Wither The Halogen Torchiere?

The halogen torchiere. You know it well. It was the portable upright lamp seen in every living room, dorm room, and bedroom during most of the 1990s. Available for not much more than $15 at any home and hardware store during the height of its popularity, this ultra-soft source of light was a staple of urban living.

Has anybody noticed, though, how difficult it is to find one of these badboys today? Everywhere you go, it seems this bastion of illumination has been replaced by either an awful flourescent bulb version or a weak incandescent model, both usually with the dreaded “three-way switch” instead of the full-range dimmer. What gives?

I went into my local Lowe’s Hardware Store to find out.

As it turns out, there have been a rash of accidents over the last several years resulting from the use of these lamps. Apparently, the bulbs burn extremely hot and if the fixture tips over or some moron throws a shirt on top of it, a fire can start. Hmmmm, seems like a reasonable cause for alarm, but my halogen of 15 years just went out and I need a new one! How prevalent could this safety hazard really be?

After work today, I went down to the last place I knew of which carried something resembling my current model: Fred Meyer in Ballard. Fred Meyer is a combination hardware store/grocery store and they have a ton of stuff. Sure enough, I spotted a Holmes 300 Watt Halogen Torchiere with full-range dimmer!!! And better yet, it seemed to have all sorts of new safety features built in like auto-off and a cage around the bulb. According to the packaging, its “new technology and design exceeds new 1999 UL 153 Safety Standards”… whatever that means.

So I threw two of them in the cart and went over to the food section for some groceries. No sooner do I run into Keith’s wife and start talking about how Disneyland beats the crap out of Disneyworld, than a woman interrupts our conversation and politely says the following (pointing to the torchieres in my cart):

“Sorry to interrupt you, but my entire house burned down because of one of those lamps.”

Apparently it’s kind of prevalent!!!

I went on to explain that these new lamps were safer than the ones from the past but she didn’t seem impressed. I don’t blame her.

And so with that, I proceeded to the checkout to purchase my death torches. I’m taking the Holmes company at their word since they are a reputable manufacturer, but if my condo or the Newsvine offices catch fire and kill me, somebody please hack into my server and delete this blog post.

Sizing Up A Grill

It’s about a month into grilling season here in Seattle, and after an unappetizing experience with MatchLight “Easy Lighting” (viz. “Soaked With Fuel”) Charcoal the other day, I finally decided to go out and get a proper gas grill for my deck. A couple of weeks ago, I had spotted an unusually cool clam-shaped barbecue at my friend Stephanie’s house so I decided to look it up on the interwebs.

After a few minutes, I determined it was one of the “Weber Q Series” grills. The problem was, there were three sizes and I had no idea which would be ideal. Luckily, Weber put together this extremely helpful diagram on their spec page:

Now that is some great information design. I don’t care if the grill is X inches by Y inches. I don’t care if it’s “small”, “medium”, or “large”. I just care what I can grill on it. Weber’s diagram tells me I can cook 10 hamburgers, 16 hot dogs, 55 shrimp, or 2 lobsters on it, and that’s all I need in order to determine that the 100 Series is big enough for me (I ended up getting the 120… it has flaps).

Anyway, great grill so far. I definitely recommend it. It’s small enough to throw in the back seat of your car as well so you can take it down to the beach or wherever you need to heat up tasty foodstuffs.

Fighting Cancer at The Vine

In the spirit of giving, some of our favorite Newsviners have banded together to create the Team Newsvine Relay For Life. For those who aren’t familiar with Relay For Life, it’s a worldwide program to raise donations for the fight against cancer. Teams self-organize in different cities and run, walk, or jog around a track or a field from sundown to sunup to raise awareness of this fatal disease.

Several days ago, Corey Spring, Mykola Bilokonsky, Top Jedi, Prompt, and several other Viners organized such a group for an Ohio relay and they’ve already raised almost $1500 for the cause! If you’re interested in making a donation to help fight cancer, I recommend heading over to the Team Newsvine Relay For Life page and checking it out. You can donate under the “General Team Donation” umbrella or specify your name if you’d like. 100% goes directly to the American Cancer Society, of course, and the donation is tax-deductible.

It’s gratifying to see the spirit of sharing and altruism that has developed at Newsvine expand to areas of the offline world. While Newsvine itself had no part in the creation of this event, we fully support our members’ efforts to spread awareness about the fight against cancer.

