God Bless us, everyone

Happy Happy Joy Joy Christmas!!

There's a Spectre...

The narrartor's voice is not the best, but this is CLASSIC!

Wild Tangent

Try to follow this... Why am I posting a link to the Great Lakes Real Time Vessel Location site?You can track ships up and down the St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes(Kinda like Paracelsus' link to Real time flight tracking)

I went to Tower Records over the weekend and bought Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions CD, cuz it was half off! (In your face Amazon!!!) Anyhow, listened to it with my kids and my daughter was singing along with Erie Canal, which was funny, because I remember learning that song as a kid.

So that whole Erie Canal thing was in my mind, when I saw This!

Yow! So I had to find out what that was all about, which led me to the Boatnerd site's account of it, and from there I just went nuts.

There are a lot of cool things on the boatnerd site(including its great name).How about a charity auction to win a "cruise"on a freighter?? Good times. No, seriously..I was Google-Earthing the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes...What a crazy place...Being from out West, we don't get to enjoy all of that industro-maritime coolness. Unless you live in Long Beach maybe. Feh!

And there you have it...Why I'm posting a vessel tracking link here.
Maybe it's a Synchronicity. Or not.

Literally

I was literally rolling on the floor laughing when I saw this. Well,...no. But If I had, then that would have been the correct use of the term 'literally'.

A site devoted to the abuse of the word "literally".

And just because, Someone spent a lot of time researching "Further" versus "Farther".

How do you get your kicks?

I know I should be camping outside a Wal-Mart for a PSIII and enduring the unbelivable insanity, not to mention the cold, but I don't find that at all amusing.
What's got me all excited now is Windows Vista. There I said it. I know, pathetic....maybe pathetic is too mild a word, but it'll have to do.
Anyway, who cares, did you know there are some real cool feaure in MS Vista? And I don't mean "features", you know, like feeeeatures? No, some are actually PRACTICAL.

Like, Copying and Pasting from a remote computer

Or how about ReadyBoost which allows you to use a Flash Drive for virtual memory? Ok, maybe not that practical, but cool nonetheless.

Or my favorite,Dynamic Disk Resizing...I'm guessing the guys at Partition Magic are gonna be pissed.

Swords into Plowshares...or Giant Fire Extinguishers

Saw this on Gizmodo today (Check the link for more information.) Hungarian engineers cobbled together bits of old Soviet-Era weaponry to produce what can only be described as the Mother of all fire extinguishers.

Feh...The user disabled embedding the video, so you'll have to go to YouTube to see it.

Be Careful Out There

Tips on navigating the Internet.

Live to Ride

The yearly pilgrimage to the International Motorcycle Show is nearly upon us.(By us, I mean those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area, some of you have already had the pleasure).
This year I may try attending sans enfants mainly becasue I will actually be able to focus on the bikes rather than my 3 year old falling off a Suzuki RM85. On the other hand, my girls really like going to the show and climbing on the bikes....and what better way to get a majority opinion on motorcycle ownership around the house than that? Hmmmm...something to consider.
In the meantime, here's a sampling of what I'll be ogling:

Better Get Me A Bucket

Happy Halloween!
What better way to start the festivities than with a little Buckethead?


In case you don't know who he is, check out the Wikipedia entry

More

See ya in the Gulag

"Stay the course"
"Freedom's on the march"

Oh, and this one:

"The Bush Administration is replacing toilet paper with the Constitution"

I (Ride) The Line

First a warning: You may become addicted...painfully so.

OK, that's out of the way. Now, go to Line Rider and have fun. Just be careful you don't kill the little guy.

I manged a loop-the-loop and a 360 and some pretty killer near-wipeouts...and that was only after trying it for 136 hours!

NOTE:If you find it too difficult, try this slightly hacked version...less gnarly crashes. A bad thing, if that's what you're looking for.

