Capn Design

July 2010

This month I posted 9 entries, crafted 69 tweets, listened to 125 songs, watched 41 videos, bookmarked 2 sites, took 258 photos and favorited 34 things.

Tab Candy

This re-imagines tab management using a tool that is part desktop and part Exposé. It’s built for Firefox, is available in a pre-release build and they hope to integrate it into a proper build later.

The Chipophone

“The Chipophone is a homemade 8-bit synthesizer, especially suited for live chiptune playing. It has been built inside an old electronic organ.” The video is worth your time.

Top 21 Points About Our Trip to Japan

Posted July 26, 2010

If you know me in almost any venue outside of this blog, you’re aware I was in Japan for the last couple weeks with Jori. No surprise, the trip was awesome. I’ve got a bunch of blog posts about various aspects of the trip and a ton of photo editing in the works, but here’s a quick rundown (in no particular order).

  • The iPad is the ultimate long-flight gadget. There are very few flights that will outlast the iPad’s battery.
  • How to Train Your Dragon is a fun movie.
  • The most basic of sushi spots in Tokyo is about as good as the best sushi spots in NYC.
  • Baseball in Japan is a ton of fun to watch. The coordinated cheering is impressive, to say the least.
  • It is motherfucking hot there in the summer. Last week, one day in Tokyo it was 101 Fahrenheit without the 90% humidity. It severely limited what we could get done in a day.
  • 3G is available everywhere and getting the cheapest package of international data is worth it ($25 for 20mb), but plan on just using it for maps and email if you want to stay within your limit.
  • The Mori Art Museum was awesome again. One of my favorite museums I’ve ever been to. See the Sensing Nature exhibit if you’ll be in Japan between now and November.
  • Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki was more delicious than the Tokyo version.
  • Kamikochi, in the Japan Alps, was incredibly beautiful.
  • The train ride from Nagoya to Takayama was awesome. Try to sit in the very first car as you can see straight out the front.
  • The Ghibli Museum was great the second time.
  • If you like art or beautiful spaces, pick up Art Space Tokyo before you go.
  • I think I actually lost weight on this trip because we walked so much.
  • The best, and only in my findings, place to get green tea flavored Kit-Kats (yes, they are good) is at Narita Airport. Don’t bother looking around elsewhere.
  • Kyoto’s International Manga Museum was worth a visit, but would be far better if we could read Japanese.
  • Eating at a 545 year-old noodle shop in Kyoto was awesome.
  • Ramen with noodles hand-pulled immediately before consumption is also awesome.
  • Japan is expensive, but the food doesn’t have to be. Lunch and dinner probably averaged out to $13 per person per meal.
  • Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum didn’t blow me away, but it was certainly depressing. It was like Holocaust Museum Lite.
  • People don’t really speak English, but at train stations they speak Train English and at restaurants they speak Food English, so you should be okay. Most hotels have someone who speaks a decent amount of English, especially if you found the place in a guidebook.
  • The country is incredibly homogenous. Walking to the subway in NYC this morning, it was a shock to see such a variety of colors and shapes as people passed me.

I’m sure I’ve got more in me, but I wanted to get out a quick list, lest I procrastinate.

Bill Simmons on Lebron James' Decision

You must read this in the next 10 hours because, after that, Lebron will no longer be a free agent. Here’s my favorite bit.

Red Flag No. 1: Wade and Bosh (who have the same agent, by the way) hired documentary crews to follow them around. As any reality-show junkie knows, if there’s no drama, you have to manufacture it. Well, how could a free-agency documentary (or reality show, or web series, or whatever they do with this footage) have drama if both guys decided where they were going weeks ago? You’d have to center it around Wade’s upcoming divorce, or Bosh struggling to decide whether to stay with his girlfriend or hook up with those gorgeous half-Cuban, half-who-the-hell-knows models that only exist in South Beach. And neither guy would ever do that. So what works? Indecision. Meetings. More meetings. A lot of “agonizing.” If this footage ever sees the light of day, I bet the acting is worse than your average episode of “The Hills.” You wait.

20100708gps.jpg Crossroads

A video from Garvin, who drives around for 9 minutes with 20 GPSes yapping in his ear. According to Garvin, “The video installation ‘crossroads (what to do)’ deals with the influence of others onto one’s own path of life in an abstract way.” [via core77]

Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

As an uninformed non-lifeguard, I found this article enlightening. For instance:

Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

I had no idea. [via @jasonfried]

20100706architecture.jpg Architecture's Modern Marvels

Vanity Fair asked 52 experts to name the most important pieces of architecture since 1980. This is what they chose. [via kottke]

Bonus link: Fast Company shows off the 20 Best New Buildings in L.A.

Fake: Automated Web Testing

For those of us who constantly have to fill out a form to test server-side code or Javascript, this might be a godsend. Watch the video for a quick understanding of what it can do. [via @defunkt]

This is How I'd Want to Find Out my Company Was Acquired

Posted July 1, 2010

Yesterday, woot! announced their acquisition by Amazon in a fantastic blog post. I mean, really fantastic. I shall excerpt several awesome bits now, but please read it all. I implore you.

We think now is the right time to join with Amazon because, quite simply, every company that becomes a subsidiary gets two free downloads until the end of July, and we very much need that new thing with Trent Reznor’s wife on our iPods.

and

[D]on’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk.

Okay, that’s all you get. You have to read the post now.

Update: I forgot about the rapping monkey.

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