2000.05 (May)
2000.05.31 (wednesday)
6:18:08 PM #
This page covers the US Dept. of Defense, Office of Civil Defense Community Fallout Shelter Program, Radiological Monitoring Program and Public Training Programs of the 50’s and 60’s Cold War era.
6:11:49 PM #
Videocassettes documenting the development and history of computer graphics.
6:10:43 PM #
2000.05.30 (tuesday)
More information than you want on the current status of the moon. Also available as an application for various platforms (scroll down for X, palm, etc).
10:33:06 AM #
CO-OPS collects, analyzes and distributes historical and real-time observations and predictions of water levels, coastal currents and other meteorological and oceanographic data.
9:33:11 AM #
Near real-time tidal and storm surge water level observation data and plots.
9:33:11 AM #
A large database of river navigation charts.
9:24:56 AM #
2000.05.29 (monday)
Translates text you input to Maritime Signal Flags & Semaphore Flags.
10:41:54 PM #
International Maritime Signal Flags, Motor Racing Flags, and Semaphore Flag Signalling System (and more).
10:39:55 PM #
10:32:46 PM #
10:32:13 PM #
2000.05.25 (thursday)
Build your own Knight-Rider swoosh-swoosh LED light thingy!
9:28:54 PM #
IBMP (Institute of Biomedical Problems) specialists have been working with their U.S. colleagues for two years trying to develop an integrated hygienic set which will meet both Russian and U.S. requirements to space hygiene.
6:38:30 PM #
2000.05.24 (wednesday)
An excellent suite of benchmarking/system-info-gathering utilities for Windows 9x. Most of the really useful ones are free, but a few of the obscure ones only come with Sandra Professional. Not only will it spew information, it also will give you some really useful suggestions for tweaking performance. I increased my disk throughput by about 50% because I didn’t have DMA transfers enabled (bonks self on head).
11:45:31 PM #
2000.05.23 (tuesday)
So what’s a vintage computer? It can be many things. We could be talking about something as vintage and venerable as the ENIAC… to something as vintage and variable as Apple’s early line.
12:16:28 PM #
2000.05.22 (monday)
A site made by an LED lover, for LED lovers; containing real-world test results of all kinds of different light emitting diodes. Featuring the world’s first Virtual LED Museum, and The Punishment Zone, where LED flashlights & utility lights are put to the test.
11:04:04 PM #
Almost too much information. Particularly noteworthy are the sections on LEDs and Jacob’s Ladder Construction.
10:42:37 PM #
A good guide to getting started in astronomy; this resource will keep you from making the same frustrating mistakes other would-be amateurs have made.
10:07:02 PM #
There are lots of sites out there that will calculate how much house you can afford, how much your monthly payment would be based on a given price, etc, but this one has the most resources and seems to ask enough questions to give a good answer, but not so many as to get confusing.
9:32:51 PM #
2000.05.21 (sunday)
This hoax circulating via email claims there is a real, biological virus deliverd via the US Postal Service:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently received several inquiries concerning an e-mail message about people who have been infected with “Klingerman virus” after opening gift packages delivered to them in the mail. According to the e-mail message, a number of people became ill with a viral infection after handling a sponge contained in a package marked, “A gift for you from the Klingerman Foundation.”
1:47:07 PM #
2000.05.20 (saturday)
How do you find out when a chase is being broadcast live on TV? …with the free PursuitAlert™ service, you’ll be alerted on your existing pager of every live high speed chase broadcast in your region. When you get the page, you’ll know a chase can be seen on your TV as it happens.
1:50:41 PM #
10:26:13 AM #
The Internet Pinball Database is the most comprehensive list of pinball machines that have been manufactured. It currently contains information on more than 4000 different machines, and includes photographs of well over a third of the games.
10:25:29 AM #
Converts dates betweeen Julian, Gregorian, Jewish, and French Republic calendars.
8:40:58 AM #
Excellent information.
Why 24 hour days, 7 day weeks, 30 and 31 day months, where seasons came from and how our calendar developed, correct millennium date, development of month names, moon names, Gregorian & Orthodox calendars, etc.
8:37:34 AM #
Just give it a location and a date, and it spits out times for twilight, sun/moon rise/set, and transit times. It takes either exact coordinates or town names.
8:03:30 AM #
2000.05.19 (friday)
Great services and cool products. They have extensive HTML-safe color wheels and references, including posters and mousepads. There is a nice ColorLab which is helpful for making color schemes and a very interesting demonstration of what the web-safe pallete looks like to one who is red-green colorblind. Also check what looks like a very promising HTML reference in progress.
2:28:46 PM #
USGS satellite photo of my office. I work in the larger of the two connected buildings in the middle of the photo, near the street.
