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(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) I went with my wife and kids to Topanga State Park a couple of weeks ago. It offers wonderful hiking, rock climbing, and pond swimming. The best part of the day was watching the brave souls jump from the 40 or 50 foot cliffs into a swimming hole. I shot a video of the divers, which you can see here: Link

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Yesterday I was harvesting figs from my tree before the fig thieves who regularly drive through the neighborhood to poach fruit could get to them, and I spotted these three large shiny green beetles gorging on a fig. The topmost beetle had his entire head buried in the obscenely red meat of these delicious figs.

Unlike the human fig thieves who eat my fruit, these iridescent scarabs are always welcome guests at my home.

Appropriately enough, they are called figeater beetles. Link to Flickr set

My 9-year-old daughter is at summer camp for a week. She sent this letter to us:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Last night was so awful. Lilli had a migrain all night. A girl needed medication at 10:00. Are bedtime is 9:30. When the conslers were getting the medication a girl started to puke! A different girl was moaning. A huge spider was on the floor. The consler came in to help. We got to sleep at 12:00! Everything is fine. I'm having a great time.

Love,
Sarina

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) *Please*, do your fucking dishes! Thanks!

Previously on Mad Professor:
• Passive aggressive taxi cab sign

Shawn Wolfe says: I love looking at (ie. studying, meditating on, losing myself in) this collection of old architectural renderings of supermarket prototypes, found by their owner in a photo album purchased at a garage sale. They appear to be from the early 1960s.

Store names are delightfully awkward word-play experiments and made-up sounding. I assume these renderings were used to simply show prospective clients what is possible in the way of modern "Food Mart" architectural stylings.

Granted, they are images of hideous chain stores, harbingers of terrible things to come. But in retrospect and as portrayed here these places seem so quaint and enchanted, wet, moonlit, not overly big-boxed yet, visited by a small handful of sophisticated men in trench coats and their nicely-groomed wives. Link

Update:

Here's a musical slideshow with the renderings.

I am enjoying Glyph Jockey's cell phone photos of interesting sites in Tijuana. Link

This no-nonsense cabbie wants his fares to know what's what without having to speak to them. Xeni Jardin snapped the photo with her iPhone and added incisive comments in her Flickr stream. Link

Mobile phone carriers make a lot of money from customers who use their 411 service. LiveSource, a company that handles directory assistance services for the major carriers, answers a billion 411 calls per year. They charge a couple of bucks every time you use the service, and if you use it once or twice a day, it can really rack up your phone bill.

I never dial 411. Whether I’m on a landline or my mobile, I dial 1-800-free-411, an advertising-sponsored directory assistance service. It’s worth it to me to listen to a 12-second advertisement before getting the number I need.

Besides 1-880-free-411, you can use a similar service, 1-800-411-metro.

When my 8-year-old daughter got a case of poison oak, I went to the drug store to buy a tube of Zanfel, a poison ivy and poison oak soap that is purported to get rid of the urushiol oil that causes the itching and blisters. I'd heard good things about the stuff. People claim it stops the itching instantly. When I got to the drug store and saw the price tag -- $40 for a one-ounce tube of soap -- I hesitated. That's a lot of money for such a tiny container. I bought it anyway, figuring that if it didn't work I could ask for a refund.

I got home, squeezed a 1.5-bead on my wet palm and rubbed my hands together until the stuff formed a gritty paste. I then rubbed the paste on my kid's legs for about three minutes. She told me the itching was gone. The rash even looked like it had subsided. By the end of the day, the itch had resumed, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been earlier. One more application did the trick. The stuff is worth the price.

Note: Zanfel doesn't get rid of poison oak if you have a systemic case -- that is, if the urushiol has gotten into your bloodstream or lymph nodes. You can tell you have a systemic case if you keep getting new blisters al over your body. You need to go to a doctor and get a shot of steroids to take care of that. $39.95 for a 1 oz. tube

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) My highschool pal, Blind Lightnin' Pete, who lives overseas, sent me some Agarwood / Oud specimens. It's an astonishingly addictive incense that will make you swear off the sticks of foul-smelling junk sold at head shops and health food stores.

Agarwood has the added bonus of requiring the use of gunpowder-impregnated carbon pucks to release the aromatic oils. Pete gave me some of the real natural variety (which costs $30/gram and up; according to Wikipedia, it's the most expensive wood in the world.) and some "fluffed-up-for-the-suburbs type, which has been perfumed with something." The real stuff, as you might guess, is much better. You only need a matchhead-sized piece to make the whole room smell like oud.

Again, quoting Wikipedia: "Formation of agarwood occurs in the trunk and roots of trees that have been infected by a fungus. As a response, the tree produces a resin high in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding fungal growth. While the unaffected wood of the tree is relatively light in colour, the resin dramatically increases the mass and density of the affected wood, changing its colour from a pale beige to dark brown or black."

