Business Card Trickery

Calling it a business card may not fit the strict definition of the word 'card' (trust me, I looked), but who cares. This is just awesome.

Bruce Stewart posted a snippet yesterday on the wired blog in which he shared the magic of the business cards supplied by LEGO for its employees. Putting a spin on business cards that never would have occurred to me, LEGO prints custom LEGO figures. This means the employee's contact information is on the front and back of the figure's shirt. A description just can't do it justice, head over and check it out for yourself.

I've considered getting business cards for myself several times over the past year or so, and I think these would do the trick. I just have one question: LEGO, are you hiring?

[via Wired]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..." - Cicero

Steamcon?

Not to be left out of the lucrative convention business, the steampunk crowd now has one to call home.

The first annual Steamcon will be held October 23-25 2009 in the Seattle Airport Marriott. They plan on having everything from an art exhibition, to theater, to demonstrations about modifying guns (I would assume on how to make them steampunk approved). Oh, and I can't leave out the cabaret act, RPG's, lessons in etiquette, "talks and discussions", and even a display of steam tech.

My initial thought was that as cool as I think steampunk is, I don't know that I'd pony up the cash to attend a convention devoted to it. That is, until I noticed on their site that it would appear that the 3-day ticket is available for $30 through June 1. Now the only thing keeping me back is the whole other-side-of-the-country-and-I'm-on-a-budget issue that also makes PAX, E3, CES, GDC, and SXSW unreasonable to consider.

[via Twitter @steamcon]

"That's it, no more Mr. Knife Guy." - Will Smith as Capt. James West

LG Versa

This phone looks like it could be awesome; of course the last time I got really excited about a phone coming to Verizon was the BlackBerry Storm, and that release was followed by the crush of mediocrity. I feel like I should be slightly gun-shy when it comes to getting hyped about another phone before hearing a lot a bout it, but I can't help but gaze longingly at the Versa.

A quick laundry list of features:

• EV-DO Rev (with tethering capability)
• an OLED display on the cover
• 2 megapixel camera (with face detection)
• GPS
• microSD
• built in accelerometer
• attachable qwerty keyboard (which sounds clunky but in pictures appears to have been done well)
• Visual Voice Mail
• Bluetooth
• threaded messaging (ala Gmail?) - it would appear there is a monthly charge for this feature

I can't wait to see how this shakes out.

P.S. Let me know if they announce the Palm Pre coming to Verizon

[via engadget and cnet]

"A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." - Proverb

T-minus 72 days

72 days left before my 25k. That means less than eleven weeks of training left. I haven't been running as consistently as I would like, but hopefully I'll continue to find enough time to advance my mileage.

I got in an 7 mile run Feb. 16, but missed my long run this past weekend. Despite this I still think I'm in decent shape for being ready in time for the race though. I'm not worried at all about finishing, I'm just too competitive to be willing to 'just finish'; I have to do well.

Anyway, I think I'm going to start posting my planned runs at the beginning of each week, partly to give me something to post about, and partly to motivate myself to structure my training a little more than looking ahead to the next run. 

So to begin:

Week of 2009/02/23:

Tues. - 4 mi.  (yesterday)

Wed. - 3 mi.

Thur. - 5 mi.

Fri.    -  2 mi. & Lift Weights

Sat.   -  8 mi.

"I don't jog. If I die I want to be sick" - Abe Lemmons

Celebration

Happy Birthday to Steve Jobs, who turned 54 today. Have a pączki on me.



"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathon Swift

Great, or Greatest Ever?

I was recently browsing old Twitter posts of some of the folks I follow, and stumbled across a gem in which Roger Chang, of Revision 3, shared the existence of a programming language I, for one, had never of. What's so special you ask?

First, the name: Brainfuck. Even though the odds of me ever mustering the energy to try it are about 1:1,243 (read further to find out why) I will never forget that the thing exists.

Second, it's tiny. According to the website compiler sizes range from 136 bytes to 240 bytes. Brainfuck has only 8 operators, and so it does not support variables. Yet it is still supposedly Turing Complete. As a consequence of it's small size, the language is extremely restrictive and difficult to use. For example,  'Hello World,' the go to introduction program, is:

++++++++[>+++++++++<-]>.
<+++++[>++++++<-]>-.

+++++++..

+++.

<++++++++[>>++++<<-]>>.

<<++++[>------<-]>.

<++++[>++++++<-]>.

+++.

------.

--------.

>+.

That's right, that series of symbols prints the phrase 'Hello World.' The results are achieved by incrementing or decrimenting an ASCII value and printing the results at the end of each line. Compare that to C++ and decide which one you'd rather look at all day:

#include

using namespace;

int main()

{

cout<<"Hello World!";

return 0;

}

My opinion: intriguing but the lack of operators makes even the most basic functions annoyingly difficult (just check out the website author's odd or even program). 

Yeah, I thought you'd agree.

"Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools." -Henry David Thoreau