Yes, McStayInSchool... Someone who argues that "TV is evil," and whose argument stops there is missing the point. It's a good thing to put your mind someplace for a while, even if it is vapid. And some of it isn't vapid, and in fact would stand up amongst some of the best stories we as humans have produced.

You can't be "on" all of the time. But if you're spending more than 10% of your waking hours (which equates to 2 hours per day) on something, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 9:12 AM on September 4, 2008

Oh my god I love me some pinball.

Have fun, PA'ers.
posted to MetaTalk by sleslie at 1:24 PM on September 3, 2008

Big deal. You live in NY. How many Estonians did you meet today? Five?
posted to MetaTalk by sleslie at 8:33 PM on August 30, 2008

I'll buy the movie rights to vi, if any of you people out there want to sell it. I've written about 10 pages of the spec script.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 2:37 PM on August 30, 2008

90% of viewers would never figure out how to leave the theatre.

Idiots!

Tap the door two times to enable the door's turning cylinders, turn the knob to the left if you would like to recall your memories of watching the movie in your brain in the future, and then turn the knob to the right like you would any other door. If you're really sure that you know what you're doing, punch the door with your fist at the end.

Simple.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 3:25 PM on August 30, 2008

The argument that can't be beaten about this topic.

Do some method acting and say this line: "I am a 9 year old girl. My government thinks I am ugly."
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:52 AM on August 27, 2008

I wish I was in Hong Kong now, where'd I could hit the Wan Chai bars and find you a "guy who knows a guy" and make a little side money... anyways, the place to go is alibaba.com. I've found this, but you would more knowledgeable in what you want.

Sub High Efficiency Air Filter
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 10:03 AM on August 26, 2008

Their families probably need to melt down the gold to buy food.

...only if they have spend the reward money they received on North American real estate.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:19 PM on August 20, 2008

Sorry DU, that ain't gonna work.

There's no way to spin this. And it's not serious enough to warrant a response from either the Republicans or the Democrats without the Republicans looking petty or the Democrats drawing attention to it.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 11:09 AM on August 20, 2008

I suppose that could work. It would have to be clear that the brother never, ever, asked for help from Obama. Appreciating self reliance is one thing, but refusing to help someone when the rewards and losses between the parties are so glaringly different would be another.

Thankfully, it appears this is a more a wiltering relationship rather than an outright refusual to acknowledge a family member.

And about the sandals, that one didn't make it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:07 PM on August 20, 2008

And when do we get to see the picture of Obama smoking?

That'll be a fun week for the talking heads. They have to be saving that one up.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:10 PM on August 20, 2008

Don't is my opinion. Do you know the work that is done to the tap water in North America? You do realize this is actually a rare thing that only 10% of the world's population has? And ask yourself why we bothered to do this for the last few decades? We filtered our water while our kids were allowed to play with metal darts!

There's a reason.

And a 2L bottle of water is a dollar there, which should be reason enough.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 11:09 PM on August 19, 2008

Slightly different, and a little bit more labor intesive is this solution: every Friday, all items are given that week's sticker of a certain color. The next week, another color sticker is used. Repeat one more week with a different color. Once three weeks have passed with the first weeks' stickered food in the fridge, all food items w/ that color of sticker of the first week are thrown out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 10:57 PM on August 19, 2008

For example, a couple months ago they aired a Lewis Black stand-up special ... with every commercial break being the same minute-long ad for Girls Gone Wild.

Someone has a modern studio with lights, cameras, and mikes, decades of experience in performing, a team of writers, and nation wide distribution of the signal, and you're complaining that to pay for all of this, you have to watch boobs for three minutes.

Exactly how does one go about making you happy?
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:36 PM on August 16, 2008

Backup your files before playing with them, and setup up a test directory to play with some sample files before you begin.

As many wise computer scientists have said before, "Shit happens".
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 9:48 AM on August 11, 2008

re: http://www.brownharrisstevens.com/detail.aspx?id=364979#

Type: Triplex
Penthouse: Yes
Rooms: 16.0
Bedrooms: 5

Laundry in building: Yes

Thank god there's laundry services available. It would get old very quickly if you had to lug your clothes all the way down to the local laundromat.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:28 PM on August 9, 2008

Do you have to really try and be blatant at pissing the servers off, or can this be provoked by a customer who acts in an inconvenient manner? Stuff like not immediately understanding the restaurant's set menu rules, or sitting in a table that requires a lot of walking on the part of the server, or changing the drink ordered after it was written down (i.e. things you don't realize are annoying until you serve time in customer service). Do those things count as 'pissing someone off'?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 11:22 AM on August 9, 2008

Green apples and green tea.

It's hard to overdose on either of them; it's easier to maintain a sensible dose of caffeine with green tea; and the green apples are hydrating and contain fructose which is a slow(er) releasing sugar for energy.

