NJS[BLOG]

A new way to interact with fiction from Jonathan M. Guberman on Vimeo.

Okay, this is officially the best use of an Arduino board to date.  In case you are unsure of what’s going on in the video, you are seeing a typewriter being used to create the text of Zork, my favorite text-based adventure game from the 80s. What a delightful mix of old and slightly less-old via the entirely new.

(Thanks, Engadget!)

Does anyone else think this exceptionally well-shot ad for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas looks like it could be a promotion for the next vampire hotel visited on True Blood?

Random student talking to her mom on the way to my car today:

So, if you pay the lawyer $5,000, does that mean you can take all of dad’s money? I mean, as long as you can get the $5,000 back, it seems worth it!

The reason I love cars is because, to me, they are like rolling sculpture. Automotive design has always been captivating: as a kid, I could spend hours drawing cars and could identify them just by the appearance of the headlights or curve of the windshield when out on the road with my parents. I learned to recognize manufacturer logos very early on and always wondered where they came from and how they might evolve. Jalopnik‘s feature on these shiny ornaments was a delightful Sunday find indeed!

New-old coworker, Hannah, just sent me this über cool video of a Czech clock tower being brought back to its former glory in Prague. Wouldn’t it be cool to try this with any number of historic buildings in small towns across the country? I can imagine this being an outstanding history project – just wonder how difficult it would be to actually pull off?

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

You may remember my email address of mysteries and the eventual contact with at least one of my “emailnick” variants. Well, I’ve heard again from the land down under, this time intentionally:

Dear Nick Smerker,

Loved your blog, & was crying with laughter. Sorry if you thought my last communication was “harsh”, but I thought it must have been very annoying for you that I did not know my son’s email address, probably because he lives downstairs, so naturally we use “speech” as our communication tool….very old fashioned I know.

Just thought you would like to know what one of your brothers is up to. I do hate ending a sentence with a preposition!! Almost as much as I hate the overuse of exclamation marks!!!!!!!
I am not the Judy Fogarty in Canberra, just a retired Physical Therapist living in Sydney. So the mystery continues……

Hope your real estate deals in Maitland work out.

All the best,

Judy (Furey) Fogarty

How fun! I thought I’d write back, since Judy sounds incredibly sweet:

Judy,

I’m glad you enjoyed my mystery chronicle on the blog!  I hope you didn’t misinterpret my message – I thought I was being to harsh to you! I think that, honestly, Google must be misrouting messages to my account and I am concerned that other versions of “me” aren’t getting important messages.  Lately, I’ve been getting messages intended for a variation of emailnick in the UK (a gmail.co.uk address.) So far, I’ve gotten order confirmations for play.co.uk and some other sites. *sigh*

Haha.  I also hate ending with a preposition, so perhaps there is at least some electronic genetic similarity with my other mother.

I’m glad to hear you are doing well.  I still think your son’s business (Rich) sounds fascinating and is remarkably similar to the work I do here in the States.  No more emails telling me about Maitland properties, but if I’m ever in Australia, I will have to look you guys up.

Keep in touch – it’s kind of fun to have a pen pal!

Best,

Nick

The Russians realize what a real problem looks like and how to devise a smart solution. The problem: yetis are fighting with bears, causing fear that hibernation patterns will be disrupted, leading to bear visitations in neighboring towns. The solution: feed the bears!

The director of the International Center for Hominology Igor Burtsev assures that yetis leave traces of their stay in the taiga and fight with local bears: “They make strange pyramidal constructions of trunks and branches in the wood – sometimes 3 or 4 meters, sometimes only 30 cm high. Sometimes they bend huge trees and twist their trunks like wheels. A human being is just not strong enough for that, and there seems to be no need for bears to do this. At first, we thought that yetis do this to make shelters, but then we came to the conclusion that this is a sort of landmark for them” . . . If this “war” between yetis and bears continues, there is a risk that bears will not sleep this winter because of a shortage of food, instead going to villages in search of something to eat. To prevent this, the region’s authorities plan to organize bear feeding.

It’s exceptional to know that the sasquatch is just a fact of life in Siberia.  Bigfoot awareness is making strides around the world!

(io9)