I can't begin to describe how it smells, because there's really nothing else quite like it. Wikipedia says "The odour of agarwood is complex and pleasing, with few or no similar natural analogues." Chandler Burr, author of one of my favorite books, The Emperor of Scent, describes it this way:

It knocks you over, clubs you like a falling stone. Its vast dimension is what astonishes: a huge smell, spatially immense and incredibly complex, a buttery layer as deep as a quarry, entirely animalic in impact, and yet the oudh itself is not actually an animalic, spicy without being a spice. The fungi - the tiny organic bugs that have eaten, digested and defecated this sensual wood - have left behind their fragrance and oudh is the smell of this rotten, priceless wood and billions of tiny dead animals.

I don't know where you can buy real agarwood. Of course, plenty of websites sell "pure," "unadulterated" agarwood, but who knows? I'm sticking with my source, Blind Lightnin' Pete.

I don't draw as much as I'd like to, but I still love getting a new copy of Draw! in the mail. The self described "professional 'how-to' magazine on comics and cartooning" is a fun mix of how to's (the Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials are excellent) and interviews with well-known pros. If you find you like it, you can order all the back issues, too. Amazon sells the Best of Draw for $14.97 Subscribe here: $24 for four quarterly issues.

Bare Bones software founder Rich Siegel (creator of the indispensable BB Edit), calculates that my Aeropress coffee habit costs me at least $1700 a year in time I could be spending earning money.

But it's so much fun making coffee with the Aeropress, that it's worth it, if you ask me. If you can't have a little fun once in a while, why live? Link

I've been tagged by Coop to create a list consisting of several "four things" entries. (Idea started by Sean Bonner) Here they are:

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life in LA
1. Failure analysis engineer, Marina Del Rey. The worst job I've ever had. I commuted between Sherman Oaks and Marina Del Rey on the 405 and was in the mood for murder at the end of each drive. The actual job itself -- figuring out why 8-inch hard disk drives had failed -- sucked beyond belief, too. I quit after four months.

2. Computer systems consultant, Toluca Lake. Ran my own business setting up computers for people in the late 1980s.

3. Freelance designer, Hollywood California. I designed Billy Idol's Cyberpunk CD artwork. He called me on the phone one day out of the blue, after having picked up a copy of bOING bOING, and asked me if I'd be interested in designing his new CD cover. I said sure. About ten minutes later, the record company's art director called me and gave me the specs: Mac, Bhotoshop Tiffs, 300 dpi, etc. I had never used Photoshop or a Macintosh before, but I didn't tell him that. As soon as I got off the phone, I went to the store and bought a copy of Photoshop and started reading the manual.

The next day I put the Photoshop software in my backpack, got on my motorcycle and rode to Billy's house in the Hollywood Hills. He was super friendly and chatty. He led me to his in-home recording studio which had a Mac. I don't know what kind -- this was late 1992 or early 1993. I installed the 7 or 8 disks onto the Mac. Billy was staring over my shoulder the whole time. I was a little nervous. He had an external hard drive with some screen grabs of his recent music video. I figured out how to load the pictures, thank God. Then I just started opening the menus in Photoshop and trying out random stuff. The image was getting all warped and purple toned. I didn't know what to think. I was just going along for the ride, praying it would work out.

After about five minutes, Billy cried, "Stop! Whoa! Fuck me! That's brilliant!" So that was it. We used the image for the cover. For the next several weeks I did his other singles, his print ads, video boxes, and even wrote the advertising copy and his publicity kit bio. I spent a lot of time at his place, and got to know him. He was always very polite and loved to talk about any subject you brought up.

When I started working at Wired, I continued to do CD single design for him.

4. Editor-in-Chief, Make Magazine, Tarzana. I love this job more than any other job I've ever had, in LA or elsewhere. If I won the lottery, I'd still do it.

Four Movies About LA I Could Watch Over And Over:
1. The Player

2. Pee Wee's Big Adventure

3. Streets. 19990, starring Christina Applegate. From IMDB: "Serious, well-made story of runaways living in Venice, California, under the threat of a psychotic cop who is a serial killer of prostitutes."

4. Echo Park

Four Of My Favorite Foods Found In LA
1. Volcano Chicken Bowl at Newsroom Cafe on Robertson. This was one of the daily specials, and was the most scorchingly hot meal I've ever eaten (and I can tolerate very spicy dishes). The ensuing endorphin rush was exquisite. I'll never forget it. I have seen Volcano Chicken offered there again. Was it a dream?

2. Akbar Indian food, Pasadena.

3. Carney's, Studio City. Excellent Hamburgers served in a train car.

4. Bob's Big Boy, Burbank. Designed by mid-century architect Wayne MacAllister in 1949. As a bonus, the food is good and reasonably priced.

