughing) Oh, my god, They caught a big one!"

When all was said and done, I got to keep the fishhook, we made it back before Kate and Doug even got there, and we all laughed so much it hurt. Worse things have certainly happened, and it's made this one holiday we'll never forget!

10:44 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Theme Park Nostalgia

BoingBoing ran a quick piece yesterday amid all the tsunami coverage highlighting a site that archives old maps from theme parks.

Of course I immediately honed in on the one from my neck of the woods and found a very nostalgic Great Escape map from the 1980s. For those of you that weren't raised in upstate NY, The Great Escape was the ultimate place to go when you were a kid. It had awesome coasters, decent theme areas, and great flume and rapids rides.

The park (which is now owned by Six Flags) is such a fixture that senior year physics classes from around the area go to the park and run around riding the rides while doing "experiments" like timing the pirate ship's rate of acceleration and the G forces exerted by the Steamin' Demon as their de facto class field trip for that year.

See if ThemeParkBrochures.com has a map from the Themepark of your childhood years

12:00 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 1 writebacks |

Follow up: Beastie Boys Photoshoot

Josh just sent me a quick email comparing the pictures I took of the Beastie Boys as they walked down 34th street back in October and their own blog. It's not one of the photos they were taking with the pro photographer, (still waiting for those to show up!) but it's cool to finally know what they were in town for.

The album where their clothes match is: 10.03.04: New York City, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom, VH1 Hip-Hop Honors

2:13 am | permalink | /life/nyc | 1 writebacks |

Ardvark The Aardvark: The Teacher

Just a mini-update today to keep the Ardvark the Aardvark work going. I finished the first concept design for The Teacher today. He didn't come out exactly as I'd pictured him in my head, but after looking at the actual adult vervets for a while I decided to keep him a bit closer to their actual form rather than just super-sizing the babies.

It's amazing how different the young of this species look from the fully grown. I think it's the fact that the babies are virtually naked, allowing their skin to show through their peachfuzz. That, and the fact that their heads are pretty much fully formed at birth, making their bodies disproportionately small (and so cute!) when they're young.

• Download the editable SVG

3:40 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Power Puff Girls / Dexter's Lab / Invader Zim / Amazing Fan Doujinshi

A while back I followed a link from Megatokyo to this incredible fan-produced manga (also known as doujinshi).

It's a clever mash-up of PowerPuff Girls, Dexter's Lab, Invader Zim, Samurai Jack, and many others. I don't know if I've ever seen fan work this professionally produced or drawn, and the story is actually quite engrossing.

I didn't post it at first because it just seemed like a novelty, but I've found myself going back to the site to check on the story a few times now and I figured it merited mentioning.

Cartoon network should hire this guy.

Bleedman's "PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi"

2:36 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Direct Line to Santa's Elves

Haven't had time to do a proper Christmas list to Santa yet this year? Here's your chance to speak directly to the elves and have them put in your requests right up at the North Pole.

Don't worry if you don't have a microphone, the flash technology they're using can 'listen' through your computer speakers, as long as you're loud enough. Give it a shot.




From Ze, the wonderfully demented mind that brought us Passive Aggressive Punctuation

12:42 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Firefox Ad Ran In Today's NY Times

So many people came out in support of the full page Firefox ad in the New York Times that they couldn't fit all of our names on one page. So today, the Spread Firefox team ran a mammoth 2 pager (pdf) featuring all of our names, a giant Firefox logo, and user testimonials.

Very cool. The press around the ad is worth it alone but the positive impression this will make on CIO's, business leaders, and "Joe user" when they see this ad is immeasurable. I'm proud to have been a part of this, and I've got the ad on my wall at work with my name highlighted. It's at once the coolest and geekiest thing I've ever had on my walls, and that's coming from a guy who's had anime murals and wall scrolls all over his room.

If by some chance you're still using Internet Explorer - Firefox 1.0 is here. It's time to see what you've been missing!

5:10 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Holiday Favorites!

Last year, my family tried a new project as part of the preparations for The Holidays: making "Chocolate Cherry Mice."

Basically, you coat a cherry with chocolate melted in the microwave, add a Hershey's Kiss as the face/nose, and stick on almond slivers as the ears. They're extremely cute and actually really tasty! You can add cake decoration gel as eyes if you're feeling really creative.

We had a ton of fun making them and I wanted to repeat the tradition this year, so I was looking for the recipe and other good ideas like that when I came across a great list, at mormonchic of all places!

6:11 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Missing the SingleWindow extension in FireFox?

If you're among the many people that have started using Firefox, you've probably noticed that links from other programs open over other pages that you already have open or open a new window entirely. This can be annoying if you didn't want to navigate away from the page that was open in Firefox, and middle clicking the link in your other programs doesn't open a new tab.

I've found it much more helpful to have links from all programs, as well as links that are programmed to open in "pop up" windows, open in new tabs. The SingleWindow extension filled this need until very recently, but mysteriously stopped working in 1.0

It turns out that Firefox 1.0 incorporates that functionality natively. Here's how to turn it on.

• In Firefox, open a new tab so you can keep this page open as well.
• In that new tab, enter about:config in your address bar
• change browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs to true (you can type part of the name of the configuration item in the Filter: box to quickly reduce the list)
• go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced
• Under Tabbed Browsing, check:
  • Open link from other applications in: a new tab in the most recent window
  • Force links that open new windows to open in a new tab

Firefox will now open a new tab for just about everything! You may also want to check "Warn when closing multiple tabs" so that you don't accidentally lose all the pages you had open by clicking the wrong thing. To avoid this, also try to get in the habit of middle-clicking the tabs to close them rather than clicking the red X.