Popularity Contest

So, all this time I've been thinking that this blog has just been a cyber version of me screaming into the void...I always wondered if anyone actually read it.
Well, my suspicions have been confirmed: No one reads this!
Oh, it's not so bad, it's not like I really expected anyone to(sniff)...
How do I know this? Why, I just went to The Blog Juice Calculator where I scored an impressive 0.0!! Woo Hoo! We're number 4,456,237,891!!!!Or something like that
Anyway, you too can go check your stats according to the number of RSS subscribers.

You can also confirm your own hipness buy checking the top ten blogs and note how many you subscribe to or have saved as Bookmarks. I always check out Gizmodo, and I'm not just saying that because they are number one either!

Yet another excellent feature is one where you can compare rankings between two blogs, for example, Me and Paracelsus Rambles.
Only problem is, it doesn't display the results in a tidy little table, no...you have to scroll down to see Paracelsus with an impressive 3.0 then keep scrolling....scroll some more...to see me...0.0! Just like High School!!

Engineers have all the fun dang it!

The guys at MIT spending some quality time with a wicked awesome whiteboard....

Greg Palast

I was reccomended a book called "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast.
I checked it out on Amazon but they unfortunately had no "Search Inside" enabled on it. It looks like a great read thogh, so after work I'm off to the bookstore.
I had never heard of this guy, but I'm glad I know about him now. he's an investigative journalist who does a great job of exposing greed and incompetence, especially in the Bush Administrattion(Yeah, he has his hands full, but hey, job security!)
Check out his site for more of his writing.
Good stuff.

Yer Man

A voice like no other! Here's a young Shane MacGowan singing with the Dubliners.

Vat iz zis man do-ink here?

If there's ANYTHING I've learned from watching Hogan's Heroes, it's you never mess with the Geneva Convention

How old are you?

Well, I'm old, that's for damn sure. So old in fact, that these videos bring back great memories. Fuzzy and disconnected memories to be sure, but memories nonetheless. And what are we without our memories? Huh? I wish I could forget my past haircuts, that's one memory I could live without.

Ha ha ha

Ah, so, say you're bored one weekend or are just really into SCIENCE...well, have no fear! You can mkae your own nitrous oxide for fun and profit(?)

Oooey Gooey

Ugh...just got finished moving. More on that soon. In the meantime, Enjoy this Collection of OS GUI's>....

Get Smart

Why do we not get the COOL cars here in the U.S.? No, we only get the Chevy Cobalt! Or the Dodge-freaking-Neon.
I'm talking about a cool, little car that gets killer milage...Right? Want to end our dependency on Foreign Oil? Well, Get Smart. I especially like the very customizable Roadster!
Now get this: This company is owned by Daimler-Chrysler...So come on already, start shipping these here..we need something to compete with the Scion xA and Honda Fit. Unfortunately, U.S. car makers are a litle slow on the uptake...I mean, how long did it take them to see the success of the Mazda Miata and come out with something to compete with it.

Beer Me

I enjoy a nice, cold beer while watching the World Cup, but after reviewing my picks in the pool I'm in, I think I may need to do more than just drink the beer. I might have to bathe in it!

Yes, the good people at Bierschwimmbad think bathing in beer is a great way to nourish your skin and feel better. I suppose so, but will it make me feel any better for NOT having picked Argentina to advance?
I'm sure an hour spent soaking in beer would cure nearly anything!

Lies, Damned Lies!

Not to be a wet blanket during all this World Cup fun, but I caught the last bit of a PBS Frontline program last night and, not having recorded it, was a little disappointed that I wouldn't be able to watch it in its entirety. Have no fear...PBS is Showing it online this Thursday.

I would recommend watching it if you have even the slightest doubts of this Administration's motivations.
Believe me, after having read "Weapons of Mass Deception", having seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and having lived through GWB's mind-numbing press conferences, this program essentially seals the deal. If you still believe we went to Iraq for the (ever changing) reasons Bush and Co. say we did, you must be in the dark or on the darkside....

