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Personal

My Adrenaline Weekend

At the invitation of my parents, Betsy, myself, my sister and brother-in-law all made the trek north to Paramount’s Kings Island, an amusement park north of Cincinatti. My dad’s bank was having a picnic there, and providing lunch and tickets and such. How could we turn that down?

For some reason, I became a complete adrenaline junkie over the weekend. If there was a ride, I was on it. A short list of the rides I fell victim to (with links to pics or descriptions):

  • The Beast:: The longest wooden coaster in the world, and consistently rated one of the top 5 coasters ever. I’d agree with this…amazingly fun. We managed to get to it early enough that we could simply sit through two rides in a row.
  • The Son of Beast:: This, however, was a HUGE disappointment. It is the tallest, fastest wooden coaster in the world, and includes a loop (which, for a wooden coaster, is just insane). However, it nearly beats you to death. Full of Helixes and switchbacks, I think I bruised a rib on it. Ride it once, just to say you did, but that’s quite enough.
  • Vortex:: Just a great coaster, a steel looping coaster that turns you upside down 6 times in less than a minute. Fast, smooth and fun.
  • Face-Off:: Surprisingly shocking, the coaster looks very basic at first glance, but the forward-backwards nature of it makes it more surprising than you might initially think. It certainly took me by surprise. With both backwards and forwards facing seats, you do the entire ride in both directions before being lowered into the unloading area.
  • Flight of Fear:: An enclosed coaster, with a propulsion system rather than a hill, and shoots you from 0-60 in under 4 seconds. Harsh, but fun.
  • Tomb Raider, the Ride:: A bizarre pendulum ride, it is enclosed and dark, so that you have no idea what you are actually in for. Very effective, if a little short. Better than I expected.
  • Delerium:: This was a new one for me…a giant pendulum, with a circular seating pattern that spins while you swing. Very, very fun, with a lot of G-forces on you as you spin into the drop. Watch the video to get the full effect.
  • Drop Zone:: Wow. The tallest gyro drop ride in the world, you spin slowly up 315 feet, pause, and then freefall to the bottom. Feels like you stepped off of the ledge of a 30 story building. Amazing!
  • Slingshot:: This was my father’s idea…I had ridden everything in the park, more or less, and he said he’d pay for this one if I’d do it. I don’t think he believed I would. A 2 person max capacity ride, I was by myself in the small roll-cage. The cables are tensioned by a set of crazy looking springs, and then the connection with the earth is cut, and you go rocketing into the air. The stats on the ride itself said: 95MPH, 260 Feet, 6G’s and I believe it. Easily the craziest thing I’ve ever been on. You launch up, then turn and freefall towards the earth. The cables catch, and you bounce up and down for a few seconds, rolling crazily a few hundred feet up, just you and a small metal enclosure, and two cables on either side. Complete insanity. Here’s a site from a company that makes these crazy things, and more pics.

All in all, much fun was had, and much silly food consumed. Looking forward to the next amusement park already…

Categories
Digital Culture

Just in time for the debates

Presidential Debate Bingo! Print it out and play along at home!

Categories
Digital Culture

Imagine my surprise…

…when it was pointed out to me that the spouse of my best friend Vicki is now an author! The Dictionary of Uncomfortable Words: What to Avoid Saying in Polite (or Any) Conversation by Andrew Witham and Brian Snyder, published by Cumberland House Publishing, is now on bookstore shelves around the country, and available at Amazon. Congratulations Brian! Some of the Amazon description:

The Dictionary of Uncomfortable Words contains more than 650 words and definitions that make people uncomfortable when in public. These are not dirty words, but rather uncomfortable words like “dike,” “flaccid,” or “penal.”

“Over the years,” the authors write, “we have repeatedly found ourselves stifling laughter at certain words, such as ‘tool,’ ‘dump,’ and ‘moist.’ Other words such as ‘spackle,’ ‘loaf,’ and ‘frothy’ sound plain peculiar. And still other words, while perfectly harmless, like ‘masticate,’ ‘climax,’ and ‘undulate,’ made us want to hide our heads in shock. We noticed that a lot of other people had the same reactions. They’re not dirty words, but they cause a markedly uncomfortable reaction in a group.”

