Ohayo gozaimasu, robots!

Today's Factoid - brought to you live from the Shibuya district in Tokyo:

When speaking Japanese, the future tense is expressed by using the same form as the present tense.

Makes a good argument for the idea that language drives culture.

Credible sources tell me that my favorite band of 2000, Ladytron has completed the soundtrack to the forthcoming Walt Disney remake of Tron, and will be premiering their new soundtrack on February 22nd at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. All UK robots are encouraged to attend and report back!

Today is my final day in my weekend getaway to Utah. Salt Lake City is aglow with the promise of incumbent stardom brought on by the 2002 Winter Olympics, and Park City denizens are basking in the afterglow of the Sundance film festival.

My only star sighting: Frank Whaley of "Swimming with Sharks” fame. Other movies seen:

- The Jimmy Show
- Birthday Girl
- Teknolust

As a native Californian, and someone who cringes at the prospect of a 50-degree afternoon, I must say, while it’s very, very beautiful here, it’s also way, way, way too cold. Before venturing to this region of the country again, I’ll require that somebody buy me this.

Osama bin Peedon

Courtesy of my biggest fan...
Interesting article with Nick, the perpetrator behind the creepy yet fascinating coincidencedesign.com stalking service. According to Nick, the site is neither a hoax, nor a legitimate business, but a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. In reality, Nick seems to be desperately hoping that there’s someone desperate, wealthy and foolish enough to pay the $78,000 fee for his nefarious pursuits.

Spooky!

Simply GNUStep seems like a really cool alternate distribution of Linux for those of us too busy to really get down and dirty with other packages. I'd love to hear any positive or negative experiences.

I first saw this in a movie theater last summer. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to cough up my spleen. Now it's online.

The song says, “nobody walks in LA”. A more accurate statement would be, nobody knows how to deal with pedestrians in LA. As I was walking down the sidewalk in Culver City yesterday the occasional passer by seemed miffed anytime I strayed from the far right hand side of the sidewalk – they looked at me as if I was an out of control driver crossing the double yellow line and heading into oncoming traffic. I suppose in LA, even walking down the sidewalk adheres to the ubiquitous driving metaphors.

Anyone own a Beosound 1? Any opinions?

Some advance reports of cool gear from CES are rolling in:

Technology Enabled Clothing will model the Scott eVest, a bulky black garment with lots of pockets for stowing gadgets and networking infrastructure that can connect a handheld computer in one pocket to the cell phone in another.

Ectaco will demonstrate the Universal Translator, a portable speech-recognition device that translates between English and French, German or Spanish.

Wow. Already the 3rd of January. It seems like just the day before the day before yesterday it was 2001.