World Cup Quote

Quote from a not-too-happy Australian fan, and former co-worker of mine, after Australia's loss to Brazil:
"Fucking assholes. Bet if the ball was a beer we would have feckin won"

Watch the World Cup on your PC

OK, I'll admit I failed. I was actually thrilled to find streaming audio of World Cup games, thinking after a very half-hearted search three was no way to actually WATCH it on your PC.
My friend at work found it today and rather than do all the heavy lifting, I'm going to point you to another blog(also a blogger.com site) that has the ol' How-To. Enjoy!

Get it at Ramblefish

One caveat: This software works great but creates a LOT of network traffic which may cause the network Security group to stop by your desk with lots of "ahem-ing"...Just pull up a seat for them and let them watch too...That should stop them from killing any neccesary ports.

Wieder Nomi

OK, embedding video is just so easy now that it may just turn this blog into a YouTube/GoogleVideo Fest.

I should have added this in the earlier post about the Nomi Song(The Biographical Documentary about Klaus Nomi). Mind you, the quality is pretty bad(by comparison there is a link on YouTube to an appearance by Klaus Nomi and David Bowie on SNL that is much better quality), but the video itself is quintessential Nomi. Of course, "music videos" were nearly unheard of when this was made, back when MTV actually played videos, so it shows its age a bit.

World Cup

So you're at work and you're dying to at least HEAR a World Cup match. Well, now you can. The Sun online has streaming, live commentary on current matches! I'd suggest headphones at work.

Mentos: The Mess Maker

Heh..Most of you have seen this already, but I just found it hilarious so I thought I'd post it...

Update: I didn't use YouTube on this for a couple of reasons:
1. The source site, revver.com, asked that the video not be linked to places like YouTube or Google Video and
2.I wanted to play around with the {embed} tag...

Feck

Been too busy/lazy to post lately.
But how's this? I've just finished reading Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire and if you haven't read it yet, go get and start reading.
A lot of people will dimiss him as a loony Liberal, but he does a fair job of providing arguments for nhis analysis. This book is a bit of a continuation of his previous book Blowback, which centers more on U.S. Foreign plicy ion Asia.
It's a good wake up call at any rate.

Trouble and Strife

I've always been interested in slang.Who hasn't? The first thing you want to figure out is how to swear and use slang convincingly when learning a foreign language. Why? Probably so you can look like you've been speaking it all your life...Or to look cool..Or to NOT look like a tourist. Also, it's good for laughs if you're obviously too old to be speaking that way.

Now, Cockney Rhyming Slang has always confused the crap out of me. On its surface, it seems like something you'd be able to figure out since it's all rhymed, unlike other slang which just seems to be made up, with no clue as to its etymology. However, if someone were to ask you to "have a butcher's", would you know it meant "Have a look"? See, the trick is the whole rhymed phrase is not spoken. The complete phrase would be A butcher's hook".

Even so, how many other words rhyme with "hook" and "look"? I suppose you have to take context into account, but I've always wondered how even two people conversing in CRS could understand the meaning of the words. It's not like there's a definitive source, like a dictionary...Or is there?

And if anyone out there actually speaks like this in their daily life, please let me know. Is this "dictionary" accurate? Or is it a load of turkish delight?

Triste

Melancholy is a luxury.

Ten Hut!!

BootCamp...Drop and give me twenty!

Yeah, I finally got around to playing with a Mac that now thinks it's a PC. Unfortunately(or maybe fortunately), it was not a Mac I own.
To their credit, Apple has made it very easy to set up. As long as you have an XP SP2 disc, you're ready to go. After a quick firmware upgrade and a cursory look at the instructions(this makes sense later), I was off.

I was amazed once the XP installation completed and the MacBook Pro booted into the familiar "teletubbies" XP desktop...and even the XP sound. Weird. Of course, having not RTFM, I spent a while trying to figure out why the hell I had no network connectivity...then I realized you have to RUN the disk, not just point to it. That's why they provide instructions! Holding down the "alt" key on boot offers you the option of which "disk" to boot to...It's funny that the icons are these big ol' desktop hard drives...
The next hilarious move was realizing there was no "ctrl"+"alt"+"delete" combination on a Mac! Yeah, OK, it works with an external Windows keyboard, but this is a laptop. Did a little digging around and found the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which has the 'remapkey' utility that allows you to do just that. I decided to christen the F12 key the Delete key for the purposes of logging in.

