03
2004
A Short History of Nearly Everything
I just finished reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and I must say that it’s one of the most fun books I’ve read in quite a while. It’s the kind of book that you can pick up and read just a few pages at a time, or read straight through as you dive Bryson’s excellent stories about, well, nearly everything.
Filed Under Books | 3 Comments
23
2003
Sea Monkeys in Mourning
Harold von Braunhut, the quirky inventor/marketer who gave us Amazing Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Spexs, died November 28th at the age of 77.
Filed Under Geek | 2 Comments
19
2003
Sony QRIO Movies
A lot of visitors to this site have been looking for the movies of Sony’s QRIO robot running – here you go: running clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4; throwing a ball clip5; and four QRIO’s dancing clip6.
Another movie can be found here (conducting an orchestra), and two more here (balancing and falling)
Filed Under Science | 42 Comments
19
2003
The Particles of Star Trek
Can’t tell a tachyon from a metrion? Steven Grimm has a collection of particles mentioned on Star Trek as well as a form where you can submit anything he might have missed.
Filed Under Geek, Science | 1 Comment
01
2003
USB Christmas Tree Light
Just in time for Christmas Tomato Chip has a USB-powered Christmas Tree Light to brighten up your desk. Unfortunately, the model that plays music is out of stock.
Filed Under Computing, Geek | 1 Comment
01
2003
TiVo #2
Michele got me a second TiVo for my birthday last week, so we’re no longer tied to the televison in the family room. The second unit has gone into our bedroom, and with the multi-room viewing feature we can watch programs recorded on either TiVo. I wanted to put a Linksys WUSB12 wireless USB network adapter on the new machine (like I have on the other one), but absolutely everyone in town was sold out, so i had to order it from Amazon.com (the got it me in 2 days, even with the Thanksgiving holiday). I never noticed how small the TV in the bedroom is until I started trying to read the TiVo program guide from across the room – guess it’s time to start shopping for a big plasma flat-panel TV!!!
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17
2003
SpamNet for Outlook Express
There is finally has a beta version of Cloudmark’s Spamnet for Outlook Express available for trial (previously, only Outlook was supported). So far, SpamNet has caught over 17,000 spam messages on my system. If you happen to download it, be sure to give them my referral code “r705hl”.
Filed Under Computing, Geek | 1 Comment
14
2003
How LEGOS Are Made
An interactive tour of a LEGO factory.
Filed Under Geek | 2 Comments
11
2003
20 Years of Windows
On November 10, 1983 Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows. The scary thing is, I member seeing the announcement on the news (I must be getting REALLY old). Windows 1.0 finally shipped two years later on November 20, 1985.
Filed Under Computing | Leave a Comment
10
2003
Comment Spam
Like so many others, I’ve been hit quite a bit lately by blog comment spam, so I finally took a few minutes to install Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist plugin (and the associated Comment Spam Clearinghouse blacklist). It has dramatically simplified the process of cleaning out the increasing number of existing spam comments (all having links to adult web sites), and I’m assuming it will block the next spamming attempt in the next couple of days. I’m looking forward to Jay implementing his XML-RPC-based blacklist sharing feature to make keeping the blacklist up-to-date simplier, but in the meantime all I can say is “thanks Jay!”
Filed Under Web | Leave a Comment
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