Marc's Musings

Links for 31 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Cirrus SR20 review - /me drools
• 11 steps to a better brain - almost a program

Some Random Thoughts

None of these has been blogworthy on its own, but here are some things that I have thought about over the past week or so...

• Great America rocks during the "offseason"--before the k-12 kiddies get out of school. We went last Wednesday and got through every coaster at least once in less than 2 hours. At the end of the day we rode V2 about 6 times--without getting off of the ride--and the front of Batman twice, also without having to remove our butts from the painful seats.
• We Like to Party (the Six Flags theme song) isn't as annoying if you make fun of it.
• My Kyocera 7135 palm phone crapped out yet again. Same thing--wouldn't find a signal, or when it did, it wouldn't make a call. After a few minutes on the phone with Verizon tech support, they told me they are no longer supporting the 7135 (gee, I wonder why), so they couldn't send me a replacement 7135. Instead they sent me a Treo 600. After less than a week, I generally like this phone better than the 7135. Now all I have to do is figure out a way to get a cheap Treo 650...
• Rich's boss gets great tickets to the Cubs (thanks again, Rich).. We were right behind the visitor's dugout, and got to see Prior get his arm taken off.
• Electrical wiring in old houses sucks. I spent the better part of Sunday trying to rewire one circuit to make a circuit availble for the bathroom (and only the bathroom). I thought that it would be easy to convert the unused 220 outlet (there for an air conditioner a long time ago) to it's own circuit. 8 hours later we got it taken care of, but I'm still a bit sore from pulling.
• It was a beautiful weekend for flying, but of course I didn't do any. C'est la vie

I had thought of more when I started this post, but of course I got distracted and forget them. At any rate, at least it's a "real" blog post, right Ness?

Links for 26 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Encryption software is evidence of criminal intent? - I'm speechless.
• Orange Darth Vader Ad - Orange comes up with some great ads
• Suspicious package was fake foot-long plastic penis - None

Links for 24 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• End of VoIP as we know it - FCC's e911 mandate
• palmOne Changing Name to Palm - guess adding the "one" wasn't such a great idea after all
• How to Perform Strong Man Stunts - scans of a 1952 book

Links for 23 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith - **spoiler warning**
• Inside Tech: Blu-ray & HD DVD - Differences between the two formats

Links for 22 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Delivr Digital Postcards - uses flickr photos
• Color Palette Tools - Great web desiging tools

Links for 19 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• CSS image map - None
• How to Create an Image Map Using CSS - another tutorial

Links for 17 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• blogpoly - happy birthday monopoly
• DMB's Management Still Disrespecting Fans - do your fans a favor and dump RLM
• NCAA Football 2006 - This is what July 15 looks like...
• Primate Programming(tm) Inc - Cheaper than india!
• How Quicken Has Lost My Trust - bad advice can be irreparable...
• Firefox Users Monkey With the Web - good article on greasemonkey from wired

Links for 16 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Google Content Blocker - it's in beta!
• FCC's broadcast flag: It's back? - We knew this would happen..
• Jedi HD Tricks - episode III pushing the technology envelope
• Grocery Store Wars - very well done
• The Original Whizzinator - pass your drugtest now

Links for 14 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Xbox 360 - First Take Analysis - can MS drag sony and nintendo out of the trenches?
• SLOCCount User's Guide - I hate using source lines of code as a metric--it doesn't mean anything--but this is a fun little tool

Links for 13 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• MIME Torture test - carefule, it's a big mbox
• some noises we make while coding - it was funny. it made me laugh. hah!

Links for 13 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• MIME Torture test - carefule, it's a big mbox
• some noises we make while coding - it was funny. it made me laugh. hah!

Links for 12 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Asterisk on OpenWRT - VoIP pbx on a Linksys wireless router
• Should Terrorism be Reported in the News? - if it's in the news, don't worry about it.

Links for 11 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• This Might Be A Wiki - Wiki dedicated to They Might Be Giants

Links for 10 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Process of Forming a Company - Interesting information

Busy

code code code
all day long
code code code
while I sing this song
-- hastily adapted from Adam Sandler's janitor skit

Links for 09 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Workers Trade Password Security For Starbucks - that's a latte
• Interactive SRAT - None
• Mr. Potato Head presents... - ... the seven deadly sins.
• Self referential quiz - what a mind bender
• REAL ID - let's spend more money that we don't have on something with negative impacts.
• States Web Games - Pretty fun. I only got a 74% on the advanced w/an average distance off of 33 mi

Links for 08 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Spamhuntress - Interesting wiki based aproach to spam fighting techniques. (adolescent)
• Sports Illustrated's digital workflow - Interesting read for anyone interested in sports photography

People 1, MPAA 0

For those of you living under a rock, or not caring about the future of high definition television, the DC court of appeals ruled that the FCC overstepped its bounds when it mandated support of the broadcast flag in any high definition equipment sold after 1 July 2005.

This is great news for the people of the United States as well as the hardware equipment manufacturers. It will allow the hardware to remain less expensive as the hardware manufacturers don't need to spend dollars researching how to implement this technology, and it will spur competition in the hardware as approval is no longer required before legally distributing a piece of equipment.

Bear in mind, that you can be guaranteed the MPAA will either go to congress and use it's significant pool of money to lobby that the power be congressionally given to the FCC, and/or the MPAA will attempt to try this in the supreme court. Fortunately for us, it is currently written into law that the FCC can only regulate the devices that broadcast, and once it is a part of the public spectrum, the public can do what it wishes.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has some good information on digital television and the broadcast flag.

Unnerving

I finally moved my old computer out of my office this afternoon. I didn't realize that the case I purchased for my new computer was THIS quiet. I can't hear the fans in it at all.

It's quite unnerving, really.

Links for 05 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• A History of the GUI - Interesting article, with a timeline at the end
• Rules for cats... - This is why I don't like 'em
• Google Web Accelerator - Like squid, but not...
• Unspeakable Happens In Area Town - I love The Onion

Links for 04 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Guess-the-google - somewhat addicting
• Stuff seized by airport security for sale on eBay - I always wanted 35 pounds of plastic handled scissors

Links for 03 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• HOWTO break Win DRM9 - Quick, before MS fixes the links...
• Boy Scout badge in Intellectual Property - I'm not a big fan of this...
• E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot' - especially if it's from hotmail...
• G2Bay™ :: Buy and Sell Information™ - interesting concept. we'll see if it works...
• Disney - For we know you have sand?

Bugmenot.com

For those of you that don't know, there is a site called Bugmenot.com that provides logins for stupid sites that require compulsory user registration (such as the new york times, etc.). I created a little javascript that will popup a window with an username and password for the site, or an entry to add one to the list if it doesn't exist in their database.

To use this javascript, just drag the following link to your links bar: popup bugmenot.com login

Enjoy.

Links for 02 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• Bacon Strips Bandages - Oh boy, oh boy! Iiiiiiiit's Bacon!!!

Links for 01 May 2005 [del.icio.us]

• GreaseMonkeyUserScripts - A great listing of greasemonkey scripts
• MS Flight Sim jet pack add on - This looks pretty fun...