This is pretty cool

Straw poll now ask a question via twitter, people reply to your tweets and it aggregates the responses.

Too respond all you have to do is @schulz answer reason and it will graph the responses. I’m posting this here so you’re ready for tomorrow. Now I need to think of a great question.

(Interesting note: This is the second service I’ve seen that uses twitter id as a kind of OpenID light, not even bothering to get user registration information out of you. Twitter is rich and fertile ground to build information services on top of.)

Optical illusions

Lots of cool optical illusions

Renkoo just blew my mind

Renkoo is like evite, but more for planning less for announcing. The official text:

Renkoo solves a problem we’ve all had: how does a group of friends decide on a place and time to get together (and maybe also an activity to enjoy)? Preferably without completely filling up your email box or spending all day on the phone . We specialize in planning socialevents where you know who you want to hang out with, but you don’t know when and where.

What that means is it lets me put a plan out thats not fully developed. Like: Kim, I want to go out to dinner and a movie with you. Once you make that step then you can figure out the details, but for me just telling people we should get together is a major hurdle. Renkoo gives those ideas a physical presences and an infrastructure towards turning them into reality.

Be prepared for a ton of vague invitations in the days to come.

Can you chug a gallon of milk in an hour

All signs point to no

Two Please. To Go

Keith should be scared

Hair gel that glows in the dark

Seriously

Grindhouse

Grindhouse trailer:

You probably don’t want to watch this at work.

133732 than thou

My spam count in gmail right now:


Yes it’s geeky.

I would like a pony

Is this the genesis of pony meme?

John has developed an infallible way to improve any public policy wishes. You just wish for the thing, plus, wish that everyone would have their own pony!

This is two years old at this point which predates my usage of the ‘I want a pony’ phrase, however I found mention of it here: The 2001 perl advent calendar. It’s not the same thing, but clearly related. Metafilter predates that by a few months: July 9th, 2001.

Digging more however I find several pointers (Example) which explain why the phrase is so captivating. Because it was coined by a brilliant genius: Bill Waterson. Calvin and Hobbes is the source of “I want a pony”.

Had I bothered to read to the end of that original link I might have noticed this:

UPDATE: John wants me to point out that he got the idea from a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which little Susie first wishes that Calvin was nicer, then realizes she might just as well wish for a pony while she’s at it. So, thank that Calvin and Hobbes guy, or something.

Ooops. While I can’t find the actual strip anywhere here is a description of it I want a pony.

Makes me want to read some calvin and hobbes.

Our Baby Birds

Our Baby Birds

The birds that built a nest on our porch had babies. Three of them. I’ve got a bunch of pictures and I’ll write more about it later, but for now here they are.