P16: Practical Progress

Catskills Twisties Crew :) - Oct 4 ride report

I haven't ridden my motorcycle much this year, but on Saturday I met up with some folks from the Brooklyn Motorcycle Meetup for a long group ride through the Catskills.

12 hours in the saddle! 320 miles on the odometer! We froze our butts off in the morning, but we were rewarded with amazing twisties, and amazing views of just-turning fall foliage. Plus there was a huge BMW rally happening at Hunter Mountain, which we visited briefly.

FYI for celebrity watchers -- I'd swear we saw Tabatha Coffey while we were having lunch at "Sweet Sue's" in Phoenicia, NY. But I'm probably mistaken. :)

Awesome short film! "Food Fight"

I can't stop watching this video, it's brilliant! Thank you John Battelle for pointing this out.

BoingBoing TV: History of war through food

This short film is the work of Stefan Nadelman. See his site for a character cheat-sheet, plus an unabridged version.

Holy smokes, Joost is cool!

This is sorta old news, but new to me:

I've heard about Joost since it was called "The Venice Project". But I've never installed it before now – it required an Intel Mac, and I had a G4 Powerbook.

Well, yesterday I recalled wanting to try Joost, and realized that my recently-procured MBP should run it just fine. Five minutes later I had it installed, running, and...

Woo hoo! They have Adult Swim! :) It's FAST and the UI makes sense. It really feels like a "TV 2.0" experience.

If you need a fix of Sealab 2021 or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I recommend you install Joost, stat!

Awesome TV: "Bullshit" by Penn & Teller

Maybe I'm the last person on the planet to discover this. But, I just found out yesterday that the magicians Penn & Teller have a TV show on Showtime called "Bullshit!"

Links to free episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

"Penn & Teller:Bullshit! aims to debunk an array of metaphysical, supernatural, and popular misconceptions and to apply critical thinking and scientific skepticism to these issues."

Dang, it's been on since 2003? I don't have Showtime so I suppose that's why I missed it. But... still. I've watched two episodes so far, and I've been seriously missing out.

The beauty of this show is its premise. You've got Penn & Teller, a well-known magician duo on TV. What can they talk about? Magicians never give away their secrets, so they don't talk about magic. However, magicians are experts at fooling people.

So they talk about how people get fooled, fleeced, and otherwise scammed. And they show how the scams work. Awesome!