Realizing a dictionary was necessary to alert the public, they created The Dictionary of Uncomfortable Words. Each word is followed by a brief explanation of why it makes people uneasy when spoken, such as:

• Abhor: Looks innocuous enough on paper but utterly filthy when spoken aloud.
• Bull: In most circles, this word is merely a prefix. We prefer the term “man-cow.”
• Congeal: Just because gooey becomes crusty doesn’t mean we want to hear about it.
• Crotch: This word is disturbing even when referring to trees.
• Dingleberry: This is one fruit you don’t want to eat.
• Half-cocked: Sounds like a circumcision that went too far.
• Horehound: A drunk with too much money in his pocket on Saturday night

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Digital Culture Media

SpaceShipOne lands safely!

From CNN:

“Onlookers held their breath as the manned SpaceShipOne performed unexpected but spectacular acrobatics on its way into space, the first step toward winning the Ansari X Prize on Wednesday.”

I think this is the most significant space flight since the US landed on the moon…at least as significant as the Shuttle program. The first private spaceflight in history should go up there with the Wright Brothers, the Apollo missions, the Concord and the US Shuttle program as a milestone in aeronautics.

This is a HUGE month for space…Richard Branson announced that Virgin Atlantic was going to try to be Virgin Galactic and offer spaceflight, and Xeni of BoingBoing went weightless with the first commercial company licensed to operate zero-g flights in the US.

I’ll just say, as someone who visited NASA at the age of 9 or 10 and has been a sci-fi freak his entire life, this stuff is incredibly exciting. Space tourism = sign me up. I’m looking at the cost of the zero-g flights ($2950) and going “that’s not too bad…” 🙂

Categories
Digital Culture

Online Accessibility

Doing a lot of research for my new job regarding accessibility standards for disabled users of the web, and have a couple of good resources for anyone doing any kind of web design these days.

Online Accessibility Course from the University of Florida
Very good tutorial, with a ton of information that I would have never thought of on my own, like putting in links to skip navigation bars so that visually impared users can skip them in order to get to the content with a screen reader.

The NIDE Cascading Style Sheet Generator from the University of Toronto
A style sheet creator specifically designed for local CSS use for various disabilities. Allows you to create CSS for visually impared, motor-skill difficulties, and other differently abled patrons.

Categories
Digital Culture

This would have been cool…

…for the course that Justin, Jean and I took with Paul Jones on Virtual Communities. From Wired:

“Aaron Delwiche, an assistant professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, often gathers students in his Games for the Web class in an unlikely classroom: the metaverse known as Second Life….In order to help teachers bring their classes to Second Life, Linden Lab donates accounts for each student, as well as an acre of land in the metaverse for the teacher and students to work and build on.”

Categories
Personal

Laptop?

So I’ve got my choices narrowed down..but it’s still a tough, tough call.

The insurance company is covering me for $1500 worth o’ computer. If I pay more, it’s just out of my pocket.

The two current front runners are a Dell inspiron 9100, 2.8 GHz, 512RAM, Radeon 9700 128Meg video, 60GB HD, with a dual layer DVD RW +R. Pretty hot little system, tricked out for only $1650 or so.

The other option is a 12 inch Mac Powerbook, with Superdrive. Specs are close to the same (adjusted for chip architecture). I’m sorely tempted by the Mac…very pretty, very light, very easy to use. But the Dell is more overall compatible with the software I own, and the other computers in the house are all PC’s.

I was tempted by the Dell 700m and the IBM T40..both tiny cute little systems, with plenty of kick. The problem is that the video cards in them are sub-standard when compared to the Radeon.

Suggestions?

Categories
Digital Culture

Arrr, mateys….

…shiver me timbers, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. If ya be needed me, I’ll be on the mizzenmast, sippin’ my lot o’ grog. Arrrrr…….

Categories
Digital Culture

Will the real slim shady please stand up?

Or, in our case, The Real Paul Jones. Via Justinsomnia, of course.

He finally caved, after two years of Justin, Jean and I bugging him about one. 🙂 Paul, if you’re reading this, why did you finally give in and become a blogger?

In other random online news, two of my favorite librarians are guest blogging over at Commons-Blog. Head over and say hello to Jessamyn and Eli.

Categories
Digital Culture

What a week!

It’s been way too long between posts. I started my new job as Web Specialist for Middle Tennessee State University this week. I’ll be assisting with oversight on the homepage, as well as consulting with faculty on their web projects. So far, I’ve just barely gotten a handle on the layout of their stuff…everywhere has a different workflow, and a different way of doing things. Not to mention different capabilities. Gotta learn that not everywhere is up on the whole PHP/MySQL method of web development. 🙁

Overall, I think it’s gonna go well. I’m guaranteed to learn a lot, and that’s still something.