Not So Fast

Gesture controlled TVs.

For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive-you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

– HHGtG

It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. Mateys.

Gawker has the alleged screenshots of Sarah Palin’s hacked email.

How it happened.

Freaky unidentified space object found and lost.

Yeah, $92. Now if only gas would drop below $3 at the pump.

$50 for a second bag on United, each way? That’s excessive.

You could overnight it cheaper.

You’re on your own until, well, later. Here’s some pictures to make your day a little smoother:

The Hadron Collider has not obliterated mankind yet, forcing me to have to get up this morning. *shakes fist*

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Live CERN webcast.

Reddit and Fark team up to save us. God help us all.

They have the patent.

Frightening.

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

The truth about the American voter.

Don’t want to vote for Obama or McCain? Here’s your other choices.

The pacifist party guy has a crazy look in his eye.

Why Obama has lost the race.

French surrenders.

When even Gawker says Democrats are being narrow-minded hicks, you know Democrats have gone too far.

Indeed.

I’m a little upset that rocket mail never took off, so to speak.

Google’s satellite launches soon.

A nice roundup of the Palin controversies and their impact.

Google’s new browser, Chrome, comes out today. Why would I switch from Firefox?

UPDATE: Trying it now. Excellent use of the screen real estate. But it needs extensions. Mouse gestures, flash block, ad block. I’m sure that will come with time, but in the meantime, it’s a drag.

Obama’ll give me a bigger tax cut.

And I’d like to thank everyone that makes more than $600,000 for paying my way. You rock, thanks.

Rumor has it McCain has picked Sarah Palin for Vice President.

Thank God it’s not Lieberman. At least someone I’ve never heard of doesn’t make me want to vote for him even less.

Ubiquity.

I just downloaded and started messing with it, but I think it has great potential.

They’re taking over Europe. Article includes irrefutable picture.

He was delicious.

video

There’s too much information available, tax the internet.

Look, buddy, voters have always been ill-informed and always will be. They just don’t care, they’re busy living their lives. Also, the fact that you’re a lawyer working for a nonprofit environmental group causes me to doubt that ill-informed voters is really your issue. You just don’t want us using precious electricity, do you?

Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself, perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread. It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans).

Provide assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans and you end up back where you started, no? Those are the rabble-rousers that are out there voicing their opinions all over the place that you’re worried is blocking out the important information. Except with this plan we have an added layer of government. That’ll help. The government always helps.

It’s possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information. If Americans are finally giving up SUVs because of high oil prices, might we not eventually do the same with some information technologies that only seem to fragment our society, not unite it? A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

Yes, information flow should be restricted to only those who can afford it. Let the rich decide what we need to know. That will make the world a better place.

Idiot.

This guy built a full Boba Fett suit, including gun, out of Legos. Bonus picture of his Darth Vader outfit.

Misha has something to say about politicians that are less than solid when it comes to religious dogma (NSFW language).

If you upgrade your CPU, it breaks Windows Media Player’s DRM and you have to erase that folder and upgrade it before you can use Netflix’s Watch Instantly again.

Just so you know.

The Jack Daniels ad at the DNC.

The whole Georgia/Russian situation clarified.

Site is being slammed at the moment, so good luck with that.

In one of the recent thunderstorms a brief surge killed my motherboard. I mentioned it earlier, so enough about the past. Today I installed my new motherboard, chip and RAM (4gigs! w00t!) and I figured I was in for a reformat because Windows never deals well with a new mobo.

Vista, however, took it all in stride; found new hardware, installed drivers and was good to go. That’s very nice. Very, very nice.

The fly in the ointment is that my wireless LAN card doesn’t work now and the handy manufacturer’s program is 32bit. I’d rather have to fix that than reinstall everything, that’s for sure.

UPDATE: My bad, card wasn’t securely seated. Tada.

So, the fact that Americans import so much stuff and our wages aren’t going up will save us from inflation. I feel better about the economy already.

Should I be wanting one? I’m not sure. I mean, all I need a laptop to do is word processing, office-suite stuff, and connect to the internet, basically. A game or two to pass the time would be nice. And I like small. I had a couple Zaurus’s that I loved. But I can get a real laptop for about the same price with far more capacity and capability.

I dunno.

It’s not like I need to decide right away, anyway. Unless you were planning on buying me one this week. Drop me an email in that case and I’ll decide quick enough.