I don't know if the green apple trick is psychosomatic, as this was something I heard from someone in college and there doesn't seem to be any evidence given anywhere, but they don't make you more tired.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 2:34 PM on July 31, 2008

Getting a rice cooker is a necessity for anyone who loves rice.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 2:19 PM on July 31, 2008

Oh, and the rice cooker recipe:

1. Put rice in the container.
2. Wash rice, by hand if you don't like washing a ton of utensils, or use some sort of strainy thing.
3. Learn how much water to put in through practice.
4. Put the container in the rice cooker.
5. Press button.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 2:23 PM on July 31, 2008

Favorite wrestlers : curt henning,randy savage,raven,Hulk Hogan, owen hart,kurt angle,the rock.

If you don't like capital letters, fine, I can accept this. Bear in mind, though, that one should not capitalize Hulk Hogan's name like He is a God amongst mortals.

He's not.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:25 AM on July 17, 2008

Don't buy the coke in such massive qualities. If you are near a convenience store, only buy your coke from them. Don't store any coke at your home. It's easy to justify the purchase of two liter bottles as you save a lot of money as compared to buying them one at a time at a 7-11, but the ease of access is what is causing your problem, not the $50 more you'd spend a month buying the same amount in cans. You're going to be spending more at the start, but drinking coke will now become something... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 9:41 PM on July 12, 2008

Go to Wang Fu Jing, or some place with a lot of foreign books, and get a small English - Russian guide. With this, you'll make a ton of friends. You've got two things in your favor: a desire to learn the language and two hundred bored Russian speakers with nothing to do for five days. A print out will be exhausted as a source of conversation within a one hour conversation, but everyone likes flipping through a phrase book.

Don't be scared of anyone, even if they're... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 6:15 AM on July 7, 2008

iframe?
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 8:46 AM on July 1, 2008

As in this... http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fb:iframe
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 8:48 AM on July 1, 2008

Team blue was the documentation team (or guy), which I found fascinating as the "blue" period of Python's development preceded a time of heavy checkins and, as mentioned in the caption, Python's explosion of popularity.

I wasn't into Python back then; are there are Pythoners out there who can corroborate this? Was the time after the massive documentation the time of Python's initial popularity explosion?
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 9:20 AM on June 19, 2008

And count me in, obviously.
posted to MetaTalk by sleslie at 7:25 PM on June 2, 2008

A think a few meetup records were broken:

1. first meetup with a baby.
2. first meetup where visa runs via hydrofoil boat to Macau were proposed and would have been part of the meetup. Did you New Yorkers ever take the party to Atlantic City?
posted to MetaTalk by sleslie at 3:43 AM on June 9, 2008

If you find a place that looks good, you can check the bus routes on the Winnipeg Transit site: http://winnipegtransit.com/index.jsp. If you run some queries through this the navigo system, you can start to get a feel for how the transit system works.

In a quick blurb, the system is great on Portage and Pembina Road, and mildly painful on places away from those roads. Osbourne Village is probably the among the best bus depots for frequency of service and locations in the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 7:53 PM on June 7, 2008

When is youtube going to get permalinks?

If you want to be all googly about it, you'd do it something like this.

1. The URL for videos will be http://www.youtube.com/watch?l=grover_learns_the_meaning_of_pie

2. There will be a server that responds to all "l" requests in the query string by sending that portion of the string (in this case, "grover_learns_the_meaning_of_pie") to a cluster of computers... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:56 AM on June 5, 2008

Two options... I'd just buy a virgin mobile card from 7-11 in the US.

The second option is to buy one in China.

Use a bit of intuition and smarts, and buy the cheapest quad you can find there in China.

One thing to look for is on the list of features on the card next to the phone, there will be a list of the features and price of the phone. You know what I'm talking about, right... the list that's not in English, is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 9:54 PM on June 4, 2008 marked best answer

Would you guys/gals need to share these notes with others?

This is a three week project for someone who has the ability to program up a simple game. The legalities of sharing music *notation* would be problematic if the site started to get big...
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 8:32 AM on June 4, 2008

Then you double the estimate of project completion once you start thinking about it. You'd probably want to hear the music, wouldn't you?
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 8:35 AM on June 4, 2008

You could ensure that all randomized game elements were generated from a seed sent by the server, and then huffman encode the user's inputs (i.e. at game clock cycle one, the user pressed the space bar, at cycles two through 50, the user pressed no keys), send that over when a level is done, and then simulate the game on the server side (with a faster game cycle) to obtain the score. That way, the only way to send a valid score over to the server is to play the game.

Now... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 7:59 PM on May 28, 2008

I just have to plug this album so more people will hear it... If I Was Prince, a compilation of Prince covers that was released a few years ago.

