Miscellaneous

Learning The Lessons of Nixon » 4 Minutes About Podcasting

Four Minutes about Podcasting is a short film tells you why podcasting can make your life better, and shows you everything you need to know to set up a simple program to have new podcasts downloaded automatically. In only four minutes!

Molly - this is a fine introduction to podcasting - Real Player required.

Genetically engineered plants detect land mines by changing color:

Mark Frauenfelder:
When the roots of these GMO flowers hit nitrogen dioxide (which leaches into the soil from buried land mines), the plant changes color. Link

(Via Boing Boing Blog.)

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Cardinal Sin ’stable’ in hospital:

Cardinal Sin ’stable’ in hospital

I’m sorry Really. Really.

I thought they were called mortal and venial. They never told me about the cardinal one.

X’s Prismatic Ponderings… » Hearing Loss: How to Prevent It:

Hearing Loss: How to Prevent It The purpose of this site is to assist in preventing tobacco-induced hearing loss by citing medical journal data on the role of tobacco.

email cell phone cellphone

Cingular 0001112222@mobile.mycingular.net 160 characters - From, Message, Call Me Back At phone number and Subject

Looks like this is now @CingularME as well as for old AT&T

Nextel 0001112222@page.nextel.com 140 characters for message

Sprint PCS 0001112222@messaging.sprintpcs.com 160 characters for message

T-Mobile 0001112222@tmomail.net 140 characters for message

Verizon Wireless 0001112222@vtext.com 160 characters for message

Forbes.com - Broadcast Bullies: “In a fair fight, XM Satellite Radio would capture a good share of the U.S. audience. Unfortunately, competition in the broadcast industry is anything but fair.”

Improbable Research – What’s New: Nothing But: “Improbable Research — What’s New: Nothing But The world’s vast collection of research journals contain many reports about positive results that turn out, later, to be simply not so. A small number of journals work hard to publish results that are, from the beginning, apparently not so. Here are two such …”

(Via X’s Prismatic Ponderings….)

I’ll sort of short circuit it here.

Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

Journal of Negative Results

From M-W.com - Word of the Day

froward FROH-erd adjective : habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition

Example sentence:

“When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep. . . .” (Sir William Temple, _Miscellanea_)

Did you know? Once upon a time, in the days of Middle English, “froward” and “toward” were opposites. “Froward” meant “moving or facing away from something or someone”; “toward” meant “moving or facing in the direction of something or someone.” (The suffix “-ward” is from Old English “-weard,” meaning “moving, tending, facing.”) “Froward” also meant “difficult to deal with, perverse”; “toward” meant “willing, compliant, obliging.” Each went its own way in the end: “froward” lost its “away from” sense as long ago as the 16th century and the “willing” sense of “toward” disappeared in the 18th century.

For all the bug geeks

Super ant colony hits Australia: “A giant 100km colony of ants which has been discovered in Melbourne, Australia, could threaten local insect species.”

(Via BBC News | Front Page | World Edition.)

KQED | public radio 88.5 and 89.3: weekly schedule

X’s Prismatic Ponderings… » More than you wanted to know… File under: more than you ever wanted to know… I am unreliably (no citation) informed that the male lightning bugs are the ones who fly and hover. The females are the ones who sit rather still in the grass. Thus, you can sex the cartoon in your blog. There are about 7 different species here in MO.

Mac OS X Things » MacDevCenter.com: Inside SSH, Part 4 In Part 3 of this multi-part series delving into the Secure Shell on Mac OS X, François Joseph de Kermadec showed you some advanced SSH techniques. Today he wraps up the final details.

ACLU - Pizza Government programs such as MATRIX and Carnivore are destroying our privacy. We live in a democratic society and government-controlled data systems are a dangerous step toward establishing a 24-hour surveillance society.

adaptive path » six design lessons from the apple store There’s a lot about the Apple Store experience that we can apply to the design of many other kinds of products — and a few lessons we can take from Apple’s missteps as well.

In an amazingly smooth process, I’ve managed to move my blog from MT to WordPre [NetNewsWire]

WordPress - ReadMe Welcome. WordPress is a very special project to me. Every developer and contributor adds something unique to the mix, and together we create something beautiful that I’m proud to be a part of. Thousands of hours have gone into WordPress, and we’re dedicated to making it better every day. Thank you for making it part of your world.

NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

April 2, 2004 (TOKYO) — NEC Corp has developed a battery that can be recharged only in 30 seconds, company sources said. Called an organic radical battery, it can be recharged to the same level of power as that stored in nickel-hydrogen cells, which are widely used in digital cameras, portable MD players and other electronic devices.

Cinescape - Home - Editorial

RINGWORLD: Based on Larry Niven’s RINGWORLD series of novels, a four-hour mini-series is in development. In the future four explorers crash on an artificial structure in deep space, a mammoth ring that circles a distant star. Exploring this strange place, the humans discover that there is life here and secrets that could change the universe forever.

The Globe and Mail

The Isaac Newton of logic

It was 150 years ago that George Boole published his classic The Laws of Thought, in which he outlined concepts that form the underpinnings of the modern high-speed computer. SIOBHAN ROBERTS chronicles the man and his method

A Smart Mob reader translated this report from the Norwegian Telegram Bureau (Thanks Richard!)

In Norway, all teenagers between 16 and 19 years of age have a cell phone.

When teens say that “everyone has a cell phone” it’s no joke. According to a new study, 100% of all 16 to 19 year olds who were surveyed, replied that they have their own cell telephone. This compares to the rest of the population where 86% have a mobile telephone. Norwegians send an average of 2,8 private text messages per day, but young women between 16 and 24 are the most active: They send over 8 text messages per day on average.

The questionnaire was developed and sent out by the national statistical office in Norway (Statistics Norway) in cooperation with Telenor. Statistics Norway is no fly by night organization. They are perhaps the best group in Norway for analyzing random samples of individuals. Thus, the results are reliable. Basically the report says that they could not find a 16 to 19 year old in Norway who didn’t own a mobile phone.

[Smart Mobs]

Scientists are developing a pill that helps people quit smoking and slim down at the same time. [BBC News | Front Page | World Edition]

Imagine a facewall like this as active wallpaper on your PC desktop. Each picturre would contain one click contact info (VoIP phone, IM, e-mail threads, and fax), presence (IM “I’m online”), GPS data (for your family), etc. New messages would be highlighted on the picture. Contacts can be grouped/outlined by high level pictures (family, company, etc.), just click to drill down. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

New Scientist

Cell phone software creates bogus backgrounds

18:12�05�March�04

NewScientist.com news service

Pretending to be stuck in traffic during a mobile phone call could become much easier using software that generates fake background noise.

This should have an image

Itunes? The National Lampoon Radio Hour, February 7, 2004 by Richard Belzer

trying out ecto - http://www.kung-foo.tv/ecto/ - and had to fix a whole bunch of character encoding errors in most of my blogs.

Things copied from web pages. Smart quotes, hard spaces, hard returns (option-x) and the left-quote, right-quote, apostrophe characters.

Otherwise, maybe this is an OK way to post to weblogs. Different from using NetNewsWire.

Yahoo! Picks - Top Picks of 2003

Yahoo! Picks of the Year Back in 1996, we featured our first-ever Yahoo! Picks of the Year. Eight years later, we’re still scouring the Internet for interesting sites to feature each and every day. Over the course of the past year, we featured hundreds of sites, and we think the most exceptional of these deserve another look. From a fascinating facial hair competition to an in-depth look at Hollywood’s most-enhanced stars to several sites highlighting regrettable fashion choices, this year’s picks remind us the Web knows no bounds. And for this, we are thankful. Without further ado, here is a list of our 25 favorite Yahoo! Picks of 2003.

Some good quotes that came in a mail message from Jan. Read the rest of this entry »

E-cards and Web Cards by Jacquie Lawson, animated e-cards, Christmas cards

The card you have just seen is one of a small collection by the English artist Jacquie Lawson.

There are currently 33 cards in the collection, and about 12 new cards are added each year. This gives some idea of the complexity and attention to detail in these cards: each one takes several weeks to draw and animate; and most have music specially composed or arranged, and carefully timed to the animation.

Gives a new meaning to the term “flash card”.

Smiley Generator

I wanted to make a graphical smiley editor in which you’d have a bunch of slider controls with which you could make a smiley exactly expressing your mood

HORRIBLE LOVECRAFT/WOODRING MUTANT LEMON

From the AppleScript mailing list…I don’t have this folder - probably Panther.