1:11:31 PM #
This is a list of file name extensions or suffixes that indicate the format or usage of a file and a brief description of that format. We don’t really show the file format itself here. In fact, many formats are proprietary and we couldn’t show them to you. In some cases, we link to a definition of the file format or to related information.
1:03:12 AM #
…this glossy 14″ x 18″ poster is the perfect way to say, “I recognize that stealing music is unethical, but I’m protected by my sense of irony.”
12:38:08 AM #
2000.05.18 (thursday)
2000.05.17 (wednesday)
Similar to J-Pass, this Java applet shows current positions of a variety of satellites, and has an excellent 3D version.
11:41:20 PM #
Nice Java applet predicts satellite passes visible from any given location. Similar to heavens above. They also have a service which will email pass predictions to you.
11:39:30 PM #
8:23:36 PM #
A bunch of guys who dress up in huge cell phone costumes and stalk obnoxious cell phone users, then grab and smash their phones.
8:22:06 PM #
8:18:27 PM #
2000.05.16 (tuesday)
9:32:19 PM #
The combined effects of orbital eccentricity and the Sun’s tides result in a substantial difference in the apparent size and brightness of the Moon at perigee and apogee. Extreme values for perigee and apogee distance occur when perigee or apogee passage occurs close to new or full Moon, and long-term extremes are in the months near to Earth’s perihelion passage (closest approach to the Sun, when the Sun’s tidal effects are strongest) in the first few days of January.
3:22:49 PM #
2000.05.15 (monday)
Not exactly comprehensive, but an excellent starting point for optomising Windows and removing a lot of unneeded cruft.
10:24:20 PM #
In February 1998 I found the LPs in my parents’ basement. I cleaned them up, played them one last time on an old turntable, and burned them onto a set of three CD-R discs. In December 1999 I read the songs back off the CDs and encoded them into MP3, so now you can hear them on the web. They’re encoded using lame, at 32 Kbps, 22050 Hz monophonic - about half a megabyte each.
10:20:00 PM #
Here you will find custom fan switching solutions for your case. I specialize in internal and bay mounted power distribution systems for the overclocker, hobbyist and system builder…
The internal FanBus is, in its simplest form, a central hook up point for multiple fans within the case. The BayBus and its derivatives are for using panel mounted switches to control the fans inside your case.
6:20:33 PM #
- YOU HAVE NOW RECEIVED THE UNIX VIRUS -
This virus works on the honor system:
If you’re running a variant of unix or linux, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your files at random.
6:20:33 PM #
A historical church, it seems. Some interesting frescoes which look very old, but not even any approximate dates. Annoying midi soundtrack. They do have a good map, though.
4:22:04 PM #
Some historical background and information about landmarks.
Translated via altavista:
The Diocese of Novara the Church that is in Novara is living the fecund moment that follows XX the Sinodo, conclusosi in 1990. Bishop is monsignor Renato Corti, 124° successor of first Gaudenzio bishop, patron of the diocese. Organizational the diocese of Novara is subdivided in eight vicariati territorial ones for a total of 346 parishes In this page web you can obtain wide news piò on the novarese Church and approach main documents written up from monsignor Short.
4:05:51 PM #
Novara is a town in the Piedmont of Italy just on the border with Lombardy. Nearby to the north is a town named Varese. I can only assume the origin of my surname comes from these, though I’ve heard most of my relatives in Italy live in Lombardy.
4:03:51 PM #
9:36:20 AM #
2000.05.13 (saturday)
Search engine for used books. I just found and ordered a copy of Science Made Stupid, which Amazon has been looking for since 7 April without success.
Updated: Bibliofind passed my order onto the dealer, who emailed me that “that book was sold this afternoon.” Shit.
6:57:34 PM #
The book search engine that allows you to comparison shop among 41 online bookstores including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders.
6:55:09 PM #
This is almost a great deal - I paid $50 for it after rebate. It’s the only sub-$100 digital camera I’ve seen that has expandible memory (uses smart media). It’s limited to 640×480, which is all I really wanted anyway, as I just wanted something to take quick pics for web pages and to email, and I plan on sticking with film for “serious” photography for a while. It’s a pretty small camera, about the size of a standard tape measure, uses regular AA batteries, and comes with a 2MB smart media card. On the negative side, it uses serial rather than USB, it doesn’t have an LCD screen (what do you expect for $50??) and the CCD is really shitty. I mean really shitty - output looks fine outdoors in the daytime, but pics taken at night or indoors with “normal” lighting come out very grainy and noisy. This is because the CCD is rated as ISO 40 speed film, which is very slow and requires a massive amount of light to get good pictures. The manual is pretty crappy and there are some serious interface issues with both the camera itself and the included software - neither remember your settings when you restart them. All in all, though, its not a bad deal for the price.