Old Habits Die Easy

I’ve been using Yahoo Finance to keep tabs on my stocks for as long as I can remember. Ten years maybe? It’s a simple, fast-loading page which lists all of your stocks and any news associated with them. It’s perfect for my simple needs. But after Yahoo’s redesign a week or so ago, Yahoo Finance has been pissing me off. I know this may seem like a minor thing, but Yahoo is now forcing users to log in every 24 hours. For someone who uses two or three computers (or even one computer, really), this is a major pain.

I went to my Account Settings page on Yahoo to see if perhaps a preference got flipped, and to my delight I saw a panel which let me set the frequency of login prompts. Great! Upon visiting the panel, however, this is what I saw:

What a useless set of options! Every 15 minutes? Who the hell would choose that? Who would want any of those options? Why not have one for “every click” as well? You could call it the MySpace Setting.

Anyway, this is becoming a real nuisance so I’m going to kill my Yahoo Finance habit and find another site to track stocks on ASAP. Does anyone have any suggestions? Google Finance maybe? What do you use?

The Sports Gods Hate Washington

Another night, another excruciating, last second, season-ending loss by a team from my state. Tonight it was the Washington Huskies. Last night, it was the Gonzaga Bulldogs. A couple of months ago, it was the Seattle Seahawks. This ever-growing history of late season chokery is making me think that Seattle is just getting what we deserve for being one of the most apathetic sports towns in America.

Yeah, I said it.

This town is not about sports. Most fans here are in it for the entertainment. We go to Mariner games to sit in the sun. We go to Sonic games to peoplewatch. And when our teams go through their inevitable bad years, we don’t even show up. This is not Green Bay. This is not Buffalo. This is a city that puts about as much into sports as we seem to get out of it. That is to say, not a ton.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this post but the Husky loss that occurred about an hour ago has me so pissed off that I just need to vent a little. As part of that venting, I want to put tonight’s loss in perspective with the other awful losses that have occurred here throughout the years. Here they are, in order of awfulness:

10. The UW Huskies losing to the Texas Longhorns in the 2001 Holiday Bowl. Dominating the game and up 36-17 near the end of the third quarter, the Huskies proceed to let Texas Quarterback Major Applewhite pass for 476 yards en route to a 47-43 victory snatched in the game’s final minute.

9. The Seattle Mariners losing to the New York Yankees in Game 6 of the 2000 ALCS. The Mariners were about to even the series at 3 games apiece when Mariner Killer and Halle Berry Non-Appreciater David Justice belted a three run homer off Arthur Rhodes to send the Yankees to the World Series against the Mets. The Mariners, though great that year, would retool for 2001 and make another appearance further down this list, unfortunately.

8. “The Kenny Wheaton Game”. I’d call this “The Damon Huard Game” but there were so many of those that this one must carry an original moniker. The 9th ranked UW Husky football team marched into Oregon in 1994 and were poised to take the lead against the hated Ducks in the final minutes of the 4th quarter. UW stood at Oregon’s 8 yard line and quarterback Damon Huard proceeded to throw a high-risk telegraphed pass to the sideline, which was then intercepted by Kenny Wheaton and returned 97 yards for the touchdown and the victory. This play is widely viewed as the greatest in Oregon football history and is still played at every single Oregon football game.

7. The Sonics losing to the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals. Chicago was the better team here, but after Seattle’s great victory over the Utah Jazz in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals (the most exciting sporting event I’ve ever been to, by the way), it was a bit of a letdown.

6. *This spot saved for something I forgot which may come out in the comments*… UPDATE: Via Jamison Kelleher… the obvious one I forgot was the Sonics’ loss to the Denver Nuggets in the 1994 NBA Playoffs. It was perhaps the best Sonic team ever, in a year that Michael Jordan wasn’t even playing and the Bulls were out of the picture. So what happens? The Sonics become the first #1 seed in history to lose to a #8 seed. The pattern is repeated the following year with a first round loss to the Lakers.

5. Tonight’s UW/UConn game goes here. UW forces #1 seed UConn into a season-high 25 turnovers, plays great physical ball the entire way, leads by 5 points with a minute to go, and then gets absolutely torched by a buzzer-beating, long-distance, off-balance three pointer as time expires in regulation. UW gets screwed by a goaltending non-call, has five players foul out, and proceeds to lose in overtime. Season over. The better team lost.

