2000.08 (Aug)
2000.08.30 (wednesday)
Dogs on Treadmills (QuickTime Movies)
8:50:54 AM #
2000.08.29 (tuesday)
An Unsolvable Instance of FreeCell 8:29:12 PM #
Send a Fax by e-mailHaven’t tried it yet, but looks useful. Text only, it seems, no .jpg attachments :( You could probably do ASCII-art, depending on how it treats line breaks…
8:14:24 PM #
The Future of SUVsConcept of an SUV built on a Kenworth semi chassis - this is truly where
the suburban arms race (in the form of ever-larger SUVs) is headed.
See Also:
7:52:19 PM #
ChasM’s HelpDesk Interesting… it uses clickable imagemaps to simulate configuring of different operating systems, mostly related to networking. Seems to be more focused on dial-up than LAN networking though.
5:28:28 PM #
2000.08.28 (monday)
My spies in the field report that the new dual 500MHz G4 Macintosh runs Quake3 “like a badass mofo.”
7:16:30 PM #
Kuju X-Box Demo MoviesNice, but not as impressive as the Nintendo demos IMO. The X-Box seems to be at an earlier stage of development, though both systems are scheduled for US launch around the same time.
7:06:30 PM #
Nintendo StarCube Gameplay MoviesSweet… The full Mario demo is by far the most impressive, but weighs in at a hefty 62MB… Oh yeah, the StarCube (or GameCube or whatever its called now) will use 3″ mini-DVDs… kewl.
6:56:37 PM #
kremvaxExcellent 1984 AFD joke from USENET…(update: link broken, but here’s the google archive entry: [USSR on Usenet])
6:48:08 PM #
Oral Histories from the Pioneers of America’s Space ProgramFrom part 2:
When the time came to test the couch for the Gs the astronaut would experience during landing, Heberlig designed a couch for a pig, who was to be hoisted to a height of 16 feet and then dropped into a sandbox, where it would land at a velocity of 30 feet per second–the predicted rate for Mercury. But, strapped into the couch, the pig died before the first test could begin. Heberlig was baffled, and for a while there, it looked as if humans might never get up off the planet because they couldn’t come back down! But finally the farmer who had sold Heberlig the pig explained that pigs always die if they are kept on their backs for any length of time, as their organs press on the lungs and the pig suffocates. As a result of the farmer’s explanation, the period between strapping in and launch time was drastically shortened, and the tests were a success.
6:11:40 PM #
2000.08.26 (saturday)
SCSI-to-IDE Controller ACHIP ARC760Interesting… a bridge that turns an UDMA/66 drive into an UW-SCSI drive. No pricing or ordering info available, though. And I kinda doubt this is really a great idea.
10:51:06 PM #
2000.08.25 (friday)
Eric Harshbarger’s LEGO® websiteExcellent! This guy does some heavy-dutu LEGO sculpting… be sure to check the working grandfather clock (uses LEGO gears and internals) and the impressive desk.
10:42:30 PM #
Canada’s Asteroid Protection PlanReally more of a “detection” rather than a “protection” plan - Canada aims to orbit a small telescope to look for incoming projectiles, but no mention is made of what would happen once one is detected - I guess we just know when to grab our ankles. If it happens, it looks like it would be used more for tracking high-orbit satellites than for seeking asteroids…
6:59:03 PM #
802.14 and DOCSIS Standard InformationExcellent technical description of cable modem technology.
6:55:55 PM #
2000.08.24 (thursday)
World-Wide Tropical Cyclone Names
5:38:06 PM #
Tropical Cyclone FAQ
1:13:37 PM #
2000.08.23 (wednesday)
City CafeDrool…. the best restaurant in Northpoint, AL, now delivers (but not to Atlanta, I fear).
Tomorrow is Chicken & Dressins day!
5:58:30 PM #
Latest
SpecFP2000 ResultsI hope this is a regularly-updated page and not just a one-shot deal… as usual, the Alpha is smoking everything else…
4:34:04 PM #
email
ExpressA pocket-sized single-purpose email appliance. $80. See also the slightly larger email Postbox for $100. They both use dialup to connect to a proprietary network to get your mail, according to the FAQ, so you can’t use them with your existing ISP and they won’t download from any POP3 mailbox (also it appears you can’t specify your outgoing address as anything other than your account with them). If it weren’t for those drawbacks, I’d buy one.
4:30:14 PM #
2000.08.22 (tuesday)
How some publishers make money with news archives.
5:25:29 PM #
News Libraries as Profit CentersA surevey of newspaper libraries and their use of their archives for revenue generation. Although 88% of respondents said that their libraries were involved in generation of revenue, only 24% said that they had more than 6 months of archives on the Web.
