| Suddenly, man isn't so big and important. | |
Which browser is the fastest? An unbiased test.
The Opera site claims that Opera is The Fastest Browser on Earth!. The Mozilla site claims that Firefox empowers you to browse faster (faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being an alternative to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot. Apple's Safari pages claim that Safari loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser.
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Breakdown of the ideal web design process
A detailed breakdown and analysis of the web design process. Includes things such as know what you are doing, know the needs, what the visitor wants, personality and style...
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Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years.
Another very cool timelapse. It's strange to watch someone grow older right before your eyes.
Another very cool timelapse. It's strange to watch someone grow older right before your eyes.
Gmail Feature Suggestion: Vote For What Features You Want To See Most
Please select up to five features from the list below. We've categorized the list for your convenience.
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Lowtax at Michigan Technological University
| Internet mastermind Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka lecturing at MTU. Very funny. | |
YouTube - Cheerleader Stunt Gone Wrong
This was from Westfield High School in Houston. The camera man doesn't know how to react to this.
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Delete ALL cookies in Firefox on shutdown, EXCEPT from certain domains.
I set my privacy settings on my Firefox to clear cookies & other data when I close my browser. Trouble is, when I needed to log into Gmail, maintain my Google search preferences, keep my Digg, New York Times, Blogger login - you name it, I had to re-submit my credentials each time. Follow these directions, & you won't have to enter them each time.
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San Diego Reporter beaten bloody - All Caught on Tape
Video is linked in the news article. Fox Six News San Diego says investigative journalist John Mattes suffered cracked ribs, bite wounds and cuts to his face during yesterday's incident which was captured on film and ended with two arrests.
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Google to Offer Print-Archives Searches
Google plans to announce on Wednesday that it is offering a service that will permit Internet users to search through the archives of newspapers, magazines and other publications and uncover material that in some cases dates back more than 200 years.
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Best-Case Scenarios for all 32 NFL teams (SI Forecast)
Assuming 16-0 is out of the question, what's the most your favorite club can hope for? SI looked at each team's schedule to devise a best-case scenario -- how the season could play out if all the key elements break right
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Weighing a Switch to a Mac
Ten years ago, if you were a Windows user, the idea of switching to a Macintosh might not have seemed enticing. An abundance of new Windows software was arriving on store shelves, while the selection available to Mac users seemed to be falling behind, often relegated to a back corner of the same store.
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First look at Leopard (Mac OS X)
Here are some of the first unofficial 'real life' images taken from Leopard, including Time Machine, Mail, iCal, Preview and Spaces.
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Amazing Video of 110 mph BICYCLE crash
This is what it looks like when your high-tech mountain bike snaps in half as you are riding down the side of a volcano at 110mph (172 kmh).
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BHT v2.6 Released - Free Computer Tools Package
The package is geared towards using as much freeware as possible, in order to diagnose and repair a computer system. Installation is not required for most tools, such as AdAware and Spybot, & scanning is easier to do without the need of an inet connection.
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Wal-Mart to sell 'build-your-own' computers
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will start selling build-your-own-computer components in more than one-third of its U.S. discount stores this month as it looks for ways to tempt shoppers to buy more than just low-margin food.
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Download Google Videos As AVI Files
You can download Google Videos as AVI without additional programs or extensions.
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Stephen Colbert at the White House
Colbert preformed last night at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. His jokes were hilarious, yet the room full of old white men don't seem to be laughing. The best part- he's standing like 5 feet away from the president and he's totally scathing. Link to torrent.
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Vintage diseases are making a strong comeback.
Mumps, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and rickets are making a comeback. These diseases were thought to have been beaten by medical science in the last century. Their return has many wondering what's going on.
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Bad Physics: Misconceptions spread in School Textbooks
Of course my list isn't 100% perfect, so I hope that it will form a basis for improvement and conceptual change, rather than becoming another source of 'Ultimate Truth.' This is a list of misconceptions which tripped me up personally.
