Heinz's Email Blog July 2008 Archive

What does Yogi Berra know about web beacons and hidden images in emails? "I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early." You can't know which ... Read More

A trip to Proxima Centauri, the second nearest star? Should take you maybe 5 months or so. Proxima Centauri is about 4.24 light years away: it takes light 4 years and ... Read More

What a doozy: "doozy", it turns out, is but a less elegant way to say "daisy". Both daisy and doozy refer, of course, to something extraordinary, one of its kind, excellent, ... Read More

When is a red rose not a red rose? At dusk. Rods, responsible for twilight seeing, tell colors apart badly. (All cats are gray in the dark after all.) There's more ... Read More

A white flash across the iPhone indicates success: you've just snapped a screenshot of your Tap Tap Revenge high score — by pressing the Sleep/Wake button while holding the Home ... Read More

Vienna to Zürich: 750 km; no need to change trains. That's dry and lacking adventure? The Austrian Federal Railway's online travel planner thought so, too. It suggested I take a train ... Read More

Have you ever peeped into Services under your browser's name in the menu? What I get looks like it could be useful — but it is also more than a ... Read More

Against the wind is where the action is: the wind thrusts through your hair and face and clothes, you can hike or even trapeze and fly like a seagull closely ... Read More

A Sokker match fills twenty-five gripping minutes — too many for any OS X screen saver. If you'd rather see your virtual players dash over an artificially green display than a ... Read More

If seashells can make islands; if horns can be mugs; if, finally, cups can be seashells: shouldn't seashells function as coffee mugs, too? While we're looking for suitable shells, let's turn ... Read More

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:      Petals, on a wet, black bough." Concise words evoking concrete pictures characterize this Ezra Pound two-liner (In a Station at the Metro) — and ... Read More

Steve Jobs, history has it, obsessed over one thing more than the iPod's loudness: OS start-up time. The milliseconds saved, he sensibly reasoned, accumulate over a computer user's lifetime. (At ... Read More

Seashells live in the ocean, and the ocean lives in seashells. You know how to prove this: hold a shell to your ear, and you can hear the waves rolling ... Read More

"The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place." Solid writing advice from William Strunk and E. B. White: choose your nouns ... Read More

From puréed chestnuts, chicken liver and egg yolks, Guillaume Tirel — known as Taillevent and several French kings' cook in the 14th century — made a delicious soup. It is ... Read More

Do you eat accumulates? Of course not! Fat people eat accumulates after all, as they say. Garden path sentences — "the girl who whistles tunes pianos" is another example — send you ... Read More

Xobni, the bin ox for a better Outlook inbox, has been updated. Xobni 1.4 can download contact pictures and company information from public LinkedIn profiles and populates its panel faster. You ... Read More

Rods and cones like company — but not so much each other's. Millions of cones for red, blue and green gather on the fovea centralis, a tiny spot on the retina. ... Read More

The air condition's reassuring hum; birds chirping melodically; chatter from the park nearby; your computer's busy fan: sounds and noises are seldom distracting and often even comforting — as long ... Read More

Now take the psychrometer and swing it over your head; swing vigorously for about ten minutes! You have prepared the amazing instrument by dipping a woollen sock in water, of course, ... Read More

Zenbe, the free email service that turns your inbox into a mountain on the way to enlightenment, now allows you to let go of messages, too. Next to an Empty ... Read More

Pick up your hand chicken — yes, in the Mandarin-speaking world, the cell phone is called "shǒujī": "hand chicken" or "muscular hand flesh". Maybe — maybe — it's also "hand ... Read More