He was always a great musician, his facade was just a bit off for a while there.

"I'll tell you a funny story about Prince. I was in this studio and I heard Prince was coming in. There was a time I thought he was awesome, but what a fucking creep! The rules were, you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:38 PM on May 27, 2008

Wow, Faze. That hit me. You have no idea. And, assuming you're from North America, you get up real early in the morning, geezer.

But seriously, I'm reading that over a few times tonight in my small rent-sucking Hong Kong apartment as I think about what I've given up for a few spins around the proverbial Shenzhen underground nightclubs and a glimpse of the harbour from an office on the 30th floor during a failed job interview. There are things I will take from this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:10 AM on May 27, 2008

Wow.

It has to be real -- check out the scene at the end of the horses section. The trolley smashes into a subway pole, and the guy goes flying. The picture fades out, most likely due to the fact that the camera man stopped cranking the film to help his coworker and there was no more footage.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:06 AM on May 26, 2008

Grunge was over by this point. This was when Pearl Jam had that 'Last Kiss' cover song out, if I recall.

Romeo and Juliet Soundtrack, and the Kids soundtrack. Those were more 1995, but they had lasting power until at least 1997.

The song "Pepper" by the Butthole Surfers was mainstream at this point. The rest of the album, though, fits your profile.

There was alot of Jungle at this time... I remember listening to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 4:06 AM on May 22, 2008

Oh, yeah, Brit pop. Pulp. Everything but "Song 2" on that Blur album.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 4:09 AM on May 22, 2008

I was in total agreement with that page, hortense, until they brought Tom Petty into the argument.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:07 PM on May 19, 2008

With perhaps greater consequences, the earthquake has been seen by Chinese as the government losing the "Mandate of Heaven", as the fall of previous administrations

That is in complete disagreement with what I'm hearing in the media here in HK. Go through this page, and run some of posts through this translator. The prevailing consensus seems to be "加油 中国人!" or "Chinese people refuel!". The Salon article you gave even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:35 PM on May 19, 2008

And look at the room rates for the Olympics at the hotel in the first comments... You would need at least 500 Euro to do what you want there. One hostel I stayed at said that they were charging 500 yuan a night for a bed in a four bed dorm room. And they were booking back in November.

To get a visa to China, you need proof of an exit ticket and a hotel reservation. At least, that's the latest story, and it depends on the consulate... everything's with regards to tourist... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 4:13 AM on May 19, 2008

Let's think of new clocks to make.

Mine would be this: all the numbers are raised from the surface. They will be cut in the form and shape of the number. The hour will be signified by the number being mechanically risen from the surface of the clock. All of the numbers' top surface will be covered with LCD elements, and the hour hand will fade from grey to white to grey. The surface of the clock will be black. The minute signifier will be another LCD screen, but it will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 10:01 AM on May 16, 2008

If they're a hockey fan, bring a nice clean five dollar bill. They have hockey players on them!
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 7:19 PM on May 2, 2008

I don't like that list of countries that list tourist exemptions for Filipinos, as they list China and Mongolia, two countries that I know for sure are impossible for anyone to get visa free access to.

And Mynamar? You're gonna walk into Mynamar without any visa...?
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 11:16 AM on May 2, 2008

Maybe scratch my comment. You don't need a Visa for Mongolia, but I did (Canadian). I'm positive you need one for China, though.

Good luck, and a passing thought... Japan is visa free, according to that website.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 11:27 AM on May 2, 2008

The 15 year old inside of me has always been astonished that most of the world doesn't eat a proper breakfast. Proper meaning anything from a British fry up and its colonial variants to milk splashed over corn flakes. It's so obvious and, well, correct, but they're all "kimchi and rice" or "dim sum and a coke" or "non toasted bread and a strong coffee" or "cheese" or "let's reheat what we cooked for supper and make new rice in the rice cooker" or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by sleslie at 10:31 AM on May 2, 2008

I'm looking into the D programming language lately, and... oh crap. Walter Bright looks like a wrinkled 12 year old. The only thing that is missing is a Seattle Mariner's baseball cap.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 11:19 PM on April 30, 2008

Despite your objection to gum, I would recommend you go to Costco and get a large box of Dentyne Ice gum.

But I'm really here to recommend Sen Sen candies. They're like very concentrated little pellets of black liquorice. They are the size of those nerd candies. I worked at a convenience store many moons ago, and we bought one box a year for the above 50 crowd.

Intense flavor. You'll remember it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 8:25 PM on April 18, 2008

Some airlines allow you to charge your laptop if you ask a flight attendant. Depends upon the airline and their mood at the time, of course, so not something to rely on. That would be even better if you had a spare battery and a stand alone charger.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sleslie at 9:38 PM on April 10, 2008