4. If I was a Gonzaga fan, this one might be even higher on my list, but that display of chokery last night against UCLA was almost too ridiculous to believe. Gonzaga dominates the entire game (and really the entire season as well, with only three losses… all to great teams), never loses the lead, and then in the final couple of minutes, everything falls completely apart. With ten seconds to go in the game, UCLA cuts the lead to one and then steals the ball from J.P. Bautista right after the inbound pass. One easy layup later and UCLA has their first lead of the game. Gonzaga then loses the ball again, fouls UCLA, and goes on to lose by two. Adam Morrison cries at midcourt as he realizes that he made the mistake of playing out his basketball career in a state that is reviled by the sports gods.

3. The Seattle Seahawks losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in this year’s Super Bowl. I almost didn’t even put this in here because Seattle played well enough to win and the overwhelming majority of the country agrees that the officials stole this game for the Steelers, but it’s in here because it goes to the concept of city karma. Pittsburgh is a great sports city. Steeler fans are passionate, hard-core, and deserving of a Super Bowl victory as much as any other fans in the country. My only solace in watching the thievery that occurred is that it couldn’t have happened to a better city.

2. The 116-win Seattle Mariners losing to the New York Yankees in the 2001 ALCS. The Mariners had just finished the winningest season in baseball history, ended the year on a hot streak, and then as soon as the playoffs hit, turned into a minor league team. Barely escaping Cleveland in the divisional series, it was on to New York where the wheels came completely off and Seattle’s season was ended by a far inferior Yankees squad. People around my city love to talk about how Seattle failed to make a move at the trade deadline that year, but please… I remember the trades that were available. The most heralded guy on the block was Juan Encarnacion… and he was only available if we gave up Joel Piniero. I’m sorry, but if you win 116 games, your squad should do just fine in the playoffs. But this is Seattle. Things are different here.

1. Anybody who watched this game knows why it’s in the #1 position. UW vs. UConn. 1998. Almost a carbon copy of tonight’s loss but even more dramatic and inexplicable. UW takes perhaps its best team ever to the Sweet 16 to play UConn, Donald Watts hits a three in UW’s final possession to go up by one. UConn’s Jake Voskuhl misses a shot with a few seconds remaining on the clock. Rip Hamilton gets the rebound, misses his first shot, gets his own rebound, and then shoots a near-vertical shot over a frozen 7-foot-2 Patrick Femerling for the victory as time expired. Most painful loss I’ve ever seen. One that actually desensitized me to basketball for a few years.

So there you have it. The most excruciating losses this state has seen in recent history and will continue to see as long as things stay the way they are. It’s pathetic that I didn’t even have to research any of this stuff either. Every item is still fresh in my head. And I know I’m forgetting some obvious losses as well.

So if you live in Washington State, just be glad we have other karma to replace what we lack in sports. We’re nice people and our crime rate is low. We’re tech-savvy and our economy is good. We’re environmentalists and our air is clean.

We’re just not a city of sports fans, and for that, we may be getting exactly what we deserve.

March Randoms

Some thoughts from the month of March:

