post-next -Ted Drake's sketchbook

Meg Whitman is a horrible person

Ted Drake — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:20:25 +0000

It didn’t take long for me to learn how despised Meg Whitman was in the valley. I’ve heard from Ebay employees that couldn’t wait to get out from that company. She treated people like they were garbage and produced a sweatshop mentality inside eBay.

I was shocked to hear that she was running for Governor. Anyone would be better than Meg Whitman!

I thought her campaign ads were bad enough when she was trying to be the most conservative candidate, but she reached a new plateau shortly after the primaries with an ad in Spanish that contradicted everything she said during the primaries. In English she supports Arizona, wants to shut down the borders, and disallow any rights to Latinos in California. In Spanish, she’s a savior of Latinos who doesn’t support Arizona or the similar initiatives in California’s past.

Meg Whitman is a lying, hateful, horrible person and you cannot trust her. She’s trying to buy her way into politics. I seriously doubt she’s spending millions of her own money because she cares for her fellow person. She’s got something up her sleeve that will make her and her friends more money. Just watch.

I support anyone but Meg Whitman. That is why I’m posting Jerry Brown‘s commercial. We need more people to share information on her dishonesty.

Cheezburger Network demands an apology from Meg Whitman (techflash.com)
Here’s The Reuters Interview That Made Meg Whitman Snap (businessinsider.com)
Silicon Alley Insider: Here Are Our Questions For Meg Whitman About The “Shoving Incident” (businessinsider.com)
Pro-Prop 8 Meg Whitman of eBay mulls CA gubernatorial run

FedFlix: redistributing the government videos to the public

Ted Drake — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:21:50 +0000

I just watched Carl Malamud discuss his work to open government data and resources to the public domain. One of his projects, FedFlix, takes government tapes from archives, digitizes, adds meta data, and finally releases the content to the public domain.

Carl also discussed his work with releasing legal documents to the public domain to allow all citizens access to law resources. Open Government data has been an ongoing talk at this conference. I’m looking forward to seeing more mashups and effects of this transparency.

Here’s a sample video that is relevant for the recent incidents. It’s a mine safety video.

Rather Good Goes Salamander Goo

Ted Drake — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:42:29 +0000

I remember the innocent days of the early internet. Everything was quiet and peaceful until some spongemonkeys burst onto the scene with their love of the moon.

Now the guys that opened Pandora’s box have a new creature to celebrate: the Axolatl. My sister had one of these crazy critters and they are almost as cute as a pug.

Yahoo’s new open strategy is the bee’s knees

Ted Drake — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:54:15 +0000

New Yahoo Policy – All Doors are Open

A stoic millionaire

Ted Drake — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:36:21 +0000

“Damn”…

That’s quite a reaction to finding out you have a million bucks in Jade on the dining room table

Did you hear about the hippo that ate the dwarf

Ted Drake — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:26:09 +0000

This is almost too funny to be true. So let’s just imagine that it is.

Here’s the story in text:

Hippo Eats Dwarf

BANGKOK: A hippopotamus swallowed a circus dwarf in a “freak accident” in northern Thailand, according to a columnist in the Pattaya Mail.

The Grapevine column reported: “A circus dwarf, nicknamed Od, died recently when he bounded sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a yawning hippopotamus waiting to appear in the next act.

“Vets said Hilda the Hippo had a gag reflex which caused her to swallow. More than 1000 spectators continued to applaud wildly until they realised there had been a tragic mistake.”

Scooter, the weight-lifting super dog

Ted Drake — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:57:15 +0000

Scooter makes a special guest appearance at the end of this video.

Yet another blog of mine

Ted Drake — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:54:30 +0000

I’ve got way too many projects in the air. I just finished updating InsiderFood with many new resources. I also did some updating on InsiderArts and began working on InsiderWine.

I’ve got a big project to do with YQL that I keep putting off and I still need to work on my photography.

So what do I do instead? I started yet another blog: Fondooo.com. It’s a kitchen gadget site that was inspired by the recent work of my co-worker James. He just started WorkStyled, a blog about stylish work spaces.

The hardest part of building a site these days is coming up with the domain name. The concept was easy, WordPress and Woo themes made the design a piece of cake. No, it took me much longer to come up with a domain name. I chose fondooo (note the three o’s) because everyone has had a fondue pot at some point in their lives. It’s the ultimate kitchen gadget.

So take a trip down kitchen gadget lane on fondooo.com. It’s just another in my range of food sites:

Search Engines
- InsiderFood local food search engine
- V3GGIE Vegetarian Search Engine
- TARTIN3 French cuisine search engine
Blogs

Now, if only I could find a few more hours to update the other dozen projects.

“Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen from Auschwitz

Ted Drake — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:51:34 +0000

Nazi concentration camps featured a hopeful sign for the incoming prisoners. “Arbeit Macht Frei” means Work Sets You Free and helped keep up the guise of these “work camps”.

Someone just stole the sign from Auschwitz.

I took this photo of the Small Fortress in Terezin, Czech Republic. It’s hard to understand how horrible these camps were until you’ve actually visited one.

At one point the guide showed us one of the prisoner cells where people were so cramped they had to sleep side by side on wooden bunk beds. She then took us to the cell for Jewish prisoners. It was 1/4 the size, had no furniture, and the only source of light/air was a tiny window (4 inches by 4 inches) about 6 feet up in the air.

Here’s some information about Terezin from wikipedia

The Small Fortress in Terezin was also used as a punishment prison for Allied POWs who persisted in escape attempts. POWs from Australia, New Zealand, England and Scotland were imprisoned and witnessed the horrendous inhuman mistreatment of the largely Jewish population. Keeping POWs in such a camp was against the Geneva Convention, and the camp was under the direct control of the Gestapo who refused to acknowledge the POWs’ special status. They saw that elderly Jewish inmates were given food every second day and forced to do hard labour constructing a 1 km long tank trap,mainly using their hands. Prisoners who stopped jogging, with handfuls of dirt, were beaten unmercifully. Prisoners were forced to sit on the head and legs of a victim while the guard repeatedly struck the victim with a nailed post, reducing their buttocks to pulp. Jews were also whipped with strips of thin wire that tore their bodies apart. Prisoners were forced to collect the bloody parts and load them on a cart.

I wish work could have set these people free. Unfortunately life wasn’t that easy for the people tortured in the death camps.

Auschwitz ‘Work Sets You Free’ sign stolen (msnbc.msn.com)
Police: Auschwitz ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign stolen (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Auschwitz death camp sign stolen (guardian.co.uk)
Sign at Auschwitz Memorial Is Stolen (nytimes.com)

Eames film: making of the fiberglass chairs

Ted Drake — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:03:03 +0000

There’s a plethora of fascinating films by Charles & Ray Eames. This one illustrates how they created one of their fiberglass shells. I don’t re-post much, but hat tip to Kottke.