A Good Yarn Improves With Age

In reading my daily dumb quotes calendar this morning I came across a brief story of Engineer Charles Steinmetz.  I’ll quote another site that has done a write up:

Here’s an interesting anecdote, as told by Charles M. Vest, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during commencement on June 4th, 1999. “In the early years of this century, Steinmetz was brought to General Electric’s facilities in Schenectady, New York. GE had encountered a performance problem with one of their huge electrical generators and had been absolutely unable to correct it. Steinmetz, a genius in his understanding of electromagnetic phenomena, was brought in as a consultant – not a very common occurrence in those days, as it would be now. Steinmetz also found the problem difficult to diagnose, but for some days he closeted himself with the generator, its engineering drawings, paper and pencil. At the end of this period, he emerged, confident that he knew how to correct the problem. After he departed, GE’s engineers found a large “X” marked with chalk on the side of the generator casing. There also was a note instructing them to cut the casing open at that location and remove so many turns of wire from the stator. The generator would then function properly. And indeed it did. Steinmetz was asked what his fee would be. Having no idea in the world what was appropriate, he replied with the absolutely unheard of answer that his fee was $1000. Stunned, the GE bureaucracy then required him to submit a formally itemized invoice. They soon received it. It included two items: 1. Marking chalk “X” on side of generator: $1. 2. Knowing where to mark chalk “X”: $999.”

Now other sites have him asking for $10,000, while others have him simply pacing around the machines for a few moments and figuring it out.  I prefer the quoted version because it feels the most real to me.

A nice little story about the value of knowledge.  Note that he lived from 1865 to 1923.

Dr. Horrible – New Media Experience?

Today I stumbled across a mini-movie that was right up my alley – “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog“.  It is a 3 part movie made by the fellow behind Firefly/Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Toy Story and others – Joss Whedon.

It’s a super-hero story from the villain’s perspective.  It contains his usual sense of humour and some great performances by fairly well-known actors.  Oh, and it is a musical, kinda.  Oh, and it is being made free on a website until, well, I don’t know when.  The site says it is until tomorrow, July 20th, midnight.

In any event, it is quite entertaining.

It is also an interesting foray into a new way of delivering media online.  The little FAQ seems to indicate that he wants to “create more with less.”  I’m behind this all the way!

Enjoy!

Happy To See I Wasn’t The Only One

Did you ever get to know Bob Ross?  Did he ever help you experience the Joy of Painting?  Sometimes I miss that man, his warmth and patience, his willingness to explore mistakes as creative input.

I’m happy to see such works as this one that let me know that I wasn’t the only one he touched so deeply.

Sure it is a parody – but they say it is the sincerest form of flattery.

Putting It Succinctly

I love poetry for its ability to capture ideas, thoughts, and ramblings in simple, succinct texts. This minimalist approach to language can result in great thoughts all crammed in to short little quotes, like this one attributed to poet Edward Arlington Robinson:

The world is not a prison house, but a kind of kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”

The Recurring Joke Largely Continues

During his excellent speech at our wedding, Alisa’s father Ron joked about their first impression of me (they being him and Alisa’s brother Rob): “Well – he’s big.” Since then this joke has come up time and again to everyone’ merriment (no sarcasm here – honestly). Large socks at Christmas, that kind of thing.

Well today it came up again when I was looking at my website access logs. One of the more interesting things is looking at what search terms people are using to arrive at my site. When you type something into Google and then click on the result, the site you go to learns what search term you used to find them – just in case you weren’t paranoid enough about your surfing habits already. What’s the connection with large things? Here are the top 10 search terms for July

July’s Top 10 Search Terms for theBside.ca

As an aside, the sonogram stuff I can understand as I posted fairly prolifically about Marley and the sonogram we have of her. The Pete is actually part of a search for “Pete Samples”, a Canadian musician I’ve written about and enjoyed. You can see how an idle mind could find this interesting, and largely amusing.

Bromance – Out Of The Closet At Last

The CBC’s R3TV is a weekly video podcast (sadly known as a vodcast by those who mistakenly believe they are “Hep Cats“) that offers a little insight into the CBC people and a single band every week.

This week’s episode is, frankly, completely hilarious.  Peter Elkas and Joel Plaskett are two Canadian names you’ll be hearing more from in the near future.  They’re going to both be household names if I have anything to do with it.  They’re touring together right now and apparently their friendship has blossomed into a bittersweet “Bromance”.  Not sure what that is?  They’ll even help you open your eyes to the beautiful relationships men can have in today’s liberal world.

It’s The Little Things That Count, Don Corleone

Sometimes it is the little things that count. Take for example the warnings to adults who are considering buying a FurReal Friends Butterscotch Pony at the Entertainment Earth website.

Requires 6 ‘D’ batteries, not included.

Now that’s good to know – you can purchase and plan to buy some batteries ahead of time. Nice touch!

Adults take note: Pony comes unassembled in box with head detatched. You may wish to not open the box around your children if they may be frightened by a box with a decapitated horse inside.

Wow, now that one is an excellent suggestion. Can you imagine the look on your little child’s face when they open the box and find a severed Butterscotch Pony head? And would you be buying this gift for a child that may not be frightened by a box with a decapitated horse head inside?

Flashy Things And Technology Of Olde

I’m no fan of Flash as you may or may not know. However it is almost impossible to consume pop culture sites today without interacting with a Flash site somehow. Well today is a landmark day – I’ve actually found something funny and interesting enough that I’m putting a Flash video link in my post directly. I’ve chosen Google over youtube though they both have the video.

Behold what happens when two geeks get together and think about old technology – stop motion capture. I’ve also never embedded any videos here before so this should be interesting.

In the spirit of hating Flash and the way it makes so much of the web inaccessible, I’m going to share a little secret with you. There exists a “bookmarklet” that allows you to download the .avi file that is played by the Flash player for many Google and youtube videos. Simply follow the instructions and you can view the videos from your own desktop, over and over – all without dipping into proprietary and close-sourced video players!

Finally, I leave you with a link to instructions on how to access the MP3 (audio) files that many Flash sites play so you can enjoy those upon your leisure too.

Hope these are as helpful to you as they are to me – which is to say extremely so.

Animation Short from UI11

Jared Spool started his keynote speech today at the UI11 conference with a 2 minute animation by Alan Becker. Very entertaining. Here’s a link to the video in Flash. It’s called Animator vs. Animation. I wonder who will win….

On an unrelated note I’ve now bought 4 books during the conference …. my suitcase might just have to grow a little bit more to make sure everything gets home.