Theoretical Ken

Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner: The Final Cut” opens Friday in NYC, and I really want to go see it. After 25 years, director Ridley Scott has re-released the film with lost scenes and plot lines added back in, and original effects scenes digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, and then carefully retouched. This is the version that he was trying to make in 1982. After going over-budget at the time, the financiers of the film took over and Scott had to bend steeply to their wishes. A narration track was written and added, and the film was given a happy ending. Ironically, footage used as backdrops for the new happy ending — scenes of rolling countryside — were borrowed from Stanley Kubrick; out-takes from The Shining! …read more →

Tags: Family, Movies, Science by T_Ken
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& The Oakland-Berkeley Hills Fire

Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish poet and scientist with wide ranging interests. He is known to a wider public for his thousands of short, aphoristic poems called Grooks (Gruk in Danish) and creations like the games of Hex, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, and the Soma cube. He advocated the use of the super ellipse curve in city planning, furniture making and other realms. He also marketed housewares based on the Superellipse and Super-egg.
(from Wikipedia.)

I came across the Grooks of Piet Hein a few years ago, and I was recently reminded of how much I really liked these clever poems.

Here is a sampling of Piet Hein’s Grooks.

T.T.T

Put up in a place
where it's easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
    T.T.T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it's well to remember that
    Things Take Time.

THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom? - Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
    Err
    and err
    and err again
    but less
    and less
    and less.

…read more →

Tags: Books, Fun, Language by T_Ken
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The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary
Complete Text Reproduced Micrographically (in slipcase with reading glass).

500,000 words, 290,000 main entries, 137,000 pronunciations, 249,300 etymologies, 577,000 cross-references, and over 2,412,000 illustrative quotations in one book. Weighs in at 15.3 pounds.

A direct photoreduction of the entire 20-volume set, with nine pages of the original on every nine-by-twelve inch page.

Painstakingly written by an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters.

Published by Oxford University Press, USA. Available here.

(via cooltools)

Tags: Books, Data, General, Language, Tech by T_Ken
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You may already use the “Find in This Page” feature of the Firefox browser: pressing Command+F on a Mac, or Control+F on a PC brings up a FIND toolbar at the bottom of the browser window, which allows you to search for words or phrases in a web page that you are viewing.

But here are two neat single-key shortcuts to the Quick Find toolbar for finding text on a web page. …read more →

Tags: Computers, Tech by T_Ken
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+ enlarge

Pictured above, is my very own meteorite. Awesome, isn’t it!

But it’s not really in outer space. It’s in my office, on my desk. …read more →

Tags: Fun, Photography, Science by T_Ken
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