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Sunday 11 December 2005 : Winer Moderates Himself
Classic Dave Winer
Sunday 04 December 2005 : Sunday-Morning Lumberjacking
A tree falls over at Tino Manor. Two of them, in fact.
Saturday 03 December 2005 : Oy Gevalt
And I thought I had problems. Though it would be worse if he ate it and didn’t like it, I suppose....
Thursday 27 October 2005 : Finally!
Robots May Allow Surgery In Space. It’s a good start that the robots are at least considering allowing surgery in space, but I’d also like to see them considering other important issues like stem cell research and underwater hairdressing.
Saturday 22 October 2005 : Accidental Community
So I am sitting here in a bar at the Oakland airport, sharing my Verizon EVDO connection to all and sundry so they don’t have to pay the absurd $10 for the airport’s own Wi-Fi service. And someone sent me this picture, using, I think, the Bluetooth file-transfer utility: Which was nice....
Monday 19 September 2005 : First It Started To Fall Over, Then It Fell Over
The implosion of the Avtex Fibers boiler house in Front Royal, VA.
Tuesday 13 September 2005 : Yo Ho Ho
This is possibly the Worst Thing Ever. Now available at Big Lots for only $39.99.
Wednesday 20 July 2005 : Improper Use Of Quotation Marks Department
Ingredients: Pasteurized cultured mile and cream, salt, stabilizers (xanthan, carob bean and/or guar gums). Sounds like real cream cheese to me. The manufacturers must be some kind of solipsists, or in any case unsure that the cream cheese really exists. They still want $0.50 for this little tub, though....
Thursday 16 June 2005 : Mouse Attack!
Eek! A mouse!
Friday 03 June 2005 : Vermillion Alert!
Motorists traveling on Interstates 10, 20, 59, 65, and 85 are advised to use caution when approaching Alabama, as the state has been reported missing.
Monday 30 May 2005 : In Praise Of Burger King Coffee and Dart Optima Lids
The best ready-brewed coffee in America comes out of this machine: This is the C-300 from Douwe Egberts Coffee Systems. It will make up to 1,700 cups of coffee per hour, which means that it’s serious overkill for the Burger King where this particular example is deployed. Douwe Egberts, despite being owned these days by Sara Lee, is not...
Monday 16 May 2005 : McDonald’s Needs A Taxonomy
McDonald’s ordering process is screwy, and emblematic of a lot of bad socio-retail engineering.
Tuesday 19 April 2005 : Damen Avenue Scene
Drunk cops in Chicago
Thursday 17 March 2005 : Argument and Media
Over 2300 words, ultimately about the nature of the online media and how what people write online isn't as much of a Window Into Their Souls as you might think it is.
Monday 28 February 2005 : Fun In The Snow
At about 4 p.m. today, we realized that we were out of bread, and that we’d have to head into town or do without sandwiches: so out in the snow we went. On our way down the hill, we were delayed for a while by a tow truck that was pulling one of our neighbors out of the ditch....
Sunday 27 February 2005 : 1994 Vintage Jerry Pournelle
I was poking around Byte’s website for some reason, and I stumbled across this perfect example of vintage Jerry Pournelle’s writing about computers. When I face a computer that’s screwed up in some way that defies all logic, I often refer to it as a ‘Jerry Pournelle situation’, after the kind of thing he used to write about every month:...
Monday 21 February 2005 : There’s No More There
There's an interesting article in the Washington Post today about the waning importance of the Washington area in the telecommunication industry: What once was the region's most promising growth industry has been largely reduced to a few struggling providers of phone and Internet services -- more mom-and-pop than Ma Bell -- and some small suppliers of hardware and services...
Friday 18 February 2005 : Non-Functional
There are lots of non-functional things around. It’s a pity they aren’t all so labelled.
Sunday 06 February 2005 : Hepp’s Run-In With The Police
Carl Hepp was, once upon a time, something of a celebrity among the people — both of ‘em — who watched public-access and local-origination TV in St. Louis. (Note that public access and local origination were different things, and that when people talk about ‘public access’ TV they usually mean ‘local origination’.) His twice-weekly hours-long call-in talk show, I’m Hepp,...
Wednesday 02 February 2005 : Cable TV Ad: Frederic Roofing
Every city or any size has at least one company like Frederic Roofing. I don’t mean that in the sense that every city has an outfit that will put a roof on your house or your place of business, though that’s certainly true, too.
Monday 31 January 2005 : Cable Ad: Comfortmaker
Mike Shannon played right field and third base for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1962 to 1970, when he retired from baseball after being diagnosed with nephritis. From 1972 to the present, he has provided the color commentary for Cardinals games on the radio. As a baseball player, he was good but not great. He only had a lifetime batting...
Saturday 29 January 2005 : More From The Video Vault
If you’re an ATV dealer and you can somehow prove that Yamaha does not have the best ATVs on the market, Gary Surdyke will give your wife a thousand dollars. Or at least he would in the late 80s, when this local-cable ad was produced.
