Wouldn’t be great if you could make your car frown when
someone cuts you off on the freeway? Well if Toyota’s inventors
have their way, you will be able to express your feelings through your
car without the risk of road rage. A car that can smile? It almost
seems reminiscent of the “Love Bug” or KIT from
“Knight Rider” doesn’t it?…
Grok Headline matches for Be nice! That car has feelings too.
An Automobile With Feelings
An Automobile With Feelings07/25/2004 10:34 PM Four inventors working for Toyota in Japan have won a patent for a car
that they say can appear to cry, laugh, wink or just look around.
It's a whole two days
old, but I still hadn't seen this story in The Times about Toyota's
new patent for vehicles, specifically cars, with feelings. By using a
variety of color lights, moving 'eyebrows,' and varying the
ride-height, the inventors aim to not only allow the car to express
itself to its operator -- sad faces with tears for engine problems,
etc. -- but also to allow the car itself to become an extension of the
driver's emotion, signaling to other cars with winks and wags of its
antenna tails. I have a feeling this will take off, if ever, in Japan
first; that is, of course, unless they have a button for permanent
scowling. R
ead - An Automobile With Feelings [NYTimes via Colli
sionDetection]
Afghans Mark 9/11 Anniversary with Mixed Feelings (Reuters)
Afghans Mark 9/11 Anniversary with Mixed Feelings (Reuters)09/11/2004 07:38 AM Reuters - U.S. forces and
their allies in Afghanistan remembered the third anniversary of
the Sept. 11 attacks in somber fashion Saturday, conscious that
the war on terror will be a long one.
Oklahomans' feelings are mixed on Nichols' trial (USATODAY.com)
Oklahomans' feelings are mixed on Nichols' trial (USATODAY.com)05/10/2004 06:04 AM USATODAY.com - Ask Darlene Welch whether the state of Oklahoma should
have put Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols on trial for
murder - even though he is already serving a life sentence in federal
prison - and her response is direct and angry.
Prisoner Trade With Hezbollah Brings Mixed Feelings for Israelis (Los Angeles Times)
Prisoner Trade With Hezbollah Brings Mixed Feelings for Israelis (Los Angeles Times)01/27/2004 10:24 AM Los Angeles Times - JERUSALEM — In a desolate little cemetery
with graves marked only by numbers, Israeli soldiers from a special
rabbinical unit on Monday began digging up the bodies of Lebanese
fighters whose remains are to be repatriated as part of a prisoner
exchange later this week.
nice survey of a nice market....but can u plz tell me of which city this survey is?
Nice ice12/24/2004 12:49 PM Lab-made diamonds are as dazzling as those mined by third-world labor.
This bling may be easier on your conscience -- and your wallet.
Wouldn't It Be Nice?
Wouldn't It Be Nice?02/13/2004 05:21 PM One of the things collectors are always asking about are more
playsets. Friend to Rebelscum and top notch customizer Steve Ceragioli
gives us a glimpse of what 'could be' with his take on the vintage Dagobah
playset from The Empire Strikes Back line. Considering how
nice the upcoming Dagobah wave looks, we feel it's hightime Hasbro
gives serious consideration to a few of these great playsets from the
past.
Another cool thing was seeing Blogcritics.org do a "featured
content of the week" type feature we've done in the past here. Phillip
Winn found eight amazing photos at Flickr, and posted links to
check them out, all available under Creative Commons licenses.
Let's be nice...
Let's be nice...11/19/2003 05:48 PM Tsk, tsk, America. It seems that we may be
collectively having a problem with being nice.
Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down
Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down04/22/2004 10:44 AM There are many reasons I love the Internet, but the fact that weblogs
like
Louise Garston's exist would have to be one of them. "Nice cup of tea
and a sit down" is the Internet hub for cake, tea, and biscuits.
That's it. Period. Simple. It's totally sincere and sweet, and full of
breaking news about which flavor of jam is most popular for
discriminating toast aficionados, newly resurrected teas, and so on.
Sometimes, Louise posts tea-and-biscuit related art, like a portrait
of "Two little old space-alien ladies having a nice sit down." At
present, Louise is pretty worked up about the fact that the "iconic"
biscuit known as Tim Tams have recently become available to UK
consumers, after a long and ardurous struggle. "Tescos sell them now,"
says Louise. "Hooray, you have to tell everyone, they're fantastic!
Enjoy!" Link
nice.
nice.12/19/2004 03:09 PM Lots has been up lately. As mentioned not too long ago, I have taken
up a volunteer job at a...
