Books

June 22, 2015

Hello internet friends!

This is a very pretty photo of a Boeing 777.

Why the sudden Boeing? I just finished reading Skyfaring – the book I mentioned two weeks ago. And now I am looking at aircraft pictures, because nerd.
It’s a good book, though.

Another book that made its rounds on the internet – or at least the part of the internet where I hang around – is Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. I am pretty sure it’s also a good book, there is just one little thing: The Problem with Aziz Ansari Writing a Book About Something He’s Never Done.

That’s all I have for today. Stay safe.

We’re in the hands of engineers.

June 15, 2015

Hello internet friends!

I am sure by now you have read Paul Ford’s “What Is Code”?
If not, you should – it is very well written and covers basically everything about code and software development in 2015 in a way that everybody understands.
Well, probably not everybody but I am sure all of you will have no problems with it.

I didn’t watch Jurassic World, yet – and I am not sure if I really want to. Especially given how much Jurassic Park means to me.
Now you might wonder – what makes Jurassic Park such a damn good movie?

While we’re being nostalgic for the 90s, here is some trivia regarding the title song of Friends.
(Have fun trying to get song unstuck from your brain now.)

I’m switching my diet to sauerkraut and kimchi now – I’ll be smelly but at least I won’t care? I’m sure that’s how it works.

Have a good week!

Ho-Ho-Ho

June 9, 2015

Hello internet friends!

What a nice, beautiful Monday it is!
Oh, wait. Never mind.

It’s very Snowfall-y, but nonetheless a very compelling read on the beauty of flying: In Flight – en route from London to Tokyo, a pilot’s-eye view of life in the sky.
It’s taken from a book that I have moved very high on my “to read” list.

(Snowfall-y? Well.)

It’s summer and that means it’s a good time for rum-based drinks. While enjoying one of those, it might be interesting to learn a bit about the geopolitics of rum.

And once you’re nicely drunk, you might be in the mood for some pretty weird and often weirdly pretty television. So why not give Sense8 a try? Many critics seemed to be on the meh side of things but I found one who pretty much agrees with me.
And as we all know, that’s the most important quality in a review, right?

Have a good week!

Reading Material

June 1, 2015

Hello internet friends!

It’s not even 11am when I write this and I could already do with a weekend.
Good god.

Imagine yourself in the back of a car. Now imagine yourself reading or playing around on your phone. Does this make you feel slightly queasy? Maybe you’re one of those people who have certain stomach issues in these situations.
Now imagine driverless cars.

Did you hear? Eating chocolate is the way to weight loss.
At least according to my watch, this must be true.

Lego puts a lot of work into hiding dongs.

If you find the time to do it, take a nap. It’s really nice.

Pentecost

May 25, 2015

Hello internet friends!

My Apple Watch (No, I am not going to be all fancy and look up the UTF–8 for the Apple icon. Honestly.) arrived last week pretty much right after I sent the last email. And as I posted to Twitter on Tuesday:

I already developed capital-O opinions.

But I realised pretty soon: this does not matter the least. Because as soon as people notice the watch on my arm, they have all the opinions.
It’s a waste of money, obviously. And a first generation product, ugh! And “Oh, it can tell the time? How innovative.”

It is actually fascinating. I am pretty sure that a Pebble or one of the Android watches would not even remotely create these sometimes pretty passionate reactions.
Oh well. I quite like the watch – it tells the time and it vibrates in a weird way when someone sends me an iMessage.

Remember when the internet went crazy because it was raining spiders somewhere in Australia? Turns out that is actually pretty common and could happen in your area, too!

Sweet dreams.

Humming Bird

May 18, 2015

Hello internet friends,

I’m usually a pretty calm person but when the first thing I see on a Monday morning is an email with the “important” flag, I do feel myself turning big and green.
What’s wrong with these people?

If you need around 12 minutes of emotional hygiene, I have good news for you: out of nowhere a new episode of You Look Nice Today appeared. (This is a good thing.)

Wait, what?
If this is true, it’s pretty bad for everybody involved.

Remember 30 Rock? Of course you do. Now someone got hold of the complaints about it and I am not too sure if these aren’t satire, too.

Given that we take more photos nowadays than ever before, interesting new applications emerge: Using millions of online photos cobbled together, we can now watch history unfold.
This is actually pretty amazing – and a good reason to make sure we have good and robust archival systems and proper licences for these photos.

Eat some fruit and take care.

Upward Mobility

May 11, 2015

Hello internet friends!