5:23:07 PM #
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is known around the world
as a remarkable testimony of prehistoric life. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
bears witness to a custom practiced by native people of the North American
plains for nearly 6000 years.Thanks to their excellent understanding of topography and of bison behavior,
they killed bison by chasing them over a precipice and subsequently carving
up the carcasses in the camp below.
3:59:43 PM #
2000.08.21 (monday)
Work in Progress: Weather ResourcesMy first (public) attempt at a “one layer portal” with “content-centered” design, as outlined by Jorn Barger [qv]. Mostly an outline now, expect big changes.
10:49:02 PM #
Concepts in Digital CashExcellent overview of the problems facing true digital cash systems.
5:27:17 PM #
Star Wars Gangsta Rap MovieGreat flash movie…
5:12:10 PM #
2000.08.20 (sunday)
The Truth About HellInteresting because of the author’s view that Hell is physically located inside the Earth and that Russian geologists have actually drilled down into hell and recorded sounds by lowering a microphone down there. A friend emailed this link to me as an inticement to assist him in finding a name for “the pseudo-science which attempts to empirically prove the existence of Hell, and to find its physical location.”
8:12:24 PM #
Guide to the Logical Fallacies
Logical fallacies are errors of reasoning, errors which may be recognized and corrected by prudent thinkers. This site indexes and describes all known logical fallacies.
7:02:09 PM #
A Collection of Word Oddities and TriviaI linked a single page of this back on 26 Feb (see the Zzyzx Road photo), but for some reason never really linked the entire resource.
6:58:25 PM #
How to Apply in Person for a U.S. Passport You never know when you’ll need one…
6:52:33 PM #
2000.08.19 (saturday)
DVD-Audio Watermarking Fiasco Continues
If a compression algorithm removes inaudible sounds, it can be argued that a watermark will be removed by such techniques - if the watermark is inaudible. If this is the case, it serves no purpose. However, if the watermark is not removed by lossy compression, it will be, by definition, audible.
1:17:59 AM #
2000.08.18 (friday)
Cable/DSL Tweak GuideSome decent suggestions for tuning MTU, RWIN, and some other TCP/IP parameters
to increase your network performance, aimed at broadband home users, windows
specific.
3:14:02 PM #
Dict LookupThis is an IE4+ plugin that adds an item to your contextual menu. Highlight a word, right click, and select “Dict” - a new window opens with the definition. By default, it assumes your windows directory is in c:windows, if not, edit the .bat and .reg files appropriately. This is a lot nicer than a dictionary.com bookmarklet.
10:55:43 AM #
2000.08.17 (thursday)
This database tracks Spam Support Services, and lists the ISPs who knowingly keep organized spamming alive by hosting spamware and “we-stealth-bulk-for-you” spam services on their networks.
12:31:21 PM #
UXN Spam Combat Query and search tools to help you track spammers.
12:29:47 PM #
2000.08.16 (wednesday)
California Regional Weather ServerExcellent nation-wide radar summary, with a nice animated summary and an excellent two-week archive of radar summaries at hour intervals.
10:02:54 PM #
Space Weather ResourcesSee also: Space Weather Resources at the NSSDC
Space Weather studies the environmental dynamics of “geospace”: the active (and sometimes stormy) region above the Earth’s lower atmosphere including the ionosphere (which often reflects AM radio waves back to Earth) and the magnetosphere (home of the Van Allen radiation belts and the environment of many spacecraft — including the numerous geosynchronous satellites used for communications and other applications.)
9:44:12 PM #
MOOSEThe Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment, a 1960’s era prototype “vehicle” for emergency returns to Earth from orbit. From the excellent Encyclopedia Astronautica.
1:29:41 PM #
2000.08.15 (tuesday)
World of Composting ToiletsMore information than you needed.
4:28:18 PM #
Exploratorium Science SnacksA long list of easy-to-reproduce science demonstrations from the San Fransico Exploratorium.
These pages are full of Snacks…but they’re not the kind you eat. They’re the kind you can learn from and have fun with. Exploratorium Science Snacks are miniature versions of some of the most popular exhibits at the Exploratorium.
2:16:14 PM #
SmileysWTF??? Some guy actually got paid to write this book? IT’S 93 PAGES!!!
From the people who put an armadillo on the cover of a system administrator book comes this collection of the computer underground hieroglyphs called “smileys.” Originally inserted into email messages to denote “said with a cynical smile”:-), smileys now run rampant throughout the electronic mail culture.
12:45:56 AM #
United Mineral & Chemical Corp.Your one-stop shop for pigments, chemicals, and high-purity metals. Lots of trade jargon I don’t understand, but it sounds cool.
12:21:29 AM #
How does glow-in-the-dark stuff work?Related:
- glow-in-the-dark crap you can buy (plus: web design and hosting! Two great tastes that taste great together!)