I forgot to post this Wednesday, but you should check out the evil awesomeness of John Scalzi, inventor of “bacon on my cat”, he also wrote some good books you may want to check out if you’re into that whole reading thing.

Wil Wheaton is also involved.

Please, I can say no more.

I added the link a couple weeks ago, but I want to give them a shout because it’s a beautiful site and I keep finding tons of great recipes and/or ideas. With an account you can save the recipes you want for future reference.

Uncollapsing quatum particles.

A bit of a roundup.

Such comments “border on the bizarre frankly,” Rice said, speaking to reporters traveling with her in Warsaw.

“When you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988,” Rice said. “It’s 2008 and the United States has a … firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland’s territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it’s probably not wise to throw these threats around.”…

Twirl makes Twitter less painful. I tried twitter and thought, I’m not keeping a browser window open for that and promptly ignored it. Twirl gives you a IM like interface that keeps hidden in your tray, but still available. Now I can bore friends and strangers with the minutia of my life. I mean, even more minutia than you get here. That’s pretty minute.

It’s not too bad, except for the 25 freaking pages to click through.

Firefly ranked way to low. Lost, shouldn’t be on the list much less that high.

Kinda, on paper. These guys say theoretically IF string theory is true AND you have ginormous amounts of energy warp speeds are possible.

I have to ask myself why I keep doing these. I give people money to go torture myself for a couple hours. My times were almost exactly what I expected. 800m swim was 23:55. The lake was beautiful smooth, warmish, no problems at all. I only got seriously off-course once the rest of the time I tracked well. Transition 1: 2:50, a bit slow but it was a fair jog from the lake to the bike racks.

The bike course was changed, thankfully. Instead of going up two torturous more “hills” in an out-and-back, construction forced us to do two loops of the “easiest” hills. It was still hard. Really hard. 12mile bike time: 54:44. Transition 2: :59, much better.

Did I mention that today is one of the hottest days of the year? Yeah, the run, not so much shade. It was just horrible. I started out slow and lost a minute a mile. Also, it was an extra .5mile long. My body knows how far three miles is and it was totally not happy about that extra part. So 3.6mile run: 48:56, which is horrible, but hey.

I was hoping to finish in 2 hours, so I was 10 minutes off. I think with a wetsuit and a road bike I could have done that easily. But we go to the triathlon with the equipment we have, not the equipment we want.

I should also mention that I completely undertrained for this. I haven’t run more than 2 miles in months. I haven’t run at all in the last month. I did a 10mile bike ride once a week, most weeks. I did swim one or two times a week, but yeah definitely not serious about the training. And it showed.

Rhetorical questions. Also, irony.

Also, when you go to turn you computer on at home after a week and realize the power supply fried, no doubt in the awesome lightning storm that didn’t actually knock out the electricity. What’s worse is having to wait a week to get a new one because there’s no way I’m paying Best Buy’s hyper-inflated prices and only then being able to find out out if the motherboard and chip fried with the power supply as they are so prone to. Which is a great excuse to upgrade and all, but I could save on shipping if I got them all together.

I was not eaten by a bear or strange, woodsy Idahoan cults. The mountains of Idaho were lovely, if a bit chilly at night a couple of nights, which wasn’t a problem for me, but Daisy was less than happy. I’d have pictures but I don’t have a decent digital SLR because, man, they’re a lot of cash to throw down and I have no idea where my cheapo one is at the moment. But yes, beautiful outdoorsy stuff, and camping is always fun—for about a week, knowing that there’s electricity and hot water at home.

I’m on vacation through next week. As far as I know the national forests in Idaho don’t have wifi, so no posts for you.

I’m sure you’ll get over it.

If we didn’t capitalize I, perhaps the world would be a better place.

Curse you, Western Civilization, curse you!!1!1!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Great writer, Gulag Archipelago was eye-opening when I read it as the Soviet Union was dissolving. Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History is another one to read if you are interested in that sort of thing.

I didn’t even realize he wasn’t dead.

Gizmodo is completely unfamiliar with preps, gives credit to Steve Jobs for the current popped collar trend.

Even if you’re an American citizen, the border patrol can confiscate your laptop without cause. That’s just wrong.

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ ”

+1 to Feingold for looking into it. +5 to any congressman that actually does something about it.