Whoa, Bob Burnquist, pro skateboarder, has his own organic food
company, selling herbs and reportedly refuses any and all junk food product endorsements.
Pretty cool to see a pro doing something besides his own skateboard
company.
What a Nice Day
What a Nice Day12/16/2002 12:12 PM It is really snowing hard outside. But it's not quite cold enough for
it to accumulate to anything significant. I only wish I had a camera
to capture it, this one, specifically. With U2 playing in the
background, and no real plans for today, it's really a nice morning.
If you've come here from Stonefishspine, welcome. If you haven't,
you're okay too. Over the weekend I spent a lot of time collaborating
(coblogerating?) with G.K. Nelson of Stonefishspine on a new kind of
commenting system to integrate with pMachine, a blogging (Content
Management) system. I'm very happy with the end result. If you'd
like to see it, head over to Stonefishspine and click on one of the
"Comments" link under any entry.
The system uses one part PHP, and two parts DOM-compatible Javascript.
The whole thing only required about four lines of additional code
added to pMachine, on top of its own files, which aren't too large.
If it doesn't work for you, its likely because your web browser has
lack-luster (I've never actually typed that phrase before) support for
the Javascript DOM. So far, GK and I have confirmed that IE6/Win,
Mozilla Win/Mac, and Opera 7 handle the system just fine. IE/Mac
doesn't seem to like it, though; I'm working on it.
From my coding perspective, two things were crucial in designing the
sytem. One, if the user's browser didn't support the Javascript DOM,
they would still be able to comment, via a popup window. For example,
try to comment in Opera 6 and you'll get the standard commenting popup
window which can see the same comments the dynamic version does. This
brings me to the second important point, pMachine compatibility. I
determined early on that if I was going to make the system work
fluidly with pMachine, I would a.) have to do a lot of coding, or b.)
figure out a way to make it work with pMachines existing
infrastructure. In the case of the former, compatibility may have
been lost in the next pMachine release. However, because of how
pMachine is designed, I was able to use the latter approach. Because
of this we were able to complete the project in just over a day and a
half, instead of a week I think it would of taken if I had to make it
interact is pMachines database system, which would of involved talking
to three different tables.
Because of this simple interaction with pMachine, the whole system
would be easily ported to other people's installations of pMachine.
Likely, at some point in the future when all the bugs are worked out,
the entire system will be available to anyone who wants it. I may
even have to enable commenting on my installation of pMachine to take
advantage of the system. :)
Am I too nice?
Am I too nice?02/18/2004 07:33 AM I've been "nice" my whole life, but I need to know when to draw the
line.
Nice knight for it, anyway.
Nice knight for it, anyway.01/07/2004 05:40 PM Sir Tim Berners-Lee. We really don't say it often enough, and with all
due respects to everyone who has contributed to everything to actually
make it work, but, well, thanks, Tim. UPDATE. An outbreak of puns over
at Slashdot's coverage....
I was looking at an old blog entry here when I was surprised to
find my first trackback spam. Free asian rape beastiality being
offered directly from an old post! Then I dug around and sure enough,
there were over 200 spammy trackbacks sent from January 5th through
the 20th.
What's funny about it is that I can see how someone built and
tweaked their spam cannon. On Jan 5, a person started at (probably
using it as an open proxy) 24.247.37.201.up.mi.chartermi.net and sent
a couple test pings of gibberish, then when they realized it worked,
they waited eight hours for me to delete them. When I didn't delete
anything the onslaught began, and over the course of three attacks,
hundreds of old entries advertised all sorts of crap sites.
I read
the recent interview with a link spammer and it sucks that people
stoop to doing anything for a buck. So, instead of worrying about this
any longer or having to check off 200+ delete boxes again, I turned
off trackbacks. See you in hell, mr. jackass seo spammer who will
never read this nor care.
I had attempted to use BitTorrent a couple of times before, but
never spent more than a few minutes with it, not enough to understand
what was going on. Yesterday night though, I gave it a little more
time and some tips from Russ and Matt I could get it going. I had to
adjust some settings, such as the bandwidth allocated for uploads,
which defaulted at 12 KB/sec and immediately started to suck up my
entire upload capability (I set it at 7 KB/sec). I chose a couple of
files (three actually) and let it download overnight. This morning,
things were well on their way, two files done, the remaining one
halfway through. But then it hit me: my transfers are limited!
I have a 4GB transfer limit (as it's common here in
Ireland) on my DSL connection. So now I have downloaded, in one
day, over 1.5 GB of data, and still have 1 GB to go. Then, there's the
uploaded data, which also counts. EEk! By the time the second transfer
is finished I will have spent over 75% of my monthly bandwidth
allotment. With 60% of the month still to go!