- more glow-crap (annoying MIDI)
12:14:28 AM #
2000.08.13 (sunday)
Another ZDTV observation: they like to tilt the camera at about a 15° angle relative to the horizon - I think this must be the TV equivelent of the still photography “camera-looking-down-on-person” technique popular with “cool” websites and magazine ads. 10:19:56 PM #
What to do when Children are Afraid of Clowns
The first (and only) birthday party I ever performed
at was for some good friends of mine. Unknown to me was the birthday child was terrified of clowns. When I got to the party she started screaming and hiding under the kitchen table. My attempts to make her less afraid only worsened the situation. Seven years later and I still don’t clown at birthday parties. When I asked members of Hickory’s Clown Alley what they do when a child is frightened, here is what they offered.
8:56:48 PM #
Sun-Mar Composting ToiletsTurns human waste and toilet paper into fertilizing soil.
5:46:30 PM #
INCINOLET Uses electric heat to reduce human waste to a clean, non-polluting ash.
5:44:35 PM #
Alcatraz Copy ProtectionYet another attempt at CD copy protection. I like the assertion that “Alcatraz cannot be hacked into using standard software.” The scary part is that a software publisher can setup Alcatraz to reformat your hard drive if it thinks you have an “unauthorized” copy - I’m sure that will never be accidentally set off.
Responses activated by an “illegal” start attempt range from a simple warning message through to a system crash and even right down to re-formatting of the disc drive.
11:04:42 AM #
2000.08.12 (saturday)
The cable modem is now working.The installer had given the central office the wrong MAC address for my modem; why didn’t they think to ask me that when I called them on Wednesday night??? They verified everything else. Grrr…
10:55:56 PM #
(netgear RT311 review placeholder) 10:46:59 PM #
Postal Information (Yahoo)All the ZIP code info you could possibly want; not just US, either - several other nations are documented as well as ZIP codes for US naval warships.
8:39:05 PM #
AutowrapsThese guys pay you money to wrap your car up in ads like they do for public busses.
8:36:43 PM #
2000.08.11 (friday)
Spent some time playing with my new MediaOne digital cable TV, and
it’s really just a big pain in the ass.The “interactive program guide” is a total crock; you can only see what’s on in half-hour time slices - on the Time Warner digital box (back in Memphis), you get to see two hours at a time. Mostly this is because 65% of the screen is taken up by ads. Also, the interface is super-inconsistent: when you’re looking at the full-screen program guide, you push “down” to go to higher number channels, since they’re arranged with the lowest numbers at the top, but when you bring up the single-channel guide, which overlays the picture (so you can see whats on and still watch TV), it works the opposite way (ie push “up” for higher channel numbers). And I have to go get another coax cable, because the guy who installed it didn’t set it up right so I can record one channel while watching another (thanks). The new channels are worth it, though. I’ve got BBC, History International, Discovery Science, and a bunch of other potentially interesting stuff. ZDTV is weird, though… it’s like a weblog on TV, time-shifted to now from a month ago.
Oh, and my shiny new cable modem is sitting on my desk, useless. They said they’re sending a guy out to test the signal, but I wonder why the guy who installed it didn’t test that in the first place.
10:19:56 PM #
Game Boy Advance - First ScreenshotsLookin’ pretty sweet…
12:19:21 AM #
2000.08.10 (thursday)
If you have your own Manila site and want monthly archives, you might want to take a look at the shell script I wrote. (note: this has been temporarily removed as I’m now working on Radio instead of Manila, and this script was a total hack. If for some reason you’re still interested, shoot me an email.)
10:19:56 PM #
SinesPart of a basic trigonometry course. The interesting part of this page is the history and derivation of the word “sine” itself.
This word history for “sine” is interesting because it
follows the path of trigonometry from India, through the Arabic language from Baghdad through Spain, into western Europe in the Latin language, and then to modern languages such as English.
12:06:38 PM #
Toshiba PCX1100 Cable ModemThis is the cable modem I just got last night. It doesn’t work (looks like a problem with signal strength). My upgrade to cable modem and digital cable TV has been a nightmare, and its not over yet…
10:15:06 AM #
2000.08.08 (tuesday)
Top 3 HTML Straw Man ArgumentsDebunking common arguments used against so-called “HTML Purists” (a pejorative term, IMO).
4:47:12 PM #
Interface Hall of ShameI think I’m getting an ulcer from merely reading
about the dumb interface decisions documented here - it’s a good thing I’veonly used a small number of the applications described within.
We’ve come up with a new rule for program developers:
You must at least LOOK at your designs before inflicting them onto your users.
4:38:57 PM #
Bad Human Factors DesignsExcellent illustrations of how aestheics sometimes ruin funcionality. I tend to disagree with his slam on top-loading VCRs, which points out that you can’t put the TV on top of it, and you can’t put in a shelf. While those are valid points now,
when top-loaders were introduced, most TVs were console models, so the VCR would be placed on top of it rather than vice-versa. Once smaller TVs, which were designed to be placed in entertainment-center type furniture, were introduced, top-loaders were largely abandoned in favor of front-loaders, which obviously work better in the new enviroment.
