Raj Taneja and Henry Rollins

Originally uploaded by Urban Mixer.

Once in a while in my travels, I bump into an extraordinary being. In this case, I was enjoying a night out restaurant-hopping with the Vancouver Martini Tour folk when I came accross Henry Rollins.

Raj: Hey, would you kindly spit on my head?
Henry: What?
Raj: Well, actually just kidding. That shit’s disgusting but I understand that you’ve had such requests in the past.
Henry: Ya, only once actually. You have a pretty good memory.
Raj: Ya, well, stuff like that usually sticks with me. My name’s Raj, by the way.
Henry: Cool. My name’s Henry.

We took some photos, chatted a bit more. I invited him out for the rest of the night but he mentioned that he was kinda a private guy. That was the end of that. He went home after that, I think.

From ONEList June 2006 (ONE/Northwest and CommEn Space)

Do you have an email newsletter? If so, then usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s latest studies of users’ eye movements across web pages is compelling visual evidence of how people read on the web, and how it is different from how they read print.

Nielsen draws three key conclusions for online writing:

• Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won’t.

• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There’s some hope that users will actually read this material, though they’ll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words

that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content. They’ll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

From Terrie’s Take #379:

Toyota has teamed up with contact lens maker Menicon to produce a compound which can significantly speed up the decomposition of cow pats (poop) for compost. The new
compound is added to cow slush and reduces the mess into usable compost in 45 days, about half the current time. As a side benefit, it also reduces the methane and thus the
smell emitted by an active bio-pile. The compound is called “resQ45″ and is targeted at the nation’s dairy, beef, poultry, and pig farmers, who have to dispose of about 89m
tonnes [Ed: you didn't know it was that much, did you?] of manure every year. ***Ed: This could be a hit in Europe and Australasia as well. (Source: TT commentary from
reuters.com, Jun 16, 2006)

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=T343500

Urban Mixer Comedy Night

MORE INFO: http://vancouver.urbanmixer.com/events/urban-mixer-comedy-night

Set Sail for Comedy: Get your giggle on, Gilligan! Or Ginger! Yeah, I always liked Ginger…and Mary Ann too!

Let the freshest comics in the west tickle your funnybone and maybe some Urban Mixers will tickle your fancy or anything else they can reach. Join the Urban Mixer at the Urban Well for some urbane chuckles with an hour of appies and mingling before a special comedy show.

WHAT: Urban Mixer Comedy Night and Mixer
WHERE: The Urban Well (Kitsilano), 1516 Yew Street, Vancouver
WHO: Social, Professional Singles
WHEN: Thursday, June 22nd, 2006, 6:30PM – 9:30PM
WHY: Great people, great conversation, great comedy, excellent venue
HOW: $15 in advance, $20 at the door buys you admission, great comedy and appies.