Month: November 2008

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of my favorite movies of all time. Because it takes place just before Thanksgiving, around this time of year I’m always particularly nostalgic about the movie.

Last year (I’ve been saving this post for that long!) I came across a great Stuck in the ‘80s article which links to a podcast devoted to the movie (direct link to a streaming MP3).

Also, check out these YouTube links:

• selections from the soundtrack (audio with a slideshow).
• the song I Can Take Anything from the soundtrack (audio only).
• The Dream Academy’s Power To Believe from the soundtrack (audio only).
• One of the best endings to a movie ever (video). Hold on, I think I have something in my eye… ;-p

Happy Thanksgiving!

In case you haven’t figured it out, the image above is part of an alphabetic gallery entitled Garamond Power Line because it is made entirely with letters from the Garamond typeface. Pretty slick…

The Tom’s Hardware “picture story” Where Do Hard Drive Heads Come From? addresses something that always amazed me: how do hard drives work so reliably on such a small scale, all while spinning at >7200 rpm?

The dimensions of the head are impressive. With a width of less than a hundred nanometers and a thickness of about ten, it flies above the platter at a speed of up to 15,000 RPM, at a height that’s the equivalent of 40 atoms. If you start multiplying these infinitesimally small numbers, you begin to get an idea of their significance.
Consider this little comparison: if the read/write head were a Boeing 747, and the hard-disk platter were the surface of the Earth:
– The head would fly at Mach 800
– At less than one centimeter from the ground
– And count every blade of grass
– Making fewer than 10 unrecoverable counting errors in an area equivalent to all of Ireland.

Wow.

The Geek ABCs are a bit macabre, but still pretty funny…

I’m actually pretty excited about the upcoming Star Trek movie by J.J. Abrams. Check out the newest movie trailer here.

Tom’s Essay is a great New York Times article by Suzanne Vega explaining her surprising claim to fame as the “Mother of the MP3.” For those of you that didn’t know, engineers at the Fraunhofer institute used her song Tom’s Diner as a benchmark for tweaking the original MP3 compression algorithms. Pretty cool…

Physorg reports that scientists have managed to turn tequila into diamonds. Yes, you read that right. Apparently tequila’s ratio of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon lies perfectly within the “diamond growth region.” Funky…

The Flickr set Star Wars ABC is awesome. By the way, “P” is for “Porkins”… 🙂

This YouTube video of a heart made out of gears is pretty funky…

10 Very Good Reasons Why You Should Grow a Giant Beard is surreal but funny…