Yeah, I know… it’s been a while. As a mea culpa, check out The Evolution of Dance for a good laugh…

Hat tip to Dan: A really funny take-off on Bill Gates’ CES keynote talking about Windows Vista.

With all the blogging, Friendstering (or, if you’re in the know, Orkuting) and other online exhibitionistic tendencies, people seem to be drawn to coming up with new ways of representing themselves. And for those non-Bobcats who read this blog (all two of you): Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Sean manages to point me to yet another way: iTunes Signature Maker.

I had some issues but came up with an interesting mix all the same:

I promise. This one is just too good (painful?) not to share. The geekier among us may or may not have heard of a new technology in disk drives, called perpendicular storage. For the uninitiated, it’s a new way of designing hard drive platters that manages to squeeze even more data on to the platter(s) while reducing the potential of data loss due to the superparamagnetic effect (if the bits are positioned too close together, the charge from a bit could “flip” the charge on a neighboring bit).

Need a little more background? OK good, because that’s the point of this post. For some strange reason Hitachi actually paid someone to produce a little musical Flash number loosely based on the classic Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” cartoon. While I will warn you that it might make you cry, at least you’ll have a better understanding about where the disk drive industry is headed. (Via)

USB floppy drive-based striped RAID. I’d write something, but (a) I’m still laughing and (b) what could I possibly say about this? (Via)

Does anybody (either two of you) also watch the BBC’s Coupling? Easily the funniest relationship comedy I’ve seen. I happened to trip over it late one Sunday night, when KQED (the local PBS affiliate) shows it. Very brilliant take on the sometimes overlapping relationships with 6 friends. I’m re-watching last Sunday’s episode (”Unconditional Sex”) and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the best line of the episode is:

1. “I’m fairly new to mild naughtiness”
2. “[Sex] is like cuddling, only damper”
3. Her: “How many kinds of ‘oh’ noises are there?”
   Him (with complete certainty): “27.”
   Her: “27?”
   Him: “I counted once - I had this long phone call with my mother. My mother only communicates in levels of disappointment.”
4. “It’s the unthinkable - it’s Satan with breasts!”
5. Her: “…We’re supposed to be getting married. I’d like to think the man who I’m going to spend the rest of my life with has a better reason for staying faithful than ‘it might be a trick’.”
   Him: “It wasn’t the only thing, it was just like the…. deterrent.”
   Her: “The deterrent?”
   Him: “Well, yeah, you know, like nuclear weaponry - nobody likes it, but it can help keep the peace!”
   Her: “Steve! You just compared our relationship to the Cold War!”
   Him: “Which may I remind you, really lasted!”
   Her: “So, the nature of the bond between us is in fact the threat of mutually-assured distruction?”
   Him (consoling her, while stroking her arm): “Oh, among many other things…”

So as I’m this close to throwing my Treo across the f’in’ room, what looks to be a really funny movie just came on: Seeing Other People. I’m totally wiped from wrestling with why my Treo has all of a sudden decided not to sync with my PowerBook, so I’m thinking I’m going to turn in instead of staying up and watching it. Definitely looks like a good rental.

For instance, it gives a great example of things not to say during a toast. The particular toast in the movie was for an engagement party, but I’m guessing, it’s equally bad form for a toast for any occasion. Three words: Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

That said, if anyone does manage to slip that into their toast to Sean and his bride-to-be during the reception, you get major bonus points.

Perfectly valid criticism of unnecessary legislation aside, I would’ve hoped the ban that was just repealed in Cape May, NJ prohibiting men over the age of 12 from wearing Speedo-style swimsuits would’ve caught on…

I’m not really into forwarding emails, but I just got this email from my Mom today. There’s a few klunkers in there and it’s a little late for Mother’s Day, but still good for a chuckle:

If you haven’t been checking out the “Random Bits” part hanging out over there on the right side of my blog lately, you might have missed the pointer to Wednesday’s column written by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle, entitled “What’s On Jesus’ iPod?”. If you missed it, go read his column and come back. No worries, I’ll wait.

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has posted an excellent, hilarious and yet insightful translation of Adobe’s FAQ about the Macromedia buyout.

Pardon the smarminess, but while I’m exceptionally entertained by the headline given Apple’s recent announcement on the launch of Tiger, I’m a little disappointed in the complete lack in mentioning this most likely being the very reason behind Microsoft’s actions: Microsoft in PR Push for Longhorn

Really? Is the reason really because they’re trying to build interest before WinHEC? Yeah, there’s always an element of that. Or is it more likely that Apple just days ago setting the date for the launch of Tiger - an operating system about which you cannot read one article without a comparison to Longhorn and its never-ending delays - is what really prompted the push?

Of course, they can always use the 1983 “Teen Beat” photo-spread of Bill Gates that had resurfaced a few months ago to add something new to the non-news that constitutes this new PR push. Or, given the Mac sitting in the background of his office, maybe not.

Browser histories are so useful - I wish I had the equivalent for my brain. There have been so many times I’ve been on tangents in conversations that I’ve completely lost track of what the discussion was originally about so it was useless in trying to return to it if the other person can’t remember either.

Going back to the browser history thing, take this morning. I’ve been wasting about 15 minutes voting on proposed t-shirt designs over at OMG Clothing, a really cool little venture that allows you to submit slogan proposals for t-shirt designs - kinda like CaféPress.com, except with an interactive spin as your submissions get voted on their (free to join) community. Cool idea, but unfortunately they leave the end-design of the shirt to their own designers.

I got so into it, I completely spaced on how I got there, as I wouldn’t exactly refer to myself as a t-shirt aficionado. Backtracking a bit, found it through another cool t-shirt related site, Preshrunk. Again, no particular reason how I ended up there… Oh yeah, I googled “cafe press lorem” because a post on Macintouch about a website featuring a lorem ipsum generator incorrectly mentioned some cool lorem ipsum-related Cafepress items.

Moral of the story? Doing a search for “lorem ipsum” on Cafepress.com yields some pretty lame results. Maybe I should set up a Cafepress account and put some out there. What do you guys think? You think there’s any publishing/graphic design/Cicero geeks out there who would be interested?

Scot’s recent post about cowbells & vibraslaps points to The Cowbell Project, where among other things you can submit songs that could be improved upon by adding some ‘bell. This got me to talking about it with some friends at work and we’re rather curious: Stairway to Heaven?

To those of us out there who either work in the industry or have a serious interest in it, it’s a pretty accepted rule that Patagonia has the best photography for its catalog and website. I personally think it has everything to do with the fact that they have a very open public-submission policy (as opposed to using “professional photographers”). It just seems to me to be not only less expensive, but healthier as well - you keep things looking fresh and you build an enormous amount of goodwill.

Consider the image they’re using for their Winterfest sale (photo by Dan Armstrong):

There’s nothing particularly amazing about the shot (although you have to feel really bad for the guy if it wasn’t 100% candid), but you feel pretty good about the company, no? They’ve got a pretty good sense of humor, while protecting both those guys from the snow and cold, right?