Joe Levi: All that 'blog are not lost...

Recently Completed Projects

2006-06-16T10:20:00.000-06:00

I like to highlight some of the projects that I've recently completed, partly to serve as somewaht of a real-time portfolio and partly to help the subsequent pages with search engine relevance (cross-linking "magic"). So, without further delay, here are some of my recently completed projects:

Diet Cola + Mentos = Amazing!!

2006-06-12T19:16:00.000-06:00

Every wondered what would happen if you popped a Mento into your mouth then took a swig of diet cola? Don't try it! Here's what could happen! And here's what could happen with 101 2-liter bottles, over 500 Mentos, and WAY too much time on their hands!

Stealth Ring Tone

2006-06-12T15:32:00.000-06:00

You’ve heard about the new “stealth ring tone” that the kiddies are using on their cell phones to get calls and text messages without their teachers hearing it?

With a modern enough cell phone, the ring tone is so high-pitched that “grown up” ears supposedly can’t hear it. The older our ears get, the more loss of hearing we have in the upper- and lower-most segments of the audible spectrum.

Here’s the tone [20060610_RINGTONE.mp3], can you hear it?

The Great Immigration Debate

2006-06-07T17:30:00.000-06:00

Via forgetfoo.com... I enjoy a good satire, and sometimes the funniest (and most pointed) satirical comedy is in the form of Political Satire. For those of you who haven't had your morning caffine yet, Political Satire usually is in the form of cartoons in the Sunday paper on the op/ed page; they quickly illustrate the adsurdity and/or hypocracy of a point, but do so in a very funny manner... You read, you laugh, you stop and think "hey, that's the way it really is! That's not funny at all!" With that in mind, here's a political satire that illustrates the Great Immigration Debate... no, not the one that's ongoing presently, the one from 1621. Watch, enjoy...

What's the worst that could happen?

Hammer Control

2006-05-22T07:23:00.000-06:00

According to a KSL News Report a Massachusetts man is in police custody accused of beating his son and wife to death with a hammer. It's examples like this that make me weep! Why would a man in such an emotional state have access to a hammer? Studies have shown that homes with a hammer present are MUCH more likely to have "hammer related injuries" (including deaths) than homes without hammers! How many children must be injured or killed before we call for tighter hammer control? I suggest we impose MANDATORY background checks and a 3-day "cooling off" period before anyone can purchase a hammer. From what I understand, this was a relatively heavy hammer, what should be dubbed an "assault hammer." Why would anyone need anything more than a rubber mallet? Only construction professionals should be allowed to purchase and use assault hammers, and even then they should be registered and kept locked in a padded case whenever not in use. Additionally, a national "hammer impact database" should be kept of the unique "impact finger-print" that each hammer makes so that we can track each hammer to its owner. Only through tighter hammer control measures such as these can we prevent greusome events like this one!!

"Modern Y.M.C.A." or "The Ruin of a Perfectly good Song"?

2006-05-19T18:32:00.000-06:00

I really dig Haiducci's version of Dragostea Din Tei, and even the O-Zone version (O-Zone is a Bulgarian Boy Band) isn't half bad... Even the "Numa Numa Kid" version isn't bad... but this?! Okay, it's in Spanish, that's cool... but, well... see for yourself.

Plan to Destory America

2006-05-19T07:01:00.000-06:00

I HAVE A PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA
RICHARD D. LAMM

I HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. IF YOU BELIEVE, AS MANY DO, THAT AMERICA IS TOO SMUG, TOO WHITE BREAD, TOO SELF-SATISFIED, TOO RICH, LETS DESTROY AMERICA. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO DO. HISTORY SHOWS THAT NATIONS ARE MORE FRAGILE THAN THEIR CITIZENS THINK. NO NATION IN HISTORY HAS SURVIVED THE RAVAGES OF TIME. ARNOLD TOYNBEE OBSERVED THAT ALL GREAT CIVILIZATIONS RISE AND THEY ALL FALL, AND THAT "AN AUTOPSY OF HISTORY WOULD SHOW THAT ALL GREAT NATIONS COMMIT SUICIDE." HERE IS MY PLAN:

I. WE MUST FIRST MAKE AMERICA A BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL COUNTRY. HISTORY SHOWS, IN MY OPINION, THAT NO NATION CAN SURVIVE THE TENSION, CONFLICT, AND ANTAGONISM OF TWO COMPETING LANGUAGES AND CULTURES. IT IS A BLESSING FOR AN INDIVIDUAL TO BE BILINGUAL; IT IS A CURSE FOR A SOCIETY TO BE BILINGUAL. ONE SCHOLAR, SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET, PUT IT THIS WAY:

THE HISTORIES OF BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL SOCIETIES THAT DO NOT ASSIMILATE ARE HISTORIES OF TURMOIL, TENSION, AND TRAGEDY. CANADA, BELGIUM, MALAYSIA, LEBANON-ALL FACE CRISES OF NATIONAL EXISTENCE IN WHICH MINORITIES PRESS FOR AUTONOMY, IF NOT INDEPENDENCE. PAKISTAN AND CYPRUS HAVE DIVIDED. NIGERIA SUPPRESSED AN ETHNIC REBELLION. FRANCE FACES DIFFICULTIES WITH ITS BASQUES, BRETONS, AND CORSICANS.

