May 2007

Whoa, news! Dell to Offer Ubuntu (more here) #

Overheard on my ham radio tonight: Zero Nine Foxtrot Nine One One Zero Two Nine Delta Seven Four Echo Three Five Bravo Delta Eight Four One Five Six Charlie Five Six Three Five Six Eight Eight Charlie Zero, I’m not sure what it means… #

I’m with Mark: “The web just got richer.” Well, somebody’s getting richer, but I doubt it’s gonna be the web. #

Oh yes this is the headline of the day: Erectile dysfunction probed with engineering tool

and the quote of the day: “Using mathematical models of penis geometry and hydrostatic pressure, doctors can predict when penises will fail – and in which vagina” #

The first blog post whose comment feed I’ll be subscribing to: Different Drummer (an instant classic) #

Cory Doctorow: The MPAA and RIAA are conspiring to unmake America, to turn this into a country where free expression, due process, and the rule of law take a back-seat to a perpetual set of governmental handouts intended to guarantee the long-term profitability of a small handful of corrupt companies. Ouch. #

Whoa, what happened in LA? Chief vows full inquiry into violence (check out the video) #

Ha: But I don’t have any reason to go postal! Well I guess hypothetically now I do. (more on Boing Boing: Webcomic artist fired from gov job over “terroristic” art) #

Hehe: CODEZ FRUM HEBEN #

The comments on this Boing Boing gem are worth reading: Side effect of AACS turmoil #

Neat: Linutop is a Linux-based diskless computer. It offers a completely silent, low-power operation in an extremely small package.

“Linutop comes with a 1 GB USB key containing the operating system and software.” #

Word up: Thursday May 17th, 2007 is Bike to Work Day in the San Francisco Bay Area (I might even bike home!) #

Information, not restriction:But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in dissent, Kennedy doesn’t propose giving women more information about partial-birth abortion procedures. He says it’s up to the Congress and the courts to substitute their judgment and ban the procedures altogether. #

The rocking ACLU folks who helped defend me against an unsound cease-and-desist letter last year have put together a site called 10 couples in order to put a human face on same-sex relationships. Check it out. #

Listening to Menomena – muscle’n flo on Indie Pop Rocks, and it is totally ROCKING (hmm, they’re playing Friday June 8 at the Independent in SF—oh crap nevermind, I’ll be in Buffalo) #

You heard it here: Which Republican candidates don’t believe in EVOLUTION? Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. (via Kottke) #

I have a soft spot for teen movies: Superbad #

OMG there’s a sequel? 28 Weeks Later #

Art/invention of the day: keyboard waffle iron #

I was wondering what those free conference calling sites were all about (apparently they’re in Iowa, whodathunkit?) #

I read this: Mount Wikipedia as a file-system and thought “Mt. Wikipedia?” Cool. #

Sometimes, I’m that guy #

T-shirt of the day: Pie Chart #

This looks totally totally cool: Alberto Gaitán’s Briliant Colorfield “Remembrancer” (more photos here) #

I need to invent a reason to need this: Make Controller Kit #

You’ve got to be kidding me:

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand.”

(via Radar) #

Photos and headline of the day: Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo #

Disease of the day: popcorn workers lung #

What? Hallo Knut Der Kleine Eisbär (via Andre) #

So many links, so little time! Kool-Aid Dills (I need to make some!) #

The internets are awash in bounty! Flâneur (awesome stop motion animation) #

I wonder sometimes if they hear what they are saying? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “I think the American people look at it and don’t see success . . . What they see are daily car bombings and chaos” Uh, duh! #

As cool as Remembrancer:Spamtrap #

Neat: HDR shot in a dense forest #

Question of the day: So what’s with all the knitting, gardening and “cooking for fun”? Why do some forms of menial labor survive as hobbies while others have been killed off? #

To do next weekend: run the Bay to Breakers with my Dad! #

I officially want to shake hands with Randall Munroe: The Glass Necklace #

Quote of the day: “I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check,” said Jobs. If that were the case, Microsoft would have some great products.” (Ouch, if only it wasn’t so true) #

Mozilla pushes back! the high cost of some free tools #

smart kitty is now an org. that is all. #

Cool: Victoria Reynolds paints meat #

Kottke to the USPS: Keep the process simple…we don’t care about your technology can and can’t do. Figure it out. #