Frequently, when devices come with instructions stuck on them, there is a problem with the design.
2:22:35 PM #
Core 77Excellent industrial design-focused webzine leads to:
- bathroom of the future
- Nike ventures into atheletic consumer electronics
- history of the Prestone Anti-Freeze container
2:19:25 PM #
Bad CoriolisExcellent debunking of the misconception that the coriolis force (which is responsible for the rotation of hurricanes and other large-scale phenomena) causes draining water to rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. [Bad Science] [physics]
11:09:47 AM #
2000.08.06 (sunday)
How George Carlin Made Legal HistoryI spent about 15 minutes looking for George Carlin’s infamous list of “The seven words you can never say on television,” (made famous by the FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation case) and this was the only page that actually listed them. And as a bonus, there’s actually a good article about semantics attached to it.
Everybody understands that you cannot drink the word “water”, and yet virtually nobody seems entirely free of semantic delusions entirely comparable to trying to drink the ink-stains that form the word “water” on this page or the sound waves produced when I say “water” aloud. If you say, “The word is not the thing,” everybody agrees placidly; if you watch people, you see that they continue to behave as if something called Sacred “really is” Sacred and something called Junk “really is” Junk.
9:19:56 PM #
Latenight Joke Targets by MonthRanking of the most popular targets on The Tonight Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, Latenight with Conan O’Brien and Politically Incorrect.
9:14:02 PM #
Earlier in this century, grammarians and linguists proclaimed the subjunctive’s death and argued that this was no big loss, as its historical role in English had been weak and inconsistent; some even went so far as to say that in Modern English its usage is “pretentious”. The fools! The subjunctive mood is a beautiful and valuable component of the English language, and instead of dying out, it actually is enjoying a subtle revival.
8:40:37 AM #
2000.08.05 (saturday)
I was watching a great show on gothic cathedrals on PBS; I get up to go to the bathroom, and when I get back, the Teletubbies are on!? At 23:30??
11:38:10 PM #
SiteSherpa - Web Traveling Companion (fixed link 17 Jan 01)”Coming Fall 2000″ - of course, you get no details now, just a vague promise that its going to be awesome. It seems to be a browser plug-in of some sort; I’m getting deepleap flashbacks… that was about 6 months of hype which turned into about 10 minutes of usage. Next, please!
12:58:10 AM #
Wooden MirrorYou pretty much have to see this… an array of small wooden squares, each attached to a small servomotor. A camera hidden in the middle of the array feeds into a Macintosh, and then, the magic happens…
The software digitizes the video and reduces its size to 35 X 29 pixels . It then converts the color information into gray levels and adjusts the brightness of each pixel to compensate for the various shades of the wood pieces. The software then compares the state of the wooden mirror to the required image and sends commands to the mirror to change the position of only those pieces that need to be moved. This reduces the amount of information that needs to be sent and allows the mirror to refresh itself about 15 times per second, resulting in smooth motion.
12:38:53 AM #
2000.08.03 (thursday)
The Slosh FactorThe story of a man and his dream to become the ultimate authority on canned chili.
“I ate so many different brands I started saving labels to remember which ones I’d tried,” Thompson said. “I wrote my comments on them, like ‘too sloshy.’ Then a few months ago, I’d heard Mister Blackwell talk about who dresses well and who doesn’t. I said, ‘Gee, if one guy can express his opinion about that, I’ll express my opinion about canned chili.’”
10:45:44 PM #
Overview of Terascale Research ApplicationsThe Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center is building the world’s most powerful non-classifed supercomputer, scheduled to go into operation next year. The machine will be built from 682 four-CPU nodes (2,728 CPUs total) using Compaq Alpha EV67/21264A (to be upgraded to EV7/21364 when available) processors and should reach over 6 Teraflops. This page gives a summary of the research applications scheduled to use this massive machine.
3:55:24 PM #
2000.08.02 (wednesday)
History of Vodka
9:28:45 PM #
Do-It-Yourself Starka & MoreFound this while looking for “homemade vodka” - not quite what I wanted, but still interesting. This page describes how to add flavoring to store-bought vodka to make your own apertifs.
9:26:52 PM #
Making Gin & VodkaI was hoping to find a how-to guide to distil your own ethyl alcohol; however, this site actually contains no useful information, other than how to order the $17.95 book.
4:58:03 PM #
Cocktails Reference DeskGood reference for measurements, terminology, and a handy density chart for making fancy layered drinks. The “tips” and “how-to” sections are pretty worthless, though, with brain-dead “advice” such as “Serve drinks as soon as possible. Ice dilutes a drink when melted.”
4:52:04 PM #