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I'm completely fascinated with the phrase written on his giant chest. It's nonsense, but just close enough to having meaning that it's a tantalizing mystery. Or just fun nonsense. Or something. Whatever it is, I like it, and that's all that counts.

Regardless, you've got to love the giant Lego man in all his giant Lego glory. Just look at his head crushing talon about to destroy that poor Dutch woman.

I really want it to be some sort of Danish (Trojan) Horse. I'm not exactly sure which way the currents run up there, so who knows it that's even possible, but I love the idea.

Here's some Youtube video, if it were really a Danish invasion, this is where they'd jump out. Sadly, they don't

It's got something to do with this guy. What? I don't know as it's in a language I don't understand:

No real than you are

Here's a story on it:

Giant Lego man washed up on Dutch beach

I was reading this article- Technorati: Big business with bogus data; when I came across this Japanese word: "gomiburoggu"

gomi (trash*) + buroggu (blogs**)

Now you know how to refer to fake blogs in Japanese. I bet you didn't think that was going to happen today.

*one of the handful of japanese words I know and while many are down to my chanbara obsession, gomi I actually owe to William Gibson. William Gibson's new book comes out tomorrow. See, it all makes sense on some level.

**The Japanese aren't particularly down with Ls or ending words in consonants. Hence buroggu for blogs or Arisu for Alice (Yeah, I'm thinking of the character from the excellent anime Serial Experiments: Lain)

big ups to the folks at Yahoo! for YSlow for Firebug, a Firefox/firebug add-on that provides a wealth of great information about enhancing site performance.

Here's the sample output from this site's home page*:

I've increased my score from 62-82 just today. I enabled expire headers for my images with this bit of htaccess magic:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A300
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A2592000
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A604800
ExpiresByType text/css A604800
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType text/html A300

and turned off etags with this bit:

FileETag None
Header unset ETag

I'm looking into gzip compression and using Amazon S3 to get me over the 90+ level

I love messing around with this place.

*the blog totally sucks scoring 51. I've got a million little things running here, so that's not a surprise. Until my blog goes from 10-15% of my traffic to something more like 50% I'm not going to worry about it.

I'd be really happy.

Palm, Inc. - Products - Foleo

If I didn't just spend 2 grand on a new computer and wasn't eying both a new TV and one of these to replace my now graying Pioneer system (7 years old and only now starting to sputter! Not too shabby!), I'd probably just crack open the wallet to buy one. While I do need a laptop to actually do work with, I'd love to have something that small to carry with me on vacation and business trips. Living my digital life on just a Treo is pretty cool, but there are just some things it can't do or can't do well enough to be the only thing I carry with me on the road.

Sherlock Holmes, bitches!

Have I ever posted this picture of me giving Professor Moriarty a piece of my mind?

I'm such a Sherlock Holmes nerd.

We were in the Blue Hills Reservation, coming down off of a hill and we saw a Scarlet Tanager high up in a tree. It's a very cool bird and has a really familiar song. Apparently there are some in the Arnold Arboretum, but since they stay so high up surface dwellers never get a chance to see them. Here's an example I found in user badjoby's flickr:

"With Russians dropping dead from polonium poisoning, I've begun to wonder about poisoning generally. What's the fastest-acting, most lethal poison? What's the most insidious, least detectable? "

subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale

I'm surprised at the relative sizes of a lot of them. Moscow's subway, for example, has always been presented to me as being absolutely massive and while it is big, it's nowhere near the largest. Of the ones I've been on I have to say I was most impressed with London's. While it's insanely expensive, a single ride costing something like $4, it covers the city comprehensively and is really pretty easy to figure out.

was the "the Mount Everest of inebriation"

Click that link for an article outlining Andre the Giant's prowess as a drinker. The numbers will boggle your freakin' mind. I give you one to tease:

119 Beers

My choices on the vote thing:

1. The Chrysler Building
2. The Flatiron building
3. The Boston Public Library
4. The Robie House
5. Fenway Park

Some notes on my choices:

• I was crazy biased on two of my choices. The Library is honestly emblematic of my youth (we used to hang out in front) and Fenway is Fenway… What can I do? I'm a Bostonian at heart.
• Really? I would have choses Taliesin or Fallingwater, but I've never actually seen either with my own eyes and I feel like architecture is best appreciated in person.
• The Chrystler Building is my favorite building in New York. Hands down. I don't know how many times I've seen it and it still fascinates me. Maybe if I lived there I'd tire of it, but failing that, call me a fan.

Verey cool presentation. Check it out and dig around if you've got a minute…

FavoriteArchitecture.org ­ The American Institute of Architects