The Way of the Spoon

The eCycle is cool looking bike, no? It starts to look even cooler when I tell you that it's a hybrid... Wait, it's not over. The gas guzzling sipping part of this bike is a multifuel engine that takes "petrodiesel, biodiesel, [and] kerosene." That means you can use used frying oil that you can get for free from Chinese food restaurants to fly down the street, accelerating from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds and topping off at 80 mph.

I WANT ONE.

Click for full size I got to see Andy Goldsworthy's Stone House Exhibit on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum (in New York, for those who don't know). Andy Goldsworthy is undoubtedly one of my favorite artists, so I was very excited to see it. While the title would lead you to believe he made a house of stone, he actually made two houses for stones. While I was on the roof, I also took some pictures of the view because it was a beautiful day. Here are links to all the pictures in all their glory (full size):

• Stone House 1
• Stone House 2
• Stone House 3
• Stone House 4
• Stone House 5
• Stone House 6
• Stone House 7
• Stone House 8
• Stone House 9
• Stone House 10
• Stone House 11
• Stone House 12
• Stone House 13
• Stone House 14
• Stone House 15
• Stone House 16
• Stone House 17
• Stone House 18
• Stone House 19

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Help?
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I had a great time at the Geek Dinner at Mendy's. I took the bus, which came late, to Times Square. From there I speed-walked a heck of a long way to Mendy's (I arrived at 7:15), where I passed three long tables which were all full of geeks and sat down at a smaller one with other late-comers. During the meal, people stayed seated and talked. I even added some things to the conversations! I had brought my tablet and decided to take note of some of the things dicussed. Discussion topics at my table included

• Iraq, the war, and Bush
• Dave Winer and Weblogs.com
• Atom and RSS
• Blogging in general
• Google, the possibility of Google indexing all real-time information and keeping it updated vs. Google linking to more specialized sites that had that real-time info

Buzz Brugerman from ActiveWords came by and spoke to people about ActiveWords, a program that allows you to start programs and do all sorts of things just by typing a command you configure and hitting space twice, no matter where on the desktop you are. Try the 60 day demo on the site. I think its worth the money for people who use their computers very often for many things. I love it.I got to speak to Peter and Monica about tablets and tablets in education, SPOT watches, and marketing. I had a great time talking to you guys, thanks for it all!

Much more to come tomorrow hopefully. I'm so glad I went!
SCOBLE IS AWESOME for organizing it ;-P
Jules

I like Robert Scoble's idea of direct communication through blogs, so, assuming I show up on Feedster, he may actually find me, which would be awesome. Lately, he seems to have been searching for people who are joining his "un-fan club" by searching for "I hate Scoble." So, to attract attention...

I hate Scoble.
I hate Scoble.
I hate Scoble.
I hate Scoble.
I hate Scoble.

Well, not at all, really. In fact, I very much admire Mr. Scoble (I feel like I should address him as "Mr. Scoble" possibly because i admire him and am but an insignificant 16-year-old ;-) ). He is definitely one of my geek idols, as are pt (Mr. Phillip Torrone) and Mr. Peter Rysavy, to name a few.

Why do I like Scoble? Because he is interesting, to put it simply. As my interests in blogs and blogging as well as in computers and programming have grown lately, ha has been there, feeding me good stuff on my feed reader. In fact, because of one of his posts, I was able to get a free copy of VB.Net from Microsoft for reviewing 5 instructional videos about using VB.Net. I now use VB.Net rather than VB6 for fun (more on my current project later) because I like it more, but for school, I will have to comtinue to use VB6.

I really would like to meet Mr. Scoble. I don't know if I would really be accepted at one of the Geek Dinners because while I am really interested in the stuff they talk, I wouldn't have much to contribute. Even so, I would try to make it to this one because it's in New York City (close to where I live) and even Mr. Rysavy is coming, but unfortunately, I can't make it because

• I am near broke and can't really go to restaurants at the moment (That status should change soon, when I get a job this summer...).


• I can't really get a ride (though I could take the bus and such).


• I am going to help out at the Fort Lee Film Commission shows on Wednesdays with my fellow film-loving friend, Zack.

I hope I get another chance to meet these awesome people though!

And now, a sort of disclaimer (as if I cared what you think): I like Microsoft and *nix/OSS equally (I don't know too much about Apple, but from what I understand, it's super-simplified *nix) and use both. I admire each for its strong points and look forwards to a day when OSS fundamentalists will stop being so darned stubborn with rediculous "Microsoft is evil" and such junk. It's an OS. They all have their strong points. Just learn to respect things for their strengths and understand that not everything can be perfect. I mention only OSS fundies because I haven't heard of any comparable MS supporters (but if they exist, the same applies to them), although Apple fundies can be very similar. For more on this, see this post.

Update: I may actually be able to go!

Free very good graphics program: Expression.
And everyone loves free!

In the Beginning, There was the Command Line (Thanks to Jon for the link).
Wow, nicely written and very interesting, reminding me why Neal Stephenson is quite possibly my favorite writer.
If you are interested by computers, language, religion, viral spreading, ancient Sumeria, and a whole lot of other things that he manages to weave together beautifully, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you check out Snow Crash. Also by him and also amazing is The Diamond Age. I have read these two and recommend them, but have yet to read Cryptonomicon, his third book (and I hear he has/will soon have another one out) which I heard good things about.

Here' a new blog that I'm adding to my RSS reader:
SensoryImpact, a very cool, slightly geeky (for non-geeks out there), design and goodies blog.
Can ya dig it?

A black hole was heard...
See the article here... (Thanks to Jon for this one)

Yes, that's right, the clip (http://64.224.245.33/) found here (http://64.227.92.28/) is a virus. An ideavirus, I mean. It won't harm your computer, it is a virus because it is designed to lure people into passing it on. In fact, as far as I know and have read on other bogs, its all fake, and apparently a teaser for a new movie that will come out this August called September Tapes. Note the cute attempt at a mysterious storyline, the fact that the site and video don't have domain names, but are hosted at seperate IP addresses, and the fake static edited into the clip. I applaud this virus because i am a sucker for interesting viruses/memes. If you spot any, let me know!
Anyway, on a hunch, I looked at the source of the site (not the one for the movie, the fake, mysterious story one) and found a link to the traffic tracker in a comment. The tracker has more information about hits and referrals if you're interested.
I originally read about this on BoingBoing, and a Technorati search turned up this blog post also. The movie looks like it could either be interesting or terrible.
This reminds me of the early I, Robot trailers, mysterious, not mentioning the name of the movie, but giving subtle hints. Good stuff!
-Jules