Geeky Poll of the Day
Posted onIf you know what the number one result is to this Most Used Key Combo poll, I’m sure you, and possibly another player, are smiling right now.
Author: Jeff
Throwing Out A Spacesuit
Posted onThe astronauts at the ISS are stuffing an old spacesuit with discarded clothes and a radio transmitter and will then toss it out the door into space. The transmitter will send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio operators for several days before eventually re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up. The project, called SuitSat-1, was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator.
Cool.
Via Phyl
Truthiness Is Tearing Apart Our Country
Posted on“Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don’t know whether it’s a new thing, but it’s certainly a current thing, in that it doesn’t seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?” – Stephen Colbert, from an interview with the Onion in its AV Club section. The rest of the interview is even better.
Via Chris
James Lipton recites K-Fed's PopoZao
Posted onEven though this post is filed under “music,” PopoZao, Kevin Federline’s new soon to be hit single (because shit’s a hit if its played enough these days) should not be classified as music. Chris posted this MTV clip of K-Fed grooving to his own song at a sound board and while many in the blogosphere are full of schadenfreude about it, what the hell would you look like grooving to your own song at a sound board? I probably would look just as silly. A better thing to watch would be James Lipton reciting the words to this inane song on Conan.
In other related news, I love the K-Fed moniker because its the first non-hispanic usage of the “first initial first name, first syllable last name” type nickname I’ve seen in the entertainment world. K-Mart was the first in the sports world (A-Rod, I-Rod, K-Rod and F-Rod all came before him) and even though I only know of J-Lo in the show biz world, (P. Diddy does not count and not because he has a period instead of a dash, rather because Diddy is not short for Combs) K-Fed does break new ground. I’m mulling the switch to J-Lip as we speak.
Comments are Shut Down Until Further Notice
Posted onThe spam barrage continues. I hope that by taking down the comments feature for a few days, the spambots will leave my little blog alone and I’ll be able to add comments back to my site. In the mean time, I am experimenting with a couple of different comment verification systems. I know that I’ve received less than 200 comments since my blog has been up but its not the amount, its the idea that someone can publicly respond to what I wrote. Now, I’ve had to change this because of fucking spammers. I hope every last comment spammer dies a gruesome death.
Under Spam Attack
Posted onMy site is currently under a crazy comment spam attack. I have received over 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours and if this continues, I am going to have to disable the comment feature which would fucking blow. All comment spammers should die a horrible death. As a short haired blond crazy woman named Susan Powter once said, “Stop the insanity!”
State of the Onion
Posted onThis year both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall on the same day. As Air America Radio pointed out, “It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog.”
Via Moeller
Nikolay Valuev, aka the Beast from the East, aka the Russian Giant
Posted onNikolay Valuev is 7 feet tall and weighs 323 pounds. He’s also boxing’s tallest and heaviest champion (he controversially won the WBA heavyweight championship back in December, 2005) and punningly the newest next big thing to hit the boxing world.
Feel free to start the Andre the Giant comparisons now. While Nikolay reads Tolstoy and writes poetry to his wife, there is a big brew-ha-ha in Russia now as he supposed beat the shit out of a security guards that was hassling his wife about where she parked her car. You tell me – is he more Princess Bride Andre or WWF Andre? Regardless, he’s 43-0 and may be fighting in AC this year.
"Kind of Muddled?" Try Indecipherable!
Posted onThis actual verbatim exchange between a citizen and our President comes from an appearance by Bush in Tampa on February 4, 2005 as he tried to save his Social Security Privitization plan:
WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: ‘I don’t really understand. How is it the new plan going to fix the problem?’
PRESIDENT BUSH: Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the – – like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.’
If you don’t believe that the leader of the free world could really say such gibberish, here is the support. Chalk up another point to the pre-senile dementia diagnosis.
Via Monty
My NXT Robot
Posted onLego is currently developing an updated robot kit for their Mindstorms division called NXT and I am so pscyhed to get one. I have never built a robot before, though when I was a child I dreamt of doing so and even figured out all the pieces I needed to ad-hoc acquire. While I got some of the parts, I never got the tank tread that was needed for mobility and that in a sense stopped the development in its tracks. Now, many many years later, after reading the recent Wired aritcle about this project and seeing the demo on the Lego site, I for some reason have a burning desire to build my own robot. It comes out in the fall and I for one cannot wait until the leaves start a’fallin.
The really cool thing about the development process is how Lego has tapped the hardcore Mindstorms programming community for advice, testing and feedback which in turn is actually being incorporated into the product design. The original robot kit from 2000 was not that great but a lot of talented and smart people took those limited bits to amazing heights – sort of how we put a man on the moon with less computing power than what is in a regular cell phone. Now those same people are now working with Lego to ensure that the NXT kit is friggin fantastic. This is not an open source product and project though – Lego is keeping all proprietary data and knowledge and Lego is the one making the money here but that to me, and to the developers helping, is okay. Its better to have someone to turn to do, to own the factories, to handle packaging and shipping, etc. Sort of how RedHat sells Linux in a way. Everyone is just happy that the end product will be the best that it can be because the global knowledge base has been tapped in order to make it so. I have signed up to be a Lego Mindstorms NXT Pioneer and will find out some time in February whether or not I’m picked to write article, post entries and build robots as a beta tester. I am sure I have no chance, there are only 100 Pioneers, but as NY Lotto used to say, “Hey, you never know.”