• Am I the only person who consistently burns the hell out of the roof of my mouth whenever I eat French Bread Pizza? I am done with that stuff. I eat regular pizza multiple times per week with no mouth-scorching issues, but for some reason — perhaps the fact that French Bread Pizza seems much hotter on the inside than the outside — I just can’t eat the stuff without inflicting personal injury. I’ve tried Stouffer’s and Red Baron… both with the same result. The worst part is that often you don’t even know you’re burned until hours later.
• Greg Storey taught me a new drink in Austin: The Rusty Nail. It’s two parts Scotch and one part “Drambuie” (a Scotch-based honey liquour, or something like that). I never drink Scotch or any other straight alcohol, but damn! Not bad! So I get back to Seattle and try to order it in three places and apparently barely anyone has Drambuie up here. I was so psyched to have one though that I ended up ordering a regular Scotch on the rocks for the first time in my life. I fear it’s only a matter of time before I become “one of those Scotch people”. Thanks Airbag. :(
• Normally when I don’t have something nice to say, I try to shut up about it, but regarding SXSW this year: I’m sorry but 80% of the panels I attended were awful at worst and unenlightening at best. I did go to some good ones, so if you spoke on a panel and you got a good amount of laughter, engagement, and positive feedback, then you were probably on one of those. Just like last year, I made it a point to attend mostly sessions which were outside my normal line of work (i.e. no web standards, no CSS, etc), but even so, I learned very little. The most outstanding session to me by far was Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s session about his book “Stumbling on Happiness”. I also found that in general, solo sessions were much more engaging than panels. When you have a panel full of people jumping from subject to subject and no experienced moderator to pull them together, the result is a mess. All future SXSW trips will be limited to solo sessions, daytime golf, and of course, the parties. I won’t even go into the parties because everyone else already has, but this year, they were great, great, great. To all of you who I met and consumed spirits with, thank you!
• I was extremely happy to see so many Treos and Casio EX-Z750s down in Austin. I have written extensively about my love for both on this blog and it’s great to know so many people feel the same way. The Casio didn’t surprise me so much as it’s been the best ultracompact camera on the market since it came out a year or so ago, but I figured the SXSW crowd would be more into camera-centric flip-phones than business-centric Treos. I think that with both the Casio and the Treo, it comes down to one thing above all others: user interface. Neither can be beat in that department, as far as I’m concerned, and the SXSW crowd does seem like the type to care deeply about such things.
• I could have been a big success story for Sprint and their Ambassador Program. I wouldn’t mind upgrading my two year old Treo 600 to at least a Treo 650 and I don’t mind switching carriers to do it. So what does Sprint do? They send me a free phone with six months of free unlimited voice, data, TV, and music service. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the phone is a flip phone with no qwerty keyboard or IMAP email support and it comes hardcoded with a Missouri phone number that cannot be changed. What am I supposed to do with that? The only thing I can think to do with it is just use it as a portable TV, but the screen is so small that it’s hardly worth it. On the bright side, it confirmed my long-standing opinion that I have very little interest and/or need for mobile video. It’s probably against the terms and conditions of the program, but I may give this phone (and service) away on Mike Industries. It’s a several hundred dollar value if you’re into it. By the way, I don’t mean to give the impression that the phone and the service suck… I think this is a great program for people who live in Missouri and like flip phones.
• I don’t mean this in a rude manner, but does anyone know what causes “old person smell”? I think I remember seeing a Seinfeld episode about this awhile back, but can’t remember what the conclusion was. What I’m talking about is that distinctive scent that you can sometimes detect around elderly people. I smelled it again the other day in a coffee shop, and for the life of me I could not equate it to any known scent. I’ve had conversations with friends about this so I know it’s not my imagination, but the best we could come up with was that it’s either: a) an old perfume or shampoo that was perhaps popular around 50 years ago, b) medication related, c) denture related, or d) clothing related. I have a great respect for my elders and I’m interested in this subject only for its olfactory implications, but does anyone know what’s going on here?
• If you’re into alcohol-free mouthwash and you think Biotene tastes gross, you should try Crest’s Pro-Health Alcohol-Free Mouthwash. It’s quite palatable.

iPod Giveaway #7: We Have a Winner

After several days of deliberating, I’m proud to announce that the winner of the Steve Jobs Movie Poster competition is Sean Liew with his exquisite entry “Enemy of the Gates”. Sean’s entry not only showed excellent photo composition skills but unmatched attention to detail as well. There were funnier entries, edgier entries, and more time-consuming entries, but none put it all together like Enemy of the Gates, and that is why Sean is now the proud owner of a new 1 gigabyte iPod Shuffle.

• Honorable mention – humor: “iTrip” and “Dude, Where’s My iPod”, “The Big Woznowski”
• Honorable mention – photo composition: “American History”, “Adaption”, “Nightmare on Pod Street”
• Honorable mention – concept: “Being Steve Jobs”, “Lord of Apple”, “i, Pod”

Below is a slideshow of the top 40 entries. By the way, apologies to any contestant whose bandwidth limit was exceeded by this contest. What can I say? You might want to look into Dreamhost:

So that’s the end of the Mike Industries iPod Creativity competitions… for awhile at least. They’ve all been extremely fun, but the time associated with setting them up, managing them, and picking winners is more than I can spare right now. Maybe in a few months, they’ll be back. Until then, thanks to everyone who has participated.

iPod Giveaway #7: Design a Steve Jobs Movie Poster

Original photo by Norbert Ivanek.Ok, so it’s the day after Christmas and you didn’t get that iPod you wanted. Now’s your opportunity to take matters into your own hands and win one.

The theme of the final Mike Industries iPod Creativity Competition of 2005 is to design a movie poster featuring Steve Jobs. Like all competitions before it, the rules here are loose. Just feature the man we all know and love in a cinematic role, keep your image exactly 418 pixels wide, and insert your entry inline in the comments of this post. Please also give photo credit when appropriate.