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Canon's New MP800R Photo-All-In-One. It Does Everything For $400
Canon's new printer/copier/scanner does everything and does it fast and professionally. At $399.99, this looks awesome.
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Fujitsu announces ETERNUS8000 Model 2100: 1.3PB array
Bigger is better. Capable of up to sixteen 3.4GHz processors, 256GB of cache memory, and RAID 6 configuration.
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Amazing photographs of a rainbow
I thought I'd seen my share of amazing rainbow photographs until I saw this one.
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How To: Build a Tornado Machine
Extremely detailed instructions for building your very own tornado machine. "The tornado machine is a vertical cylindrical box of about one meter high (3 to 4 ft) with a front opening. Air is rotating and rising in the machine, and with the means of a fine water mist a tornado vortex will form."
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Larger Than Life Sculptures - Two-stories High and Hyper-Realistic
Ron Mueck is an Australian hyper-realist sculptor who creates gargantuan-sized sculptures that capture details of the human body so well that they're hard to believe. Mueck is a master at capturing human expression and recreating the detail of muscles, skin, fat and bones that we are all made of. Also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck
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Digg Tools - Ever Growing List Of Digging Tools
Large list of various digg tools/links collected from around the web. Good website to check out.
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Azureus-BitTorrent Client Crowned Most Popular Open-Source Software
The Azureus-BitTorrent Client won the overall most popular open-source software award in SorceForge.net's first annual Community Choice Awards, the developer collaboration site said Thursday.The winning projects in a variety of other categories were also announced at the LinuxWorld Expo this week.
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Vote for your favorite SourceForge.net projects today
There are well over 100,000 open source projects on SourceForge.net. Now you can vote for your favorites in 14 categories. Your vote will help select winners of the first annual SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. You must vote on or before March 23. Winners will be announced April 5 at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston.
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Vote for your favorite SourceForge.net projects today
There are well over 100,000 open source projects on SourceForge.net. Now you can vote for your favorites in 14 categories. Your vote will help select winners of the first annual SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. You must vote on or before March 23. Winners will be announced April 5 at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston.
Vote, vote, vote.
Vote, vote, vote.
Rest In Pieces - My computer died today.
You may know him, his name was Mike M.Puter. Quite the accident really.
Seems I was doing some adjusting and modifications on the inside of my
trusty computer when, in a complete moment of carelessness, I forgot to
unplug the power cord from the back of the box. I had been working on
it for 30 minutes without a hitch when I just got sloppy. Like my
marriage, a mere spark has led to disaster.
"The Ross Needs A New Computer Fund." Give till it hurts.
Seems I was doing some adjusting and modifications on the inside of my
trusty computer when, in a complete moment of carelessness, I forgot to
unplug the power cord from the back of the box. I had been working on
it for 30 minutes without a hitch when I just got sloppy. Like my
marriage, a mere spark has led to disaster.
A millisecond before plugging in the new hard drive, I realized that
the box was still juiced. No sooner had I made contact than it sparked,
sizzled and all life was gone. I'm sure I overloaded and/or shorted out
the mobo. Funny thing though...the hard drive survived.
I was able to scramble around my basement and piece together a
reasonably fast Dell. It's got an older P-II 400 processor, but the
mobo was a bit newer than my late great HP Celeron. I installed a stick
of 512 memory and this thing flies. Well, compared to that slug-slow
Celeron I fried, my kid's Nintendo64 "flies".
The funeral will be tomorrow around 3 or 4pm at which time I'll down a
couple of glasses of wine and heave the HP's carcass as far as I can
out into the woods across the street from my house. Immediately
following, there will be a graveside service which will consist of me
emptying my bladder with great force onto the smoke-streaked Celeron
processor. A well-deserved salute, indeed.
"The Ross Needs A New Computer Fund." Give till it hurts.
digg - Submit Item
Let this serve as a cautionary tale. Wear your seat belt and don't try to outrun the cops. There's no blood or guts in the vid, but still it's intense. And while not actually tech related, I'm sure the SUV had an on-board computer so there.
