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January 28, 2002
Help shape the future of
Help shape the future of the space program; take the NASA survey. You have until 1/31!
Posted by John at 01:13 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2002
Cell phones, CD players with
Cell phones, CD players with huge subwoofer amplification systems, VCR players for the kids... all these automotive accessories are pushing the 12-volt electrical systems of today's cars to the brink. In an ironic engineering twist, car manufacturers are migrating to 36-volt systems which will (a) improve fuel efficiency by a staggering 10%, and (b) pave the way for more electric cars and hybrid gas+electric vehicles with better distances between charges.
Posted by John at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)
Your mother was right. Scientific
Your mother was right. Scientific American has an article on the effects of television viewing full of scary facts and figures. Most interestingly it says, in part, "...the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continue. Survey participants commonly reflect that television has somehow absorbed or sucked out their energy, leaving them depleted." Read a book.
Posted by John at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)
Enron finally decides to fire
Enron finally decides to fire Andersen, an event which gives rise to a number of wonderful quotes. Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay said, "While we had been willing to give Andersen the benefit of the doubt ... we can't afford to wait any longer in light of recent events." And then there's this one: "We're very troubled about the destruction of the documents, and we're very concerned about the accounting advice we got," said Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who is representing Enron.
Posted by John at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)
This has always puzzled me,
This has always puzzled me, but never so much that I felt compelled to write an article about it. Fortunately, others have more time on their hands. ON THE IMPLAUSIBILITY OF THE DEATH STAR'S TRASH COMPACTOR.
Posted by John at 02:37 AM | Comments (0)
Another week in New York,
Another week in New York, just got back a couple of hours ago. I love that city, you can just walk out on the sidewalk and breathe in pure energy, feel the buzz of commerce in the air, the smell of the deal. It's exhausting to live there, though. Better to go back and visit. Every time I go somewhere, when I get back I am reminded that I'm going to have to do something about the email. Between work and home I'm getting over 500 a day, and even with all the spam filters turned on I get back from a week-long trip and there's 1,000 email messages waiting for me. I know a guy who gets over 1,000 a day, and he created an "approved list" that only accepts email from people on the list. You can get on the list, but you have to go to a different URL and log in. This methodology makes it impossible for the spiders to pick up his address, and he just bounces the rest of the messages as spam. Sounds like the right approach to me.
Buried among the emails, David C. sent me a note that the site I mentioned back on 12/14/01, CoincidenceDesign ("you can't stalk them, but we can"), made the news this week, along with some background research on the people responsible. The article links some other, ummmm.... interesting web sites, although I was disappointed that the site JapaneseDrunk.com seemed to be offline. Thanks, David!
Also this week, I got one of those precious 5-second chuckles out of the Industrious Clock.
Posted by John at 02:32 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2002
As a born and bred
As a born and bred Southerner, I resent the reputation that Southerners have as being slow-witted and ignorant. I fight the battles everywhere I can. Then somebody like this guy from Kentucky comes along, has a quick-draw gun battle with a snowman, and gets shot.
Posted by John at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
Nice to see somebody standing
Nice to see somebody standing up for what freedom is really all about, while the government moves to limit and constrain our freedoms in the name of anti-terrorism. Freedoms, once surrendered, have historically proven difficult to win back.
Posted by John at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2002
Galileo's middle finger. No, it's
Galileo's middle finger. No, it's not what you think.
Posted by John at 01:18 AM | Comments (0)
They fight crime!
He's a fast talking voodoo romance novelist plagued by the memory of his family's brutal murder. She's a sharp-shooting cat-loving former first lady who inherited a spooky stately manor from her late maiden aunt. They fight crime!
Posted by John at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
Another Flash goodie is the
Another Flash goodie is the web site brittlebones. At first I couldn't even figure out what this site was; was it a graphic designer on PCP? A goth fan site? A speedmetal band? I won't spoil it for you. I can just tell you I was stunned by the quality of the artwork and the presentation on almost every page I opened up. A little treasure trove. Reminds me of some of the fantasy art I've seen on Dark Matter.
Posted by John at 01:06 AM | Comments (1)
Bit-101 is a site done
Bit-101 is a site done entirely in Flash, and uses a lot of the same mathematical and physics relationships as Sodaplay. Click around, it's a fun site. If you like the spring and magnetism figures, by all means visit Sodaplay to build your own or check out some of the cool creations others have submitted.
Posted by John at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)
Every once in a while
Every once in a while you run across a link to someone who has hosted their web site on Angelfire. I usually try to warn people if it's an Angelfire link, since they have these really annoying popup ads. Well, looks like we don't have to grapple with that issue any more. Someone sent me a link to check out, and I got the message "Angelfire does not allow direct linking from offsite, non-Angelfire pages, to files hosted on Angelfire." Hmmm. This would seem to make hosting your stuff at Angelfire a questionable proposition, at best. Guess the really annoying popup ads aren't pulling in the revenue. What a shock!
