Author: Jason Doucette

Random thoughts occurred to me the other day, which led to some tweets:

3D food printers are a thing. Wire that up with some hooks and you could get a real cookie when your tests pass.

— Jason Doucette (@jasondoucette) February 9, 2015

Which had nothing to do with today’s topic, but led to this:

Of course, break the build and the hook triggers a job on the 3D steaming pile of poop printer.

— Jason Doucette (@jasondoucette) February 9, 2015

And then I went back to work… for about 5 minutes. Then I realized I’d just been Irresponsible Internet Guy. Does a 3D steaming pile of poop printer exist, beyond the model that comes standard in humans, or did I just inspire people to do something that can’t be done yet?

A quick google search led me to this article – “Scientists Are 3D Printing Poop Now–You Know, For Science.” Which sounded exciting, but when I clicked through to the source, it turns out scientists just got an artist to cast some poop-shaped resin models, which I guess means Michelangelo used 3D printing too? But anyway, not a 3D printer that makes poop, or a printer that prints things out of poop.  The next closest thing was something about an artist that used a 3D printer to make moulds that he’d put poop into to make sculptures, because art, but again, not quite what I’m looking for. (And that’s “looking for” in a very context-specific sense.)

But here’s the thing that came to mind during this process – sure, there may not be such a machine now, but we’ve entered the era where the mere act of Googling for something starts a process that will inevitably bring it into being. I’m not saying Google’s doing something in their Google X division to do something to fix searches that don’t return results by actually inventing things (though who knows, maybe they are,) but this is more of a quasi-woo-woo morphic fields thing that I’m calling the law of printable poop, because if someone’s already written this out their name won’t be as catchy as that:

The time between searching for something that doesn’t exist and that thing becoming a reality is decreasing

I could probably make that sound more sciencey by using a work like exponentially or suggesting a rate, but I have no real data to support this. Just know that a poop printer is coming, because I looked for one.

The astounding confluence of waiting for more Rob Ford news and realizing I have a lot of browser tabs open with nobody nearby to see has made me realize that this thing, right here, that you’re reading, is called a “blog” which used to stand for “weblog” (much like we all used to stand for something,) and I can put those links right here for you to see.

Shazam!

It’s decorative gourd season, motherfuckers! (I said a swear. The kids can’t read. Also, that’s an indication of what you’re getting into.) Also, I love how this happens – I wonder to myself, self, did someone make a video of this? Because that would be funny. And someone did, and it was.

A new Veronica Mars teaser trailer. I need to watch a few episodes. Not the whole thing, but I forget a few of the characters. Looks like the perfect model of the future though, Kickstarter funded and as true to the vision as they can make it (one hopes.) Now the trick will be the new onboarding process where previously unknown artists build their audience and get to make Big Things. Obviously this one is more than just the team behind it, there’s an emotional pull towards existing characters (the ones I remember, anyway.)

X-Men Days of Future Past trailer. Looks like some nice turns from the original storyline to merge it with First Class and the other parts.  I’m a little bummed that Sony owns the rights to these characters (and the FF and Spider-Man) but looking at the footage I’m kind of OK with it – this one’s darker (in mood and actual lighting) than the brand that Marvel’s building up in their efforts, and I kind of like knowing what to expect going in – Iron Man/Avengers/etc: bright primary colours. X-Men: black. Spider-Man: what a mess.

Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading, and daydreaming. This one sat in an open tab for a little too long. I mean, I get the point pretty quickly, but there’s the message and then how it’s delivered, and it’s worth the time to actually read it (it’s from a lecture he gave.) I have an old Tom Swift book that I picked up at a flea market a few years back and I’m looking forward to when the boys are old enough for me to read it with them. Really curious how that’ll hold up – it was obviously dated when I was a kid, but we didn’t have the Internet, SpaceX, smart phones, and so on, so my perspective was likely different (I recall wanting very badly to build a real rocket in the back yard.)

Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts. I’d head this was out but never saw the actual news. I want to see it, but it’s an hour and 18 minutes, and I have so many videos of that length or smaller half-started already…

And in app news, I picked up Tweetbot 3 and Fantasical 2, both at a special launch price of $2.99. This is where iOS is starting to get good, and it’s clear that there’s less room than ever for apps that only meet basic expectations. Not sure if that’ll discourage new developers from picking up app development, or if that might be a good thing in the longer run.

