jtnt://life/unedited

Today I came up with an idea that I think could warrant a patent. After doing a single search for “browser” and “bookmark” against the US Patent Office database, I knew that knew that it could land a patent.

Check out some of the beauties I found in just a few minutes poking around the USPO’s virtual filing cabinets:

US Patent 6,851,060: User control of web browser user data

Specifically, allowing a user to see his/her authentication information and saved cookies.

US Patent 6,853,980: System for selecting, distributing, and selling fonts.

Specifically, an online font store that displays related fonts with the currently viewed font.

US Patent 6,772,124: Content-driven speech- or audio-browser

Specifically, a search engine for audio files.

Sorry these are so web-centric. There are obvious, completely novel things patented in other areas, too, though:

US Patent 6,832,916: Soap dispenser hand wash interval timer

This is literally nothing more than a soap dispenser with a sign that says, WASH UP with Soap and Water. Get rid of germs in only 15 seconds” over it, as the patent says that the user “may use an ordinary clock” in determining the intervals.

I bet you never would have expected to find an image like this in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database. I bet you’d be even more surpised if you found out it was a drawing of a patented beer glass.

Another fine example of American ingenuity in design. Form really does follow function.

And then there are those that are completely justified and somewhat ironic in their titling, like US Patent 6,862,223, and I quote:

MONOLITHIC, COMBO NONVOLATILE MEMORY ALLOWING BYTE, PAGE AND BLOCK WRITE WITH NO DISTURB AND DIVIDED-WELL IN THE CELL ARRAY USING A UNIFIED CELL STRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY WITH A NEW SCHEME OF DECODER AND LAYOUT

Monolithic indeed.

It’s like the first time I got my picture in the paper for being a cub scout in a local parade, but much geekier… I am quoted in a Wired News article on the security oversights Apple made with Dashboard Widgets.

“I hope they see the danger, if only for their marketing,” said Tolson. “All it will take is one seriously nasty widget to completely wreck (Apple’s) image of ‘no viruses’ or ‘Macs are inherently more secure’ message. And you better believe that would become news.”

I said it then, and I’ll say it now… “Nasty widgets” is fun to say.

1) A student is suspended when he refuses to hang-up his cell phone (which
aren’t supposed to be in use in his school) while on a call with his mom, a
soldier calling from Iraq.

“Kevin got defiant and disorderly,” Parham said. “When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we’re not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days.”

How thoughtful of you? Is this how we’re teaching kids to respond
appropriately to situations? A kid cusses and he can be arrested?

Read full article.

2) Andy Roddick loses match after he corrects umpire and turns a
double-fault into an ace, allowing his opponent to rally.

“I didn’t think it was anything extraordinary,” Roddick said. “The umpire would have done the same thing if he came down and looked. I just saved him the trip. He’s working hard up there.”

‘At a boy! So infrequently do we here such good news from our sports stars.

Read full article.

The world was made safer today with the detention of Bobby Fischer in Japan. Fischer is wanted for playing chess in Yugoslavia 1992 in violation with sanctions imposed on the country.

It’s about time this guy was brought to justice.

I will sleep easier knowing Fischer is off the streets and now unable to terrorize neighborhood park chess matches around the world. I finally feel safe fathering children.

The funniest man in show business today turns 37 today. (Tip o’ the hat to Morning Edition on NPR.)

Thought I’d be nice and help spread the meme of Glen, the band Survivor, and their Starbucks commercial. I think Roy is the true star, though.

Enjoy.

There’s also, Stacey. Leave her alone.

Grab yourself some Afternoon Delight. (Alternate link, just in case - or if you just like MTV better than Rollingstone.)

Multi-tasking wastes time. That’s right. You heard me. So, put down your cellphone, and take your hand out of that bag of chips, and take your third eye off the TV and pay attention!

“…Scientists at Carnegie Mellon put subjects in an M.R.I. machine and asked them to listen to complicated sentences at the same time that they mentally rotated geometric shapes. The two tasks activated different parts of the brain, but each region was operating at a suboptimal level. Here, then, was high-tech confirmation of the common-sense wisdom of Publilius Syrus, a Roman philosopher from the first century B.C., who warned, “To do [two] things at once is to do neither.”

I’m not the only one.

Quote Gem:

“The world needs more non-conformists striving for the lowest possible quality!

Not.”

I’ve just stumbled upon this thing called lomography.

I think it’s a load of crap.

These people are talking about spontaneous street photography as though it’s something new, and, apparently, dependent on a certain type of low-tech camera.

Apparently these people have never heard of Gary Winogrand or his famous quote:

“I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”

I spent an entire semester at SVA doing this sort of photography, and admittedly it turned into my favorite work in school. So, I understand these people’s enthusiasm for the style and the freedom it makes you feel.

What I can’t stand is the way they talk about this style/method/etc. in such cultish terms. How it’s been turned into some kind of movement, made even worse by the fact that the name is tied to some product. The Lomo folks must be loving this.

So you don’t look through the viewfinder when you take pictures. Great. So they’re low-tech, ala millions of Holga (the refuge of every 2nd year photography student in art school) pictures before yours. Great. So these pictures are entirely personal. Great. Then why do you feel the need to yap on about them and put them up on the web so much?

A lot of these lomographs (it pains me to even think that word) are not as unplanned as they seem. They all look like pictures taken by that annoying kid in your (again) 2nd year photography class that is taking candids and off-center/kilter images to “break down the conventions of what is thought to be photography, journalism, and art.”

Shut up. Now, get over yourself, and go take pictures that are really personal, not just stolen records of the most mundane parts of your life. (Really, I think all this is from a fear to raise the camera to their faces in public. To thrust the camera into view or admit to someone else - a stranger perhaps - that they are taking their picture. I’m sure you could psychoanalyze that more, but I won’t.)

How come all this “personal” work has so much impersonal crap in it? A woman sitting next to a table with a lone coffee mug on it?

Oh wow. Genius. If you’re not Nan Goldin, keep it to yourself. At least her pictures are of the interesting parts of her life.