Two years down, many more to come. A note to the future from Mama and Papa; We love you, happy birthday.

Parking lots here in Singapore don’t tend to be the horizon spanning monstrosities of the US, land being a premium and all that, they tend to be either fairly small or multi-story parking decks. One feature of the non-parking deck lots that they do have strikes me as something the US should consider.

Basically the parking spaces in Singapore parking lots are not paved with asphalt or concrete — they are paved with bricks, holey bricks at that:

So why would this be a good idea: less run off, less sewers-backing-up floods, more plants (questionable at best). I’m sure there would be a host of issues to be solved, like how much oil/gas is leaking into the ground because of this (cars in Singapore tend to be new, well maintained due to the exorbitant cost of owning them and various other government rules, while cars in the US run a wide gamut, old and new, lots of oil and gas leaking rust-on-wheels.), not to mentions the cost of the bricks and laying them compared to the cost of asphalt. Also grass grows like a weed here in the tropics not so much in parts of the US so it might just be dirt in the holes. But really it just looks so much nicer.

Every once in a while when the instant noodles are cooked just right, a sort of instant noodle al dente, each bite takes me back to being eight years old. Sitting at the kitchen table at the summer babysitters house, Peggy was her name I think. Sitting at the table and eating Oodles of Noodles. Watching Voltron; the lions and the cars. I don’t know why, it’s been two dozen years but crinkly instant ramen still takes me back to those lazy summer afternoons. At least when they are cooked just right.

How long until Apple releases a version of the TV with it’s own app store and that comes packaged with two iPod Touch as controllers?

I don’t think an TV-as-game-console (and a lot more) would dethrone Sony and Microsoft from the hardcore gamer world it would put a lot more pressure on Nintendo in the casual gamer market. It’s no wonder that Nintendo sees Apple as their biggest future competitor.

Currently the TV is cheaper than the cheapest iPad, bundle it with two iPod Touch and it’s still not as much as the high end iPad. So that crazy iPad Scrabble game would be a bit less silly and you could play it on your TV.

I ran across these photos (here, here and here [boston.com]) via Boston.com’s The Big Picture [boston.com] article from June 11th. See the blue umbrellas and beach chairs in photo #12 [boston.com]? Yea? Well:

I used to spend every other summer vacation on that beach. My grandfather had a house on the lagoon at Gulf Shores… that is until Hurricane Ivan destroyed it in 2004 [confusion.cc].

I haven’t been back in some time. I guess it’s a good think I got some photos of the clean Gulf water.

And the beautiful beaches at sunset.

It’s hard to appreciate the scope and devastation of the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe from halfway around the world. Though the news talks about it everyday, there is no 24-by-7 discussion of it. Even though Singapore had a smaller oil spill just a short time ago [nytimes.com]. Seeing pictures of birds and turtles covered in oil make me feel bad. But seeing photos of the beaches I played on as a kid covered in oil bring it home in a much more personal way.

The Consumerist [consumerist.com] has a short article on the Pentagon’s recipe for brownies — no not the happy-fun kind of brownies, the military stopped testing that in the ’70s. We’re talking K-Ration, nuclear-war proof, post-apocalyptic edible, made from shit cockroaches won’t eat, cardboard brownies.

The article on the consumerist [consumerist.com] is basically the following two quotes, but they are so perfect, I’m going to reproduce them here:

“Shortening shall be a refined, hydrogenated vegetable oil or combination of refined vegetable oils which are in common use by the baking industry. Coconut and palm kernel oils may be used only in the coating. The shortening shall have a stability of not less than 100 hours as determined by the Active Oxygen Method (AOM) in Method Cd 12-57 of the Commercial Fats and Oils chapter in the Official and Tentative Methods of the American Oil Chemists Society. The shortening may contain alpha monoglycerides and an antioxidant or combination of antioxidants, as permitted by the Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS), and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and regulations promulgated thereunder.”

I like it! A well written, clear and concise, technical requirement… Of course there is one tiny little problem with this requirement:

“[NPR] asked Penny Karas, the founder of Hello Cupcake bakery in Washington, D.C., to whip up us a batch. And to be honest, they weren’t too good: dry, crumbly and dense. But they did taste as if they might last quite a while if boxed up and shipped to a war zone.”

Yep. This situation is a familiar problem to me as a Solution Architect… Well defined technical requirements that produce technically correct products that, due to the business requirements of the various stakeholders, no one wants to use…

I can’t tell you how many projects I have been on that I have had to fight some MBA holding sales|product|operations (delete as appropriate) weenie over their insistence on the inclusion of some brilliant business requirement like “It has to be good after a NUCLEAR FUCKING WAR!” Don’t get me wrong that might be a valid business requirement for military rations. It might even be a lofty goal for a mobile phone network. It it not, however, a useful or necessary requirement for a value added service in the mobile industry. No one cares if their phone can download music after the first strike! Well… Ok, maybe the guy who launched the bomb wants to download “We will rock you”.

Anyway, thanks to Stephen for the link, head over the the original article on The Consumerist [consumerist.com] with links to the actual recipe and the NPR article.