Posts tagged 'Random Musings'

Raaarr! Gimmie 41% Of Your Income

Oh yea, I should probably start thinking about getting started with my tax preparation.

(via nataliedee)

High-end Crocodile Fashion

I imagine this is how high-end crocodiles would rock their sweaters.

Digg Bing Logo Mashup

typophile.com had a type battle for members to design a new logotype for digg.User aluminum posted this fine Bing version of the digg logo.

It’s a clever idea since both brands are 4 letters and the second letter is an “i”.

(via dburka, the creator of the digg logo)

Let’s Enhance This Image

If only image processing was as easy as it was on TV.

Technology At The Altar

This groom just couldn’t wait to tell the world of his new relationship status. He whipped out his Blackberry, just before kissing his bride, in order to update his Facebook relationship status and send out a tweet. Now with my wedding coming up this May, I got to thinking… but Kristina quickly put a stop to that and banning any sort of gadget on our wedding day. Fair enough.

But I did want to live stream the ceremony. I was thinking of setting up my laptop with its built-in camera streaming everything across the Internet with something like ustream.tv or justin.tv. The venue has wifi and the computer can be near a power outlet. Since my venue is a music center, they should have a decent sound system that I can route to my laptop for a good quality sound source. Kristina and I will be miked-up so everyone can hear our vows and all that.

To top it off, it would be neat if I could get a small, pinhole camera to discretely embed on my tuxedo which could also stream to the laptop and eventually out to the Internet as a second angle. That way viewers could choose the locked down wide angle shot as well as everything going down from my point of view. How cool would it look to see the crowds reaction as we turn and face them after being pronounced man and wife? That would be awesome. Plus, I would record all the footage locally to the hard drive just in case the Internet craps out we’ll still have a copy.

After Googling around for a good mini spy cam, the Mini DV AEE-MD90 seems to be highly recommended. Here’s a good video review of it.

The only problem is there’s no way to stream the live video from it to a computer. The sound is also crap but that doesn’t really matter. Does anyone know of anything like this that would fit the bill? Has anyone done something similiar like this before? Any tips?

My Fresh Face Writeup For FullBleed

FullBleed, a web magazine published by the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, did an interview with me for their Fresh Face column. The aim is to showcase up and coming creative professionals and I feel honored to even be considered. It was a lot of fun to do and a big thanks goes out to Stephanie Hay, Corey Greeneltch, and Sean McCormick who took my photo. Go check it out!

russell-heimlich-freshface-portrait

Toilet Paper Survey FAIL

I just took a survey and one of the questions was about toilet paper. These were the answers to choose from…

I don't use toilet paper FAIL!

I feel sorry for whoever falls into that last category.

Hippie Weirdo Yoga Farmers

Probably the strangest clip I’ve seen in a good while. If this actually aired somewhere, my guess would be Canada… or California public access. Kudos for doing yoga in those tight jeans though.

The New Car Conundrum: What Should I Get?

Russell's 1994 Mercury Villager

My 1994 Mercury Villager mini-van has served me well over the years but it has to go according to the U.S. Government. Since it gets a measly 17 combined miles per gallon according to fueleconomy.gov, my van is a certified clunker and eligible for the Cash for Clunkers program. This means I can get $3,500 off a new car purchase that gets at least 4 more miles per gallon or a $4,500 discount for a car that gets at least 10 more miles per gallon. That’s a sweet deal considering the Kelley Blue Book trade-in value is at most $1,550.

The thing is I don’t really need a new car. I get to work using public transportation leaving the van only for small errands. Once a year we will take it on a road trip to Ocean City but that’s about the extent of my driving. I fill it up maybe once a month and according to FuelFrog (my review) I’m getting about 22 miles per gallon.

FuelFrog Miles per Gallon for my 1994 Mercury Villager

Because it has 130,000 miles on it, the tune-ups can be a bit costly about every other year. I have started noticing a high-pitched squeal whenever the accelerator is depressed and one of these days it will die.

With this opportunity I decided to do a bit of research on Yahoo! Autos. I found 21 cars that fit my criteria including the 2010 Honda Insight, 2009 Honda Fit, and 2009 Honda Civic hybrid which all caught my eye. Kristina doesn’t like any of these because she already has a small sedan and strategically it would make sense to get another type of vehicle. I can agree with that, but bigger cars are more expensive.

Three Honda cars to replace my van.

There is also the option of brokering a deal with my dad for his Toyota Rav-4 with 100,000 miles on it in exchange for a car with the discount. He was the one who bought the van 15 years ago and paid it off before handing it over to me but such a deal sounds complicated.

I just feel a little weird about getting a new car and then having it sit at home for most of its early life. So this is where I seek advice from the wisdom of the interwebz. What should I do?

On the plus side an auto loan would help me build my credit score for when we eventually buy a house :)

Perhaps The Greatest T-Shirt Ever Made

Threadless.com, the user submitted/public chosen t-shirt store, is my favorite source for shirts. I’ve built up quite a collection over the years; 19 to be exact. But this shirt tops them all…


Three Keyboard Cat Moon T-shirt from Threadless.com

Now if you’re not up to date with the latest Internet meme’s you might be a bit perplexed right about now. Allow me to explain. This shirt is a combination of two viral Internet sensations.

The first is a YouTube video of a cat playing the electronic keyboard dubbed “Keyboard Cat

The video has nearly two-million views and has become even more popular by people splicing it to the end of blooper clips as if to “play” that person offstage after a goof or follie. These have become known as Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat videos and PlayHimOffKeyboardCat.com has the best collection of all of them.

The second meme in this shirt is from the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt

Three Wolf Moon T-shirt

The shirt became popular for it’s sarcastic reviews promoting the great things that have happened to the people who bought the shirt. Hundres of comments were posted like this one, making the shirt an Amazon best seller

“I admit it, I’m a ladies’ man. And when you put this shirt on a ladies’ man, it’s like giving an AK-47 to a ninja.”
– T. Huynh “photo bum”, Amazon reviewer

The shirt managed to get over 9,000 diggs and a dedicated song thanks to CollegeHumor.com.

So now you can see how that is one of the best t-shirts ever made. But this shirt also made history of it’s own by being the fastest trending t-shirt in Threadless.com’s 9 years of operation.

“This design was submitted, and before we even noticed we saw it start to trend on Reddit. We put it up for scoring and it started gathering up 5’s faster than we could ever imagine. Over just one weekend Three Keyboard Cat Moon accumulated more scores than any other design in 9 years of Threadless history and the highest average score to boot. We listened and put it up for sale immediately. This is the first time we’ve actually ended scoring early in favor of printing the design.”
– Jake Nickell, Threadless founder

The shirt is $20 and I just ordered mine using a gift certificate from a former colleague. Don’t be surprised if they sell out faster than the keyboard cat can play you off. Satirical irony FTW!