Coyote Blog

... people can seek out some pretty amazing spaces to do business.  Not sure OSHA would be hip to this.

Via Carpe Diem
Update: Substituted a video I thought was better.

Here is a rare look at my native habitat, a micro-ecosystem that has mostly been extinguished in the heartless march of human progress.  Where was the Nature Conservancy when you needed them?

Rules of golf modified for war.

I wanted to share my build report on my new home theater speakers.  I built three matching speakers - left, center, right - to go behind my acoustically perforated projection screen.   Because they stay behind the screen, this is perhaps the last time they will ever be seen.  But I wanted to get better at wood-working skills, so I tried to build these as if they were to be visible (but at several steps I could have taken shortcuts which I will describe).

Here are the finished product:

I will put the rest below the fold so as not to bore those not interested.  My apologizes to feed readers, but I think you will see the whole thing.

Continue reading ‘Speaker Build Report’ »

My speakers (L-C-R for a home theater) are complete!  They sound fine on the initial test, though they need to break in for many hours.  Here is how they look (the paint job is actually truck bed liner).  I will post a complete build report when I can get caught up.

Woman waits in line for 41 hours to be first in line for the new iPad, then sells spot in line for $900 which she uses to buy Lady Gaga tickets.

Don't get me wrong - this is not meant to be some conservative rant against the vacuity of the younger generation.  It just strikes me as hitting a really interesting pop culture nexus.

Who knew that this was the key question to ask on a first date.

The simplicity / complexity question is also interesting as a predictor of political views.  I prefer simplicity but apparently must subconsciously seek complexity because that is what I seem to get.  Does that make me libertarian?  A libertarian would argue that both liberals and conservatives act, at least in the political arena, from a deep hatred of complexity, or at least unpredictability.  You can't really love capitalism without being able to accept chaos  (chaos in the sense of "unpredictable, bottom-up, unregulated and uncontrolled," not the more nihilistic Road Warrior connotation).

I thought this map in the National Geographic was cool- it shows the most popular surname in different areas of the country.  I am not sure what geographic divisions they use (why does Texas have so little granularity?).  But it does turn out there are a couple of "Meyer" labels on the chart, which kind of surprised me  -- though they did spell it the right damn way - no "s" on the end, no Mayer, no Myer or other such nonsense ;=)

The "Meyer" in the middle of Iowa is pretty much where my dad's family settled when they came over from Northern Germany.  Though I am confused as to why they show it color-coded as English origin -- I am pretty sure this area is German  (the Meyer over around northern Nebraska and in Wisconsin is coded German).

HT:  Flowing Data

My 16-year-old took the car into the shop today and had his first experience dealing with the repair guy.  I told him that they may call him and tell him he needs some work done on the car, like they will say he needs to have the flux capacitor flushed for $300, and if he was in doubt, call me.  He said fine, but if they tried to sell him laser canons, he was going for it.

I love maps like this one, and a year or two ago I linked an earlier version.  This one is from the Economist via Carpe Diem, and shows the name of the country whose GDP is similar in size to that of the state.

I have to criticize the map-maker, though.  They used Thailand at least four times on this map -- the original version managed to do it without repeats.  But I am amazed that Arizona ranks right there with Thailand.  This is not to diss the rest of the state, which has a lot going for it, but in terms of population and economic activity, a huge percentage in in just one city, Phoenix.

I do have to wonder whether New Mexico being matched up with "Angola" is really very flattering, and pairing Mississippi with Bangladesh is funny on a couple of levels.

Jesse Walker

If you've ever gone browsing in an occult bookstore (and you really should; it's like browsing in a science fiction bookstore, only the authors really believe the stories they're writing, or pretend to)...

I am in the process of building some speakers for my home theater.  This is something I have never done before, but the idea has always intrigued me.  So much so I have actually played around with software and designed a lot of cabinets and crossovers, but never built them.  I am finally going to build an L-C-R for my home theater, and since they go behind my projection screen (the screen is perforated for sound transmission, just like in movie theaters) the pressure to produce flawless cabinetry is reduced significantly.  In fact they will probably be built out of raw MDF finished in black, though I will try to make them look nice just for the practice.

Anyway, one of the reasons I have put off this endeavor is that I do not own a some of the key tools, and do not have the space for these tools.  I have a nice router, belt sander, jig saw, etc.  but I do not have, and really don't have the space for, either a table saw or a drill press.

Which led me to wonder if folks had well-outfitted workshops that they lease out by the hour for such work.  After all, with a good plan in hand, I probably don't need more than an hour on a table saw to get what I need -- most of the project will be in routing the speaker holes and counter sinks, assembly, and sanding/finishing which I can do at home.

Of course, I could not find such a thing.  I could not even find a storage locker that would let me use it as a work shop.  Thinking about this, I am not surprised.   No matter what I get a customer to sign, now matter how well maintained the tools, if someone cuts their hand off using a tool in a stupid and careless way, there is likely going to be a jury somewhere that still wants to assign me liability.

My readers tend to be very nice about rushing to help -- I got about 10 emails offering to help me with my server migrations.  I turned them down because part of the point was to learn to do it myself, and my learning process tends to be by trial and error doing things myself.  Anyway, please do not offer me your shop -- I have found a local community college that allows its shop to be used after one has completed a training and familiarization course (which seems a reasonable precaution).

I am excited about getting started, and am just starting to accumulate the materials.  BTW, in case it becomes relevant to you in the future, a full 4x8 sheet of 3/4-inch MDF is really heavy.

