Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

Comfortable torch, surprised pants

From Engrish.com

Canada Day quarter

Canada Day was especially fun this year: at the WWDC party at Apple's campus, I joined a small gang of Canadians in singing "O Canada" as the party was ending. I was named an honorary Canadian for the evening. When they asked me how I knew the words, I said hey, I've been going to hocky games for 35 years.

Meanwhile, in Canada itself, 11-year-old Nick Wooster of B.C. won a national competition with his design for the 2004 Canada Day coin (showing here). Order your Canadian coins from the Royal Canadian Mint.

"stupid dirty girl"

California Education Secretary Richard Riordan told a 6-year-old girl that her name means "stupid dirty girl". Yes, it's bizarre and disturbing. You can watch the video here. The furor is now dying down, but at least one editorial implies that Riordan is a pervert, or worse.

Preserving old recordings

Here is a cool story about local nerds working to digitize old wax and tin cylinder recordings. These recordings are up to 130 years old, and they're being destroyed by the march of time. Using scanning microscopes, smart dudes are plucking high-quality sound from these ancient crumbling recordings. Cool!

For more information, see the scientists' home page here. And check out this amazing restored and noise-reduced recording from 1912.

Bo Logh

It's a blog in Klingon. And you think you're busy.

The Filth

I just finished reading (and re-reading) a rather incredible comic book series (for adults) called The Filth, written by Grant Morrison. It's pretty hard to describe briefly, but here goes: an ordinary guy's life is shattered when he's told he's really a member of a secret agency called The Hand that goes around cleaning up any weird stuff that deviates from the standard way things are or "doesn't belong". Along the way, Morrison fills the comic with one incredible concept after another, including a superintelligent Soviet chimp assassin, a ship the size of a city, a drug-addicted president who meets a horrifyingly bizarre fate, nanotech robots who talk to cancer cells, giant killer sperm, a comic book universe that's used to develop technology for harvesting into the real world, and some of the evilest evil villains you've ever met. Also many other things. Amazing art by Chris Weston. New concepts are thrown out at a dizzying pace that reminded me of a modern, adult version of what Jack Kirby did when he returned to DC in the early 1970s. You have to read it slowly and pay attention.





If you're weird, check it out. Let me know if you want to borrow mine. Reminder: this is for big-minded grown ups. Sex and violence.

Apple WWDC wrap-up

WWDC content was excellent this year. Plenty of new stuff to chew on, including actual SDKs. Bravo, Apple! Now that I'm done schlepping to San Francisco at the crack of dawn every day, my life should return to something more closely approximating normal, whatever that is. Well, one sign of normality is regular posting here about my usual range of pointless yet amusing topics.

Apple? Preannouncing?

From Apple's iMac page:

iMac Availability
Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September. We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.

Bizarre.

And the stock is taking a hit.