Tagged:
1. Neatorama

2. Joshuah Bearman

3. Kevin Roderick

4. Kyle Buchanan

It's commonly known that the displays on iPod Videos and iPod Nanos scratch if you look at them cross-eyed. I tried taking good care of my iPod video, but the screen got scratches all over it in a matter of days. Whatever they are using for the display, it is one of the softest materials known to man.

Being good at closing the barn door after the cows have gotten out, I bought a Macally IP-P802. It's a bad name for a nice product: a sheet of clear plastic that wraps around the iPod, protecting the display. The neat thing about it is that the plastic (or the undetectable adhesive on the plastic) covered up the scratches so that I barely notice them. I don't know how long this stuff will hold up to scratches, but at least they're cheap. Until Apple starts playing nice, you need to protect your iPod's display. $7.98 on Amazon

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I looked at the sales reports for 2005 and compiled this list of the top 14 best selling items reviewed on Mad Professor (and Boing Boing). Here they are:

1. MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 04

2. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

3. Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek

4. Worlds Worst: A Guide To The Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept, And Dangerous People, Places, And Things On Earth

5. Life's Little Annoyances : True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore

6. Strange Angel : The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

7. Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)

8. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life

9. The Apprentice : A Novel

10. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

11. The Week

12. One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science

13. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight : Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution

14. They Have a Word for It : A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases (The Writer's Studio)

Thanks for visiting Mad Professor. BB has over 300,000 daily visitors, and MP has about 3,000, so I consider you all the cream of the crop. *:)

My morning espresso-making ritual is the highlight of my day, and these beautiful, tiny (2 ounce) espresso glasses make the moment even brighter. Mouth blown from laboratory quality borosilicate to form a double wall of glass with a pocket of air trapped inside, the glasses keep the espresso piping hot and my fingers cool.

The visual effect of my daily double-shot of espresso "floating" in the vessel pleases me to no end. Link

In August I posted an entry on Boing Boing about my new espresso machine and the trouble I was having getting it to make crema, that delicious light colored foam on the top of a well-shot cup of espresso.

The fine folks at Caffé Pronto felt sorry for me, and sent me a bag of Caffé Vincente Espresso Blend, advertised to have "rich crema, and a long smooth finish."

Doubtful, I ground some up and turned on the machine. My mouth watered at the sight of the tawny crema emanating from the portafilter. And it's delicious to boot. I like the kind of espresso that numbs my tongue, and Caffé Vincente is loaded with whatever alkaloid does that. Time to buy more. Link

>The Week is the only magazine I devour the instant I get it in the mail. It's a news weekly that summarizes what all the other news magazines and papers around the world have covered that week. What a fantastic idea. It's like having a friend who reads everything, from the New Republic to the National Review to the Beijing Times, and then tells you about it in a way that holds your interest. After reading it, I really feel as if I have a handle on world events. Best of all, it's actually fun to read. I consider it my one must-read magazine. Link

Yesterday I wrote about Tim Biskup's book "100 Paintings." Today, I bought "Indiand Princess," a wonderful lithograph of a painting done by Biskup's wife, Seonna Hong. Seonna shares her husband's admiration of Disney artist Mary Blair (if you've been to Disneyland's "It's a Small World After All" ride then you know here work). Link Sixspace also offers a canvas giclee print of a much more recent Hong painting, called "Runaway," on its site here

I like magazine, book, and ephemera illustrations from the 1920s - 1960s. The artists really had their technical chops down, and had wonderful imaginations as well. Illustration Magazine is the best place to read about these illustrators and see their work showcased in a lovingly-produced format. A few issues back, they profiled Frank Frazetta, as well as Norm Saunders, the guy who painted the lurid Mar Attacks bubblegum cards. (You can buy most back issues, including the one featuring Norm Saunders and Frank Frazetta, from the magazine.) Link

I used to dread the feeling of a cold coming on, because it meant a week of snot-nosed misery. But a few years ago I discovered Zicam, and now I almost don't care. Now my cold lasts 24 hours, and the symptoms are very mild. The trick is to take it at the first sign of a cold. I carry it with me at all times.

This stuff, which is comes in the form of a gel that you either squirt into your nose or rub into your nostrils with a Q-Tip, contains a form of zinc that attaches to cold viruses in your nose, and makes it very hard for them to bind with the cells in your nostril. And if a virus can't bind with a cell, it can't replicate. According to independent research, cold sufferers who took a placebo reported cold symtoms for 10 days, but patients who took Zicam reported symptoms for a day-and-a-half. I consider it a cure for the common cold.

Here's a recent news article about a possible link between Zicam use and losing your sense of smell permanently. (Thanks, John!)

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