There’s a decent chance The Steve will actually see this blog entry so please keep it clean and respectful. Anything overtly offensive will be removed.

This competition will remain open for exactly two weeks and will end at midnight, Sunday, January 8th. The winner will receive a 1GB iPod Shuffle from me, and so will Mike B., the genius who suggested this particular contest.

Remember to keep your images exactly 418 pixels wide (any height is fine) and under about 50k or so in file size. Insert your image into the comments below using code like so:

<img src="http://yoururl.jpg" />

iPod Giveaway #7: Reader’s Choice

First off, apologies for the lack of iPod creativity competitions around here for the last two months. I’ve been a bit busy. I didn’t want to close the year without one final competition though, so tonight I thumbed through all 400 contest suggestions and have come up with a list of six I’d like to do.

Since I can’t seem to decide on one, I’m putting the final six up for a one-day vote. The idea which receives the most votes will be the theme for this final iPod giveaway of 2005… and as always, the person who thought up the theme will win one Shuffle and the person who wins the competition will take home the other.

The Finalists

Steve Jobs Movie Poster

Design a movie poster featuring Steve Jobs and post it as a 418×418 image on this site.

Best Lyric

Post the best one sentence lyric from a song.

iPod Envy

Take a picture of yourself in an urban setting with another object, pretending that it is an iPod.

Best Cover Song

Post a link to the best cover ever performed. That is, one band singing the music of another.

Name That Tune

I post one note of a song and continue to reveal more notes until someone guesses it.

iKu

Best haiku remotely related to iPods wins.

Honorable Mention

This suggestion cannot be voted for but it is my favorite idea of the bunch. “Toban” writes in submission #378:

“Have people send digital video files of themselves eating a food product which is visibly expired. For example, a displayed expiry date on a container of cottage cheese, or mold on, well anything. The most extreme entry wins an ipod. What would you eat for a Free Ipod?”

I love the internet.

Please vote to the right. The polls close at midnight on Wednesday.

December Randoms

Some thoughts from December:

• Head on over to Mark Wubben’s site and get involved with sIFR 3. Mark will be handling primary sIFR 3 development, but I’ll remain involved as spiritual advisor. Also, check out Faruk’s new FACE CSS technique. I haven’t used it but it looks eyebrow-raising.
• If you use a Mac and do any amount of CSS design, you must check out XyleScope. I used it early on in its beta life, but upon downloading version 1.1.5, I can say that it’s one of the best pieces of web development/design software around. Inline, on-the-fly CSS editing. Ahhhhhhh.
• Intuit has apparently started mailing unsolicited CDs of TurboTax to people. I just got mine this week. You just enter a code when you install it and your card gets charged. Although this is obviously a bit wasteful from an environmental standpoint, it’s a pretty effective sales tactic. I now have a physical CD in my possession, I know I’m going to need it, so there is a 100% chance I will end up using it. I might even do my taxes early now. Hooray for unsolicited CDs in the mail!
• Mike Industries hit a new personal record on Wednesday with 70,000 page views thanks to this slashdotting of sIFR by “Commander Taco”. Honestly, I didn’t even want to read the thread because I figured that Flash plus Slashdot would equal total lunacy, but I have to hand it to the Slashdot community… it was pretty even-handed. Any moronic remarks were generally met with reason and RTFAs.
• The great Nokia N70 experiment has failed. I’m sticking with my Treo for now. I just can’t deal with keys made for hobbits.
• I went to a concert in Seattle this weekend and The Wrens were the last band to play. They were okay, but they did do something on stage I had never seen before. The singer picked up his cell phone between songs, dialed a number, and then sat down on stage. The rest of the band then began into a song and the rhythm guitarist held his own cell phone up to the pickup on his electric guitar. Then, the singer sang through his own phone, over to the guitarist’s phone, in through the guitar pickup, and out the speakers. Pretty interesting.
• Woohoo! Danni won Survivor. How many times has Hefner called already?
• Firefox 1.5 continues to puzzle me. Aside from some unexplainable bugs related to its new handling of the overflow property, I just found out that it spits out errors when encountering the underscore hack. The underscore hack is probably my all-time favorite CSS hack and I much prefer it to the valid-but-much-more-verbose “* HTML hack”. I’m pretty sure the W3C specs say to ignore any CSS properties that the browser doesn’t understand, but instead, Firefox 1.5 reports errors. Ugh.