Matt's Blog

The Today Show apparently did a segment on Halloween decoration, with the anchors dressed as Star Wars characters. Someone thought to hire two people to dress up as ewoks; one source claims that they were both midgets and drunk and has a hilarious video of the live broadcast going “increasingly awry.”

London’s Daily Mail has a fascinating story about Stephen Wiltshire, an artist diagnosed with autism. Often considered a disability, Wiltshire creates enormous sketches of famous skylines. Entirely from memory. In amazing detail. After marveling at the best of humanity, the worst of humanity is an interesting read, too. In Italy, a Mafia execution in broad [...]

Between… Some time in college… and November 4, 2008, I looked at moving to the Netherlands. I was never particularly serious about it, but I preferred it to Canada. It had a bit to do with politics, a lot to do with not being as crazy as things were here, and nothing to do with [...]

We adopted the phrase “It’s not my cow” at work. Actually, I adopted that phrase. Everyone else says something else, but I could never remember what it was, so I stuck with “cow.” The reason for the phrase is that, with surprising frequency, we’d ask another developer a question and get the response, “I don’t [...]

If you ever, for some reason, need to find a day that is guaranteed to have poor weather, I’ve found a neat trick. Plan your event on the day that NASA is launching something. It may only be something like high winds, but you’re pretty much guaranteed that the weather will be bad enough to [...]

Fellow Massachusetts drivers, I would like to call your attention to Massachusetts G.L. c.89, §4B. Violation of this law occurs when the driver, “while operating a vehicle on a way, did fail to drive in the lane nearest the right side of the way when such lane was available for travel, the defendant not then [...]

Today, I will be the loser who blogs about gardening. One day this summer, I found a package of corn seed and decided to plant it. Since I’d had bad luck germinating things in the past, I put dozens of seeds in the ground. Most, if not all, of them ended up growing. Since I’ve [...]

I’ve posted my review of the Pro96, Radio Shack’s digital police scanner. A high-level overview is that it has lots of features but is so shoddily built that I really wish I hadn’t wasted my money. After disassembling it for the millionth time trying to fix the problem with volume cutting out, I had another [...]

I now know what I want to be for Halloween. And it’s safe: “It has the same chance of lifting your 6-year-old as the one you may have seen on CNN or MSNBC TV.” I just found out where they’re sold online. Of course, the costume won’t be complete unless I also carry around a [...]

I think I’ve mentioned before that I view gay marriage as a “duh” right. Anyone arguing against it is a bigot trying to deny a civil right to a minority solely because they don’t like that minority. I can’t fathom how anyone could view it as anything but that. Of all the people that I [...]