Today was the last day of NIWeek 2010, “Worldwide Graphical System Design Conference and Exhibition” hosted every year by the good people of National Instruments in Austin, TX. I roamed the expansive expo floor and took some photos. Below is a gallery of the hottest, best looking booth babes present at the show. You are most welcome!
Things have been slow around here, so to make sure I keep you entertained I share this video:
The second trailer for what should be the best movie of 2010 is not online. Go check it out. I hope you are old enough to remember the first Tron.
Yahoo! Movies: TRON: Legacy 2010.
This is the eighth participation of our legenday volleyball team in the NI Summer Volleyball League. Let’s see if we can take the trophy this time.
Top row: Victor Guardado, Marcos Kirsch, Jerónimo Mota, Jaime Fernández
Bottom row: Daniel Jaramillo, Alejandro Zepeda, Gustavo Castro, Alejandro del Castillo
So this Tim dude is watching CNN one day, and some kids from Darfur are playing soccer using a make shift ball made out of twine and trash. So he thinks to himself: “Wouldn’t it be great if this kids could have a soccer ball that would never need to be inflated, couldn’t puncture, can be used in any terrain, and would basically last forever?”. Then he remembered once seeing a foam-like material, much like what Crocs are made of. One day he casually mentions the idea to his buddy Sting who agreed to finance the endeavor.
Fast forward and the One World Futbol project is born: A regulation size and weight ultra durable all-terrain soccer ball. You buy one for the not-so-low price of $39.99 and another one just like yours is donated to some kid in the other side of the world. The same model was used by the OLPC project, which didn’t hasn’t worked out so well, but perhaps this time it will be different.
It’s a great idea. The one unanswered question is: Does this ball actually feel like your good ole soccer ball, painstakingly sewed by the nimble hand of some Pakistani kid? I can’t seem to find any opinions from people who have actually hit the ball. I personally wouldn’t pay forty bucks for a soccer ball that plays like a ga-ga ball, donation or not. But then again, I may not be the target market. Here’s hoping for this project’s success.
Given that this is a long weekend because of the 4th of July celebrations, I went kayaking with a few friends to Town Lake. We stopped short of making it to the Congress Avenue bridge (home of the largest urban bat colony in the world). According to my calculations, we traveled just over 4 km.
This is a very common activity in Austin, so this post is not exactly groundbreaking, but I thought it would be a nice chance to try out taking some new “Now less crappy!” cell phone photos. They look pretty good to me (click on them to enlarge).
The awesome Austin institution Alamo Drafthouse movie theater decided to show all FIFA World Cup matches live in one of their beautiful screens. This is probably the next best thing to being there, so I headed out there today to check out Uruguay VS Holland. It’s great to watch the game like this, with our own pitcher of Firemans 4 and good food.
My only suggestion: Make it 3D the next time!
It’s been almost two years since our last redesign, which caused an uproar among our readers: violent protests outside of our headquarters, a Facebook protest group, a heated poll, and flag burning.
Well, the design team of The MKX® is happy to announce a new look for our website. Among the improvements:
But in spite of the new look, you can still count on the accurate, unbiased, hard-hitting, no-nonsense news reporting that we are known for.
You can see previous designs in this old post.
This is part 2 of my two-part collection of random thoughts from South Africa. Part 1 is here. Click on Read more for part 2.
