The Cart Blog

Colin Farrell’s excellent Corporal Punishment Research website has created a montage called “spank while you sell,” which shows the use of corporal punishment in advertisements for consumer products.

I loved this image by lemasney of “the prevail whale.”

to counter all the negative buzz Twitter is getting when its “fail whale” page is displayed.

Oh, Twitter.  We know you can do better.  And we’re all rooting for you.

I wrote a piece of software that I called Checkout Candy, which does automatic upselling on the shopping cart and checkout pages of a Zen Cart, based on Better Together discounts.

I got an email last night (from someone who was obviously not a native English speaker) that said,

I have been asked by my cousin (that Is been a distributor of candies for the last 20 years In Israel). to look for a good deal In candy.

I’m looking to ship a container 40’ long.

Please send me list with prices.

I never laughed so hard! Good luck in your search for candy, sir!

Last weekend we saw the classic Bond film Dr. No at my favorite movie theatre in Tampa.

In one scene, Bond does a double take when he sees the recently stolen Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington in Dr. No’s lair. In 1962 when the film was made, urbane audiences recognized the painting and got a good laugh.

Do you think it would even be possible to retell such a joke today, unless the purloined item involved Nascar baseball caps or some other tacky item?

Forbes has a brief history of the Goya theft, which was quite odd. The BBC offers a discussion of art theft in general.

• The RickRoll: a brief history.
• Glengarry Glen Ross for the Circuit City crowd. “You drove here in a Hyundai. I drove here in a Hyundai with leather seats.”

Thank a veteran that you can still rock in America!

“Because if that was wrong – I’ve gotta plead ignorance here.”

On Monday, April 28, we spent several hours driving through the rain to Ottawa (to catch a plane and interview Tobias Lutke, but not in that order). I started singing Gary Allan’s “Songs About Rain” (yep, I’m a sap), and a code frag appeared before my eyes:

void main(int argc, char **argv) {
dream(&baby);
}

(“And I’ll be dreamin’ of you baby in Maine” from Sonny & Cher’s “Rainy Day Feeling”)

So if it’s code and not words, does it still count as a mondegreen?

What a wonderful voice. And such great subject matter.