rafitorres

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico - Timbalero A “sense of...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:28:00 -0430

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico - Timbalero

A “sense of place” song.

It is a beautiful thing to see the band play this song to crowds of tens of thousands, and see how a whole stadium suddenly becomes one big salsa dance floor. In fact, you can play this song at any event—a birthday, a party, even a funeral¹—and people will dance to it. It is impossible not to.

—

¹ I’m not making this up. I’ve actually seen people dance to it at a wake.

GPOYW, “2+ hours on hold” edition.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:24:12 -0430

GPOYW, “2+ hours on hold” edition.

"For my third tattoo, I’m going to get an Herve Villechaize talking action figure. He’s a..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:19:45 -0430

“For my third tattoo, I’m going to get an Herve Villechaize talking action figure. He’s a hoot at airports.”

- crustyjuggler72

So this happened. Can’t wait to meet you all!

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:43:12 -0430

So this happened.

Can’t wait to meet you all!

guillee: Next stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shame I won’t be...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:37:26 -0430

guillee:

Next stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shame I won’t be there long enou gh to hang out with rafitorres.

I knew I’d sensed a great disturbance in the force.

Restaurant Efficiency

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:20:04 -0430

Guy in a restaurant notices all waiters carry a spoon in their shirt pocket. He asks his waiter, “why the spoon?”

The waiter responds, “well, some time ago, management hired these efficiency experts who found out customers drop their spoons 73.5% more often than other utensils. This represents about 3 spoons per hour, so if we carry a spoon all the time, we reduce the number of trips to the kitchen, saving 1.5 man-hours per shift.”

Just as the waiter explains this, the guy drops his spoon. “See?” says the waiter, “here’s a replacement spoon, sir.”

The guy is impressed, then he notices all waiters have a little string hanging out their pant zippers. He asks again, “and what’s with the string?”

“Well, the efficiency experts also noticed we could save time in our trips to the bathroom. By tying this string to the end of our penises, we can pee without touching, and since we don’t have to wash our hands, we reduce bathroom break time by 82%.”

Guy says, “that makes sense, but if the string helps you take the penis out, how do you put it back in?”

“Well,” said the waiter, “I don’t know how other waiters do it, but I use the spoon.”

"Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:13:05 -0430

“Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.”

- Schneier on Security: My Reaction to Eric Schmidt (via toldorknown)

The “nothing to hide” argument has been pretty much destroyed for some time now (just read the Daniel Solove essay). Anyone who still brings up this argument is being disingenuous or just plain ignorant. The fact that Google’s Eric Schmidt is bringing it up is worrisome, and I would advise him to read some history regarding the methods used by dictatorships and police states to wield their power. Latin America is a good place to start.

On Favrd, Twitter & Community: Why You Should Be Able to Count the Stars

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:51:20 -0430

On Favrd, Twitter & Community: Why You Should Be Able to Count the Stars:

Kim Gaskins writes about the community that Favrd spawned and what’s next after the site closed. Includes quotes from Dan Wineman and Remiel on the issue of star devaluation, Jon Dascola on the real-life friendships formed, Nick Douglas on the personalities and projects that grew out of it, some of the charitable projects the community supported, and yours truly on the “no webcock” policy.

The Only Joke I Know

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:08:05 -0430

You know, the go-to joke, the one joke you always tell when someone says “tell a joke right now,” and that all your friends are sick of hearing. This is mine:

Guy gets on the bus. Only available seat is next to a little old lady who has a brown paper bag placed on the empty seat.

Guy asks, “excuse me, can I take that seat?”

Lady says, “yes, but be careful with the nuts.”

“There are nuts in that bag?”

“No, needles.”

Thanks so much, Google News, People Magazine and all other media...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:57:00 -0430

Thanks so much, Google News, People Magazine and all other media outlets that apparently don’t know there’s this invention called “DVR” which allows you to watch TV shows one (or many) days after they air. Did you also go around telling people “Hey everybody, Bruce Willis was dead all along!” after the opening weekend of The Sixth Sense? Right.

Unused poster art for Inglorious Basterds (via). Also, Basterds...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:28:00 -0430

Unused poster art for Inglorious Basterds (via).

Also, Basterds comes out on video on Tuesday the 15th!

Gratuitous Paragraph

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:20:00 -0430

(More about my daughter than about me, actually.)

This morning I took my daughter to get an MRI. It’s a long story¹, but the thing is they had to sedate her for it, since she got scared when she first saw the MRI machine. Watching her fall asleep was a bit funny and really weird, since you’re basically watching a 3-year-old drunk person.