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Subliminal Comic Book Messages
I was downloading some vintage comic book pages today to cull the old advertisements. I have a thing for that vintage stuff. Anyway, as I perused some of the pages, I began to pick up on a...theme. I clipped some of them out for you to see. Is it me? We'll start with everyone's favorite duck, Donald (and friends). I'll not comment on these, simply present the evidence. Draw your own conclusions.
Next I looked at some Have Gun Will Travel comics and sure enough...
Very interesting.
Very interesting.
I love my job....sigh.
"Good morning, this is Restore Carpet Service. How can I help you?"
"Oh, hello. You come highly recommended from a friend who says that you can get almost any sort of stain out of carpets. I have a real doozie I need removed."
"Ha ha ha...well I've seen a lot of carpet stains in my 20 some years of cleaning. I'm sure I've got something to help the situation. What exactly are we talking about here?'
"Well, actually it's chocolate. I have a very light beige carpet and my younger brother spilled his chocolate. He was running down the hallway from his bedroom to the bathroom when he spilled it."
"Hmmmmm. I see."
"No, I'm afraid you don't. My younger brother is 65 years old and is mentally challenged."
"I understand, ma'am. I've met a few challenged older people in my time."
"That's well and good, but Roger is...special."
"How so?"
"Well, he likes to run through the house naked. Mind you, he's as harmless as a bunny, but he simply enjoys stripping his clothes off and prancing through our home. My husband and I take care of him, you see."
"Oh...well, like I said, I'm not unfamiliar with how to act around challenged people. I'm sure we'll get along fine. Now getting back to the chocolate stain, I'm assuming that Roger likes to eat chocolate?"
"Ha ha, oh he sure does. Anything chocolate in fact. We have to really watch him sometimes. In fact, that's what happened in this case. My husband and I were in the living room watching Wheel Of Fortune a couple of nights ago when we heard Roger moaning quite loudly in his room. We got up and checked on him. We opened his door and he was laying in bed with the lights on. He was awake and had the blankets pulled up tight around his neck. Before we could even say a word, he threw off the blankets and ran by us stark naked down the hallway towards the guest bathroom. That's when he spilled the chocolate."
"So...he...was eating chocolate in bed?"
"Yes. You see when he threw back the covers, there was an empty box of chocolate Ex-Lax laying there along with dozens of Hershey Kisses wrappers. He must have been gorging himself all evening. It's when he started running that he spilled the chocolate onto our carpet."
"...he...spilled...the...."
"Yes. He started squirting chocolate out of his butt like a garden hose. The faster he ran, the harder he squirted. He made it into the bathroom, but only after redecorating our hallway somewhat. My husband was able to get most of it off the walls, but we're quite worried about the carpet. Hello.....?"
"I'm still here. Sigh...how's Friday morning around 9:30am?"
____________________________________________________________
I love my job.
Blech!!
I feel like crap. Utter crap. The reason is unclear but I'm sure that it is one of the following:
- Far too much caffiene.
- Nothing to eat for the last 6 hours.
- Sleep deprivation.
- Middle age.
- Pre-armageddon jitters.
Soft, soft, soft.
In my 47 years, my hands (especially my right one) have touched many soft things. Baby Klipspringers, the velvet curtains at the Fox Theatre, the downy soft neck hairs of certain women...all of these have brought me great pleasure. But nothing compares to the ever pleasant softness of dryer lint. I find it one of life's simple pleasures to carefully remove the dryer vent, which in my case is comprised of two lint screens on one tray (Yay! Bonus lint!), and retrieve the fuzzmuffin.
Ah, but while all dryer lint provides a measure of tactile tingle, there is one particular lint that can bring me to my knees. After a couple loads of jeans, there will be awaiting me two blue squares of lint peppered with the odd-colored pieces of fuzz from whatever other t-shirt or polo that may have made the trip with the pants. These are enjoyable, but are hardly worth raving about.