Friday 28 January 2005 : Tiny House
“This isn’t awesome” — but the commercial sure is. I wonder whether Geico has two different ad agencies? Most of their ads are horrible, but this is pretty clever. Tiny House, :30, 2mb Quicktime....
Sunday 16 January 2005 : Bulk Jazz at Panera
I was sitting in Panera Bread last night, fumbling around with proxies in an attempt to get around their ham-fisted network filtering. Now they’re blocking an art gallery’s website for ‘nudism’. The site does, indeed, feature photos of paintings and sculptures featuring people without clothes on, but I’d hardly classify this as ‘nudity’, much less ‘nudism’. I didn’t have...
Tuesday 11 January 2005 : Hardrock, Coco, and Joe
Moldy Old Lady, Oh Lady Ai-Do!
Friday 07 January 2005 : Life In The Sticks
We came downstairs this morning to find the Sheriff in the driveway. His Jeep and a few other County vehicles were a few hundred feet from the house, so I immediately assumed that they had come to take me away for my criticisms of Bushitler — you know, that’s happening all over the place — and that they were...
Monday 06 December 2004 : Monster Attack
Domo cookies! Raarrr!
Tuesday 30 November 2004 : Back At Tino Manor
Tino is battered from an overnight train journey in the wrong compartment. Some train pictures substitute for the wit he's too achy to dish up.
Wednesday 29 September 2004 : Panera Bread, Reston Town Center
The dangers of 'free' goods and services
Tuesday 31 August 2004 : What’s in Tino’s Gadget Bag?
What is in Tino’s gadget bag? Now you can find out.
Wednesday 16 June 2004 : Why I Hate D.C.
I don’t usually just post links to other random websites, but this one seems unjustly obscure.
Monday 31 May 2004 : Tino Manor Entertainment
A short description, with pictures, of the incredibly complicated arrangements for watching TV here.
Friday 02 April 2004 : Old People’s Foibles, Courtesy, and the Boomers
We allow old people to do a lot of things that inconvenience the rest of us, but we’re going to have to stop this practice as the number of old people grows.
Wednesday 31 March 2004 : The Return of G. Clotaire Rapaille
G. Clotaire Rapaille, everyone’s favorite French semiotician, is now working for the Kerry campaign.
Friday 05 March 2004 : Micro-Aggression
A new term: Micro-Aggression.
Monday 01 March 2004 : Environmentalism and Humanity
Wired has an article about Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who has since broken with what's generally considered to be the environmental movement: The unifying principle is simple: "There's no getting around the fact that 6 billion people wake up every morning with a real need for food, energy, and material." It is this fact, he charges, that environmentalists...
Saturday 31 January 2004 : Band Names From Spam
Two-word pairs, as they occurred in a recent piece of spam I got, with a subject line of 'fabric paradoxic colette harpsichord oilcloth'. Some of these would make better movie titles than band names: extraterrestrial cyclorama cheek meteor nether keg circumpolar exhaustion drab gibberish [this would be Cheek Meteor's first album] lithe necrosis shoestring bootlegging cereus gimmick [part of Wile...
Friday 23 January 2004 : Junk Room Serendipity
Tino finds an old diary while clearing out some boxes.
Friday 10 October 2003 : Christmas Is Coming
Maybe it's a bit too early yet.
Tuesday 07 October 2003 : At Least They’re Honest
Bogo-rebates on Sprint PCS products at CompUSA
Wednesday 20 August 2003 : Domo Madness!
Domokun has found work, in catalogs.
Thursday 31 July 2003 : DEA Museum
I have put up a (very) few photos from our recent trip to the DEA Museum. You can find them here....
Monday 21 July 2003 : Bug Attack!
We're under a full-scale bug attack here at Stately Tino Manor. We're trapped in the house; if we open a door to go out, the bugs will come in and take over. The thing that looks like a giant bird's nest in the photo at right is actually a swarm of mayflies around some floodlights. Clicking on the photo will...
Friday 11 July 2003 : VoIP and the Phone Companies
Businessweek claims that Apple's iChat AV will
Thursday 05 June 2003 : Found At Last
I have been searching for a Bert doll for some time now. For whatever reason (possibly because he's evil), Bert merchandise is difficult to find these days. At Toys Backwards-R Us, there's no Sesame Street merchandise to be found at all as a result of some licensing deal with Spongebob Squarepants or some such competing television show. Do kids even...
Sunday 02 March 2003 : Before and After
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looks quite a bit worse for the wear after a run-in with the authorities.
Friday 28 February 2003 : Calamity Probability Meter
The new Rolls-Royce Phantom gets reviewed in the Telegraph: There are lots of clever design touches, such as the self-righting RR emblems in the wheels, or the Spirit of Ecstasy that can be lowered out of sight at the touch of a button, but there are some plain stupid ones, too. The "Power Reserve Indicator" on the dashboard is perhaps...
