Day: July 19, 2007

Prokudin-Gorskii Images

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Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a color photographer before his time, who undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire for Tsar Nicholas II. He was able to capture color by taking three pictures of each scene, each with a different red, green or blue color filter. Walter Frankhauser, a photographer contracted by the Library of Congress, manually registered and cleaned up some 120 of the original high-resolution scans, with breathtakingly beautiful results. The results of his effort can be seen at the online-exhibit The Empire That Was Russia.

The Cuckoo’s Egg

Chris 3 Comments

Cliff Stoll’s “The Cuckoo’s Egg” is one of my favorite books. It’s a classic cybersleuthing story based on true events that happened to Cliff who was an astronomer turned system admin at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. It starts off with him discovering a 50 cent hiccup in the accounting software that ends up being a hacker involved with the KGB. The entertaining part of the story is how Cliff tracks the hacker through the early days of the internet. Great read. I knew that it was also made into an episode of NOVA but hadn’t ever seen it until now. (Thank you YouTube)

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101 Greatest Simpsons Quotes

Chris 19 Comments

WOOHOO! Here are a few of my favorites:

Troy McClure: Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about!

Homer: I’m normally not a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman.

Chief Wiggum: Fat Tony is a cancer on this fair city! He is the cancer and I am the…uh…what cures cancer?

Troy McClure: Hi. I’m Troy McClure. You may remember me from such self-help tapes as “Smoke Yourself Thin” and “Get Some Confidence, Stupid!”

Hmmm. They seemed to have forgotten Kent Brockman’s, “And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”, which launched a thousand slashdot comments. This list is null and void without that quote.

Generation Chickenhawk

Chris 8 Comments

Max Blumenthal went to the College Republican National Convention (sounds like one hell of a shindig) and brought his camcorder along for the ride. Some of the highlights include:

  • Max asking the student war supporters why they don’t enlist.
  • Tom Delay claiming if abortion was illegal, we wouldn’t have a problem with immigration. Seriously!
  • The “not gay” student claiming that just because he is attracted to the same sex, doesn’t mean he is gay.

(via Evil Bobby)

Waiter Rant on Late Night Dining Etiquette

Chris 8 Comments

Waiter Rant takes a question about ordering in a restaurant right before closing and dishes out some good advice.

Wes, coming into a restaurant 30-45 minutes before closing is totally cool. It’s the fifteen minutes to three seconds before closing tables that drive me batshit. Don’t get me wrong, waiters understand that customers often can’t get away from their soul sucking/youth thieving/relationship destroying corporate jobs until late in the evening. We understand that some people can only pencil in quality time with their significant others after eleven o’clock. To make life easier for late night diners I’ve compiled a handy list of do’s and don’ts.