Bob Mettauer took up cycling when he retired in the 1990s. Ever since then, he has been logging his miles, and he has committed to ride nine miles with his bike every day, no matter the weather. Now, almost 30 years since that fateful day, the 95-year old man from California, known to neighbors as “Bicycle Bob”, logged his 100,000th mile of cycling.

Mettauer logged his 100,000th mile Tuesday and was treated to a celebration by friends and neighbors at Casa Grande Senior Mobile Estates in Santa Maria.

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The cycling enthusiast said he plans to take a few days to rest after reaching the 100,000 mile mark, but he has no plans to quit his hobby.

"On Sept. 18 I'll be 96 years old, and I'm going to keep on going," he told KEYT-TV.

Now that’s dedication right there.

(Image Credit: KEYT - KCOY - KKFX News/ YouTube)

Yeah, it seems early to talk about Thanksgiving, but Brach's is way ahead of us with their new product Thanksgiving Dinner Candy Corn. It may sound disgusting, but if you will be in isolation for the holiday, here's your excuse to pig out on candy instead of cooking. You can even tell Mom you had a Thanksgiving dinner when she checks in by FaceTime.   

A full course meal presented in a unique mix of candy corn flavors. BRACH’S Turkey Dinner includes all of the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. From roasted turkey, green beans and stuffing to ginger glazed carrots, cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie.
Flavors include Green Beans, Roasted Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Ginger Glazed Carrot, Sweet Potato Pie & Stuffing.

One has to wonder how savory these sweets really are. The first ingredients are still sugar and corn syrup, while everything else is under "Natural and Artificial Flavor." Then you have to wonder why they didn't mix in some regular candy corn and call it corn flavor. -via Boing Boing

There can only be too much decoration on your walls, right? If you feel like your home needs to be more lively but you don’t have any more available space, here's an unorthodox suggestion: try hanging decorations on your windows! Painter Chambers Austelle hung her artworks on her window frame. It might limit the view outside, but it can actually create a focal point in a room, as Apartment Therapy details: 

It also just might draw more attention to, say, a set of windows with pretty moldings. I probably wouldn’t pick a piece that’s going to totally obscure the entire window, blocking all natural light in the process. However, if you did have a not so great view, this is a decent fast fix for covering that up a bit.

Austelle herself was inspired by a pin she saw on Pinterest. “I love the look of artwork hanging on bookcases, but that wasn’t an option for me, as I don’t have a bookcase,” she says. She then realized she could create the same effect with this set of double windows on her porch.

“Just like you would on a wall, I used wire resting on a nail to mount the photo in the center of the windows,” says Austelle. You can also explore more temporary mounting solutions like Command Strips, too, especially if you choose a lighter, smaller piece. One other tip to keep in mind: This idea works best on undressed windows, so drapes and shades don’t get the way of your prized piece of artwork.

image via Apartment Therapy

This might look like an ordinary ring, but it’s more than just an accessory. The Oura Ring is a health tracker that has sensors on the inside, but the wearer won’t even notice it! The small tracker has been getting traction from being used by the NBA and WNBA as a tool for preventing outbreaks of COVID-19, as TechCrunch details: 

So what does the Oura Ring actually track? A lot of things, actually. It measures sleep, as mentioned, as well as various other metrics under two broad categories: Readiness and Activity. Sleep, Readiness and Activity all provide one overall summary score out of 100 to give you a topline sense of where you are, but each is actually calculated from a range of sub-metrics that add up to that larger score.

Oura’s sleep tracking is much more in-depth than the forthcoming Apple Watch sleep tracking that Apple is releasing with its next watchOS update in the fall. It monitors when you go to sleep, how long you sleep, how much of that qualifies as “deep” and how much is “REM,” and gives you a metric or you sleep efficiency, your time in bed, your total sleep time and more. Readiness tracks your ambient body temperature, heart rate variability, respiratory rate and your resting heart rate, while activity automatically measures calorie burn, inactive time, your steps and how close you are to your overall activity goal.

image via TechCrunch

Thanks to technology, most of the resources we obtain are in digital form. We view our textbooks, documents, and other resources as PDFs on our phones. While these files are easy to retrieve, we can’t deny that it is difficult to zoom in and out to read. But that’s not the only shortcoming of PDFs. According to Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the user experience research and consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group, PDFs are still problematic, even after twenty years: 

In the article, co-published this week with user experience specialist Anna Kaley, several reasons are given as to why PDFs are problematic when used for online reading. Some of the usability issues mentioned include a jarring user experience, slow load times, unnecessary content, unnavigable content masses, and the fact that PDFs are sized for paper and not screens. 

“The format is intended and optimized for print. It’s inherently inaccessible, unpleasant to read, and cumbersome to navigate online. Neither time nor changes in user behavior have softened our evidence-based stance on this subject,” the article reads. “Even 20 years later, PDFs are still unfit for human consumption in the digital space.” 

image via Vice

Most of a video game’s narrative is relayed in cutscenes, flavor texts (the random bits of information about a game’s setting scattered all around the game), or through simple dialogue between characters. But some games are now telling the bits and pieces of their narratives through dungeons, buildings, and other environmental spaces. Watch Game Maker’s Toolkit as he provides the best examples of this very practice. 

