Monday, July 20, 2009

Seriously, Microsoft?

I am more than pissed off by these Bing commercials.

The premise is that web searches are no good at restricting their results to what you actually meant. And that's just not true. It hasn't been true for ten years. Get over it!

If search engines were that annoying they wouldn't be so popular. Millions of us would not be using a search-created homepage. Search works great. The only thing pissing me off about search engines now is Bing's marketing campaign.

This is fun, though. http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Friday, July 17, 2009

Garlic Flower


Garlic Flower
Originally uploaded by erink
One of our farm shares two weeks ago included a garlic bulb with a stem attached that was like 5' long. Seriously. Well, at least four feet.

We kept it like that for a few days, because it was cool looking. Then eventually the beau cut the garlic off the bottom and put it on the counter where we keep garlic. But we didn't throw out the stem yet, because, well, it was cool looking.

A few days on, the flower bud at the top started opening. So I recut the stem and put it in a little vase. (The stem is down to about 3' now.)

The flower is only about as big as a quarter.

Our other farm share has been giving us garlic scapes, which are just the stem part. You can use them in salads and eggs and stuff, they're garlic-flavored and a bit more dense than green onions. But now I'm thinking maybe we should make them all into flowers.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Tiny Spiders


Tiny Spiders
Originally uploaded by erink
Something new turned up in the window box this morning.

They look like spiders, but I'm not sure. They might not have enough legs.

I kind of prefer them to the really big caterpillars that ate the petunias the last few seasons, and they're better than the ragweed that started growing in one of the other boxes. As long as I have window screens. Anyway, they didn't stay long.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Vive La Tour (or Cyclists Are Crazy Too)

Obsessively watching the Tour de France again. Here's a story from Stage 9 (Sunday).

Stage 9 was the last in the Pyrenees. There's a big HC (unclassifiable) climb, a peak named Tourmalet, about 3/4 of the way through the course. The descent just after the summit is a little tricky, down a narrow twisty mountain road. The riders went over in a few groups, two guys in the front, and then a group of 7 or 10 guys, and then the peloton (main field), followed by about half the race, who couldn't keep up on the climb, in variously sized groups of stragglers.

By the way, you might not want to be eating when you scroll down. I'm just saying.

Laurens ten Dam is a dutch rider who went over the summit with the second group. Apparently, he crashed like hell just after that. The TV didn't have video of the crash, but it looked like it must have been pretty impressive. This is what ten Dam looked like when he got back on the course:

This is a screen grab from a video I found on YouTube (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeU2HlDZFA) but I think you can still see the dirt and the fact that his jersey is shredded. He's also ripped up his left elbow and knee.

See, in the Tour, you don't get an injury time out. If you can't finish the stage, you're done. You go home. If you finish too slow, you're done. So you just have to go. In one early stage I saw a guy crash and ride the last 20 miles anyway with a broken wrist. Oh, my mistake - the TV just did a recap of injuries and it was Robert Gesink, and he actually rode 75 kilometers (46 miles) with a broken wrist. Right now I'm watching Kurt-Asle Arvesen, who's been grimacing and riding slow since a crash about 10 km earlier, hanging on to the doctor's car trying to decide if there's anything he can do to finish the last 40 km.

Actually ten Dam's crash probably wasn't very bad. It looks like he hit dirt pretty quickly, which is better than pavement, and he slid on his back a lot, which is better than sliding on your arms and legs. Oh, and though he didn't catch up to his breakaway group he rode the rest of the stage with the peloton no problem.

So here's the fun part. Laurens ten Dam is on Twitter.

Twitter is actually a great thing when it comes to connecting to "famous" people - or at least people with an inside view of things you see on TV. I follow two Mythbusters, NHL staff, some NHL players, Penn and Teller (he's actually quite chatty), and a bunch of pro cyclists. Especially for cycling, where there isn't a big US media presence, there isn't a lot of pressure for them to watch what they say. I mean, they do, of course, they're professionals, but also you get a lot of visibility into their lives. Like what they ate for dinner, problems with hotels and non-air-conditioned buses, and pictures of Levi Leipheimer in fluffy slippers.

Here's the photo Laurens ten Dam posted after Stage 9.

This is what you call "road rash." He also posted that the team doctor had to go shopping for more supplies.

Apparently the worst part of an injury like this is when you go to sleep, and you wake up and the sheets are stuck to you. Because, you know, your skin tends to ooze when it's like this.

So, road cyclists are officially crazy in my book too.

And you can read all about it on Twitter.

Vive la Tour.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Cow and Girls


Cow and Girls
Originally uploaded by erink
Was it "take your daughter to your underpaying, degrading work day"?

Friday, July 10, 2009

Bicycle Bell Ringtone

Found this in the Bike Pittsburgh blog. A local artist has been collecting sounds and publishing them as ringtones (for free!). She included this bike bell from one of the Bike Pittsburgh organizers.

http://www.locallytoned.org/tone/93

The bell, by the way, is wicked cool. Erok says he got it at Free Ride.

Bike Pittsburgh: http://bike-pgh.org/