But when it's towel time, all bets are off. How these rectangles of fabric continue to provide me with sheet after sheet of hairy joy, I'll never know. I sit on the edge of the stairs each and everytime I load my towels and washcloths into the dryer. Yes, I know that my actions are serving a very important domestic service, but that's an afterthought. It's the lint. Only the lint.
"BUZZZZZZ!!"
I'm off and running. You see, unlike shirts and such, you can allow towels to remain in the dryer once their toasty rotation stops. They're perfectly happy to just lay there worried not about wrinkling. This allows you to focus all of your attention on the trap. The key to this situation is to act without haste. Doing so provides you with a special treat, warm lint. Do you need any further proof that there's a God?
You hold it in your hand, fighting back the tears of joy. Look at it. It's square. It's clean. It's soft. It's fragrant (if you use dryer sheets). And yes, it's warm. But alas, like most things in this passing world, the joy is fleeting. Within seconds, you begin to feel the warmth fade away. Granted, the softness remains, but your psyche is scarred and for good. Into the trash bin it goes. Thank goodness tonight's bath night.
________
Ah, but while all dryer lint provides a measure of tactile tingle, there is one particular lint that can bring me to my knees. After a couple loads of jeans, there will be awaiting me two blue squares of lint peppered with the odd-colored pieces of fuzz from whatever other t-shirt or polo that may have made the trip with the pants. These are enjoyable, but are hardly worth raving about.
But when it's towel time, all bets are off. How these rectangles of fabric continue to provide me with sheet after sheet of hairy joy, I'll never know. I sit on the edge of the stairs each and everytime I load my towels and washcloths into the dryer. Yes, I know that my actions are serving a very important domestic service, but that's an afterthought. It's the lint. Only the lint.
"BUZZZZZZ!!"
I'm off and running. You see, unlike shirts and such, you can allow towels to remain in the dryer once their toasty rotation stops. They're perfectly happy to just lay there worried not about wrinkling. This allows you to focus all of your attention on the trap. The key to this situation is to act without haste. Doing so provides you with a special treat, warm lint. Do you need any further proof that there's a God?
You hold it in your hand, fighting back the tears of joy. Look at it. It's square. It's clean. It's soft. It's fragrant (if you use dryer sheets). And yes, it's warm. But alas, like most things in this passing world, the joy is fleeting. Within seconds, you begin to feel the warmth fade away. Granted, the softness remains, but your psyche is scarred and for good. Into the trash bin it goes. Thank goodness tonight's bath night.
________
For your viewing pleasure, a photo of a cat.
Dear God, These Blogs Can Be Pretentious.
Wow. I just returned from visiting some of my neighbors and boy, let me tell you, some of them people really must think a lot of themselves. I mean, spewing your guts is one thing but doing so in Shakespearian prose borders on disturbing. All I know is if any of these people speak the way they write, I'll wager they have a lot of mirrors hanging in their house.
Monosylabics unite!
Monosylabics unite!
It Pays To Change Your Perspective.
Let this be a lesson to you. Change your perspective and things will look a lot better.
In Praise Of Amy.
Meet Amy Sedaris.
Amy is someone that, if you haven't done so by now, you should really make an honest effort to watch out for. When I say "watch out for", I don't mean in the sense that she is dangerous and unstable and should be avoided at all cost (despite what the above pictures might imply). No, I mean that she is a person of indescriable talent and humor and would enhance your life with joy heretofore undiscovered. In short, she is hilarious.
Some of you may have first been introduced to Amy via her character, Jerri Blank on the short-lived TV show, Strangers With Candy. Or maybe you have seen her in one of her appearances on David Letterman's show or being interviewed by Conan O'Brien. If this is the case, then you've witnessed her hyper-manic style which is offset by her inate sexiness. Quite a combination if I may say so.
