Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Quest for a Carryall

In my search for a suitable bag to carry my things, I have come across what is, apparently, a common dilemma for women: how big and how many pockets.

The problem is in the context of the LAPG Tactical Bail Out Gear Bag (Best Seller!). This bag is badass.





This bag is so badass, in fact, that this manly man made a three minute video describing it. It is at worst a hilarious juxtaposition of manliness and what is wrongly considered "femininity" due to the fact that he concerns himself with a bag and its color and pockets, and at best an informative tour of a useful bag:




I want this bag. I want this bag so hard.

But the problem I find is that I already have a bag of this depth and length, but it adds extra width and a lot of extra pockets. It will be useful, but in what scenario? Will it really help me achieve my goal of wanting something smaller than a messenger bag or a computer bag?

Ladies and Enlightened Gentlemen, help me out here. Is it wrong to

A) Have a true carryall
B) Have more than one bag

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Our Hurtful Beer Can Holders

There's a Budweiser commercial that talks about a combination foam number one finger and beer holder. They call it a "foozie," a combination of foam and coozie.

But here's the thing. "Coozie" is a variant pronunciation of the word "cooze," which we all know is:

noun Slang: Vulgar. vagina.

But that's not all. I asked my mom's boyfriend what he calls a foam beer holder. "Oh, well I call it a 'coolie'."

–noun Offensive. an unskilled laborer, esp. formerly in China and India.'

The word is cozy. Ok? It's a beer cozy. Like a tea cozy, but for beer.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Manlinest City

There has been a study commissioned by COMBOS, "the hearty, pretzel and cracker snack made with real cheese," to determine the manliest city in America. (Incidentally, I most closely associate with my sister, as she would always eat these on road trips when we were kids.) Minneapolis is ranked 18th. They've gotten everything wrong.

Their basic parameters of manliness are as follows:
  • Unhealth
  • Banality of sports taste (NASCAR-related things were weighted more heavily)
Just because you are obese (you eat COMBOS, the hearty, pretzel and cracker snack made with real cheese), that does not make you a man.

Ostensibly, we are trying to measure the manliness of the men in these cities. Minneapolis may not be the number one manliest city, but let's measure based on some real manliness criteria:
  • Number of beards, with extra points given for achieving the beard contest criteria.
  • Total pounds of man-muscle
  • Total pounds of beer belly
  • Number of cars with flames on them
  • Number of men shot in the chest by an anarchist who then go on to give their speech before being driven to the hospital
Manliness is not measured by NASCAR.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Let Me Explain Google Wave

Author's note: It's possible that you know all of this. I am writing this down in the hopes that people who didn't get it before might be enlightened by my thought process. Enjoy.

I sought out a Google Wave invitation, not exactly knowing what I was getting into. It was new and I wanted to add it to the list of new technologies I could claim myself as an early adopter of (the list, as I recall it, runs from mini disc to kindle--incidentally, neither lasted very long).

My invitation came on Friday night. I poked it a few times over the weekend, but it ran too slow and there was too much going on at once. I was a member of the Twin Cities Wave and pretty much no other waves. I was confused and I was bored.

(A wave is a message thread made up of individual messages called pings.)

Yesterday I was confused and bored again. But then I joined a few smaller waves with some friends.

Google Wave is the following existing technologies wrapped into one delicious web app burrito:
  • Wiki - Anyone can edit any part of a wave and there is a full record of who has done what. This beats wikipedia (or any other wiki I've used) by about a thousand in terms of intuitiveness.
  • Message board - A ping (a message within a wave) can be replied to much like a LiveJournal or I Can Has Cheeseburger-style post, with root replies and sub-replies.
  • Instant message client - Wave lets you see who is online. It is actually most like the old ICQ, where you can see what another person is typing as they type it. If you open up a wave with one other person--bam. Instant message.
  • Email - It's not exactly like email, but it really helps to think of it as email: every message is private and includes only the recipients you choose. You can send a wave to a person when they're offline and it will sit in their inbox until they return.
These technologies are all a decade old or older. But just because Google Wave hasn't really introduced any new technologies from an end-user standpoint doesn't mean the combination of existing technologies isn't potentially game shifting (but not really game changing, like email was).

It may be obvious how there is some overlap with the functions the items on this list fulfill. But what was not immediately obvious to me is why it's so interesting to slip them all together into one very browser-crashing web application. Here's what I can see so far.

What it will be good for:
  • Collaboration - What I never could get wikis to do, Wave does almost effortlessly: one document with multiple editors. Google suggests you use Wave to have everyone at a meeting take notes; maybe smart, maybe dumb. The playback feature is key here--it totally trumps the edit history page on Wikipedia. Much more useful (to me) to see edits progress temporally than see them listed.
  • Discussion - The problem with message boards is their public nature. The problem with email and Gmail is its linear nature. Wave lets you communicate privately in a message board setting. If you branch off into two topics, no more guessing what a person is replying to--you can create new waves based on old waves. Google Wave provides the sharpest, slickest format for private, lengthy online discussion so far.
Wave is important. Being better than a wiki and easier to use for lengthy conversations than email will allow us to have richer conversations more easily. Definite value added. Not a Segway.

There is one problem I can see: the necessity of ubiquity. Sort of like Twitter, there's a critical mass that must be reached before this will be useful to me. I can't collaborate by myself. But give it a year; this thing will be pretty popular but, as I said, I don't think it will change the game on the scale of email.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

World Beard Championships

I think everyone ponders at one point or another what sort of awards they could win, simply for their natural proclivities. We're all naturally good at some things, and with a little effort maybe we could be recognized for these talents.

For me, today, my natural proclivity was my beard. I am growing it out for a wedding in November, per the groom's request (it is known as a Sympathy Beard). I have been letting it grow without trim since early September with great success. Emily has pointed out that it's on the verge of being pony tail material. It's thick and luxurious. I figured I should investigate whether or not there is any sort of beard competition. I might place!

No, I won't.

There is a beard competition. It's called the World Beard and Moustache Championships, and there are some manly beards battling for the title.

Look at this man. This is a man.


This is Jack Passion, the World Beard Champion ("first place in the full beard natural category, the most competitive category of all", according to World Beard Championships). Compared to this man, my beard is bush league. This man is a real man, and a real beardsman.

I will say that length should not be all that counts in a beard. I submit the following criteria for beard judging. Please submit your own.
  1. Thickness
  2. Fullness
  3. Softness (softer = better)
  4. Style (a manicured beard is no beard at all)
  5. Shapeliness
  6. Luxury
  7. Manliness
  8. How many bits of churro can you fit in there