Rough Drafts

I wonder if it has to take time-outs when it malfunctions? Japan Today – News – Sony’s Qrio robot attending nursery school in California While the children were at first apprehensive about Qrio, they now dance with it and help it get up when it falls. “The children think of Qrio as a feeble younger

Robert Rodriguez’s inspiring 1995 book, Rebel Without A Crew, makes a convincing case that anyone can make movies–all you need is chutzpah, a few friends, and the ability to previsualize the entire movie in your head, so you can do everything in one or two takes and edit it together in a few weeks b

It’s impossible for me not to love Postsecret. People make postcards confessing something that they’ve never told anyone before. They mail them to the site’s owner. And he scans the cards in and posts them in public. It’s everything you might imagine such a site could be, and more.

I’ve never been a particularly picky eater, but reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s book The Man Who Ate Everything about five years ago changed my life. Steingarten’s enthusiasm for food, his erudition, and his ability to combine the two into unmitigated gustatory delight are unique and inimitable. He’s

Driving home last night, stop-and-go traffic on the 101, gas gauge pegged to E, I finally ran out of gas about half a mile short of my exit. Restarted the truck and made it as far as the exit, then a couple blocks up Poplar, before the truck ran out of gas again while I […]

Thanks to I., I now know what I would look like if I were a South Park character.

A practical guide. (via Chris)

Helluva a playlist here–all songs with cowbells! (thanks, Scot)

The definitive list, from Mobile PC. Update 2/22: This story got posted on BoingBoing, Fark, and as of this morning, Slashdot. We’ve had our editors talking about it on CNN, Fox, and a slew of radio shows. It’s a hit!

His kung fu looks crazy — but you wouldn’t want to fight him.

One of the delights of running a free haiku site is getting angry, crazy, or just plain bizarre emails from people who feel that, for some reason, my web site is not living up to their expectations. Publish the wrong haiku, and some people will send profanity-laced invective. Skip a few days, and so

I had a great time on the Dennis Miller show yesterday, and I even got to meet Mowgli, the chimpanzee, on his last day working the show. While we were taping, I snapped Miller’s cheerful mug with the Treo 650 I was showing him. Details (and chimp pics!) over at Mobile PC.