This is a fairly unconventional author spotlight, but I hope you will bear with me. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you have probably heard of woot.com. If you haven’t heard of woot, let me just tell you a little bit about them.
Woot.com has been selling one deal per day every day since 2004. The site is based out of Dallas and every night at midnight central time, if the current product of the day hasn’t been sold out, they simply post a new product. As ridiculous as it may seem, the site has been highly successful. If you need to learn more, simply go to woot.com and check out their FAQ.
What I mainly want you to focus on while you’re at the site is the product description. While most sites want to be accurate and helpful to their customers, woot takes a different direction and adds entertainment to the mix. I honestly don’t know who does the product descriptions (the author on the blog is listed as wootbot), but there is a distinctly dry sarcasm involved while peppering all of the pertinent information about the product. Here is a sample from a Mobile Receipt Scanner sale:
Hydraulic suspension. Triple chrome dubs. Flaked and laced gold-and-red paint job. This is gonna be the year I take first prize at the West Coast Custom Receipt Scanner Rally.
I first got into customs back in ‘06. ‘Til then I thought a receipt scanner was something that, like, some nerd or somebody might use to scan some receipts or something lame like that. Well, truth be known, I didn’t even know what a receipt scanner was. But if you had told me what one was, I would have punched you in the mouth for boring me half to death.
It just goes on from there. While I have only bought a few items from there, I still visit the site every day, hoping for a good deal on something and enjoying a little bit of entertainment in the meantime.
So go and check it out. Buy yourself a nice new Roomba or a new TV, or at least have a laugh.
In my meanderings across the web, I came across an oddity. Apparently, there are people in the world that are willing to pay an ungodly amount of money for a certain type of discontinued pencil called the Blackwing 602. According to pencilpages.com, these particular pencils started production in the 1980s and enjoyed a [relatively] long history until 1998, when the company producing them simply decided to move on to more economically efficient pencil lines. They were famous for their ferrule eraser holder, and for their smooth writing. According to the more choosy writers among us, the Blackwing requires significantly less pressure to write than a normal No. 2.
Since their discontinuation, these pencils have developed a cult following, some people simply refusing to write any significant works without their beloved writing utensil. Some of these pencils have been known to go for upwards of $35 per pencil on sites like ebay and craigslist.
Blackwing 602
What I find so interesting about this is that people still swear that their creative juices flow better when using a device that has been threatened for decades by advancements like pens and computers. The pencil has been around since the 1700s, and it is still the utensil of choice for students, engineers, professors, and everyone in between.
Despite the Blackwing’s following, Eberhard Faber (the company responsible for this legendary pencil) has not made any efforts to renew production. Never fear, pencil lovers, there is hope! California Cedar appears to be starting production on a pencil that mimics the writing style and aesthetics of the original Blackwing with their Palomino Blackwing. You’ll have to go here for an in-depth, hands-on review of the Blackwing copies.
So, let me ask the obvious question. Do you have a favorite tool that you just love to use? Is there a tool that you can’t work without? I would love to hear!
UPDATE: Blackwings have actually been in production since the 1930s. Thanks to Derek for the tip.
Well folks, I apologize for my lack of posting yesterday. I have been pretty busy with work and just trying to catch the last of the Summer fun before we enter the long dreary fall months. Thanks for boingboing.net, I felt like posting something today just for fun. So, without further delay, here is a film presented by boingboing and filmed by an imaginary film maker, Lee Titt:
Simply saying new words can bring them into existence. Last night, I spoke popplegrapple and it was. However, it takes a special kind of word to make it into the Oxford English Dictionary. That’s just what a motley crew of words decided to do recently. Some were fully acceptable like netbook and overthink, but there are others in that list that just get my goat.
Take for instance the word bromance. The only time I have ever heard that word has been in a comedic setting, which makes me giggle every time I hear the word. But then again, the word nipple makes me giggle too, so that can’t be the measure of a word.
I had a good long talk with my wife over dinner last night that enlightened me to why I shouldn’t be upset that words like chillax have made their way into the dictionary. She simply said, the multitude has spoken and they have come up with a definition for a word that they use in everyday language. There is no magical council in a government building somewhere, coming up with new words like strick (A bundle of broken hemp, flax, jute, etc. for heckling). No, we control our own language by creating and changing the way we communicate with each other.
What I have had to come to understand is that not only is the english language and ever-changing conundrum, but it is also clearly defined only by the people that use it, and not those who want to control it. Now, I really need to give myself a staycation so that I can work on coming up with a new word or two. Is there money involved here? when do I get my check?
All of this talk about Paleoblogging and Linux and old projects of mine has me wanting more vintage goodness. While I may not be dredging up forgotten items of the past, I have been focusing more and more on the hackers of old. There is something almost mystical to me about computers and how they came about.
Some would say that Alan Turing is the father of computers. He was a mathematician and helped in World War II, helping decrypt messages using form of a computer. Just imagine the leaps and bounds that we have taken since then. While early computers were purely used academically for mathematics, they soon became gaming systems, word processors, and eventually saturated our lives as communication devices. What would Alan Turing say if he were alive today to see Twitter? Would be appreciate Call of duty? Would he be able to adapt to writing his technical papers in a full-featured word processor?
Computers have such a full and rich history that remains relatively unexplored by the average person. I encourage you to learn a little bit more about where we came from. Sometimes, it’s much more entertaining to look into the rock solid past than to predict the shifting future.
