Cardboard? No. Delicious? Yes.

From Food Stream

Differences between Arial and Helvetica

I posted a comparison a while back but got them mixed up. Here's a comparison of a couple of characteristic letters: One more:

Updated 200810230005

So that's what we did!

It's a little embarrassing to only fully appreciate the distinction of investment banks when they're about to become obsolete. They borrowed money worth 20-30 times the value of their liquid assets in order to run their risky operations and if they didn't go out of business usually reaped huge profits at the end of the quarter. This was possible and sanctioned because what they were risking was their own necks as well as those of their faithful creditors with just the appetite for risk.

Now that those creditors are no longer willing to let investment banks play with their money, investment banks have to resort to borrowing from regular peoples' savings. The government is a little sensitive about that since it's the protection of regular people which originally led to the legislated segregation of investment from commercial banks. History certainly has a way of repeating itself, but it was fun while it lasted.

Annual Fourth of July Posting

Happy Independence Day. A couple weeks ago, I decided that I was going on vacation. I wasn't sure what I was going to do but I knew it was going to involve eating. I took a bunch of pictures, but perhaps what I enjoyed doing most was taking the subways in Shanghai. Anyhow, here are a couple of offline tweets that I couldn't post due to my roaming status:

• Maybe we can judge distance roughly as follows: multiply speed of rotation of earth in terms of miles/hour and isolate the miles term by multiplying rate by number of timezones
• My Air fits in the magazine compartment. Not much good that does if I need to use it though and the seat's fully reclined.
• The "TSA" of Hong Kong caught my little swiss tech keychain knife immediately at the security checkpoint whereas EWR didn't seem to care :/
• I got seated in "premium economy"/emergency row by pure luck.
• My limited Chinese left me with only two meaty hotpot ingredients: beef spam and chicken wing tips. I recommend neither.
• I've gotten quite confused. All of a suddent 8RMB is expensive for food. It's very ironic. I think since cheap food is so available, expensive food is super expensive.
• Best green tea frappucino ever. Five bucks coffee is still five bucks.
• Best KFC ever. Real thigh meat and chicken wings. Really spicy.
• Really looking forward to IM on the iPhone. Too bad I won't be able to stand in line on 7/11!

I'll try a debrief with pictures? That means it will be relative to food. Oh, I almost forgot it was the Fourth of July. The most patriotic thing I've done so far on the vacation is to watch National Treasure 2.

White is the new black

I went to the Apple store today to make an international call using Skype, but found that many of the iMacs had parental controls turned enforcing a white list of websites users could access. That list included Apple websites, but did not include skype.com or even att.com, which made it difficult for me to download the software necessary for me to make my international call. Luckily not all Macs were restricted and I was able to take care of business.

In other news, I think it's at least worth mentioning that white is an available option on the 16GB iPhone 3G but is not available for the 8GB. Does that make white the new black, a traditional mark of distinction? Back when the first 2G iPod nanos were released, black was only available on the higher capacity 8GB nano. Black MacBooks also cost more than white MacBooks.

School's out for Rutgers buses

Red Mango

I wonder how this compares with Pinkberry. Note the mochi topping.