It’s through assigning priority to the information they want to convey. Designers effectively present content or information by following a visual hierarchy. They try to organize their content so to present the content with the highest priority first. This, in turn, will be the first item that will grab the eye’s attention, as the Interaction Design Organization details: 

“Hierarchy” is simply a nicer way of saying organized from most to least important. We also use “hierarchy” to show relationships (where relationships exist) between content blocks.

There are common patterns for hierarchy both on the printed page and for the digital page. These patterns are based on the movements that our eyes tend to make when presented with a fresh page. English, for example, is read from left to right. English readers have a set scanning pattern when facing a page of text. Arabic readers have a different pattern. Why? It’s because Arabic is read from right to left.

It’s important to understand how your audience processes information before adopting a hierarchy pattern. 

Check out the full piece here.

image via The Interaction Design Organization

To the lucky people who discovered these remarkable pieces of meteorites, I thank you for being at the right place at the right time. Absolutely stunning! 

Ha ha ha haaaaa! This will make your day. And what make this dog more awesome when playing drums is that he's on beat the entire time.

Matt Shirley asks, "What's the most annoying fruit?" According to his chart, it would be avocados. You keep an eye on those things, because there's about a 15-minute window at one point where they will be perfect for eating. He seems to be a bit confused by pineapple, which is understandable. Like all fruit, a pineapple is at its sweetest right before it falls apart. Knowing when that is before you cut into it is a matter of experience. I like to cut them when they are showing quite a bit of yellow outside. Yeah, that means trimming some brown parts from the flesh, but what's left is very sweet!

Fandom Games gives us an overview of Ghost of Tsushima, from its graphics, story, and gameplay mechanics, all while dissing the game itself, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise, and Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series, as well as The Last of Us Part 2.

And the fun doesn’t stop there, as the honest trailer also gives us a haiku at the end of the video.

(Video Credit: Fandom Games/ YouTube)

Millions of people have used their lockdown time to recreate works of art. Designer Lydia Cambron went a step further and recreated a movie! Well, a part of a movie, anyway, but she chose well. Here she is, remaking the final scene of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, copied shot by shot in her apartment. At first I thought the monolith in the bedroom was a guillotine, but I think it may be an exercise machine. Stay for the credits. -via Nag on the Lake

Deep in the Queensland rain forest, the ruins of a hand-built castle begun almost a hundred years ago still stand, slowly being resurrected from the ravages of time and nature. Paronella Castle was a labor of love the first time around, and also the second.   

It was the impossible dream of an ambitious Spanish immigrant who sailed to Australia in 1913 to make a life for himself and his fiancé waiting back home. José Paronella worked for over a decade worlds away from his homeland, first as a labourer cutting sugar cane, and then slowly building his wealth, buying, improving and selling cane farms. In his first years of travelling around Queensland, he discovered a virgin forest land alongside a waterfall and knew at first sight that he would one day call it his home. Over a century later, the ruins of his incredible story remain in the jungle…

Paronella and his wife Margarita spent ten years building a beautiful castle in the jungles of Australia, complete with fountains, a movie theater, tennis courts, 7,000 exotic trees, and a hydroelectric plant to power it all. They opened it to the public as Paronalla Park in 1935. They endured floods, cyclones, fires, and the creeping jungle, until the Paronellas died and the jungle eventually won. But that's not the end of the story. Read about Paronella Castle and see plenty of pictures at Messy Nessy Chic.

If your house has an incredible air conditioning unit, or a good cooling system that can make you ignore the hot weather, then good for you! But what if your fan or AC isn’t enough to subdue the heat? Is getting sleep still possible? Yes! All it takes are some tweaks to your daily routine, as inews detail:

Firstly, keep your curtains or blinds drawn during the day to block out the heat. Open windows and doors throughout your home to get a through-draft.

Making sure you are hydrated throughout the day is also very important and keeping a glass of water by your bed is advised. Also, avoid spicy foods and eating too late at night as this can raise your body temperature.

Keeping your extremities, such as your head and feet, cool can also lead to a more restful night.

Image via wikimedia commons 

After four long hard years of catching mice, Palmerston, the chief mouser at the U.K Foreign Office, finally decided to retire from the institution.

Palmerston made it official in a letter sent in his name to Simon McDonald, the office’s permanent under-secretary, which explained that he wanted more time “away from the limelight.”

“I have found life away from the front line relaxed, quieter, and easier,” a letter signed with two paw prints said. It was posted on Twitter.

The letter from Palmerston, or @DiploMog’ as he is known on Twitter, said his service showed that “even those with four legs and fur have an important part to play in the U.K.’s global effort.”

He really is deserving of retirement.

Learn more details about his career at the Foreign Office over at AP News.

(Image Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)