Voila, Windows on a Mac. There are still a few little annoyances,(trying to get LEAP authentication to work automatically), but it works and I think it could be a great move for business taht have developers using Unix/Windows and even Mac OSX!
I'm not convinced a bunch everyday people are going to rush out and do this though...especially the Maccolytes.

IP Freely

So, Paracelsus was out to visit recently, and when he found I was no slave to the Cable Company, he accused me of being a Luddite. It didn't help that I have no TiVo either.
Look, I'm no Luddite, I enjoy technology as much as the next guy. My problem is the money it takes to keep up with it all, which is why I'm intrigued by the advent of IPTV.I like that someone is stepping up to do battle with the Cable Companies. Not like the Telcos are real heroes either...
See Brian Clark's article on the first shots fired in the New Jersey Cable vs. Telco war. Of course, the Cable Companies are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their monopoly and hopefully, we'll all benefit from this Free Market slugfest. Wonder if the Invisible Hand will land a Sucker Punch....

No Future

If you long for the days (daze?) of early Eighties Punk, go to Strange Reaction.
What a find this was...I was looking for a version of "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" by The Damned,because I was trying to convince a co-worker that this song was the basis of "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand. I found way more than that, in fact I had no idea there were that many independent Punk bands, from so many countries back then.Not only are there short Bios of the bands, but included are at least 2 songs of the album in question. And with bands like The Hugh Beaumont Experience, how can you go wrong?

Go Fly a Kite

With all the talk of Boot Camp out there, it's little wonder that someone doesn't try to get OSX to run on a PC.Well, someone has...Sort Of.

I like it. What I really want to do, is load it on a machine at work and see how many people I can convince that I've done the impossible.

Do you LUV your SUV?

From Ars Technica:
OK, so it looks like GM, in spite of all of their other problems, is partnering with Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" and allowing everday jokers to create their own Chevy Tahoe commercials. To their credit, they allow something like THIS to get in and posted on their site...complete with a Chevy logo...Nice.

And of course, here's mine

The Vinyl Solution

Granted, if I really wanted to, I could rip all my vinyl through a PC then transfer all those files to my Powerbook...then onto the iPod. OR, I could just get an iKey and be done with it.
This cool litle gadget will allow lazy slobs like me to avoid actual work and get those great Sparks' songs onto my iPod, so i can embarras myself further, by singining along to "Angst in my pants" while taking Asher.Mental for a walk.

Why Study Math? Here's Why.

I could have used this when I was in school. Unfortunately, I was in a family that "was never good at math" As a result(OK, I'm not going not blame it all on them), I never really excelled at math.
In college, I roomed with a Grad Student who switched from Physics to Mathematics.
At that level, math is closer to religion than anything else...A really goofy, freaky religion.
At any rate, a Norwegian Professor has compiled a list of 12 Reasons to Study Math.
I like the opening paragraph in which he notes that in the "developed" world, students see math as too difficult and boring, and as a result, study it less. What does this mean for the West?I am printing these 12 steps and hanging in the dining room where my daughters do their homework. They may come from a family that "was never good at math" either, but that doesn't mean they won't be!

Evolving

I Saw this on Gizmodo today and it reminded me of the Old, Sad Things site I sent to Paracelsus rambles a while back.
Why I should be sad, I don't know. Capitalism is about competition; winners and losers. In most cases, the losers get slapped by the Invisible Hand if they can't keep up, not that Faber-Castell
didn't try to keep up, but you know what I mean. It's just that in retrospect, you see how pitiful and/or misguided their attempts were.
It also got me thinking about typewriters. Yes, I am old enough to rememeber those...In college, I had a typewriter,a Brother. They
too tried to bridge the gap, with goofy little LCD screens and on-board dictionaries. Amazingly, they still make typewriters and, yes, they still have on-board dictionaries and the silly little LCD's. Their Australian site explains why someone would choose a typewriter, citing the need to produce professional documents, without "the cost and complexity of a PC". Meh, they may have a point. Just wondering when they too will go the way of the rotary phone.
Hey, imagine the "bridge" version of a rotary phone!