I took some more pictures outside today, and I noticed a lot of minor artefacts in the output. Again, this is by no means anything more than a toy camera. If you want quality, use film or a “real” digital camera; if you want a toy, this is perfect :)
Sample images (click any for full versions of all):
(picutre placeholder (3 pics))
Comparison taken with a “real” digital camera:
(picture placeholder)
See also:
- MagicImage 410 - cheaper, 4MB fixed memory, but it has USB interface (more info)
- MagicImage 500 - More expensive (~$180), 1280×960 or 1024×768, also serial interface.
12:05:36 AM #
2000.05.12 (friday)
Windows Media Player will rule the online music distribution world.
It plays CDs too, you know. Rips and plays the resulting audio on the fly. You don’t need to worry about that stupid cable. It also pulls up reviews of the album and cover art, after it identifies it using the CDDB algorithm.
Then it will also, with a single click, rip the entire album and merge it into your library. You can listen to each of the tracks as they’re ripped, if you want.
BTW, it will only encode in WMA format. The highest bitrate it supports is 160k.
Likely it places in the encoded file a UUID generated at install time, so they player can refuse to play it on machines which did not rip it from the original CD.
It does not excel at playing random MP3z, as WinAMP does. It really sucks at that. But that may be intentional.
When I play the tracks I’ve ripped using it the status bar ominously flashes “Protected Content”, along with the bitrate, track name, album, and artist.
You can also purchase tracks online (playable only by your machine, OC) and they will automatically be merged into your library
Remember that this will be on every Windows desktop eventually.
Mark my words: WMA is the computer audio format of the future. With its ubiquity and built in rights management the record industry will flock to it.
Oh, I also expect M$ to license the codec to makers of car digital audio players. Or, hell, just make their own players.
11:39:26 PM #
It looks like Canada is far ahead of the rest of the world in developing and implementing a standard for digital radio broadcasts. Thankfully, it appears that so far the work has been dominated by engineers and the legal ramifications that have been examined up to now have been limited to FCC-type regulations; copyright concerns have not yet been address and there is no mention of encrypting the broadcasts, though I’m sure this will be on the RIAA’s agenda sooner than later.
Also:
1:24:24 PM #
Lame new coins:
I’ve heard a rumor that they will be etching holograms onto quarters next year. That’s right, folks: Canada is so lame that they have to resort to marketing to get anyone to buy their money.
7:29:26 AM #
2000.05.11 (thursday)
Great images of events here on earth taken from orbit. Currently there are some great IR shots of the fires in New Mexico. I looked at a visible photo from yahoo weather and saw nothing in this area.
Updated: I updated the above link for the New Mexico fire, as it has been moved to an archive. Check http://www.osei.noaa.gov/Events/Fires/US_Southwest/ for an index of pics from this event. The ones with “NM” in the file name are of this fire. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no long-term archive and this directory is only for the year 2000.
6:26:02 PM #
2000.05.10 (wednesday)
It’s like C-SPAN, but audio only. Possible cure for insomnia.
5:24:13 PM #
2000.05.09 (tuesday)
Using an anonymous patch of the American West as a stand-in for Mars, NASA has begun the second field tests of an advanced rover prototype developed to help it explore the Red Planet.
5:21:19 PM #
2000.05.08 (monday)
…on the screen was the most colorful and detailed handheld game I have ever seen. It was so vibrant that after only a few minutes of play I had to make the decision and say this looks better than the N64 game it’s based off of.
9:52:38 PM #
Super-nifty, but not cheap… The software they supply is “internet-ready,” sort of; it will FTP data to your website, or you can buy an adapter that turns the hardware into a dedicated host on your LAN.
Texas Weather Instruments developed the 1-Wire™ Weather Station, using technology licensed from Dallas Semiconductor (see Sensors magazine June 1998), to solve the problems of attaching multiple cables, power supplies and consoles associated with weather instruments to a Windows PC. The 1-Wire Weather Station utlizes the Dallas Semiconductor 1-Wire MicroLan. All that is needed to get data directly from various sensors into your computer is a host adapter (HA3) that plugs into the computer’s serial port, one twisted pair cable, any of the Texas Weather Instruments 1-Wire weather sensors and the OneSix™ server software loaded into a Windows PC. There are no power supplies, consoles, displays or switches needed with this system. Adding a sensor is a snap by simply plugging the new device anywhere in the 1-Wire cable. The OneSix server identifies the new sensor and the sensor calibration information.
