Honorable mentions
Several items, all deserving of more than just a quick link:
Pee-Wee makes a comeback
Paul Reubens, AKA Pee-Wee Herman, was on NPR’s Fresh Air today. The interview coincides with the DVD release of the complete Pee-Wee’s Playhouse collection. At the request of Reubens, the interview stayed far away from the unfortunate movie theater incident in 1991 that put an end to the show as well as his questionable art collection that was seized in 2001 (Reubens explains). What was aired was a fun look into the development of the Pee-Wee Herman character, the show, and a better understanding of Reubens himself.
To say I was (am) a Pee-Wee Herman fan is an understatement. My best friend, Buff, and I religiously watched his show every Saturday morning and went through a period in our childhood where we watched the movie about twice a week. We had all of the best lines memorized, could point out all of the production shortcomings in it, and yet laughed our heads off every time we watched it.
By the time of Reuben’s arrest in 1991, we were starting to outgrow our extreme fascination with Pee-Wee, but it was still a disappointment nonetheless. His TV show was a classic and was cut short of the long life it deserved.
Public Radio on the Web
One of the downfalls of living in Pittsburgh is the lack of an all-news Public Radio station, such as KNOW in Minneapolis. WDUQ does a fine job in the morning and early evenings, but the presence of Jazz the rest of the time has forced me to look elsewhere for informational edification. AM radio here is full of sports talk blowhards and right-wing nuts, both of which I do listen to, occasionally, for laughs.
For the past month, I have been enjoying a public radio station out of Boston, WBUR. I first came across it in the dark days of post-election America when I was looking for coverage of Kerry’s concession speech. It offers free, around-the-clock streaming audio in the three major streaming media formats. The quality of the stream is surprisingly good and the shows it broadcasts are top-notch.
I like the station so much that tonight I set up a $5/month pledge for a year. Even though we’re pretty much dirt-poor right now, this is a worthwhile $60. After all, without it, I would have missed out on hearing Pee-Wee Herman today. And that would have just sucked.
Optical illusion weirdness
This do-it-yourself optical illusion is really amazing. Not believing the video, I downloaded the PDF file and assembled it myself. And, amazingly, it works! The effect of slipping into and out of the illusion is somewhat akin to playing Q*Bert for a long time – at some point, your eyes will cross and everything that was concave is now convex and vice-versa. It’s disorienting but also very cool.
Patterns, patterns, everywhere
Although I haven’t read the book, I am familiar with the ideas of Christopher Alexander, as illustrated in his book A Pattern Language. His ideas inspired Design Patterns in the field of software engineering, and helped other disciplines break down their complex ideas into simpler components.
This website recognizes the networked structure of Alexander’s book and presents it as a series of interconnected pages, allowing one to build up a collection of patterns that can be applied to a specific architectural problem. Although it may be of limited direct applicable use to most, if one is creative with metaphors and abstractions, inspiration may result.
Computer Sweatshops
By the looks of this article, working at Electronic Arts is anything but a good time. 80 hour weeks? Some weeks, I can barely make it through 40.
