Smiling Skepticism :-/ » Short Posts

DIY Ugly Christmas Sweaters

George Mandis — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:29:38 +0000

For Christmas this year my extended family has decided to have an ugly sweater theme. My mother, being the clever person she is, decided to roll her own. I now know where I inherited the frivolously creative gene.

Merry Christmas and enjoy.

Feelings of Confusion

George Mandis — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:27:43 +0000

I love the way Richard Feynman speaks about… Everything.

Here he is talking about confusion.

In Memory of Bombing the Moon

George Mandis — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:00:42 +0000

On October 9th, 2009 we took up arms against our lunar brethren and preemptively attacked the moon. It knows what it did. Its insolence would not stand, thus, we acted.

In a distinctly American act of commemoration, I present to you, a means to immortalize this event through tacky t-shirts and coffee mugs:

F*** THE MOON COFFEE MUG

F*** THE MOON T-SHIRT

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates pentatonic scales

George Mandis — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:52:45 +0000

After having so much fun playing with my “jazz-funk ensemble of doom” last Sunday I was reminded of this video I found earlier in the month. It’s Bobby McFerrin demonstrating the universal appeal of pentatonic scales:

My band has a unique, unspoken way of communicating the direction we want to take the song in when we play, but I’m sure if it’s quite as visually entertaining as Bobby McFerrin jumping around the stage!

My Emperor Gum moth is actually a…

George Mandis — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:59:47 +0000

Photo by Native Orchids

In June I put up a post about how I thought an Emperor Gum moth had found its way from Australia to my parent’s porch in Portland, OR. Lots of people chimed in on the comments from all over the U.S. saying that they too had found moths that looked like this.

So what was the deal here? Are they a relatively common occurrence in the U.S. but somehow not officially documented or recognized as indigenous? Like some kind of expatriate of insect world?

Thanks to Mirranda Haan, who found one of her own and is evidently a better bug researcher than me, there’s a less spectacular but far more likely explanation: these moths aren’t Emperor Gum moths. They’re Antheraea Polyphemus moths, which, to my clearly untrained eye, look almost exactly like Emperor Gum moths.

Norwegian Egg Coffee

George Mandis — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:54:29 +0000

I’m a little bit of coffee aficionado, but maybe less of one than I thought. I roast my own beans and have been looking into getting a vacuum coffee brewer, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of Norwegian Egg Coffee:

Has anyone tried this? I like my eggs and I like my coffee, but I usually keep them separate…

Puppies vs Kittens vs Google

George Mandis — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:26:00 +0000

Google Trends weighs in on the kittens vs puppies debate.

My proposal for Ignite Portland 6

George Mandis — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:20:53 +0000

Ignite Portland is a geeky social event where people get up on stage and give a presentation about something. Anything. The catch? You have literally five minutes to give it and you only have 20 slides at your disposal that will be rotating automatically every 15 seconds. You can watch videos of presentations from previous Ignite Portland events to get an idea of what fun this can be.

The title for my proposal is “How to start a Ponzi Scheme.” If I could do it again, I might have changed it to something like “Start a Ponzi Scheme this summer!” or “How to start a Ponzi Scheme with your friends.” Maybe “Start a Ponzi Scheme profit, fun and potential federal offense?”

The idea came to me about 30 minutes before they were shutting down the form that accepted submissions. It looks like I might have been the last person to get one in!

I’ve started a Kickstarter project

George Mandis — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:45:16 +0000

For some reason it didn’t dawn on me until this morning, but my hand-made guitar picks are a perfect candidate for my first Kickstarter project. I whipped up some videos and even made a video of me demonstrating some of my picks. I’m hoping to raise $350 by June 9th, 2009 to give me the funds to create a big batch of plectrums. We’ll see how it goes!

My Handmade Guitar Pick Project on Kickstarter

Konami-JS: Adding the Konami Code to your site

George Mandis — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:39:13 +0000

UPDATE: Are you here because of Zombie Newsweek?

With the recent attention surrounding ESPN and their use of the Konami Code, I thought it would be fun to make a JavaScript library that allowed everyone to take advantage of this time-honored cheat code:

http://konami-js.googlecode.com

By adding just a few lines to your site, you can set it up so the Konami Code does… Well, pretty much anything! The default behavior is to load a new web page, but if you’re fluent in JavaScript, you can change the konami.code() method to do whatever you want. Checkout some konami-js examples.

Try entering it now: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter