Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Fool’s World Map

    Via Boing Boing tonight comes the Fool’s World Map. Brilliant.

    This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool.

     

    One day, a Texan asked me a question when I lived in U.S…

     

    The question was “How many hours does it take to go to Japan by car?”. (true story)

     

    He didn’t know where Japan is, and even bofore that, he didn’t know that Japan is an island. And then, I thought. “What kind of world map is pictured in his mind?”

     

    This was a beginning to think that it might be fun to gather those mixed up recognitions of countries and visualize it as a world map imagined by the fools in the world.

    I love the map, although it’s kind of depressing how dumb the world seems to be in general…

  • Bits and pieces

    Odds and end, bits and pieces tonight.

    Looks like the Bulletin article won’t be appearing Friday (tomorrow). Nobody knows when for sure. I’ll post here when I find out.

    Interestingly, the guy who interviewed us for the story on blogs now has a blog: Drunk with Ink. Cool!

    Tonight on a whim I set up my old Sega Genesis game system, and introduced the kids to it. They seem quite taken with Sonic the Hedgehog, although they really can’t work the controls very well.

  • Interview photos

    Following up on my interview for the Bulletin last week, today I went over to the Bulletin building to have my photo taken for the article. Actually, it was myself, Jake, and Chris from monkeyinabox all there for photos.

    Very interesting. The photographer took a bunch of pictures of each of us, then put us together in several ways; I’m very curious to see how they turn out. It was certainly a new experience for me—not that big a deal, really, but still kind of cool.

    I’m told this article should be appearing in the Friday edition of the Bulletin. Stay tuned!

  • Lightning

    We’re currently having an impressive lightning storm here in Bend, one like I haven’t seen around here in a long time. I went out on the porch to watch it for a few minutes; I guess I’m easily impressed when Nature decides to put on a show. :)

  • Quota Woes

    The Deschutes County Sheriff just can’t catch a break. Not only are they dealing with some eyebrow-raising issues dealing with their budget and money, which I blogged about here, but now they’re awash in controversy over the establishment of quotas (“don’t call them quotas”).

    Jake has already written about this twice, here and here. And of course, since the story broke on Bend.com—and continues to unfold—here’s the links to the relevant articles:

    I’m not as bothered by this as I was by the “found money” deal, but some people are. (You know who you are! *heh*) Hey, it’s what passes for drama here in the High Desert.

  • Blue Moon

    One for the weekend: tomorrow, July 31, (er, rather, today now I guess) is a blue moon. One definition of it, anyway. Enjoy!

  • Weekend off

    My wife and I are heading up to Portland for the weekend, and will be back Sunday sometime. Needless to say, I’ll be taking the weekend off from blogging (even though I’ll probably be online Sunday night; we’ll see). Have a good weekend!

  • Silverado

    I just got caught up in watching the last hour and a half of Silverado on TV, what a great movie. One of the first westerns I remember seeing that actually felt like what is must have been like in that era. Plus, it’s just a fun movie. With an all-star cast that holds up, too: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, John Cleese, Brian Dennehy, Rosanna Arquette, Jeff Goldblum, Jeff Fahey, Linda Hunt.

  • Interview

    I was interviewed today by a reporter writing a story on local bloggers for the Bulletin. Very interesting, kind of cool. I’m not sure what will come of it other than myself sitting there yammering on semi-coherently, but the article will apparently be published next Thursday. I’ll have to pick up the paper to see.

    And, the guy is interested in talking to as many bloggers as possible. Email me if you’re interested.

    In other related news, Jake has an angry letter to the Bulletin on his site. That rant kind of spun out of this local story situation. Worth a read.

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Jeez, it looks like I’ve taken a blog sabbatical around here. July must be that kind of month. Anyway…

    So, probably against my better judgement, I read The Da Vinci Code over the last week. (My parents loaned it to me.) It wasn’t nearly as earth-shattering as some people would have you believe (especially since I already read the source material, Holy Blood, Holy Grail a number of years ago), but overall I found it mostly, well, amateurish—poorly written.

    I mean, the writing just doesn’t follow the rules for good writing. Things like showing versus telling, dialogue, triangulation, stuff like that. It’s distracting, sloppy. And yet—and yet—this book is a huge bestseller. Huge. So what’s the formula?

    Short chapters that are quick and easy to read, keeping the pages turning. Characters that are easily identifiable. Chase scenes. And of course, a conspiracy, everybody loves a conspiracy. Especially one with a lot of religious iconographic mystery behind it.

    I don’t know if this points more to the state of bestselling fiction today or to the level of the average reader. But on the bright side, it should give hope to all aspiring writes of bestsellers out there.