Damn. I want to go back to my good old days of DSL in the Bay Area,
where I had a symmetric 768 KB/sec DSL connection, with no transfer
limits, at $40 a month. Okay, that's not realistic. :) But on the
other hand, until transfer limits are removed (or at least raised)
here, I won't be able to do much with BitTorrent. Too bad.
And, btw, this clearly has to have an impact on broadband usage.
Forget about BitTorrent specifically, other types of media transfers
are also quite heavy, and having that sword hanging over your neck
(the sword being whatever they charge per megabyte after you cross the
transfer limit) users will be more likely to treat broadband as a kind
of always-on modem, rather than as true broadband. Ireland is great,
for technology in particular, but it definitely needs some serious
improvements to both infrastructure and access to that infrastructure
(see my post on mobile handset costs yesterday) to be truly
competitive. There's a qualitative jump (both on the supplier and the
consumer side of a market) that happens when connectivity is
pervasive, always-on, fast, and relatively inexpensive, and Ireland
isn't there yet. Here's hoping we won't have to wait much longer.
Hey, Ya... Nice Ringtone!
Hey, Ya... Nice Ringtone!02/18/2004 02:52 PM Long a hot item overseas, mobile ringtones are becoming a moneymaker
in the States.
With Joel out experiencing the Great American Christmas Road Trip,
the news posting responsibility has fallen on me for the day, with our
friend Brian from Kotaku pitching in when he can. I was supposed to be
able to check Joel's email for whatever juicy bits might come to us
through that avenue, but unfortunately it seems I can't, so if you
have any hot news that we need to be aware of (or you just want to
engage in hot man-cyber) please hit me up at ryan [at] this website.
Thanks!
The queen of nice
The queen of nice02/10/2004 06:47 AM What's not to like about Norah Jones' new "Feels Like Home"? Nothing.
Then again, what's there to like?
Medium
Footwear's collection of new shoe designs look pretty cool. They
seem right about midway between skate shoe and hipster shoe to me
(tending towards hip for the sake of being hip), which is what I'm
currently liking in my shoes.
I'd point to my favorite shoe designs, but their assy flash
interface doesn't let me link directly to them.
The joy of a nice knife
The joy of a nice knife12/19/2004 03:21 PM One of the things I realized while working at the restaurant on
Nantucket was how dull my knives were at home. At Fifty-Six everyone's
knives were razor sharp, and it made slicing and dicing nearly
effortless, albeit dangerous. When I got home I got a stone and spent
about an hour sharpening my two knives: an 8" chef's and a 4" paring,
both from Henckels. (I have a few other knives, but I find I never use
them. These two do the trick for all my home cooking needs.) Today's
New York Times looks at knives and the trend for Japanese knives in,
When a Knife Is the Gleam in a Cook's Eye.
There's a whole world of useless kitchen gadgetry out there, junk that
will clutter your cabinets and ultimately make little difference in
the quality of food you cook. But knives are an exception (another
exception: pots/pans). Quality knives make all the prep jobs easier
because they provide more control and cleaner cuts, and they're a
pleasure to use. While they are expensive, they last forever and are a
worthwhile investment. I bought my 8" in 1995 and have used it nearly
every day since. My 4" was purchased in 1998.
As the gentleman says at the end of the Times article, "You know
you've got the right knife when you're getting as much joy from
preparing dinner as you are from eating it."
Nice Ad Tailoring
Nice Ad Tailoring05/21/2004 04:14 AM Saw this on a Russian site and thought it is pretty funny. Picture
below is a poster ad in the...
Nice Spread You Got There
Nice Spread You Got There03/14/2003 02:13 PM J, a painter recently banned from selling work on eBay, is one of the
only artists whose technique includes this step: "I lift my legs up
and spread them open as wide as I can." (03-14)
LOL! What Steven doesn't mention is that gump is
nice.
Nice Jugs, Dad
Nice Jugs, Dad11/11/2003 09:22 AM According to Fathers Who Breastfeed, male breasts also can produce
milk -- which comes in handy for the times mother is unavailable or
father wants to gross out his friends. (11-09)
nice writeup of WWW 2004
nice writeup of WWW 200405/21/2004 02:15 AM still bummed i couldn't make it, but it sounds like some great
research demos Grok Description matches for Be nice! That car has feelings too. GrokA matches for Be nice! That car has feelings too.
Be nice! That car has feelings too.
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