Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Globe

    Today at work my friend Kerry and I were talking about geography and globes, which was prompted by the Yahooligans Where in the World is? game (where you see if you know your world geography), and came up with what I think would be the perfect globe: an interactive one whose outer surface is a touch-sensitive LCD screen that has all the details projected onto it from the inside. Think about it: it’s basically a spherical computer screen, so it could always be up-to-date with new political country borders—download new data to it via a USB connection to your computer—and facts about each country; a touch-sensitive surface means you could simply poke a country to get information about it, or play games on it (find the country); it could be custom color-coded; it could be animated; you could even load other planets onto it, say Mars, Jupiter, or even a fictional one. It would have to be programmable, of course, so hackers could customize the hell out of it.

    A cursory search online reveals this: The Explorer Globe from LeapFrog. It’s similar to what I’m thinking:

    Touch the interactive pen any place on this interactive, talking atlas and learn thousands of amazing facts. Compare population and land area between say Dundee, Scotland and Oaxaca, Mexico. Find out flying times between Lubbock, Texas and Kyoto, Japan. Learn fascinating facts about continents, countries, capitals, music, currency, highest points and so much more.

    There is also a “Eureka” game mode that prompts players to find geographic points of interest (giving hints along the way) before time runs out. Up to four players can play six multi-level games with this very chatty, very challenging atlas. And it isn’t just for kids either. Everyone will have fun testing their knowledge of geography and exploring the world.

    Sounds cool. Sadly, I’m pretty sure technology isn’t advanced enough yet to come up with my perfect globe. When it is, though, I want royalties.

  • How it should be done

    I got this really nice comment on my restaurant post last month, where I reviewed Zydeco, Anthony’s and Mercury Diner here in Bend:

    We just wanted to say Thank You! to Jon & Andrew. Thanks for your great reviews of our restaurant. We’re glad to hear you’ve enjoyed your experiences with us and that you’re excited about passing on some input to future guests. We look forward to seeing you at ZYDECO kitchen & cocktails again soon.

    Sincerely,
    Christy & Robert Kabakoff and Steve Helt

    That is one of the reasons why Zydeco is a great restaurant, and it shows that the owners are smart and web-savvy to Google themselves and aren’t afraid to join the conversation. Contrast that to Shannon and Simone‘s poor experience with Kanpai.

    Not hard to figure out why I’ll go back to Zydeco in a heartbeat but won’t bother trying Kanpai.

  • Shannon’s bad dining experience

    Shannon had a bad experience at a new sushi restaurant in town, Kanpai. Now she wants to be the number one result on Google for Kanpai Bend, so I thought I’d oblige and try to help her out. Although at this moment, she’s already the number two result, so it shouldn’t take much.

  • Superman is a dick

    Appropriate humor for April Fool’s, but it’s a real site: Superman is a Dick. Yes, those are actual covers from various Superman comics; the comments below each are the best part.

  • Now with categories!

    Maybe some have noticed this, but I finally got around to making my weblog archives by category publicly viewable; you can view the summary list here. Yes, that’s a lot of categories; I model my system after The Open Directory Project‘s. And no, I don’t have all my weblog entries there; there’s a bunch that I made before I started categorizing. The list will grow as I assign the old stuff.

    And you’re not seeing the true hierarchy like ODP does, for simplicity’s sake I’m just showing the final category each entry sits in. And I tend to multi-categorize, too, so posts may show up under several. Anyway, it’s a whole new way to datamine my site. Enjoy.

  • Okay, here’s my update

    I’ve been sick all week. Starting last Thursday, in fact. The weird thing is I never get sick like this. It’s very odd. Started out like I was coming down with the flu or something, joints and muscles all achy, pressure in the head building up intolerably. That was last Thursday, so Friday I spent about an hour and a half at work and then came home and slept (also something I never do).

    Over the weekend it moved into a head/lung cold. Like a sinus infection, so while my nose didn’t run much like a headcold would, the pressure in my sinuses was such that rolling my eyes too much in their sockets would hurt. And I had a deep cough, so that my lungs hurt when I coughed but not much of anything would come up—not a wet cough, though occasionally I’d cough up some phlegm.

    This week it’s lessened, but I’m still low on energy and fighting it. The pressure in my head is pretty much gone but I still have a cough, wetter now and I cough junk up.

    Sleeping fine for the most part; I’ve been taking aspirin before bed (tried some fake Sudafed Sunday night, but totally didn’t like the way it messed up my sleep and dreams). I’ve seriously considered seeing the doctor several times, and then I start to feel better enough to drop the notion.

    So that’s what’s going on with me.

  • Light posting

    Sorry for the light posting lately. I’ve just been swamped at work and busy with sick kids at home and not really feeling like writing anything. I’m still swamped at work but of course I’m taking a minute to blog this :).

  • Klamath Falls

    In my previous post, a fellow named Kirk wrote in the comments:

    Hi Jon my wife and I will be relocating to the Klamath Falls area soon from the Spokane,Wa area. I have become quite fond of talking with bloggers in the Spokane area and found that there is much information to be learned from them. Not knowing the area very well I was wondering what you could tell us about Klamath Falls and surrounding area.

    Seemed like a good idea for an entry all its own, except for one thing… I don’t really know all that much about Klamath Falls! :)

    Here’s what I do know: It’s a nice area, located in beautiful southern Oregon, though economically worse off than much of the rest of the state. The population is just over 19,000. It’s about 60 miles or so from Ashland (which is my favorite southern Oregon town) and about 20 miles from California. I know that, some time back, they were pushing to make the area a high-tech mecca, even coining the name “Silicon Basin” for this purpose—though I don’t know how it turned out. (Not entirely well, I’d guess.)

    Since Kirk sounds like he’s looking for bloggers, I did a quick search online for some in K Falls. Not many; ORblogs doesn’t have a page for them, and a Google search turned up nothing. Then I figured I’d browse Blogger’s regional blogs, with some luck: Klamath Falls Bloggers, 30 of them. I can’t speak to how current they are, though. What’s up with that? Where are the Klamath bloggers?

    Anyway, Kirk, welcome to Oregon!

  • Addition at five

    My daughter, who’s five, has been learning addition of late. She knows a lot of the single-digit addition, like one plus two, three plus three, like that, but what’s funny is that instead of saying, “One plus two equals three,” she tends to say, “Plus one plus two equals three.” It’s that extra “plus” that prefaces the statement that totally makes me think she’s doing math via Polish notation.

    I know, only a computer geek would get that.

  • Historic photos of Pacific City

    While researching something about Pacific City, Oregon, I came across the Pacific City Oregon Visitor’s Guide which has some links to a bunch of extremely neat historical photographs. I like Pacific City quite a lot, not just because of the Pelican Pub & Brewery, but also because it’s the quintessential small Oregon coast town (like Bandon, another town I really like). And the Dory boats are cool.

    Links to Pacific City history, historic photos, more photos, and historic Dory photos.