<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'><title>alan's blog</title><link href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/' hreflang='en-US' type='text/xhtml' /><link href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/feed/atom.xml' rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' /><updated>2008-11-20T20:30:00-06:00</updated><author><name>Alan Lynn</name><uri>http://www.alanlynn.com</uri></author><id>urn:uuid:c8969b00-b156-11dd-b35d-0002a5d5c51b</id><entry><title>Pancakes by Mail</title><link href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/pancakes-by-mail/' /><id>tag:alanlynn.com,2008-11-20:/blog/20081120203000</id><published>2008-11-20T20:30:00-06:00</published><updated>2008-11-20T20:30:00-06:00</updated><summary type='xhtml' xml:lang='en-US'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p>As a joke, I set my Facebook status to "<b><a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1909758">Alan Lynn</a> is going to start a pancakes by mail service.</b>" but after thinking about it, I thought it would be funnier if I actually did it.</p><p>When I was doing some preliminary preparation, I found an article claiming <a href="http://lumberjackday.net/celebrate/howto/crafts/pancakemail/">you can use a pancake as a postcard</a>. Maybe another time...</p><p>So the next morning I got up bright and early (noon) to start making some pancakes for my friend <a href="http://www.iprefermuffins.com">Kevin</a>. By 2pm I had a recipe and was ready to go. By 3pm I had <a href='/images/blog/iprefermuffins-xbox-avatar-scratching-ass.png'>a photoshop of Kevin's Xbox 360 avatar scratching its ass</a>.</p><p><a href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/pancakes-by-mail/'>continued...</a></p></div></summary><content src='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/pancakes-by-mail/'></content></entry><entry><title>A Man Eating Some Pants</title><link href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/a-man-eating-some-pants/' /><id>tag:alanlynn.com,2008-11-07:/blog/20081107003000</id><published>2008-11-07T00:30:00-06:00</published><updated>2008-11-07T00:30:00-06:00</updated><summary type='xhtml' xml:lang='en-US'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p>I recently discovered the <a href="https://www.mturk.com">Amazon Mechanical Turk</a>. It's a place where you can pay anonymous people to do small tasks, or work on said tasks yourself. Amazon calls it "artificial artificial intelligence". It's mostly filled with small work-like tasks such as tagging an image or selecting pictures of wire strippers (which despite the warning, did not contain adult content).</p><p>After contemplating whether I was making enough money to power my laptop, it was clear that the other side of the table was where the fun was. I deposited the $1.29 I had made and got to work making my own task.</p><p>For the reward of 5 cents, I prompted 10 users with the following:</p><blockquote><p>Draw a picture of <b>a man eating some pants</b>. The only quality requirement is that the picture can be easily identified as a man eating some pants. You may sign your artwork if you desire.</p></blockquote><p><a href='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/a-man-eating-some-pants/'>continued...</a></p></div></summary><content src='http://www.alanlynn.com/blog/a-man-eating-some-pants/'></content></entry></feed>
