September « 2006 « Eric Faller

28Sep/063

Napkin Backs

In a comment on a previous post, Paul expressed confusion about whether napkins have backs. So at lunch today we took the following pictures in order to demonstrate the differences:

Napkin Front

Front side of a napkin

Napkin Back

Back side of a napkin (for doing calculations)

Filed under: General, Humor 3 Comments

18Sep/068

Ever go to Wikipedia to look up "one thing" and then wake up two hours later wondering where the time went? This just happened to me. I checked and I started on Hercules and ended up on Magic Carpet Ride with 27 pages in between.

As a fun challenge I tried to find the smallest number of links between those two articles. The best I could do was 5°:

So the challenge for you is: can you do it in less than 5 jumps between articles? (obviously without editing any of the pages to make your own links and things like that)

Or just post your own pair of random articles and your minimum number of links.

Filed under: General, Random 8 Comments

16Sep/060

Weird Google searches

So, after 3 months of running Google Analytics I've had 1174 visits and 2050 page views for a total of 1.75 pages/visit (this doesn't count RSS hits).

The things I find most interesting are the 497 different Google queries that have led people to my site. It's good to see that my name and variations on it are the top hits, but there's quite a "Long Tail" of other random Google searches. Most of them have something to do with my previous posts, but some of them are completely random queries that happened to hit words from multiple different posts (and comments). Here are some of my favorites:

defeating evil genies
sugar momma w4m
how to build knd weapon
lego store in stanford mall
how to build a lego ipod case
pcb designer blog
most difficult lego kit
faller car system video
fixing jetta airbags
loyalty and membership card programming

Here's the full list: link

Filed under: General, Random, Website No Comments

5Sep/06Off

Eames lounge chair

This is the "Eames classic" lounge chair. Introduced in the 50's, it's become a bit of a bit of an icon of American modern(ist) furniture design. It's featured in NY's Museum of Modern Art, and more notably (for some generations) it was a centerpiece in Frasier Crane's apartment. If you've seen one of my shirts, you know I want one:

The only problem is that it's a designer chair sold by Herman Miller, so it's naturally quite expensive. I've always been unable to convince myself to buy one, afraid of it becoming my own personal Rubicon on the way to a life of lavish decadence. Do I really want to become a person who spends $2000 on a designer chair? Perhaps that's the wrong way to think about it though: I don't necessarily want to become that kind of person, but I do want to have a nice, comfortable chair. Where does one draw the line between appreciation for the finer things and conspicuous consumption? I'm not exactly sure..

Right now I have an IKEA Poäng, which has become increasingly uncomfortable with its velcro-on polyester pad and rigid wooden armrests, especially for long periods of reading. So I've been giving the Eames some thought again recently, considering I might have some bonus money left after paying off my car loan (something I was planning to do a long time ago, but I kept buying too many toys). It's very tempting. Must.. resist..

Frasier Eames