Postscript: I will let you in on my secret ambition.  I really, really want to build a pair of line arrays, as much for their shear bad-ass looks as anything else.  Of course, my wife would freak and I am not sure where they would go in my house, but someday....

OK, I have to call bullsh*t on a certain cultural phenomenon.  At the risk of uttering a blasphemy, I have to say that In and Out Burger is simply not very good.  It seems to be hot among teens, so I get dragged to it from time to time by my kids, but the burgers are just meh and the fries are simply bad.  Among fast food joints, Wendy's is much better and we have a veritable explosion of gourmet burger places here in Phoenix  (a trend I applaud as mightily as I did the craft beer phenomenon) that are all much better.  As a regional phenomenon that builds a cult following as it spreads east, it reminds me of nothing so much as the similar Coors beer craze in the 70's, where easterners used to illegally carry Coors over state lines to bring some back home (e.g. Smokey and the Bandit).  And Coors sucks too.

See brave but under-armed woman around the 0:50 second mark.  And we should all be embarrassed by the shoddy state of handgun skills in this country if this guy is is representative.  The average housewife in turn of the century Arizona could have shot better than this guy.

I usually check out the TeeFury shirt of the day, but must have forgotten when the Serenity Sake ("with just a touch of saffron") shirt was for sale.  Dang.

and this is funny

OK, I am geeky enough to think this is funny too (sorry, my daughter keeps emailing these to me)

A while back, we finally finished reworking our backyard, one of those 3 month projects that eventually threaten to be a multi-generational saga.  We turned our existing pool, with a bit of trickery, into a zero-edge thing, put a dark bottom in it and ended up with a nice effect.  I probably could have posted it upside down and no one would have been able to tell the difference.  The pool design creates a surface like glass.

The tree is an ironwood.  A lot of the more interesting plants will not grow in the desert, but an exception is the native ironwood tree.  We have three now and every one is a work of art.

From the view count (over 3 million), I seem to be the last person to have seen this, but I found this pretty amusing (yeah, I know, I am such a guy). Maybe I need to restart the 100 pushup program.

The Brits are selling an aircraft carrier via an internet auction.

Jeff Wilser via TJIC:

Let's say a man needs to buy a new pair of shoes. Left to his own devices, he would simply buy shoes in bulk, stuffing his closet with fifty identical pairs of sneakers that will last until he dies.

Since I got plantar fasciitis a number of years ago, about the only shoes I can wear without pain are ASICs running shoes.  Since I work for myself, I can get away with wearing whatever the hell I want to work.  Anyway, every few years, I look up the model number of the shoes I like (it changes a bit each year) and order 2 of each color ASICs has, usually 6-8 pair in all.  This tends to last me about 3 years.

Similarly, when I start running low on shirts, every few years I go to a Lacoste or Polo outlet (whichever I find first) and buy about 10 shirts, one of each color I can find.  This usually keeps me out of the stores for years.  For going out, my wife buys me a new Robert Graham shirt for each birthday and Christmas (much more fun than getting a tie) and this satisfies my need for dressier stuff.  Not sure how I buy jeans -- I have a whole pile of identical pairs I bought some time in the distant past that still seem to do the job.

A Marginal Revolution reader asks:

How would you pick a tattoo, if you decided you were going to get one? How would you pick something that your future self is most likely to be glad to have? A favorite piece of art? Follow Leeson's lead and get an economics-related tattoo? Names of family members are off-limits, as are answers like "get a small dot in my armpit that nobody would see."

I could argue that it is impossible to make a political, religious, or personal statement one is 100% sure will still be relevant 30 years hence.  Here is the solution I teach to my kids -- never, ever make a fashion you can't remove (e.g. piercing OK, tattoos not OK).   I have lived through leisure suits and grunge, wide ties and narrow, short skirts and long, tie dye and soft pastels.  Think of tattooing as having a leisure suit permanently bonded to your body.

Some will say this is evading the question, so I will actually provide an answer.  The only thing I might have conceivably chosen to ink my body with at 20 that I could probably still live with today at 48 would be something having to do with my undergrad college (Princeton).   Call it the George Shultz rule.

Hat tip: South Bend Seven

And I will repeat my best ever Halloween Pumpkin:

(click on pictures for larger view)

This guy thinks he has found evidence of time travel, in the form of a person talking on a cell-phone-like device caught on film in 1928. But wouldn't having a cell phone in 1928 be like having the first fax machine?

via How to Be a Retronaut

"American company Fiberglass Freaks is producing officially licensed, road-legal 1966 Batmobiles. And yes, the flamethrower works.Each car costs $149,999 (£95,000), takes six months to build and features an array of working gadgets, including a red flashing beacon, a radar screen called "˜Detect-a-scope', a retractable, gold-coloured "˜Batbeam' and a dashboard DVD player.

More pictures at the source.

I had the opportunity to go to the Oscars once, along with the Governor's Ball afterward (the year Eastwood won for Unforgiven).  When asked what certain folks looked like (e.g. Sharon Stone at the next table), my answer was inevitably "not as good as in their pictures."  Claudia Schiffer sat right in front of me in the theater and all I can remember is her huge bony anorexic spine sticking out like some kind of lizard.

The exception was Cindy Crawford.  This may be unbelievable, but she looked even better than in pictures.  I kid you not.  Here is a sample of why she is the greatest, via Tom Kirkendall (he claims to just be blogging on the quality of the commercial - yeah right).