Now, here's the bad news. You really have to see "Romeo + Juliet" if you haven't yet. It's Bill Shakespeare for L33t HaX0rs. So first highlight and copy this link, then click on it. Then, from the resulting Angelfire page, paste it into your address bar and hit Enter. It's worth the trouble, but not a good link for the kiddies. Parents, are you policing your children's Internet browsing? Hmmm? Here's the link:
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/christx/romjul.swf
Posted by John at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
TIME magazine does their annual
TIME magazine does their annual Year in Pictures for 2001. I love good photography. I wish they would offer high-resolution versions of these pictures.
Posted by John at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2002
I love Tiburon, my home
I love Tiburon, my home town, and wouldn't move for anything, but sometimes I miss Atlanta.
Posted by John at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
You know, I shouldn't care,
You know, I shouldn't care, but this really pisses me off. In Nigeria, there has been a massive increase in the number of baby boys called Osama. "In one hospital in Kano, where there were celebrations after the 11 September attacks, 7 out of 10 babies are said to be being given the name Osama." I can intellectually understand the feelings some of these people in third and fourth world countries have toward the USA, but I can't understand endorsing a terrorist under any circumstances and I certainly can't imagine naming one of my kids after one. Aside from the fact that "Osama" is a pretty idiotic name anyway...
Posted by John at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
Looks like if you wanted
Looks like if you wanted to you could now register ĶєεΙħąǚlїņģ.ĉǿм as your very own, if you're so inclined.
Posted by John at 03:00 AM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2002
Watching Swordfish this evening, there's
Watching Swordfish this evening, there's a scene where Gabriel (John Travolta) and Stanley (Hugh Jackman) order triple espressos and Gabe tells the story of Operation Swordfish. FBI dummy corporations set up to launder drug money, but they actually made money. "Almost 400 million dollars when Swordfish was shut down in 1986", says Gabriel, "That was 15 years ago. It's been sitting there ever since. Earning interest. Do you have any idea how much money that is today? $9.6 billion." Of course, as a former portfolio manager used to investing hundreds of millions of dollars, that one set off all my crap alerts.
Use the rule of 72. When the interest rate times the number of years equals 72, you double your money. So, for example, 7.2% for 10 years, or 10% for 7.2 years, roughly doubles your money. $400 million would have to double 4.5 times to get to $9.6 billion. Doubling 4.5 times in fifteen years means doubling once every 3 years or so. Using rule of 72, to double your money in 3 years, you need an interest rate of about 24%. Anybody know where I can deposit my money and get interest rates like that? Hang on a second and I'll check that on the calculator......... Yep, with annual compounding, it comes out to 25.4835%. Not bad for back-of-the-envelope math.
It's funny the stuff that you notice based on your experience. I'll bet my computer-savvy friends are panning this movie too, for bad computing. I know my chopper pilot friends are dissing it for bad flying. If I had any friends in the FBI's Elite CyberCrime unit, they'd probably be cracking on it for bad law enforcement. Oh, the movie overall? In general, it tries waaaaay too hard. Opinions differ, but I'm not impressed. I give it 2 stars.
Posted by John at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2002
Pssst. Hey, buddy, come over
Pssst. Hey, buddy, come over here for a second. Shhh, keep your voice down! See, it's like this. They're voting, like, for weblogs. Could you maybe, just this once, put me in for, say, best-kept-secret weblog? I know, man, I know, but really, I can quit any time.
Posted by John at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
I saw Carl Sagan do
I saw Carl Sagan do this on one of his TV specials. "Billions and billions" of years ago. The Universe in One Year. I wonder if those Carl Sagan specials are out on videotape. Hang on, let me check.........gulp, um, that would be yes, along with the 47 books, you can get all 5 videos and the new collector's edition DVD of the very show I was recalling, "Cosmos", which has not only been completely digitally remastered, but has been updated to include pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. Ooh, ooh, gotta have it!
Posted by John at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)
And today, in the "Never
And today, in the "Never Write Anything in an Email That You Wouldn't Want to See on the Front Page of the Newspaper" department, we have our special guests, Microsoft. Hehe. After promoting Linux from a threat to "the threat", division VP Brian Valentine serves up the instructions to the ground crews on how to combat this insidious, *free* operating system.
Posted by John at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
You thought it couldn't get
You thought it couldn't get any worse after Jar-Jar Binks, right? Well, you were wrong. Fortunately, the plan is for them to die quickly.
Posted by John at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)
Lake Superior State University released
Lake Superior State University released its 27th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. Now, I don't know LSSU from a hole in the wall, but I have to agree wholeheartedly with their recommendations. "Synergy?" If one more person says that word to me, I may snap. The neighbors will say, "he seemed like such a nice man, so quiet..."
Posted by John at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
Anna Kournikova, whose fame and
Anna Kournikova, whose fame and popularity have skyrocketed way out of proportion to her looks mainly due to having a computer virus named after her, lost the semifinals of the Auckland Classic, 6-1, 6-4 to Israel's Anna Smashnova today. Yeah, really. Smashnova beats Kournikova. In the most ridiculous coincidence, Smashnova will advance to meet Russia's Tatiana Whakimova in the second semifinal. Ok, I was only kidding about that last part.
Posted by John at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)
