Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Good things start in garages. TimberShark Media‘s first portfolio-building gig was filming informational training videos for Kuru Footware (produced, obviously, in my garage.) Some have asked to see an example of the finished product. Here ya go:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

or, watch it in HD on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s69NRyOd6c

Special thanks to Luke, Ben and the supremely talented actress Kim.

What’s happening in your garage?

Earlier, I blogged about the Biggest Homes in Utah. It’s time to choose a winner. I nominate this one (in Bountiful)*:

and here’s the google map link

* Thanks to occasional-blog-reader Kim for pointing this one out

Someone, definitely a lothario, once said that his summer goal was to get guns, grills and girls.  Now, while I can’t condone the womanizing, the guns and grills sound good to me. What warm-blooded American doesn’t have a garage full of assault rifles? What patriotic citizen of this fine nation doesn’t protect their liberties by packing, at all times, a 45 caliber Springfield 1911 in their waistband? It’s like the crazies at the gun shows say, “Democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner, Liberty is one well armed sheep contesting the vote.”

There are lots of funny gun rights bumper stickers out there. A bit of googling on the topic will provide an afternoon of hilarity. Add a little angstful passion to a redneck with a computer and WHAMMO! funny stuff.

I think we should have the right to bear arms, I just wish I could be the arbitrator of who gets to do the bearing. Cops who think everyone should be TASED: no. Scary Goth kids: no. Robots: hard to say…

And then we have grills. The grill is the modern man’s fire, and just like in prehistoric times, the grill today is the meeting place for all things manly: slabs of meet, brutal-looking BBQ tongs, tongues of fire, A1 steak sauce, and manly discussion about geopolitics.

Not too long ago, p.adams surprised me by dropping by with a few friends. Obviously we fired up the grill. Yes, we cracked open a few cold ones (jones soda, mainly.) And yes, we talked about the state of the world. I mean, seriously, what IS Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up to these days?!?

What’s on your grill?

How do you get your way? Well, the art of negotiation and persuasion is a study unto itself, but there are a few tricks you can use to aid people to do your nefarious (or benign) bidding. Here are a few of those tips. Obviously, with great power…

• Use the word “because” (From the book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion)
• Speak into their right ear (From the Telegraph):

“Known as the ‘right ear advantage,’ scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain. ‘Talk into the right ear you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain,’ say researchers. The team…  observed the behavior of hundreds of people in three nightclubs across the city where they intentionally addressed 176 people in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they made their request in a person’s right ear compared with their left. “

• Give them something (a small gift). Why do you think stores have free samples? Reciprocation is a strong social motivator.
• Wear a lab coat. People will apparently do anything when instructed to by a doctor or a scientist. Shocking!
• Ask for a small favor first. Once they agree, then ask for something bigger.
• Smile. Use their name (Thank’s Dale!)

Now, don’t use this new-found knowledge for evil, OKAY?!?

How do you get your way?

The browser war isn’t a real war with machine guns and artillery shells and breaking Geneva conventions, it’s more of a virtual turf war for the world’s web surfers. Let’s review the history of this nifty interweb of ours:

• 1989: CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee launches the first web server*. You can see that web server (and I have) because it’s just sitting on a table in one of the CERN lobby buildings. You could even steal it if you wanted (I considered it), because there is very little security– those silly Swiss!
• Mosaic, the first graphical browser, came out a few years later, in 1993, followed by it’s cousin Netscape Navigator in 1994. Remember?
• Microsoft, with their market-busting, monopolistic fervor, introduced Internet Explorer (IE) in 1995 and began shipping it with all version of Windows. Because it came pre-installed, it quickly grew to near complete market domination.
• SEVEN YEARS passes with little change. Everyone had been using IE. Then, WHAMMO! Firefox (www.getfirefox.com). Firefox is available on Linux, Mac and PCs. It’s fast, has lots of awesome plugins and TABS!
• A year or so passes and Microsoft plays catch up and finally releases a tabbed version of IE. Other browsers appear (like Google Chrome.)

How goes the fierce, non-violent, nerdy war? As of May 2009, the browser market share looks like:
IE7 21.3%
IE6 14.5%
IE8  5.2%
FF 47.7
Chrome 5.5%
Safari 3.0%
Opera 2.2%

So, what’s the next step? Better tabs. So good ol’ Mozilla (makers of Firefox) are having a competition to redesign the tabbing experience.