I have no more links, but no Ford news yet, so hey look at me using my planned downtime to actually catch up on stuff!

I’ve never had a Cinnabon.  They started in Seattle in 1995, and I don’t know when they made it into Canada but I would have been vegan by then, so they’ve always been the “nice smelling food I don’t eat.”

And I’ve seen standup comedians make fun of them, memorably Louis CK and Jim Gaffigan, and sure, I knew enough about the company to get the joke, but in my mind, they could have just been talking about a really big donut.

Thanks to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, I now know how little I knew.  For the benefit of other vegans and/or dwellers of smaller cities and towns:

[quote]It’s difficult to understand the way the Classic Roll supercharges multiple senses at once—unless you have eaten one. The plastic knife cuts through an outside that’s mildly crusty before giving way to a softer middle. Frosting melts into the ridges of the bun, which sits in a brown puddle of excess. Take a bite and the buttery flavor bathes the edges of the tongue as the gritty sweetness of sugar and cinnamon washes over the tip. The texture is lighter than expected. The sensation of pure sugar can be overwhelming. It coats the mouth and clogs the back of the throat. Halfway through the roll, the body cries out for water or, even better, Diet Coke, which has a way of cutting through the varnish laid by the fats and sugars. Deep inside the roll, the bun’s core is hot and yet just barely cooked. Once gone, the bottom of the clamshell box is left smeared like a crime scene with a mash of syrup and cream cheese. Each one is 3 inches high and 4 inches in diameter and costs $3.69.[/quote]

880 calories, which is apparently 330 more than a Big Mac.  Incidentally, and equally fascinating to me, the Big Mac Equivalent (BME) has become an actual unit of measurement in the food world.  You can also purchase something called a “Caramel Pecanbon” which at 1080 calories, is “about equivalent to eating two Big Macs.”

The family was away this weekend, and not knowing what else to do with myself, I decided to watch entire movies start to finish without interruption.  I hear it’s all the rage in homes without kids.  Of course, so as not to limit the options for films I can watch with other people, I restricted myself to the genre of “stuff only I might be interested in,” a category that’s mostly explosions and older films.

So, Patton.  I knew it was about a general, and that George C. Scott had refused his Oscar for it, but that was about it.  But hey, if he’d refused an Oscar, that meant people thought he did a good job (turns out not just him; the thing won seven awards and was nominated for ten in total.)  And it didn’t disappoint.  But here’s the thing:

With every biography I’ve seen, there’s the seeming obligation to put in certain key phrases and moments from the subject’s life.  And sure, that makes sense, since if a moment was famous and it’s not in the picture, then I guess the biography can’t be called definitive.

But.

What if, during the stress of making the film, working long hours, overcoming obstacles, and so on, the writer, director, producer, team, what have you becomes convinced that, like in time travel, if they don’t include the right dialogue at the right time, the subject will never be born?

Relevant clip (and irrelevant language, you know what it says)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSoXwn-Okd4

I got a little excited this morning to see this trailer:

No, really, it’s true!  I even tweeted it!  So you know my emotions are authentic, unless I’m forced to issue a retraction because social media moves just too damned fast for accuracy to be a factor.

And, oh, this is embarrassing.  I might need to do that.  Or at least re-frame my excitement, since I just realized that there’ve been four seasons (or “series” as they say in BBC-land) and I’ve maybe seen two and a half.  So in actuality, there’ve been “new” episodes for quite a while.

But it’s still exciting to build a social stockpile, a library todo list that I’m in no hurry to complete, but that I know won’t disappoint.  When I watch (or read, or listen to) them, it won’t be out of a sense of “doing homework” or just trying to get through the backlog; it’ll be because I want to enjoy them, I’m reasonably sure I’m going to enjoy them, and it’s a good time to do just that.

Work with me here: I was talking to someone who just bought a new condo.  My building’s 20 years old, and back then, units were simply built bigger.  I used to think it was simply greedy developers maximizing the revenue per square foot, but I think it’s also that we simply had more stuff back then. I grew up in an era where I knew multiple people who ordered entire TV seasons of MASH on VHS, three episodes per tape, delivered one tape per month, maybe not because they wanted to watch it right now, but it’d be nice to have the option someday. I fall prey to the  data hoarding instinct from time to time, but it’s increasingly comforting to know that there’s entertainment out there when I need it, no ridiculous amounts of shelving required.