Einstein & The Theory of Cycling Relativity

Sticking my knees out I pedaled wildly, mocking him from behind.  A kid on the sidewalk raced ahead of our approaching group herking and jerking as our racer group peloton noodled through a historic small-town downtown.  Even though he didn’t see me thrashing around mimicking his moves, imitating how goofy he looked especially in front of others was a dufus move on my part.  He was just a kid having fun on a bike.  Sorry kiddo.  It only took me a few seconds to realize my childish and arrogant indiscretion.  Before we reached the corner, I settled in and encouraged him to keep it going.  I think its super cool when kids who see the weekly group ride roll down their street jump and pound on the pedals to race the group to the corner.  Beats getting throttle blasted by a teenager in a diesel pick up truck any day.

Just this past Sunday we rolled by what seemed to be 15 people riding recumbent tri-cycles on the bike path.  One is usually an oddity.  But, by the time we hit Milford, passing one after another tri, it was clear that our traditional road racing bikes were the minority.  I thought they looked like cool little Indy car versions of bicycles.  Up near Devou Park this past Monday three kids raced my wife and I up a steep little street.  In a cute little moment, she egged them on, gave ‘em a run for their money and pipped ‘em at the crux of the climb.  Every so often, I see a mammoth man getting a good sweat going while riding an old mountain bike as the tires cringe under his weight.  Then there’s the occasional bike rider with a 12er of Bud Light in one hand and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  There’s as many different types of riders as there are types of bikes.  I’ll never mock a single one of them again.  

I try to give as many bike riders as I can a wave or a head nod. When I see a bike rider at the side of the road I try to stop and lend a tube or at the very least slow down ask, “You okay?”  Just because my shorts match my jersey and my bike weighs 15 pounds, doesn’t make me a higher level of cyclist than others. When it comes down to it, racing bikes is not the pinnacle of bike riding. 

 Enjoying yourself is, Einstein.

The Linux Boot Sequence, Visualized

Most of us don’t appreciate all the processes involved with our OS’s boot sequence; we’re far more interested in watching that status bar fill. In this visualization of the Linux boot sequence, each function is a node, and each line connecting the nodes represents a call, direct branch, or indirect branch. The image itself was created via logarithm interpreting the process as electrical signal, so if we’re reading this correctly, it’s almost as if you’re looking at the brain pathways that boot Linux (oh you computer science junkies will have a field day with that analogy). [Gizmodo via Flickr via MAKE]

Someone Please Build This Woman a Webcam Eye

In 2005, Tanya Vlach lost an eye in a car accident and has since worn the prosthetic pictured above. While the artificial eye is “an excellent aesthetic replacement,” Tanya notes that she is “interested in capitalizing on the current advancement of technology to enhance the abilities of my prosthesis for an augmented reality.” In other words, she is calling out to skilled DIY’ers across the internet to help her build a high-tech “eye-cam.” But this isn’t just about helping people—what she has in mind is just plain cool. More » 

 [via Gizmodo]

rach:

Full on obsession: The Swedish blog Lolita, where a girl makes inspiration boards that are often more beautiful than what set them off. It’s got photography, fashion, papercuts, flowers, trees, nymphs, scrawly drawings, petticoats, watercolors, cake, and all that stuff you’d want to see explode from the mind of a nordic dreamer.

A sign of satisfaction from Stefan Sagmeister

While the world economy twists itself into a tangle, one of our favorite designers and TED speakers, Stefan Sagmeister, is spending more human time in beautiful Indonesia. He just sent me this delightful story …

As my village neither possesses proper street names nor numbers, I was sitting at 6:00am today on the couch in the open living room trying to think of a sign for my house so that visitors would find it easier. I go out to the small alley to take a picture of the entrance in order to be able to draw a little sketch. The next-door neighbor who runs a tattoo shop from his house asks what I am doing. I explain I want to make a sign and that the manager suggested mounting it to the electric pole on my property.

As the pole is partially obstructed by shrubs, my neighbor offers up his own land for the sign, indicating he’d like a little something for it.

“How make sign? Metal? Wood? Stone?” “I’m not sure yet.”
“Have friend, makes beautiful stone carver?” “Sure!”
“When visit?” “I don’t know…” “Now, time?” “Now … it’s 6:00am!”
“No problem.”

We take my scooter, drive 10 minutes to the stonemason’s house in the stonemason’s village, wake him up, his wife brews extra-sweet Bali Coffee and we drive to his workshop, where I sketch out the sign and amaze both of them with the ability to draw in perspective.

An “S” in a circle, constructed out of tightly interwoven stone leaves, carved painstakingly as a deep relief into a single 3’x3’ foot slab of white stone from Yogyakarta, all commissioned before 7:00 am for the price of a New York parking ticket.

100 greetings from wonderful Indonesia.

via blog.ted.com