Boing Boing » Search Results » sumit

Stationary bike weight-loss success story

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 01:43:32 +0000

Sumit sez, "This is the wacky story of how I biked across the country on my exercise bike and lost a lot of extra pounds in the process - complete with charts and graphs of calories burned vs. weight loss and bullet points and all sorts of other happy mutant happiness."

Sumit is also "the Seattleite who brought you 'Rope Bondage for Laptops' and 'Putting a Wood Floor on Carpet.'"

My VRATUS - How I Rode My Exercise Bike Across the Country (and Lost 20 lbs Along the Way) (Thanks, Sumit!)

HOWTO lay a wood floor on top of the carpet in your rental apartment

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:14:52 +0000

Sumitsumit sez, "Tired of carpet, want wood floors, but living in a rental apartment? If you have the low-pile variety, here's an economical way to make yourself a great new floor without damaging the underlying carpet. From the guy who brought you 'rope bondage for laptops.'"

How to Install a Wood Floor on top of Carpet

HOWTO put a laptop in rope-bondage for a bag-less messenger bag

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 18:21:56 +0000

Here's a quick video showing how to tie up your laptop (or other boxlike object) such that you can wear it like a messenger bag; it'd be cool to be the guy at the meeting who shows up at a meeting with a coil of rope around his shoulder so that you can go hands-free when it's over.

How to Make a Wearable Harness for a Box-like Object out of Rope (Thanks, SumitSumit, via Submitterator)

Rudy Rucker remembers Benoit Mandelbrot

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:06:01 +0000

Eileen Gunn sez, "The incomparable Rudy Rucker describes his visit to one of the greatest mathematicians of our time. Surreal, philosophic, mathematical."

Mandelbrot is waiting for me at the end of his driveway, he's worried I might not find the house as the address on the curb is covered by snow. A white-haired balding man, stocky, somewhat diffident, he sees me, I wave, he doesn't wave back, not sure yet I'm the one he's waiting for, when I'm closer he says "Are you Rudy Rucker?" We introduce ourselves, shake hands, I tell him I'm thrilled to meet him. In the house his wife Adèle greets us, Mandelbrot disappears to take a pee I suppose, then we sit in a cold room with some armchairs. They don't seem to really heat their house. He sits on an odd modern chair with parts of it missing, a collection of black corduroy hotdogs. He wears a jacket, a vest, a shirt, trousers with a paperclip attached to the fly to make it easier to pull up and down, I guess he's 75. Rather rotund and, yes, a bit like the Mandelbrot set in his roundness and with the fuzz of hairs on his pate.
He starts talking almost right away, an incredibly dense and rich flow of information, a torrent. Fractal of course, as human conversation usually is, but of a higher than usual dimension. It's like talking to a superbeing, just as I'd hoped, like being with a Martian, his conversation a wall of sound paisley info structure, the twittering of the Great Scarab.
His wife listens attentively as we talk and from time to time she reminds him to tie up some loose thread.

Remembering Benoit Mandelbrot (Thanks, Eileen, via Sumitterator)

NM cops raid Montessori School greenhouse for pot, find tomatoes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:53:13 +0000

New Mexico state cops swooped in for a daring raid on a Montessori School greenhouse, where they were growing tomatoes, not pot.

"We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower," she said. "Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating."
After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school's driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.
Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school's greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.
"As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story," she said.

Pot raid at school turns up tomatoes (Thanks, Matt, via Sumitterator!)

(Image: Cherry Tomatoes, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 9229859@N02's photostream)