Dear Amy is on my short-list of "people to meet" and if possible, sit down to a cup of coffee with. Yes, that would be quite nice. Maybe she would bring me one of her delicious homemade cupcakes. I like cupcakes.
Next week: My love and admiration for her brother, David Sedaris.
A special day.
Today, January 27th, is a very special day for me. You see, it was 38 years ago today that I, as a young boy of 9 years old, was walking through the train station in Denver, Colorado. Even at that early age, I was somewhat of a loner. As such, I was by myself when, what would turn out to be a monumental event took place.
I had just stepped off the westbound Santa Fe. My younger sister and I had been staying with my Aunt Rosetta back in St.Louis for a couple of weeks while my mom was out in Los Angeles setting up the newest in a long string of rental homes that we would inhabit throughout the course of my childhood. She had wired my Aunt telling her to chaperone my sister and I on out to L.A. via the next available train. Rosetta jumped at the chance. Not only would the trip afford her a chance to see her sister again, but it provided a well-deserve respite from her drunk of a husband who was known to us kids as "Bottle Bob". Rosetta always had unexplained bruises on her chunky body which were always written off as "kitchen accidents".As I walked around the echoing train station, I paid a much needed visit to the restroom. To this day, I recall the sharp acoustics of the granite walls and what looked like marble floors. Sounds bounced around inside the station like ricocheting bullets. One could sit still and hear babies crying and shoes squeeking from 200 feet away. It made you feel like you had super-powers.
Notable too was the high-gloss finish to the marble floors. It was not unlike walking on water as the reflections of the windows and the passing foot traffic reflected back up into your vision. It was this hypnotic illusion that captured my attention as I walked towards the men's room. I dared myself to navigate my way from the train platform to the bathroom using only the floor's reflection as my guide. Looking up would mean that I was weak and would, in my mind, only postpone my entrance into manhood. I always pushed myself with such tortuous mental exercises thinking that each victory, no matter how small, would steel my personality into the manly man I had always envisioned my nomadic father to be.
As I neared the restroom, eyes still locked to the cold stone floor, all I noticed at first were the feet. It was hard to focus on the angled reflection of the greenish glow of the neon letters that spelled out MEN above the open doorway to the bathroom. This was my beacon and my periphery strained to shut out the scores of rapidly moving feet of people heading here and there.
I walked forward in a somewhat determined manner, fighting both the urge to look up at the light to verify my sense of direction and the growing desire to pee my pants. "Be a man...you can do this.", I said over and over as if each step would cause a chest hair to sprout unexpectedly. I neared the door and this I knew by the sight of men's feet walking quickly ahead of me. Like me, they were answering nature's call but unlike me, they were doing so in a normal, more orthodox manner.
And then I saw it.
Laying on the floor not 2 feet in front of me was what I thought to be a twenty dollar bill. It just sat there, quietly minding it's own business and the hurried train passengers darted in and around it. Granted, there was quite a bit of rubbish scattered here and there on the station floor. Hot dog wrappers, torn tickets, crumpled cigarette packs and more could be seen everywhere. There they'd wait for the janitor's 10:00pm push broom. But this was money! It's familiar green color stood out from the surrounding trash and contrasted nicely with the pinkish hue of the floor.
Trying to be as composed as a 9 year old can, I nonchalantly slid my left foot over the bill and stood there. Thinking quickly, I raised my left wrist into my field of vision and checked my watch for the time. Clicking my tongue in mock disgust, I shook my head as if I had suddenly realized that I was late for yet another business meeting. In retrospect, I realize how ludicrous this must have looked. For one thing, I didn't have a business meeting to attend, but I also didn't have a watch. But the plan was draw attention away from my feet and in my mind, it worked.
I bent down and retrieved the folded bill from under my foot. In one smooth motion, I palmed it and slid it into my pants pocket. I entered the men's room.
...to be continued.
Still alive.
Yes, after my terrible dirigible accident and months of re-constructive surgery, I am indeed still alive. Thank you for all the cards and dirty socks.
