So, I read an absolute ton of RSS feeds, in a number of different areas that interest me. One of the kinds of feeds I track are the ones from authors whose work I enjoy. I’ve got a pretty big list of them in my aggregator these days, and I’m always looking for more. (Really–feel free to email me lists,… Read more →
Category: Science and Technology
Browser neepery
I am clearly getting old. There was a time when the announcement of a new beta of a new version of Firefox would have had me running to get the latest and greatest and get it installed. These days, however, I seem to be less excited about having the bleeding edge, and more interested in having the functionality I want.… Read more →
Meta-blogging
So, since my ISP keeps screwing up the configuration on the machine that hosts this blog, I’m looking into an alternate anti-spam solution. I’ve moved from my hand-rolled captcha system (see previous anti-spam post) to using Spam Karma 2. Let me know via email if you have any problems with commenting over the next couple of days. Read more →
Upbeat and assorted.
Yes, that’s correct. Apparently there is a BaldGuyz corporation making products just for… well, “bald guys”. As time goes by I am falling more and more into their target audience. I think these boxes look pretty funny though. * * * I wouldn’t actually buy BaldGuyz products, but as an engineer I think I am duty-bound to actually buy these… Read more →
BOOM – Server Crash!
Well, my ISP had a server crash yesterday, which anyone trying to access the blog surely noticed. Part of the crash recovery involved restoring from their last backup, which was apparently long enough ago that all my September posts are lost. Fortunately, I have local copies of the postings in my RSS reader (yes, I subscribe to my own blog–for… Read more →
If he’s right it will radically alter my marriage…
Everyone should be checking out the Long Bets web site, a portal designed to deal with predictions that stretch significantly into the future. You can vote on the predictions, discuss them, or challenge the predictor to actually bet on their prediction. There are some very interesting things being discussed here, and everyone with a science fiction bent will find something… Read more →
Apparently I am a road-trip amateur…
I have always thought of myself as something of a road trip professional (“I’m a mission specialist: I specialize in missions”) but apparently I was wrong about this. How could anyone take themselves seriously as a road tripper without owning one of these? 12-Volt Portable Oven and Pizza Maker # Plugs Directly into Your Cigarette Lighter Socket # High/Low Settings… Read more →
A Contest I Might Actually Enter
I get a kick out of reading the top entries in the Obfuscated C contest every year–in the same way that it’s kind of amusing to see the guy who built a 3 story house of of crushed pop cans. You kind of goggle that someone would spend that much effort on something so fundamentally useless, but you can’t help… Read more →
I suspected it all along
My friend Soon-To-Be-Married-George (formerly known as “Undead George”, “MacJones”, “Jorge”, “35-year old burnt-out trucker”, etc.) sent me a link today to a Virginia Commonwealth University study on the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Here’s a bit of quote from the press release: “For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are… Read more →
Forget Investment–what about retail?
And now, from the Pohl & Kornbluth category, an article about a study of a drug that makes the recipients more prone to trusting people: In the first experiment, they played a game in which an “investor” could choose to hand over to a “trustee” up to 12 units of money that are each equal to .40 Swiss franc, or… Read more →
Arrrrrrrghh!
This is something you never want to see. I anticipate a lot of wasted time tomorrow. Read more →
Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
The gang over at SciAm have kicked out a 15-point guide to smacking down the most common (and egregious) fallacies presented by creationists as arguments against evolution. Top quality fun reading. An example: 8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. Chance plays… Read more →
Redheads Curse Robot Lennon!
So I have my RSS reader (Omea, if you care) set up to pull down really rather a lot of feeds–somewhere around 350 I’d guess. (I am Mr. Infoload Efficiency, yes I am.) Lots are folks’ personal blogs, or feeds from news sites, or political blogs, etc. One big category is the “tech stuff”, some of which I follow in… Read more →
Honey, can you start the towels, I just did my darks?
“I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn’t do anything around the house except drink beers” Trish and I both do our own laundry–I would actually gladly do both, but her laundry is very complicated. Anything I do at home (as opposed to dress shirts & other things that need ironing,… Read more →
Can you say “Hack”?
So, they are making Talking Jesus, Mary and Moses dolls. I may have to buy a couple of these and join in the long and proud tradition of hacking talking toys. (I admit, it was the Lord of Evil who put this idea into my head.) Can you imagine how sweet it would be to have Jesus ask “Have you… Read more →
