UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

As a kid I often wondered if the whole “dig a hole to China” idea really held water. I was suspicious that my hole through the center of the Earth wouldn’t actually come out within the boundaries of Asia’s most populous nation.

Of course, at the time I was probably so young that I wasn’t aware that China was Asia’s most populous nation, considering that I also somehow thought such a hole would actually be possible to dig. Oh yeah, and I never just, you know, looked at a globe to prove that it was a ridiculous proposition.

For a long time now, I’ve realized that line drawn from Minnesota through the center of the planet would emerge on the other side somewhere in the remote vastness of the southern Indian Ocean, but I never knew where until antipodr came along. Now I know that it would be roughly midway between Perth, Western Australia and the Kerguelen Islands, a place I have known about for approximately 5 minutes now, and which is apparently populated predominantly by feral cats, rabbits and sheep introduced by human visitors over the past couple of centuries. Sweet.

Well… I’m off to the garage for my shovel. Gotta start digging sometime!

I had to put that “or kids” in there because my kids like watching me play the “shooting holes” game, a.k.a. Portal. It is awesome. I’ve talked about it before, but it is worth mentioning again since I just found this video, and I had been playing it again earlier tonight.

I kind of suck at it though. I haven’t even gotten to the turrets that star in the video. But I since already know about the “Rosebud”-esque ending, this video doesn’t spoil it. Beware, it’s drenched in profanity and 1337-speak so it’s not for everyone. And it probably makes little sense if you’re not familiar with Portal. But I found it absolutely hilarious.

We web designers and developers need to keep track of more browsers than anyone should ever have to think about. (Isn’t one enough? And, even though I usually use Safari, can’t we all just agree on Firefox now and kill the rest?)

I’m just another in the chain of sites posting this graphic (which will probably proliferate exponentially now that it’s been on BuzzFeed): 1 – 2 – 3… and directly from here although this leaves me wondering who really is the originator. And of course, there’s the data source, cited in the image itself.

Well whoever came up with it, it’s pretty cool. And informative. I had forgotten the misfortune of Netscape 5, dying off two full years before Netscape 3 in the wake of the Mozilla split.

Enjoy…

I think it was probably around 1983 that I got my first Rubik’s Cube. Wasn’t that the year they really hit big in the U.S.? Anyway, I just never had the patience or the logical foresight to be able to solve it. Never. Not once. Oh, sure, I was able to solve one side. I think once I might have solved two. But I could never envision how to put it all together. It’s the same reason I suck at chess.

Before long, I knew that it wasn’t possible to just solve the whole thing one side at a time. And, unnervingly, when you were closest to having the whole puzzle solved, just a couple of turns away from a complete solution, there would be a sequence of moves where none of the sides were solved. That was just too much for my 9-year-old brain.

Eventually I just gave up on ever solving my Rubik’s Cube. It didn’t help that I had also learned that you could turn one side to a 45-degree angle, pop out the middle edge piece, and easily disassemble the entire thing, reassembling it in perfect order. And so it was, that my speedy solution to the Rubik’s Cube, sadly, always involved a screwdriver.

This year my parents gave me a Rubik’s Cube for Christmas. (It’s OK… that’s not the only thing they got me for Christmas. I also got this, which rocks.) Today I decided, by gum, I’m gonna solve it! Of course, not on my own. These days Rubik’s Cubes ship with a little pamphlet revealing the magical seven-step solution. (No, not seven moves, more like a hundred or so. But seven basic logical steps.)

I was doing great… halfway through the seventh and final step, when… well, the whole thing fell apart. Not literally. They’re made pretty well — and it’s no longer possible to pop out the edge piece with a screwdriver. (Don’t ask me how I know that it’s no longer possible. I just have my ways.)

I realized after a moment of fretting that I had misinterpreted part of Step 7. I was left with this:

One good side, and five sides of crap. (Much like Yessongs. Sorry… had to say it. Not too often you can work in a joke about a 36-year-old prog rock triple live album. By Yes.)

After dinner I was sufficiently distanced from my devastating defeat that I was willing to have another go, and this time… success!

Here are a couple of photos I took of my office/studio for the RPM Challenge, and I figured I might as well post them here too, so you can get a glimpse into the world where the magic happens. Well, where… something happens.