Day 355 - Bronies

One of our servers greets me like this on login: OMG BRONIES!!! Bronies, as you may be eager to know, are obviously the favorite means of transportation for Brogrammers, the cavalry of software engineering.

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Day 354 - Labels

These are only some of the labels attached to an IBM/Lenovo laptop power supply. I am always impressed just how much paper they manage to stick onto these. The labels range from "this is a power supply, may contain traces of electricity" over "by the way this item has inventory number 1234ABC and we want to remember this for all eternity" to, well, "by the way Saudi Arabia's outlets have 2 more volts than the ones in the US". Besides, these power bricks are usually the size of an average midsize car (and equally as heavy). It can only be a matter of time until those (like baseball bats) are not allowed on planes anymore.

Sometimes I look at a Mac power supply and take it for granted -- until I see one of these again, and realize that good industrial design is not the rule, but the exception. It makes me sad.

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Day 353 - Wine Glasses

Looks at this set of wine glasses, sadly misappropriated to hold champagne (actual champagne, too, not sparkling wine). Do I hear a "first world problems"?

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Day 352 - Half a Hog

Take a look at our recently-acquired half a pig, wrapped in subtle white paper packaging, spending its days in subzero (Celsius, anyway) darkness until it is consumed. There are various fine things in there that I am eager to eat: Bacon, obviously, but also various different roasts and cuts that are just waiting to be turned into Schnitzel.

Nom nom nom.

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Day 351 - Noël

Today's science experience was: Does a Christmas stocking holder survive unharmed when dropped off the mantle? Sad answer: It does not. Despite the state-of-the-art glue and toxic lead paint holding it in place, the "gift" on the top broke off and had to be fixed. Quality made in China just isn't what it used to be anymore ;)

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Day 350 - New Firefox Costume

Say hi to Mozilla's new Firefox costume! I think it turned out great! Our old costume served us well, but this one will looks much friendlier and even has a fiery tail (that Thunder has clearly taken a liking in).

I am looking forward to hearing more about the design process that made this happen!

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Day 349 - Chowdah Day

Today, I decided it was Chowdah (sic) Day, a tradition started long ago by the fine folks at the OSU Open Source Lab, where every Friday was Chowdah Day. The smart folks among you will helpfully remark that today is not, in fact, a Friday, but it would also be customary I have the dish in the right place with the right people and with a drop or two of Cholula, so sadly the weekday isn't the only tradition I had to break with today.

Without all of the right circumstances in place, of course it is not quite the same. The Chowder, however, was delicious, also thanks to the world's biggest pepper grinder that I conveniently borrowed from Mozilla's kitchen.

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Day 348 - Framed Posters

Today I framed some "old" Mozilla posters that I got. The left one is from the "10 years of Mozilla" anniversary and the right one is from the Firefox 3 release. Both are from 2008 and I think they are great artwork.

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With the end of Project 365 rapidly approaching (I'll blog about the project itself separately), the obvious question arises: What's next?

As I can't quite get used to the project ending and me sitting bored on my hands all day (ha, ha) I am considering doing something similar next year. There are several (serious or not so serious) options on the table:

  • Project 365, the rebirth: Another year of photos? As if there's anything I haven't shown to my readers yet ;)
  • American oddities: Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a friend suggested we need more stories comparing US and German tissues. There is, of course, plenty of opportunity to point out inferior American products cultural differences, though admittedly, that has been done before...
  • Project 52: (don't hate on the horrendous code name). In this case, I'd post a photo per week rather than day, giving me more time to take several shots in various places and decide which one I like the most, possibly polish it up on the computer, and post a photo a week that I think is actually pretty good.
  • Project 360-365: The frequency is to be debated, but the general idea is, posting a series of panoramas. Daily is probably too frequent (after all, panoramas take some time to make) and it'd be a very limited type of photography, but it's still an option.
  • A blog a day: What the name says. A new blog post every day? That of course wouldn't exclude pictures, but would make it more about the writing than the picture. Project 365 was the other way around.
  • Anything else?

These are all the ideas I've collected thus far. I am interested to hear what you think! Of course, not all of these make any sense at all, so feel free to mock them if you wish ;) but honest comments are appreciated, too. Thanks!

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Day 347 - Deskorama

Today I took a panorama picture of the space around my desk at the office (courtesy of Pano). The quality of the stitching is a little worse than what I am used to from using Hugin (a full-blown panorama software), but you can't beat the instantly-on-your-phone experience.

Of course, in order to really see the photo, you might have to check it out in the original size. Also featured in the shot: Mike Kelly, busy making awesome web apps.

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