5:40:43 PM #
Not what it sounds like, though a newsletter about extension cords would undoubtedly be cool. This, on the other hand, is the news letter of the Utah State University Extension, with an attempt at wittiness. They set me up for disappointment, and I don’t find it amusing…
4:44:28 PM #
Astronomical artwork, sketches, and diagrams based on the artist’s observations of actual events and objects, such as Vandenberg launches, the Moon, Mars, and more.
4:02:16 PM #
2000.05.07 (sunday)
I get chain letters from family all the time, but this one really takes the cake:
Subject: : This is fun, send this back to me
This is SOOOOOO Cool!!!!!! You Have to see this!!!!!! It is sOOO cute that the people that HAVE seen this keep asking me to send it to them again!!
Here is what you gotta do……
Send this to 1-7 people and you will see the little Taco Bell Chihuahua walk to the middle of your screen and he will say “Yo Quiro TacoBell”
Send this to 8-10 and he will walk to the middle of your screen and say ONE of the following: “I think i’m in love!” or “Viva Gourditas! OR “Ai,Chihuahua”
Send this to 11-? people and he will go to the middle of your screen and sing “Chances are because I wear a silly grin…” and after that he will the “nacho” song!!!!
SO START SENDIN!!!!!
No attachment, just text… how is this supposed to work? Maybe there was an actual vbscript or something attached to it at one point, but I can’t see any evidence of it in the seven layers of headers I got.
12:52:06 PM #
Great resource on these fascinating phenomena. Includes good advice on finding them yourself and some good photos:
- “Mirando al firmamento” (featured on apod)
- Young’s Sunsets
- A Blue Flash
- blue/green flashes from the south pole sunset of 2000
Green flashes are real (not illusory) phenomena seen at sunrise and sunset, when some part of the Sun suddenly changes color (at sunset, from red or orange to green or blue). The word “flash” refers to the sudden appearance and brief duration of this green color, which usually lasts only a second or two at moderate latitudes.
9:59:06 AM #
Scroll down to the bottom: there is a picture of Nvidia’s VP of marketing’s leg, which has the Nvidia logo tattooed on it. That sounds cool now, because Nvidia is on top of the 3D graphics card market, but one day that’s gonna look really dumb (esp. if the guy moves to another job) - just think about this: back in ‘96 or so, it would have been cool (relatively speaking, of course) to get a 3dfx logo tattoo, but now that would be about as cool as having “ATI” or “Cirrus Logic” tattooed on your forehead.
9:08:25 AM #
I spent a good bit last night and most of this morning reading his The book behind the book behind the book…, and various other pages on Greenspun’s excellent site:
via Jorn Barger’s Best of the Net
8:57:32 AM #
2000.05.06 (saturday)
There are no documents cases of conjoined (aka “siamese,” though this term is now considered very un-PC) triplets, though there have been some cases of triplets (and quadruplets) where two of the babies were conjoined.
8:43:09 PM #
2000.05.05 (friday)
Nice translator. Now what would be great is an HTML tag that contained this information, so you could get location information from any webpage - given that, it wouldn’t take too much magic to plug into mapblast or some other map system and spit out directions from your current location, which could come from a GPS receiver in your laptop or PDA.
Some further comments at the HTP’ Discussion Group.
10:46:28 PM #
10:40:21 PM #
2000.05.04 (thursday)
dark current noise is exponentially related to temperature - it DOUBLES for every 6 or 8 degrees C temperature rise (depending on the CCD).
7:53:00 PM #
There is a planetary alignment tomorrow, though for the most part it won’t be visible. This page has some good technical info and diagrams about exactly how the planets are lining up, as well as debunking the doomsday theories that claim the tidal forces caused by such an alignment could rip the earth to shreds.
10:53:26 AM #
$40/month flat fee for wireless connectivity to your palm. Available in all major cities* (* except Atlanta). grrr… See the coverage map: Available in the New Mexico desert and the Missourri Bootheel, but not Atlanta, which has a super-modern cellular system. FuXX0rZ.
9:45:36 AM #
Lots of video surveillance equipment, and some other cool stuff.
8:58:21 AM #
8:58:21 AM #
A portable digital music player. However, it has no support for MP3 - it only plays WMA (Windows Media Audio). It has all the buzzwords, so the record companies will love it, but with approximately 4 WMA songs available, I don’t think consumers will be lining up.
…includes full support for Digital Rights Management (DRM) that offers content providers and retailers enhanced security including persistent protection, strong encryption, individualization, secure audio path, content authenticity, and transparent licensing.
Do consumers really care about any of that?
8:46:28 AM #
2000.05.03 (wednesday)
9:55:49 AM #
Patents, trademarks, &c related to the gaming industry. I’m trying to find a company who manufactures the machines that do the “quick pick” lottery tickets and also the ping-pong ball machines they use to pick the numbers.
9:49:49 AM #