I’m just doing pushups. (NSFW pic, apparently Australian newspapers have different standards than American’s)

Extract from Aurthur C. Clarke’s last book, The Last Theorem. I hope the story picks up some.

It should be coming soon.

A solid, non-scientific explanation of what the Large Hadron Collider hopes to do. Other than create a black hole that will destroy the galaxy, of course.

This one’s good.

It’s Fatboy Slim’s birthday. This is merely a pretext to point out again how awesome this video is.

New firewire specifications have been approved. And they’re backwards compatible.

It’s a turtle. Possibly a rodent of unusual size.

Foods you thought were awesome as a child but turns out really wasn’t. Their descriptions are perfect.

The canned Snickers ad. Speedwalkers deserve what happens to them.

A modern technology and old masters photoshop contest.

Our jetpacks are here. Apparently you’ll need two guys to walk you around though.

Is it bad that I think $5 million is hardly worth reporting? I wouldn’t even bother embezzling that paltry sum. I want my embezzling news to at least be in the hundreds of millions.

Doesn’t mean there aren’t actually some wacky conspiracies out there. NSFW, it’s Cracked.

Lo, a child came forth.

I particularly like this bit:

At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

You’re not as good-looking as you think you are.

Participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face.

Also, what?

Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes.

Life is strange.

In case you too miss the beloved Minimize To Tray extension because you upgraded to Firefox 3.0, go here and follow the directions.

If you aren’t using MTT, you’re missing out.

You know what’s amazing about the internet? There are forums full of people dedicated to discussing skyscrapers.

Also, Rule 34.

He goes on to rail on Keillor in his usual manner.

If you learn best by music, this is the video for you. Not that it’s particularly informative, it is odd though, you have to give it that.

12 out of 12, yet somehow I’m only in the 97th percentile? Did the top 3% get extra credit questions?

Lileks is part of this new thing, Qor. Despite the name, it’s not related to Star Trek. They want your opinion.

I can tell you that this clip rocks.

Mint.

It’s beta, but so far it looks pretty cool. You set up a budget, it logs in to your checking and savings accounts, credit cards, investments and the like and tracks your income and spending. Makes tracking spending so much easier and the default categories it chose were pretty accurate. Also, when you have multiple accounts with various companies, having them aggregated makes everything easier and clearer.

It could use a few more features, especially in the entry of future expenses. It’s a great reactive budget tool, but not so good on the proactive part. Also, breaking out savings vs. checking accounts would be nice, but it’s pretty dang cool for free and minimal effort.

A concise, clear look at why the price of oil has spiked.

Bush may be overly-optimistic about the financial wisdom of the average American, but good answer. +1.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, part 1.

The master plan.

Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion. Need I say more? Okay, it’s a musical. Rock on! \m/

Part 2 comes out tomorrow!

The robots are deciding which commands they want to follow now. The end is nigh.

The awesome part is the nerd-fight over US Robotics and the Three Laws. Bonus: from the books, not the crappy movies.

I knew you could. Remember the how the stimulus package didn’t do anything and Bush is an idiot for suggesting it? Yeah, the congressional democrats are talking about trying it again.

It’s kinda eerie that someone drove past my house sometime—looks like last fall maybe—and took pictures. At first I was like, “Hey! A little privacy please!” but then I chilled and now I’m checking out everyone’s house I know.

I swear I’m going to trim those hedges any day month year now.

President Bush’s farewell to the G8. Rock on.

Your mind doesn’t like diverging sets of parallel lines.

McCain is a Democrat anyway, and Obama’s positions become more like McCain’s with every passing hour

Pretty much sums it all up.

Solid advice on how to keep from being an American-hating jerk in your local 4th of July parade.

The top ten deadliest pandemic diseases that you are unlikely to get and don’t spread well among non-immunocompromised people and therefore aren’t really likely to become pandemics.

Interactive, almost-holographic Google Earth.

Because of a lawsuit from Viacom over copyright infringement a court is ordering Google to turn over all the YouTube user viewing logs ever.

Here’s a great chance for Google not to be evil, let’s see if they blow it.

Lileks deals with his sensitive readers.

Frankly, it’s what keeps me from discussing a lot of things here – I can see the other side, anticipate the arguments, and lack the energy to deal with the whole panoply of dissent that might arise from, say, praising the latest “Rambo” film.