I’m back from a week in Berlin and at re:publica ’15 and now have to face reality again. What a bummer.

I did get some valuable in-person feedback to especially this email thing here, so here we go:

  • Yes, I do like it when people reply to these emails. I don’t expect it, but I appreciate it. (It does happen quite regularly, too – thanks a lot for that!)
  • I do have another newsletter, which is more or less automated – it is the links that I posted to my link blog in the last 24 hours in a nicely (I hope) formatted daily email, so you can enjoy the fact that I read a lot of stuff on the internet and maybe find something worth reading. I was told to cross-promote it here, so here you go: if you want, you can subscribe to that email here.
  • Nobody noticed that I actually spend money on a photo of Ariane, The Overexposed Model a few weeks back. You know, the one who is everywhere. I even found her in the U-Bahn in Berlin. She’s been around as well and Mike Aquino at Esquire talked to her a couple of years ago.

Light housekeeping out of the way, here is the story about how Osama bin Laden really died. Maybe. It’s now what I learned from that Homeland episode with another actress.
My gut says that this article is closer to the truth than “the official version” but that sounds pretty ton-foil-hatty and is mostly because the media (hah.) has instilled in me the knowledge, that a story is never quite as neat and clean as it seems and often a lot murkier.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Related, if you understand German, this re:publica talk by Friedemann Karig on the fluidity of truth.

As much as I enjoyed many of the stupid superhero movies lately, I do agree with Sady Doyle here: Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie
Maybe scaling things down a bit would help the whole thing. In fact I do enjoy their TV outings – Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter – quite a bit more than I liked Age of Ultron. (Maybe because I was able to watch those while lounging around in my underwear.)

Now try to get that image out of your head, take care.

Tilt Your Head and See The Duck

May 4, 2015

Hello internet friends!

Dick is abundant and low value.

Glad we cleared that up.
Did this email even reach you or was this enough “strong language” to walk right into the spam filters?

Instant Rap Airhorn is something that exists and I am sure you can find useful ways to incorporate it into your life.

Maybe to lighten up the mood while your place drops out of the sky because the software just shuts down? Your fellow flyers will surely appreciate that lovely gesture.

I am weirdly proud of being a nag-hipster – I told Dominik about the weirdness of the Mercator projection on his wall way before everybody on the internet did.
The reason is obviously the same: it’s an awesome idea, a great execution and we’re all silently angry at ourselves that we don’t have the passion and patience to put that much energy and time into something that cool. The projection complaint is just a smoke bomb. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now is ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!

Have some fruit, take a nap. And why not let me know how you’re doing – any news on your side?

Raised Fist Emoji

April 28, 2015

Hello, internet friends!

I know it is Tuesday, but here we go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Someone famous wrote something about not being famous but having the number of Twitter follower someone famous might have.
Well, okay.

Even though the reviews for the Apple watch are not overly positive – here is the best one, as far as I can tell – gadget envy is slowly growing within me.
Damnit.

This scrappy little email to my internet friends made it to the The Ultimate (Unofficial) TinyLetter Directory – in the category “Assorted Amusing Things” which is perfectly fine for me. Knowing about this directory is a bit scary, though – so many interesting tinyletters to subscribe to…
(When does Google Inbox finally have a category for these kind of emails?)

I pretty much ignored what happened to the poor eggplant emoji but now even Instagram hides it in their search:

[… ]the eggplant emoji is indeed blocked from search because it consistently is used for content that violates their community guidelines.

Well okay.

Take a nap sometimes, you’ve earned it.

Bicycle Ride

April 20, 2015

Hello, internet friends!

Remember how the Swiss police arrested a robot in January for ordering illegal substances and fake passports? (Vol.1 Issue 83)
Well, turns out – the charges have been dropped.
(I mean of course, duh, Switzerland.)

The Internet of Things will soon be upon us! I am sure some of these are parody and/or performance art.

Fun fact: in an attempt to catch up with the unevenly distributed future, I finally managed to see a 3D printer last week. It was an Ultimaker which mostly produced weird strings of hot plastic and a lot of smell.
Maybe the future is still a bit more in the future?
In related news, the original Open Source 3d printing company MakerBot seems to be in trouble. Apparently because of the Osborne Effect.
Stupid comic book movies have infiltrated my brain enough to look at that article’s headline and wonder what the Green Goblin has to do with it. (Then I remembered his name doesn’t have that “e” at the end.)

Oh, and apparently there has been some new space movie trailer. You have probably seen it.

Happy learning,
The Irregularity Team.