Sunday 23 February 2003 : One-Sixth of the World’s Surface
One-Sixth of the World's Surface, a personal travelogue of the Soviet Union in 1931, by Russell Wright. Full text and illustrations online.
Monday 17 February 2003 : What a difference a day makes…
We are completely snowed in as a result of the big snowstorm of 2003. With pictures!
Sunday 16 February 2003 : Snow!
Tinotopia gets dumped on with snow
Tuesday 17 December 2002 : Jeep News
The Grand Wagoneer turns over to 60,000 miles.
Thursday 12 December 2002 : Tino is…
Tino types his name into Googlism.
Monday 09 December 2002 : Worrisome Products
Tino gets a catalogue of incredibly tasteless products in the mail.
Thursday 31 October 2002 : Robert Flores’ Letter
Robert Flores, the guy who killed four people at the University of Arizona on Monday, sent a letter to the Arizona Daily Star telling his story. It's 22 pages long, and I suggest reading the whole thing. The usual suspects have been working pretty hard to demonize they guy (which shouldn't be too hard, because he did, after all, kill...
Tuesday 01 October 2002 : Tino Christmas List
$7500 is probably too much for a custom action figure, because I need more than one. I'd need normal, mild-mannered Tino; Super Tino!, with crime-fighting gadgets; Astronaut Tino; Special Forces Tino; etc. I figure I'll wait until you can get these things made for $100 in an hour at the mall....
Tuesday 13 August 2002 : Dvorak (not the composer)
I have moved the keycaps around on my trusty vintage IBM Model M keyboard, and loaded the Dvorak keyboard map. God, is this ever awful. I have already beem five minutes in typing this. I have wore typos because I have to look at the keyboard all the time. And the pips -- on F and J -- are now...
Monday 12 August 2002 : David Lynch Moment
Today, while waiting for a traffic signal at Herndon Parkway and Spring St. in Herndon, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw an man in a Toyota Camry rather animatedly playing a harmonica. He kept it up until the light changed, and then put it down in order to free his hands for driving....
Thursday 25 July 2002 : Car Trouble!
I have not been writing much lately because I've been busy with other things. A couple of weeks ago now, I was driving along, minding my own business, when I heard a loud BANG from the rear of the car, followed by a bunch of (slightly) quieter BANGs. Kind of like BANGbangbangbangbangbangbangbang etc. I pulled the car into the AOL...
Thursday 28 March 2002 : French Nut “Jumps” Out Of Window At Police Station
Here is the story from Le Monde. Here is the story in English from CNN. "The two interrogators tried to hold him back by the legs, but the determination of this fanatic, whose body was already mostly outside, meant all this effort was in vain." <accent type="french">Malhereeusement, eet waz all in fain. 'Ee zhust jomped out ze weendow. 'At 'appens...
Tuesday 26 March 2002 : There Is A Boom On Board
From an AP story: Salt Lake City (AP) -- The FBI says an American Airlines plane headed to St. Louis was diverted to Salt Lake City today after a suspicious note was found on board. The plane was traveling from Portland to St. Louis when a child found a note in the armrest. The note said there was a bomb...
Friday 25 January 2002 : RIP Pete Parisi
Pete Parisi, St. Louis public-access television icon, has died. And the world is poorer for it....
Thursday 24 January 2002 : Life Continues to Imitate The Simpsons
First, there are people actually trying to sue the Coca-Cola Company in (unwitting) imitation of Marge’s over-the-top ban on sugar as a threat to Springfieldians; now, a school bus driver named Otto has taken a busload of kids on a joy ride. It turns out that the kids helped Otto plan the route and played games while he drove. One...
Wednesday 23 January 2002 : Excitement in Reston
According to The Washington Post, John Walker was flown into Dulles Airport tonight before being helicoptered to the jail in Alexandria, Virginia. Reston is only a few miles from Dulles, and the main road from the airport into Washington runs right through the middle of town. When I went to pick up Nicole from work, I noticed a whole lot...
Thursday 10 January 2002 : My Tino The Car
Boo-yah. The Nissan Tino has been out for a while and is linked elsewhere on this site, but when I came across this photo I just couldn’t resist....
Wednesday 18 July 2001 : Murder and Insanity
Vintage Tino! Tino looks at the insanity defense.
Wednesday 18 July 2001 : Speed Bumps
Vintage Tino! Better speed bumps.
Wednesday 28 March 2001 : New Condiments
Vintage Tino! McDonald's has discovered new condiments
Monday 26 March 2001 : Office Supplies
Vintage Tino! What makes for good office supplies. I fear that things are going downhill.
Tuesday 23 January 2001 : Ding Dongs and King Dons
Vintage Tino! King Dons, Ding Dongs, what's the difference?
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