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josephdunphy

Last seen: 26 hours ago

Joseph is a guy from Chicago, Illinois, USA

Politically Moderate, Underemployed Jewish Applied Mathematician / Electrical Engineer tutoring all knowing freshmen in Mathematics. This profile, like most of the Web, is optimized for a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, and must be viewed in Internet Explorer. A more complete listing of posts, including archived ones, can be found on the introduction page for this site, and is backed up on this page at Googlegroups, with occasional commentary found on Stumbling into the Void on Tribe.

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  • josephdunphys blog - StumbleUpon

    Rated Dec 14 2008 • 7 reviews • stumblers • stumbleupon.com






    Hi, again. I'm in the process of turning this profile into something that will be more of a blog. A recurring theme will be my attempts to build on what I've seen on some of the sites I've reviewed; what did I learn from visiting them, what subjects did they touch on, etc. You might have noticed the continued post format I was playing around with on the Draka and Steak Porn Video reviews; expect to see more of that, with some of the short, one-liner reviews moved into the spaces between the essays. What I'm trying to get away from is the idea of Stumbleupon as a bookmarking site, as I move toward making this into a site that one can simply sit down and feel comfortable reading; more like a magazine and less like a phonebook, or something like that.

    Comments about Stumbleupon related drama, past and present, can be found elsewhere, if you really want to read about that for some reason.




    Browser selection - Please pardon the imperious tone in my comments above, but Stumbleupon surprised us by changing the background color on our pages. In IE, my blog has a black background, and you can see the links. In Firefox and Chrome, the background is white, so you can't, unless you have logged into Stumbleupon, in which case you might see a black background even after you log out, again. Very silly. I can't imagine what they were thinking about, when they did this. It definitely damages the functionality of our pages, and causes a needless headache for visitors to SU.

    I regret any inconvenience, but would point out that this wasn't my idea or doing, and that unlike the SU staff, I have no say in it. If you'd like to know when this will be fixed, they're the ones to ask. I wouldn't have the faintest idea, myself.


  • Created Dec 14 2008 •






    Continuing from above ...


    Having not been a rider on the new, post-reconstruction Draka, I'm not sure whether or not it offers the same possibilities as a mobile gathering place, but judging from the more open look, my guess is that it couldn't. Even given the 5 mph speed limit at Burning Man, wheels and the clanging of metal in a vehicle that traverses an increasingly bumpy dirt road will make noise, and there doesn't seem to be as much to muffle that noise as before. Not that any criticism of Ms.Nigro or her efforts should be read into this. One can easily picture her taking a look at how suddenly and dramatically her original effort caught fire after a welding accident, thinking "thank G-d nobody was in there at the time", and then picturing a high wind turning a little of Draka's "breath" back upon a highly flammable vehicle. I certainly would not fault her for being concerned with the safety of her guests and passengers, and before anybody says "why couldn't she just replace the wood with metal" - remember that metal is neither lightweight nor cheap. Think about how much even a small automobile costs, scale that up to something the size of a large house, and see how much compromise becomes necessary. When you see those membership costs quoted on her page, this is not gouging on Ms.Nigro's part, this is simple economic reality.

    The old Draka offered a magical experience while it lasted, albeit probably a more dangerous one than most of us probably suspected at the time, but nobody got hurt. Let those of us who were there find pleasure in that, and in the memories we have of our trip, and if one of us should be able to come up with a good, inexpensive, nonflammable wood substitute? I wouldn't presume to speak for Ms.Nigro, but perhaps it might open up interesting possibilities to be explored?