AWOL

Yes, well, I have been remiss in my posting recently. One noteworthy thing is that my Brother-in-law, who has an extensive construction background, was visiting and offered to help on the horrible home lighting project...The result? He was as unsuccessful as I! And he knows what he's doing!
What needs to be done now is to kick down some quid for a proper electrician to fix it...I'm washing my hands of the damn thing.

Pandora's (Boom)Box

The Music Genome Project. Begun about 5 years ago, Tim Westergren and like minded musicians and technical types began the Music Genome Project, the reult of which can be enjoyed at Pandora.
It attempts to "map" similar musical "genes", so that when you enter a song or artist, it will stream music by the artist, but will also find similar songs. They stress that this project and the technology behind it transcends mere "genres". Although, I recently entered "Devo" and was treated to "whip it" followed by "Planet Earth" from Duran Duran. You can tell Pandora if you like its choices, to play more like it or reject it. It will adjust what you hear accordingly.

It's fun to see what it provides based on what you enter and even see if you can stump it. Unfortunately, entering "Klaus Nomi" returned nothing. It's a fun way to mix up the music you can play while at work, or wherever. They allow you to have up to 100 "stations", lists that you create based on songs or artists. Go ahead, open the box.

Know Me

"We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago..."
-David Bowie, "The Man who Sold the World"

If you're lucky enough to have experienced Klaus Nomi in concert, then you probably will have already seen the film "The Nomi Song". If you don't know who I'm talking about,stop reading right now and go rent "The Nomi Song". Really, I don't think you will be disappointed.(I had only one glimpse of Nomi years ago when I was a suburban teen watching "Urrgh! A Music War". I realize now I didn't have the courage then to pursue my fascination.My loss).
The film is a documentary on the brief and tragic life of Klaus Sperber. A classically (self)trained singer from Essen, Germany, who landed in New York City in the late 70's and helped define what later became known as New Wave. He was much more than what a pair of mareting hacks at Sire records decided would be a good name for a genre that was beginning to emerge at the time. If you have heard any of Klaus Nomi's music or have seen this film, you will understand why he defies any attempt to pigeonhole his style.
Part Cabaret, part Kabuki, part Performance Art...part Space Alien...Once you hear him, you are entranced and must hear more. Although his "normal" singing voice is great, it's his falsetto that makes him who he is.
This is a pretty fair biography of Klaus and provides a good idea about who and what he was. It is nearly a mirror of the film.Unfortunately, we may never really know what made him who he was and what he could have become. His passing seems to have been a sad, lonley affair. See the film...maybe he won't have to remain in obscurity.

Apples and Oranges

I'm basically a PC user..hell, I support PC's in my current job, but there was a time when I tasted the Forbidden Fruit..the Apple. Even before beta of OSX, I wouldn't say I've been a convert(Mac evangelists are just a little too over the top sometimes, kind of like Tom Cruise on Oprah), but I certainly do appreciate what Macs do..so much so that I own one now and will soon be switching the home environment to Mac only. With that said, I'll need a source of cool, free apps I can download to my Mac and here it is.
Yeah, I think iConquer is the first to be downloaded...uh, that and one of the zillion text editors available!

I'm feeling bolloxed

Ah jaysus, now Eire has it's own feckin' search engine!.
Yes, Doogle, the Irish Search engine...excellent stuff. be sure to click on the Girls link for an inspirational bit of lyric.
Oh, and definitely check the Language Tools link...you will not be sorry.

Mod Squad

Talk about your over the top mods...This has been around for a while, but I can't help posting it. Having a window on your PC case is so passe now that you can put a window on your Hard Drive!
I think my favorite part is the improvised Clean Room.