Also, if you're running Firefox on Linux, Middle-clicking on tabs doesn't close them by default. To change this: In about:config set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false. This is less "correct" on unix, but it will make Firefox behave more like it does on Windows.

4:38 pm | permalink | /technology/opensource | 0 writebacks |

Cheap Stingy Bastard

I was looking to buy some Sketchers online, and googled for the name. One of the first things that came up was a link to a blog that tracks coupon codes and provides them online. I plugged in the code, and voila! 25% off my purchase and free shipping.

I got lucky and happened to pull up a valid sale (many expire within a few days) but the front page of the Cheap Stingy Bastard blog, http://cheap.typepad.com, always has fresh coupons. Check it out.

1:23 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

Update: Ardvark's Got a Wiki

I've created a page at WikiMedia for Ardvark. If you haven't worked with a Wiki before, they're really pretty neat. Once you register (free and quick) with WikiMedia,No registration needed! Just click edit at the top of any page. you're able to change the text of any page there and submit your own new information and artwork.

This is how most of the web should just work. You log in to a page, see a mistake or missing info, and simply fix it right there. Wikis have been most effective in bringing together knowledge bases like the open encyclopedia WikiPedia and technical manuals, but I'm very interested to see how this collaborative medium lends itself to a purely creative project.

There is an implicit trust in letting others have full access to edit your pages, and I'm excited by the idea of easily letting others make what they will of Ardvark, much in the same way that CVS lets developers easily tweak, change, and even fork projects. Inkscape, the tool I use to draw these characters, is the product of one such fork, splitting off from the Sodipodi project and quickly surpassing its progenitor. For security, the Wiki also keeps a comprehensive version list allowing you to restore the page if someone, for example, spams the page with links to Chinese Viagra to boost their google rating.

Ardvark The Aardvark, once completed, will be a fully paginated children's book that you can download, print, edit, share, and expand upon. To get to that goal, I'm going to need help. I need editors, artists, and writers, anywhere from amateur to pro, to work with me on the project and add their input.

If you're interested in helping out, take a look at the Wiki and play around with it a bit. You can directly make changes to book one, start on book two (or another branch of the story not related to this linear plot) upload drawings easily.

To add a new page, simply go to the address where it would be. For example, book two has not yet been created, but you can create it yourself by going to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ArdvarkTheAardvark_BookTwo. Just don't forget to update the main page to point to your newly created work! You can also leave notes on any existing page without disturbing the text itself by clicking the "discuss" link.

• Ardvark's Page at WikiMedia

4:56 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Of the Two Famous Foucaults.

We went out to dinner with Arden tonight, and she mentioned that she'd read the rough draft of Ardvark the Aardvark and had a suggestion: If I was naming the little vervets in the Ardvark story after great philosophers and thinkers, I may want to reconsider including Foucault (pronounced "foocau"). Her reasoning was that it may bring up several questions with the youngsters when attempting to explain who he was. His writings on sexuality and his notoriety for promiscuity aren't exactly on the grade school curriculum.

I stopped for a moment and thought "Oh, so THATS who the other Foucault was!" I'd seen a book by him at Borders just a week or so ago with Ali, but really wasn't sure who he was, aside from the fact that he was famous in 1980 instead of 1890.

The only Foucault I know is the one I learned about in Physics and Astronomy, the inventor of the aptly named "Foucault Pendulum"

It seems fitting that I'm learning so much while attempting to write an educational story! I've found good resources for both Foucaults.

• Learn more about Foucault's Pendulum - one of the founding proofs that the earth rotated about its axis.
  • Great illustrations and animations make this is a very fun site! The work of Jean Bernard Leon Foucault is presented in a way which makes the concepts accessible and fun.
• Read more about Michael (pronounced "Michelle") Foucault, prominent philosopher of the late 20th century who sought to understand the nature and history of the fundamental concepts of society and the author of The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception and Madness and Civilization : A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, among many others

12:41 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Ardvark The Aardvark - Book One v0.5

I've completed the rough draft of the story for Ardvark the Aardvark With the Back Leg Named Bumpus - Book One. I'd welcome revisions, edits, and new stories or drawings from anyone that wants to take a crack at it!

I'll be getting a wiki set up to facilitate content creation, but for now, send submissions to "Ardvark" here at GlitchNYC.com.

As I wrote, a few themes began to emerge, and I think they're good places to start for anyone who wants to contribute.

• The book should be fun. First and foremost, it should be an interesting, whimsical, and even eccentric read.
• The book should be fun to read aloud, both for kids and parents.
• Onomatopoeia, new words, and new concepts make books fun to share and talk about
• The book should be educational
• This doesn't mean it has to be stodgy or include anything quite so obvious as the classroom scene in book one. Instead, education and exploration should be intrinsic part of the book. To quote Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, "don't talk down to kids, just talk to them." Leave long words in, include advanced concepts of math, physics, astronomy, music, whatever - education begins with curiosity!

Ardvark the Aardvark With the Back Leg Named Bumpus - Book One

(Download the story as a .doc with some of the character designs embedded)

Ardvark was an aardvark who lived, as most aardvarks do, in the lush forests, great fields, and dry savanna of Kenya. Each day he would play in the dirt, happily romping from anthill to anthill in search of friends to play with and food to eat. Most days he found no friends, but kept himself company by having conversations with his back-left leg, which he had named Bumpus, for no good reason at all.

See more ...

3:31 pm | permalink | /life/art | 5 writebacks |