My good buddy, Grady, a world-class graphic designer, has created a new paradigm for tabbing, he calls it favitabs,  (http://www.favitabs.com). Today starts the voting for the people’s choice award, and anyone can vote: http://design-challenge.mozilla.com/summer09/showcase.php

The voting ends of July 5th, so if you want to be part of history, if you think Favitabs is an awesome idea, then click on over to the design challenge and vote.

* Sir Tim also came up with the crazy http:// prefix for web addresses. He is said to regret that decision.

Obviously Kimberley Vlaminck doesn’t read the RBDN blog or she would have 1- learned to speak French better, or 2- learned where tattoos ought to go. First the story:

An 18-year-old Belgian girl is suing a Romanian tattoo artist over the 56 stars on her face. Kimberley Vlaminck says she requested three small stars, but the tattoo artist didn’t understand her French and English.

Let me recap my tattoo blog post — women have four tattoo location possibilities :

• Shoulder blade
• Lower back (derisively referred to as a tramp stamp)
• Ankle
• Upper leg/bikini region

And though a star is permissible (as are butterflies, hearts, fairies, crosses and mystical/eastern characters), fifty six stars on the face are not. Says the tattoo artist, Rouslan Toumaniantz:

She knew exactly what she wanted. She was awake and looked into the mirror several times as the procedure was taking place. The trouble all started when she went home and her father and boyfriend threw a fit. They are saying things now like I doped her or hypnotized her. What rubbish! She asked for 56 stars and that’s what she got.

And now for some French. If you want to say, “I want three stars on my face”, you could say, “je veux trois étoiles sur mon visage.” If, on the other hand, you wanted fifty-six stars say, “je veux cinquante-six étoiles partout sur mon visage.”

Have you ever done something really stupid?

src

UPDATE: Kimberley just confessed she wasn’t asleep, that she wanted all the stars and that she clearly knew what Mr Toumaniantz was doing:

I asked for 56 stars and initially adored them. But when my father saw them, he was furious. So I said I fell asleep and the that the tattooist had made a mistake.

Regardless, we murdered (and unintentionally tortured) a lot of drosophila melanogaster* in Mr Reese’s AP Biology class as we tried to anesthetise those frenetic flies in order to view them under a microscope. It was all for science, right?

But PETA doesn’t like science, they like love. The kind of love where hateful, largely unemployed, English-major-college-student-types yell and pester patrons outside a Wendys restaurant, throw red paint at people who wear fur and, in general, act rabidly. Also, the kind of love where you sit around and eat lots of tofu.

All is not well, in their impassioned, nutty camp. PETA is mad again and here’s why: our godless, heathen president Obama killed a fly during an interview. (For the record, I don’t much like PETA (I do like pita, but only if we’re talking about pita bread, and then only if it’s filled with tuna fish and mayonnaise– hold the celery please!) ) Where were we? Oh yes, wrathful PETA didn’t like the presidential insect swatting.

But let’s back up. Is PETA filled with a bunch of loud-mouthed, liberal hippies? Yes, but that’s not why I dislike them. Do they raid farms and set loose all the minks, only to have caused those same minks to starve to death in the following months? Yes, but again, that’s not exactly why I’m not a member of their evil, brainwashing cult.

I don’t like them because they’re fundamentally dumb. (I suppose illogical is a friendlier word?)

Sure, they’ll tell you they’re simply against unethical treatment of animals**, but in reality they’re all vegetarians/vegans– PETA rule #1– no eating animals. But this presents a dilemma. If it’s unethical to eat animals, animals and people must not be so different. Animals are not people, so people must be animals. And if it’s wrong for us people-animals to eat animals, it must also be wrong for animal-animals to eat animals. Follow me?

How about an example. There is a television series (Whale Wars) on the Animal Planet cable channel where some super-hippies (actually kicked out of PETA for extremism) attack Japanese whaling boats. “Save the whales,” they cry! What kind of whales are those Japanese research vessels gathering? Minke and Fin whales, both of which are types of baleen whales. And what do baleen whales eat? Plankton, krill and fish. And what is a krill? Well, it’s a small shrimp-like crustacean. So, drum roll please… The Whale Warriors are terrorizing people for killing animals, which animals are killing other animals! PETA, where’s the outrage? How come animal-animals can kill animals and people-animals can’t? Or, not incidentally, what would be the effect if animal-animals stopped killing and eating animals? That’s right, the world ecosystem would collapse and we’d all die. Good job, PETA.