Just find this note in “/Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/Scripts Menu/Create New Mailing List Mailbox___ctl-m.scpt”

(* This script also demonstrates the syntax for adding a keyboard shortcut to a Scripts menu item. You can do this by suffixing the name of the script with three underscore characters, then the keyboard shortcut. For example:

MyScript_ctl-shift-Y MyScript_opt-cmd-Z *)

It works

Thanks AppleScript team

BTW, why the release notes doesn’t mention this great feature?

Paolo Valdemarin Weblog

For the third year in a row the Italian internet portal Clarence is going to publish a calendar with pictures of girls submitted (so we are told) by the same girls and voted by users.

This year besides uploading their pictures participants were also offered a weblog to tell their stories. Here’s the list of participants with pictures and blogs (weblogs are in Italian, pictures are not and yes, they might contain nudity)

Nerve.com - Can You See Me Now? by Mark Morford

���The time was ripe. The seeds were sown. Because shortly thereafter came the reasonably affordable digital camera. Filmless, immediate, limitless, revolutionary . . . naughty as hell. And lo, it was good.

Akiyoshi’s illusion pages

Caution: This page contains some works of “anomalous motion illusion”, which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick. Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately.

Make sure you click on the picture.

The Erotic Museum

The Illustration and Imagination of Julian Murphy. Part of our Inaugural Exhibition opening in October.

I have posted a nice little applet that we have used around the office to open multiple Remote Desktop Connections. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection was a godsend for Windows 2000 Server management, but it drove us crazy w… [Mac OS X Hints]

Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com

Junk DNA noun (1972) : a region of DNA that usually consists of a repeating DNA sequence, does not code for protein, and has no known function

Quite a fun page. Always good to hear which words would be allowed in the Scrabble game.

Open Government Information Awareness

Government Information Awareness draws its inspiration from: Total Information Awareness (TIA) System

CNN.com - ‘The devil’s breath’ feeds Arizona wildfire - Jun. 21, 2003

Sesame Street Song / Sesame He bom

News: FTC seeks powers to smash spam

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday asked Congress for sweeping new powers that would let it cooperate closely with governments abroad and prosecute domestic and overseas spammers more readily

Will stopping spam be the way that most folks finally will let the government do whatever they wish?

MacMinute: Up-to-the-Minute Apple Mac News

Palm to acquire rival Handspring June 4, 2003 - 08:58 EDT�� Palm said on Wednesday that it would buy Handspring in an a stock deal valued at about US$169 million. Palm’s board also approved the spin-off of its PalmSource unit, which makes the operating software for its handhelds. “Following the spin-off of PalmSource, Handspring shareholders will receive 0.09 of a Palm share for each share of Handspring common stock,” according to Reuters. “Palm plans to issue 13.9 million common shares to Handspring holders, after the spin-off of PalmSource. Based on Tuesday’s closing price of $12.15, the shares would be worth about $169 million. The combined company is expected to cut 125 jobs and expects $25 million in annual cost savings.”

PDASmart is Your iPOD Service and Spare Parts Headquarters!

iPod 1500mAh Replacement Internal Battery Kit - Contrary to popular belief… you do not need to be some sort of Apple Certified iPod Guru to replace the internal battery on your iPod to restore the battery life you once knew. This 1500mAh battery is the perfect replacement to get your “classic” iPod back in shape (this battery is not designed for the new, slimmer iPods).

I have 2 of this model to care for. Will probably need to do this sometime

AskTog: A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts

So you think you are an interaction designer? Not if you cannot answer all the following questions quickly and with authority.

I actually got quite a number of them correct. Must be since I’ve been using the GUI for almost 20 years

Message: 1 Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 16:19:19 -0700 From: Chris Page Subject: Re: Palm tasks applecript break with 4.1 To: AppleScript Users

On Sunday, Jun 1, 2003, at 04:32 US/Pacific, Mikael Bystrvm wrote:

tell application “Palm Desktop” set Tasks to count to do –PROBLEM 1: if I have a list with any amount of items in Palm 4.1,, say 3 or 5, when executing the codeline above, I get Tasks = 474 > (ehum) –In Palm 4.0 it gives me the same amount as visible tasks in list, which is what I want. Read the rest of this entry »

Saved from an email I received along the way. Humorous they are. Read the rest of this entry »

A little blurb I wrote during an early failure with me fiddling around with Mac OS X. Preserved here Read the rest of this entry »

Eudora Settings… Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Lewis “Survival Guide” column from Infoworld.com

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

Posted May 17, 2002 01:01 PM Pacific Time Read the rest of this entry »