Words fail me. Go watch this video from inside a tornado. Inside Tornadoes Multimedia @ National Geographic Magazine
Cindy & Geoff’s First House
I try not to fill my blog with personal drivel of no interest to anyone besides me… but even iron-willed Art can’t pass this by. 🙂 Cindy and Geoff (my wife’s daughter and her husband) just bought their first house. They found a hundred year old beauty (in need of a little TLC) on a […]
Mission to build a simulated brain begins
New Scientist ran an article on Monday titled, Mission to build a simulated brain begins. It opens with, An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday. The “Blue Brain†project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will […]
2-Year OpenOffice High School Case Study
NewsForge has an article about University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy’s conversion from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. Unlike previous articles, this one looks back with two years of perspective. From the NewsForge article: The cost analysis was compelling — the Linux option could be implemented for around $21,000, more than $100,000 less than […]
Noodling: Catch a Fish by Hand
Bored? Try noodling. From the STLtoday article: The catfish chomped down on Jimbo Anderson’s ankle with a mouthful of teeth like tiny needles. Pain spun in his head, but Anderson thrust his bare right arm into the murky water, reaching into the hole where the catfish hid. The intrusion was met by the catfish’s teeth. […]
Straight Line Designs
Boing Boing gets credit for bringing this to my attention. Straight Line Designs creates some of the most unusual furniture I have ever been delighted to see. Coincidentally, their Flash animation is stunningly wonderful! I wish I had that talent. The intro page is cute but the main site menu make wonderful use of both […]
Load Acrobat Reader Faster
Forever Geek has a great tidbit on how to make Acrobat load faster on Windows. This made a world of difference for me: Find the Acrobat Reader folder. On my system, with Acrobat 6 installed, this is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader Open the plug_ins folder. Move all of the files and folders to the Optional folder […]
Co-existing With a Web Designer
I found this on Craiglist and figured that it was alternately hilarious and thought-provoking. I wish I knew who the original author was so that I could give credit where it is due. Oh, yes, before I forget. If you find yourself taking this too seriously, breathe and get a clue. 😛 Enjoy! I’ve been […]
Missed Bridge
I mentioned Google Sightseeing once before but never imagined how useful it could be in finding hazardous roads. 😉 This “dangerous bridge” is just about 30 miles north of where I live. It is actually the Clark Bridge, spanning the Mississippi River at Alton, Illinois.
Fun Ideas for the Weekend
With the Memorial Day weekend looming large, I humbly offer these ideas to keep you busy. First, Boing Boing refers us to a web site with instructions on how to create your own Popsicles out of Guiness. The original site seems to have exceeded its bandwidth allocation so you’ll have to make do with this […]
Small Business Committee Meeting
Minutes from the Small Business Committee of the St. Peters Chamber of Commerce, May 26, 2005. St. Charles Community College, Executive Dining Room. Presentation by Floyd Bell, Data Access Solutions & Y2Marketing. Introductions including name, company, and unique selling proposition (USP). The USP should be 10 words or less. Million Dollar Marketing Equation: Interrupt + […]
Duct tape festival in Ohio
Without Boing Boing, I would never have found out about the Duct tape festival in Ohio, to be held on Father’s Day weekend (when else?). With a bit more tape, I think I can get the car to hold together well enough to get me there! 🙂
Got Encryption Software? Better Get a Lawyer!
News.com reports that Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption, presuming that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent. “We find that… the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him,” Judge R.A. Randall wrote […]
Hats off to Al “Screw-Up” Lewis
The Denver Post reports this story about Al Lewis, a man who does much to restore my faith in mankind. “I just believe things should be done the way they should be done,” he said. After a cargo strap on his truck broke, spewing about 5,000 spikes on the highway at 60 MPH, Al actually […]
Big Brother is Watching in Chicago
From Slashdot we learn that Big Brother, and everybody else, is watching if you commit a crime in Chicago. Check out ChicagoCrime.org to see where the bad guys are operating in the Windy City. Possibly more practical is this Cheap Gas hack. Hats off to Google Maps, which is providing the underlying mapping data for […]
Stock Photography, Images, Animations, Graphics
Looking for images for your web site? Be they photographs, animations, or graphics, here are a couple of good places to look. iStockphoto has a wide variety of stock photography with some graphics. Prices are incredibly cheap, just $1 for low resolution stuff that is suitable for web sites. Animation Factory has a huge variety […]
On-line Photo Galleries
I have two favorite on-line photo galleries, depending on whether you want to host the photos on your own server or let someone else handle the heavy lifting. For free stuff on your own web server / web site, nothing beats Gallery. This works great until you start to fill up the disk on your […]
Fond Memories of Amdahl
Deadprogrammer’s Cafe has a wonderful posting titled Amdahl : Business in the Front, Party in the Back which includes photos of a board out of an old Amdahl 470 mainframe. That was the first “large” computer that I ever used, at the University of Michigan in 1976. Ahhh… those were the days. 😉 Those of […]
Bug Fixed: One Reason Why Open Source is Cool
Ever wonder about why people like me continually rave about the wonders of open source software? One reason is because bugs get fixed really fast. Witness some of the security flaws in Firefox which were reported recently and patched within a few days. Here is a more personal example. I had been having a problem […]
HOWTO Open a Kensington Laptop Lock with a Toilet Paper Tube
Were you thinking of using a Kensington lock to secure your laptop computer? You might want to reconsider. Thanks to Boing Boing for this pointer to a demonstration of how to open a Kensington laptop lock with the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper. Here is the two minute long, 7.5 MB WMV […]
