Author: mark

  • Rugby World Cup tomorrow – South Africa vs England

    Got this a few minutes ago from my Dad in South Africa:

  • Panama Esmeralda

    I picked up a bag of Panama Esmeralda coffee at Peets yesterday. It’s expensive, but this morning I made a cup in my french press using my usual method and it’s the best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted. Usually I don’t buy into the whole ‘berry notes with a hint of whatever’ analysis. But the citrus in this coffee is incredible.

  • Friday rocks!!

    …especially when you’ve been quoted on the front page of a major newspaper. 🙂 (The Seattle PI)

    Congrats to Brian Dorsey and his team who built and launched Tagmindr in 6 hours. Brian and I have chatted via email several times this week and we still haven’t met. Hopefully this week at Seattle Tech Startups meetup.

    Mark.

    ps: Here’s the original blog entry that launched Feedjit. Here’s John Cook’s article online.

  • The Nash Equilibrium & The Prisoners Dilemma

    Interesting video I ran across this evening looking for interviews with John Nash:

  • Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.

    I was scrambling through a deep canyon on Sunday on Snoqualmie’s South Fork and ended up at this beautiful quiet pool that looked very deep and had a very nice brookie that grabbed my thin mint streamer after a few casts.

    I was reminded of an Afrikaans expression:

    “Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.”

    It’s the Afrikaans equivalent of “Still waters run deep” but it doesn’t really translate that well. Literally it translates as: “Still waters, deep ground, beneath the devil goes round and round” – but it loses its punchiness in translation.

    Afrikaans is a language with a rough history and I think because of this it’s rich with idiomatic expressions, some of which would make a sailor blush. [so I won’t share those with you].

    Another one: “Hy kan nie ‘n bokkom braai nie.”

    Translates as: “He can’t barbecue a dried and salted mullet” – doesn’t translate either because you have to have lived on the west coast of South Africa and seen what a bokkom looks like and experienced the sheer genius of west coast braais (bbq’s) to understand what an insult this really is.

  • South Africa in the Rugby World Cup Final!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I paid my $30 bucks for pay per view and watched SA teach Argentina a lesson in Rugby respect yesterday beating them 37-13. Bryan Habana you are a God!! If anyone knows a good place to watch SA kick England’s arses next weekend let me know. [Preferably somewhere with more South African fans than English]

  • The scary history of Aspartame and the scary people behind it

    I was driving from OC in California back to Seattle yesterday and was listening to NPR on Siruis which I’m completely addicted to. There was a brilliant interview with author and Professor Devra Davis who recently published The Secret History of the War on Cancer which I’m probably going to buy. The show was called “Chemicals, Cancer and You” – follow the link to listen to it.

    She chatted about the history of Aspartame, the sweetener in most diet sodas. Kerry (my wife) has been drinking diet soda for years (and talking about quitting for years) and after hearing the interview she’s just dumped all her remaining soda and is moving to iced tea with unrefined sugar (evaporated cane juice).

    The Aspartame discussion is towards the end of the interview – perhaps 15 minutes before the end.

    G. D. Searle and Co developed Aspartame in 1965. In the 1970’s the safety of Aspartame came into question after Tumors were found in rats that had been given aspartame. A grand jury was convened to investigate the drug. They never finished their work. In fact several senior people who worked for the FDA and who were involved with the investigation were recruited by Searle and the investigation into the health risks associated with Aspartame simply went away.

    The guy behind it all? Searle’s Chief Operating Officer, Donald H Rumsfeld.

  • The story of the little bird

    A little bird was flying along one day heading North. As he flew it started getting colder and colder. Soon it started raining. The rain turned into freezing hail.  His wings froze and he fell out of the sky like a stone. He thought to himself “Oh lordy I’m frozen stiff, I can’t move, I’m falling at 200 miles an hour and when I hit the ground I’m going to shatter like a piece of glass.”.

    As he finally lost all hope he hit the ground. But instead of shattering into a billion little birdy bits, he landed in a large and very fresh pile of cow dung. He couldn’t believe his luck. And it was warm too! As the storm raged around him his wings started to thaw and his ice-cream headache disappeared. In fact he started feeling better than he had felt in a long while. He felt so good that he started wiggling about and he even let out a few chirps.

    A cold and hungry fox passing by  heard the chirps and quick as a – well, as a  fox – he leapt on the cow-pile and gobbled up the little bird.

    The moral of the story is:

    1. When things seem really really bad don’t lose hope.

    2. Everything that looks like shit and smells like shit isn’t always a bad thing.

    3. When things are going well, shut the fuck up!

    [My dad gets credit as the source of this story]

  • I LOVE MONDAYS!!

    Monday mornings are our busiest in terms of traffic. We also get a ton of new user signups over the weekend which means that our numbers get a huge bump every Monday. So I reeeeally look forward to Mondays.

  • Locomotive Breath

    My Texan cousin-in-law and I were partying in SoCal recently and we got chatting about favorite songs. He mentioned Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull was his favorite. I just heard it for the first time, and, um, wow! If you’re into hard charging gritty 70’s tube amp rock then you want to check this out. I love the constantly driving bass guitar in the background.