Saturday, August 23, 2008

HardCard Necromancy

Wild!

Monkeys!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Kids: Stay in School!

This is proof that education does pay off:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525060.stm

I knew the fair lady scientist Ms Nekaris mentioned in the article when she was in Chicago in the mid 1990s. When she left the area we exchanged letters when she was doing her "cute little monkey" research in India, after which we lost touch. Now look where she turns up, playing Scully to some heroic Cryptozoologist's Mulder.

Anna, if you're out there somewhere, I couldn't be more proud.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Going soft

So I was rooting around the storage unit today and I decide to open a plastic bin of phones I received in a large lot last year and never sorted through. Immediately I'm hit by a foul, stale smell, sort of like a plastics factory full of old socks. I dig around in the bin and find this phone:
I was never certain whether I had any soft-plastic 500s in my horde, but there isn't much doubt with this one. The texture of the case in noticeably different, almost rubbery. The sound made when the handset meets the cradle is a dull tap rather than the sharp plastic clack of the newer plastic. And of course, there's the smell. I had always read about that, and I don't know how many of my phones I stuck up to my nose trying to detect it :) But with this piece there is no need to get that close!

Now, as for the color...I'm trying to determine if it is "light beige," "dark/rose beige" or perhaps something else. I don't think my photo (taken on a Blackberry PDA in clouded sunlight) is accurate color-wise. To my eye, I'd call it a tan or "butterscotch" color. It's definitely not Grey. Of course, the original color is likely faded and darkened with time and dirt.

Update: Thanks to the good folks on the TCI list, we have determined that it is a "Dark Beige," sometimes known as Rose Beige, also known as color code 55.