Surely, the pensive PETAns will write and tell me that animal-animals only kill humanely and only out of necessity. But that’s simply not true. Do animal-animals ever kill and not eat their prey? Yes! The list of fun-killers includes: cats, dogs, birds, fox, orca, porpoises, lions, hyena, killer whales! and opossum, to name a few.

So…  Obama was being pestered by a fly and so he slapped it, squishing it. Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA, said, “We support compassion for the even the smallest animals, we support giving insects the benefit of the doubt.” What to do about the fly? Friedrich says PETA supports “brushing flies away rather than killing them” and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.

* AKA the fruit fly. Greek for “black-bellied dew lover”
** Just like the pro-choice camp rails on about how they want a women to have the right to choose. Nope. They are pro-abortion, pure and simple.

You can read the official PETA blog responses here and here. And below you’ll find some of PETA’s most recent project images. Enjoy them while you eat an Arbys’ beef and cheddar.

Your old man, pops, dad,  father*, daddy-o — whatever you call him, today is his day. Yes Father’s Day is an American pseudo-holiday** where kids buy ugly ties for their dads, but it’s also a time to thank our dads for all their efforts in our behalf.

My dad taught me the value of hard work, of helping others, of selfless service, of going the extra mile, of preserving family history, of pursuing excellence, of continued education, of fighting a good fight and standing up for principles and values.

What about my dad? Well, last year I traveled to South Carolina with my dad to scan in some old photos of the Byrd family. The year before we flew down to California do to the same (that’s when I learned I have relatives in the Chinese Mafia…) I probably got my love of traveling from him– though, admittedly, he’s been to way more countries than I have (though the race is still on!) I smile when I remember him bringing orange juice with crushed ice up to us kids during the hot summer nights as we lay in bed. He helped edit my English papers in high school– where I never received anything less than an A. He went in and yelled at teachers who were unfair to me. He paid for me to go to France — and despite the rumors to the contrary, I came to love that country and its people and culture. Basically, I have an awesome dad.

Did you call or visit your dad today? Did you thank him for raising you and putting up with your drama?

* Here’s a tip, if your kids address you as father, you’re probably not a good one, unless you’re British (or they are)
** Real holidays mean you get paid time off from work!

p.s. June 21, today, is first official day of summer. Will it ever stop raining?!?
p.p.s. My dad happens to be twice as old as me right now.

Many of you know that I’m in the market for a pair of German Shepard sentry dogs to guard the property and protect me from all the crazy people out there trying to get me. Believe me, you don’t get this far in life without building up a sizable army of enemies both domestic and foreign.

Kidding! Paranoia aside, I’ve always wanted dogs* and German Shepard are very intelligent and friendly while sporting that, “mess with me or my master and I’ll bite your head off” look. It seems obvious to me that German Shepards should be spoken to in German. That’s why I’m learning hundekommandos (dog commands in german).

DEUTSCH (pronunciation) — ENGLISH

• Hier! / Komm! (here / komm)  —   Come!
• Braver Hund! (braffer ho ont) —    Good dog!
• Nein! / Pfui! (nyne / pfoo-ee) – –    No! / Bad dog!
• FuB! (foos)  —   Heel! Sitz! (sits)   –   Sit!
• Platz! (plahts) –    Down!
• Bleib! / Stopp! (blype / shtopp)   –  Stay!
• Bring! / Hol! (brink / hohll)     Fetch!
• Aus! / Gib! (owss / gipp)   –   Let loose! / Give!
• Gib FuB! (gipp foos)   –   Shake hands!
• Voraus! (for-owss)   –   Go!

* Wolves actually. A pack of wolves. Then I could say, “Smithers…release the hounds.” German Shepards are close to wolves while not actually being canis lupus.

Now you can have your hat and eat it too.*

Maybe I shouldn’t be blogging when I’m hungry…

* The old saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”, is mixed up and stupid.” The original maxim was, “you can’t eat your cake and have it too.” Obviously, cakes are no good if you can’t eat them, but once you eat it, it’s gone!