Real mutant superhero powers. (Cracked, so NSFW)

For all your messianic Obama needs. Just keep scrolling.

I need one of these. This is what makes America great. Someone will sell you the answer to any problem or annoyance, no matter how minor.

Karl Rove on Obama.

I fully expect* my energy bill to be going down, and not just the normal it’s-summer-so-my-bill-is-cut-in-half going down.

*don’t actually expect it at all.

Obama’s “thrown under the bus” list

This.

The Supreme Court says the government can’t keep me from having a gun.

If you want free Jack-in-the-Box tacos, you can have them Thursday.

American cheese on a taco. So wrong.

Despite the howling for the last couple years, a majority of Britons aren’t convinced about man-made global warming.

There is growing concern that an economic depression and rising fuel and food prices are denting public interest in environmental issues.

The news today is restoring my faith in my fellow man.

What’s the anthro- word that means man-made? I know there is one.

UPDATE: Anthropogenic. It came to me riding in to work. Now we all know.

Human nature at it’s finest.

What’s perhaps even more interesting is that 48% of the 59% who want to expand off-shore drilling have just come to their position on this issue “recently.”

You just have to find the right crowbar.

You can’t play the game, but you can create Spore creatures now. Assuming your computer is up to it.

Cloning your own immune cells to cure cancer.

Here’s a hint Congress, just because something isn’t working as well as we want doesn’t mean you should help fix it. I think history has proven that the less you try to help the sooner the problem is fixed.

Available for download now! You should go buy it.

12-hour fuel cell batteries for laptops coming soon?

There’s a saying about barn doors and horses that leaps to mind.

With suspicions of oil speculation on the rise, the USA’s top commodities cop announced steps Tuesday to close some regulatory loopholes that hindered its ability to detect market abuse.

Al Gore’s green house uses even more energy which if you’ll remember was abnormally high to begin with.

Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Man gets Vista to work with his printer.

Having used Vista for the past month, I’ve had no problems with it. Minor annoyances include having to okay EVERY MOVE rearranging the start menu, downloading Vista drivers. Once it and all my programs were installed it has given me zero problems, loads quickly, I have no complaints except the smoke taskbar is hideous, why can’t we change the colors?

The new Firefox is out! The new Firefox is out!

It didn’t have some of my favorite extensions addons when I tried it a couple weeks ago, but I’ll have to check again now. Nope, still no All-In-One Gestures.

You’re racist!

Lion cub cam.

UPDATE: Aww, you woke them up!

Is American free speech too free?

Wow. I can’t really imagine the government having that power. Society does enough of that on its own, thank you very much. It just strikes me as so fundamentally wrong it’s almost unfathomable, like Americans playing soccer instead of football. Or Coca-Cola not existing, Spock has a goatee, or something like that.

The pretentious, the educational, the fun, I give you the list of books I want to read while the sun is shining*.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Saw the movie, bet the book is better.

The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne. Because apparently the guy could write, we’ll see.

The Divine Comedy by Dante. Continuing my survey of classic literature there was no way I would read in high school.

Kai Lung’s Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah. Because it’s there. Also, it reminded me of a story about crickets in my Through Golden Windows series.

Africa in the Iron Age . Continuing my study of continental world history.

March Upcountry by David Weber. His Honor Harrington books were good, let’s see if he can pull off another good series.

March to the Sea by David Weber. Ditto.

That should last me a few weeks at least.

*Should the sun decide to shine in North Idaho.

To mix things up a bit, I thought I would do something I don’t often do: a meme. I stole this from Cori Matt, no, I am not original.

The Instructions:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how my answers could in any way relate to the the photos presented.

Famous last words. (It’s Cracked, NSFW language of course)

Mark Steyn.

“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.”

Heehee.

Mark Steyn on his Human Rights Commission trial.

Tell you what, first person to offer $25,000 takes it all.

Instapundit is only worth $16,902. You know you want the earning potential that is kristinhoppe.com

People are saving more. Somehow, this is a bad thing.

Remember everything we’ve been saying about emotions for the last 20 years? Yeah, forget it.

The pill that makes you live longer. Plus it has an awesome name.

Worrying about death is making you fat and poor.

The authors believe people with low self-esteem use consuming as a way of subconsciously escaping self-awareness, which is heightened by thoughts of dying. “When you indulge in shopping or eating, it helps you forget yourself,” says Smeesters.