Coolness: quantity art (from Josephine) #

File this under: “could have been better spent”: Adobe Systems plans to spend $100 million in venture funding to promote its [proprietary] software development platforms #

Things are going to get very interesting: Mr. Comey provided a fuller account of the 48-hour drama, including, for the first time, Mr. Bush’s role, the threatened resignations and a race as Mr. Comey hurried to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital sickbed to intercept White House officials, who were pushing for approval of the N.S.A. program. #

Catering truck as restaurant “startup”: His grand plan is to open his own restaurant, and he sees the Que Crawl as a way to earn some start-up money for the future venture and learn the business end of running a kitchen. (thanks Webb) #

Cory pulls no punches: Bigoted religious phony Jerry Falwell went to hell today. #

To watch later: Miranda July Stars in the New Blonde Redhead Video #

OMG is this amazingness: Cheese-rolling 2006 #

To read later: ‘The middle of nowhere’ by Edward Luttwak “The operational mistake that middle east experts keep making is the failure to recognise that backward societies must be left alone…” #

For future reference: Chrome Care #

I only have 2.5 years left: The Bayesian Advantage of Youth (though I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur) #

Money pump: Arbitrageurs use Google AdWords and other means to send traffic to their site, and monetize that traffic with Google AdSense. (I had no idea this existed) #

Death by Veganism: babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil #

I enjoy DreamHost: In California at least, non-compete and non-solicit agreements, especially for regular employees, are pretty much unenforceable. (there’s a pretty funny part at the end) #

Overtonesque: People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion #

Wikipedia fact of the day: In 1862 large, bloody battles [of the Civil War] began, causing massive casualties as a result of incompatibility between new weapons and old battlefield tactics. (I’m curious to know more)

Also see: The civil war in four minutes and Sherman’s neckties #

Ha Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs, ‘Oh, Shit,’ Says Humanity #

Neat: reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books (but how does it know you’re right?)

Update: Oh, I forgot to mention, I don’t like captchas. #

This is pretty funny: Modern-Day Martin Luther Nails 95 Comment Cards To IHOP Door #

Updated: The Random Image Plugin for WordPress is now at version 4!

New Features:
Random image display can be customized using a template
Images can be selected that only contain a specific class attribute #

$599 for a Dell Laptop running Ubuntu #

Wikipedia article of the day: Caging #

Ivan came in yesterday wearing a totally radical webgeek tshirt from A List Apart. Of course I had to update it: HTML5 fist. #

HA! “Are you a Republican suffering from memory Loss? Try… SUBPOENAS! Now with immunity.” #

No way!

A large German bank needed a way to use OS/2 on newer hardware that OS/2 did not support. As virtualization software is an easy way around this, they desired to run OS/2 under a hypervisor. Once it was determined that VMware was not a possibility, they hired some Russian hackers to write a host-based hypervisor that would officially support OS/2. Thus the Parallels, Inc. company and their Parallels Workstation was born.

#

Useful: ImgBurn, a free CD and DVD ISO burner for Windows, and GParted, a free partition editor that comes with Ubuntu—but also has its own livecd. #

Cool: A Californian company has created software that can layer relevant recorded sounds over locations in Google Earth (Thanks Amy!) #

Completely radical homebrew keyboard #

Paul Jones on irony:

The armada of evil are at the command of a large faceless corporation whose goal is to eliminate Pirates from the face of the earth. Not only that but the corporation has manipulated the government to act on its behalf even to the point of suspending the freedom of assembly, of habeas corpus, of trial by jury and a number of other civil liberties. Yes you can’t help but think Gitmo and then oddly of Disney and copyright.

#

Google sez fuck you to Windows Live Maps: 2nd and Main, Sausalito, CA (Google turns Earth into a ORPG)

Update: the car that did the deed #

Perhaps I’m being naive (I know nothing about the hog population of Georgia), but if I saw a 1,051-Pound Hog I’m not sure my first instinct would be to kill it. Catch it maybe. Photograph it definitely. I guess death is a better fate than state fair sideshow attraction. It just seems kind of sad, hoax or not. (Strange that a 3 year old photo is making the rounds just now) #

Currently rocking out to Birdmonster – All the holes in the walls #