“Dad, everything is SOOOOO dizzy.”
“Paula, you should say ‘I feel so dizzy.’”
“Daddy, ha ha! [burp].”

—

¹ Paula is almost 4 years old now, but she started speaking late. Speech therapy over the last year and a half has helped tremendously, to the point where you can’t tell she even had a problem, which is awesome. However, now we need to know how much longer to continue with the therapy program, and one of the things the doctors want to rule out is Apraxia of Speech. This is very unlikely, but we need to make sure, thus the MRI.

danij12: Truly I’m sure Mothra would disagree.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:10:20 -0430

danij12:

Truly

I’m sure Mothra would disagree.

From the crossroads of my doorstep,My eyes they start to fade,As...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:35:03 -0430

From the crossroads of my doorstep,
My eyes they start to fade,
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid.
And I gaze back to the street,
The sidewalk and the sign,
I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind.

—Draco Rosa, One Too Many Mornings

The Star Addiction

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:06:00 -0430

(Yeah, yeah. Here we go with another Favrd post…)

Dean Allen’s more detailed explanation about why he shut down Favrd instantly reminded me of Roger Ebert’s review of a 2002 documentary film called “Comedian.” The film follows Jerry Seinfeld as he goes back to the stand-up comedy circuit after retiring from his insanely successful TV show.

“Why, you might wonder, would a man with untold millions in the bank go on a tour of comedy clubs? What’s in it for him if the people in Cleveland laugh? Why, for that matter, does Jay Leno go to comedy clubs every single week, even after having been called over by Johnny for the ultimate reward? Is it because to walk out on the stage, to risk all, to depend on your nerve and skill, and to possibly ‘die,’ is an addiction?”

The biggest revelation, at least to the eyes of Ebert, is that these comics are often miserable, tortured by their craft, easily depressed by the smallest of mistakes.¹

“It looks to the audience as if stand-up comics walk out on a stage, are funny, walk off, and spend the rest of the time hanging around the bar being envied by wannabes. In fact, we discover, they agonize over ‘a minute,’ ‘five minutes,’ ‘10 minutes,’ on their way to nirvana.”

Sounds familiar? I don’t know about others on the Favrd crowd (though I can guess), but the truth is I’ve frequently agonized over the wording, rhythm and structure of a tweet, sometimes for days (thanks, Birdhouse), before clicking the publish button. Spend fifteen minutes figuring out how to fit the joke into those 140 characters? Typical. And don’t get me started on finding a typo after I published. And then, just as Dean said, I’d go to my Favrd page, eager to see how the tweet did. If it bombed, I’d just get to work on the next one, determined to get a “hit.” Addiction indeed.

I had to learn to curb that at some point—I have a job, after all—so I just had to learn simply not to care that much about the whole thing. To this day, though, getting a “hit” is still, well, a “hit.” I can imagine how others may be much more obsessed than I am—as @tj explained so well—so when I read Dean saying

“Anyway, please don’t take the shut-down as anything other than a shift in my own priorities, manifested in a desire to stop selling crack.”

I just think he knows what’s up.

—

¹ I remember thinking the same thing independently as I watched Last Comic Standing on TV one summer. I was shocked by how some of the best comics were so bitter and humorless off the stage.

Remember those “Internet Yellow Pages” books in the...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:55:06 -0430

Remember those “Internet Yellow Pages” books in the ’90s?

guillee: I finally remembered who rafitorres’ Twitter avatar...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:44:23 -0430

guillee:

I finally remembered who rafitorres’ Twitter avatar reminds me of!

(If you didn’t grow up in Latin America, this won’t make a shred of sense to you. Sorry!)

Mira Guille! No te doy una no más porque mi abuelita tenía un Tumblarity de 2,000.

(Sorry again!)

A tree her size.

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:59:33 -0430

A tree her size.

dianadhevi: “Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:04:04 -0430

dianadhevi:

“Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. […] In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.” I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. […]

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?” My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. […]

The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

- Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Drawings Number One and Two have been permanently etched into my mind ever since I read the book as a child. I used to have these dreams where the elephant would talk to the boa from inside the stomach, and they would have these long conversations about nothing.

Probably the First Mention of AIDS on the Internet

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:55:08 -0430

Probably the First Mention of AIDS on the Internet:

December 20, 1982, on the Usenet group net.singles. This was a few months after the CDC introduced the term “AIDS.”

The link is from Google’s Newsgroups archive. They have a very interesting Usenet timeline with links to the first ever discussions about important events in tech and World history since 1981, years before the World Wide Web even existed.