emptyage

Nicaragua First Aid Kit - Unpacked

Nicaragua First Aid Kit - Unpacked, originally uploaded by Mat Honan.

The packed kit can be seen here. Click the above photo to see everything annotated all note-y like.

links for 2007-12-30

• Nicaragua Living | Making Nicaragua a little closer.
  (tags: Nicaragua travel blog)
• ViaNica.com -- Explore Nicaragua online!
  Excellent Nicaragua travel planing site
  (tags: Nicaragua travel)
• Explore Nicaragua: Ometepe Island
  Detailed Ometepe information, with ferry schedules
  (tags: nicaragua ometepe travel)
• Diriamba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  festival of San Sebastian
  (tags: Nicaragua travel)
• San Sebastian Festival
  (tags: Nicaragua travel)
• The Rediscovery of Nicaragua - New York Times
  (tags: travel nicaragua)

Nicaragua - Concepcion

Concepcion, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua, originally uploaded by perdo44.

Of all the things we're doing during out upcoming Nicaragua trip, nothing is more appealing to me than hiking up to the top of Concepción Volcano.

links for 2007-12-21

• Atlas: Airport Delays Are Getting Worse, So Pack Your Patience
  A look at the best and worst airports
  (tags: airlines travel wired flying bymth)

links for 2007-12-18

• A day in the life of a cat
  Fascinating. This person strapped a camera to the family cat's collar, and let the cat make its own photo essay by simply wandering around.
  (tags: animals camera photography nature hacks)

Brooks on Obama-Clinton

Did David Brooks just endorse Barak Obama? You be the judge:

Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.

Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

In Rainbows Unboxing

In Rainbows - Booklet, originally uploaded by Mat Honan.

Every new fangled gadget on the planet gets its own unboxing photoshoot these days. I thought that In Rainbows deserved no less. And besides, it's lunchtime.

Lo: The unboxing of the Radiohead In Rainbows Disc Box.

links for 2007-12-17

• Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger
  (tags: blogging history blog)

links for 2007-12-15

• Anil Dash: Google and Theory of Mind
  Another great essay from Mr. Dash.
  (tags: google web business)

links for 2007-12-14

• Welcome to the new Macworld.com
  Macworld gets a sorely needed and pretty awesome redesign.
  (tags: macworld web design publishing mac)

links for 2007-12-13

• The 53 Places to Go in 2008 - New York Times
  I love Laos. It's my favorite place. Glad to see it topping the list.
  (tags: travel vacation laos)
• kleptones bestival 2007 download
  Awesome new live Kleptones
  (tags: live mashup mp3 music via:waxy)

links for 2007-12-12

• Best Buy Cease & Desist Letter | Laughing Squid
  Idiots
  (tags: bestbuy ceaseanddesist)
• Nurses on Cheney: "He'd Probably Be Dead by Now"
  Having been through a health insurance DISASTER over the past year and a half (i.e. buying own coverage) I love this ad.
  (tags: health healthcare healthinsurance)
• NicAmigo... a friend of Nicaragua
  (tags: Nicaragua travel)
• How to eat cupcakes - a photoset on Flickr
  (tags: flickr humor food)

Spare Me

Hilton Helping Protect the Environment: Paris Hilton is making a personal contribution to protecting the environment.

"I changed all the light bulbs to energy-safe light bulbs and I'm buying a hybrid car right now," the 26-year-old celebrity heiress said Wednesday.

Oh, snap, changing light bulbs! Why, she's like a young Al Gore sans panties.

I'm so psyched we can just buy our way out of environmental catastrophe. Why didn't anyone tell me before? I totes would have bought a dozen endangered gorillas and, like, some earth friendly shit, and stuff.

This makes me want to burn all celebrity heiresses.

links for 2007-12-11

• Developments in the pricing of credit card services. - Free Online Library
  (tags: creditcards)

We Are So Very Over Whatever It Is You Are Saying

Harper & Mat

The above photo, taken at the recent Torrez nuptials, may be my all-time favorite photo of The Harper and Myself.

Unless it is the one below.

Mat / Andre / Harper

Please Do Not Force Me To Email This Image to You in Reply to the Image You Sent Me.

I will do it! I will send it!

Because, you see, not to be all Anil about it, but. I have seen it. Everyone has seen it. Yes, we get it. Problems are on the Y axis, bitches are on the X axis, and the two do not intersect. Or something. Please. Do something completely original instead. Which is to say, do not do as I do. (For I certainly did not create this image. It is entirely too clever for me to have come up with. I just saw it, and laughed, and thought I would share. Just like you. God, I love you.)

Howdy, Neighbors (part two)

We have new neighbors downstairs. The apartment below us has been vacant since last October, as our landlord slowly renovated it. Since we live on the top floor, that means that for the past year, we've been able to be as loud and as weird as we want.

But now we have three people moving into the flat below us, and that means no more midnight floorstompings or impromptu hardwood bocce tourneys. Which is not to say that I think we need to be quiet. NFW. Rather, as I explained to the wife recently, we had an obligation to be exceptionally loud over the next few weeks. She needed to galumph across the kitchen floor, play the stereo at uncomfortable volumes whenever she was home, and chat, or holler, on the phone to other Southerners. ("Hey y'all!")

But I think it went a bit too far last night. I got up in the night, certain there was something important to do in the other room, and went to go do it. About this time, Harper awoke, and saw me, creeping through the doorway. Tip-toeing. Convinved that the pillow next to her was me, and the shadow in the doorway not me, she naturally screamed bloody fucking murder. Fire. Rape. Pillage. Ruin.

I tried to calm her, I said, "it's me!" which I think she heard as "I am here to find the gatekeeper." Or something similarly creepy, because she only screamed louder, and that thing that I had gotten up to do I all of the sudden had to do a lot more because, holy shit, at this point, I was terrified of me/not me, standing in the doorway.

And so it was over just like that, but, I'm still psyched about how well Harper is breaking in the new neighbors.

links for 2007-12-05

• Largehearted Boy: 2007 Largehearted Favorite Albums
  A few of my faves of the year made this year-end list on the best music blog on the internets.
  (tags: indie mp3 music 2007)

Pop Me

I found this video depressingly humorous, and then worried about my myopia here in Silly Valley. Okay, I know I'm not technically in Silly Valley, but it sure feels like it some days.

Also: Did I mention we are moving to Silly Valley? I did not? Perhaps that is because we have no immediate plans to do so. But damn. The grass is greener, and all that. And for those of you who would argue that the Los Gatos mountains, by virtue of a) being mountains and b) being mountains are necessarily not in Silicon Valley, I reply unto you: Show me Silicon Valley on a map. Where are its boundaries? Livermore? Cupertino? Gilroy? San Mateo? Shenanigans, I say. Silicon Valley is whatever we made it to be. Technically, I am in Silly Valley already.

Note: I am blogging about this video. As instructed.

Finally: Ryland's Church Sign Generator makes an appearance. We are everywhere.

links for 2007-12-04

• Is It Better to Buy or Rent? - New York Times
  (tags: housing money realestate)
• Emoticons During Wartime: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker
  (tags: humor politics war)
• How can I keep my nipples from bleeding?
  Informed!
  (tags: running health fitness nipples)