II. I WOULD THEN INVENT "MULTICULTURALISM" AND ENCOURAGE IMMIGRANTS TO MAINTAIN THEIR OWN CULTURE. I WOULD MAKE IT AN ARTICLE OF BELIEF THAT ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL: THAT THERE ARE NO CULTURAL DIFFERENCES THAT ARE IMPORTANT. I WOULD DECLARE IT AN ARTICLE OF FAITH THAT THE BLACK AND HISPANIC DROPOUT RATE IS ONLY DUE TO PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION BY THE MAJORITY. EVERY OTHER EXPLANATION IS OUT-OF-BOUNDS.

III. WE CAN MAKE THE UNITED STATES A "HISPANIC QUEBEC" WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT. THE KEY IS TO CELEBRATE DIVERSITY RATHER THAN UNITY. AS BENJAMIN SCHWARZ SAID IN THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY RECENTLY:

...THE APPARENT SUCCESS OF OUR OWN MULTIETHNIC AND MULTICULTURAL EXPERIMENT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ACHIEVED NOT BY TOLERANCE BUT BY HEGEMONY. WITHOUT THE DOMINANCE THAT ONCE DICTATED ETHNOCENTRICALLY, AND WHAT IT MEANT TO BE AN AMERICAN, WE ARE LEFT WITH ONLY TOLERANCE AND PLURALISM TO HOLD US TOGETHER.

I WOULD ENCOURAGE ALL IMMIGRANTS TO KEEP THEIR OWN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. I WOULD REPLACE THE MELTING POT METAPHOR WITH A SALAD BOWL METAPHOR. IT IS IMPORTANT TO INSURE THAT WE HAVE VARIOUS CULTURAL SUB-GROUPS LIVING IN AMERICA REINFORCING THEIR DIFFERENCES RATHER THAN AMERICANS, EMPHASIZING THEIR SIMILARITIES.

IV. HAVING DONE ALL THIS, I WOULD MAKE OUR FASTEST GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP THE LEAST EDUCATED - I WOULD ADD A SECOND UNDERCLASS, UNASSIMILATED, UNDEREDUCATED, AND ANTAGONISTIC TO OUR POPULATION. I WOULD HAVE THIS SECOND UNDERCLASS HAVE A 50% DROP OUT RATE FROM SCHOOL.

V. I WOULD THEN GET THE BIG FOUNDATIONS AND BIG BUSINESS TO GIVE THESE EFFORTS LOTS OF MONEY. I WOULD INVEST IN ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND I WOULD ESTABLISH THE CULT OF VICTIMOLOGY. I WOULD GET ALL MINORITIES TO THINK THEIR LACK OF SUCCESS WAS ALL THE FAULT OF THE MAJORITY - I WOULD START A GRIEVANCE INDUSTRY BLAMING ALL MINORITY FAILURE ON THE MAJORITY POPULATION.

VI. I WOULD ESTABLISH DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND PROMOTE DIVIDED LOYALTIES. I WOULD "CELEBRATE DIVERSITY." "DIVERSITY" IS A WONDERFULLY SEDUCTIVE WORD. IT STRESSES DIFFERENCES RATHER THAN COMMONALITIES. DIVERSE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE MOSTLY ENGAGED IN HATING EACH OTHER-THAT IS, WHEN THEY ARE NOT KILLING EACH OTHER. A DIVERSE," PEACEFUL, OR STABLE SOCIETY IS AGAINST MOST HISTORICAL PRECEDENT. PEOPLE UNDERVALUE THE UNITY IT TAKES TO KEEP A NATION TOGETHER, AND WE CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS MYOPIA. LOOK AT THE ANCIENT GREEKS. DORF'S WORLD HISTORY TELLS US:

THE GREEKS BELIEVED THAT THEY BELONGED TO THE SAME RACE; THEY POSSESSED A COMMON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE; AND THEY WORSHIPED THE SAME GODS. ALL GREECE TOOK PART IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES IN HONOR OF ZEUS AND ALL GREEKS VENERATED THE SHRINE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI. A COMMON ENEMY PERSIA THREATENED THEIR LIBERTY. YET, ALL OF THESE BONDS TOGETHER WERE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO OVERCOME TWO FACTORS . . . (LOCAL PATRIOTISM AND GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS THAT NURTURED POLITICAL DIVISIONS . . .)

IF WE CAN PUT THE EMPHASIS ON THE "PLURIBUS," INSTEAD OF THE "UNUM," WE CAN BALKANIZE AMERICA AS SURELY AS KOSOVO.

VII. THEN I WOULD PLACE ALL THESE SUBJECTS OFF LIMITS - MAKE IT TABOO TO TALK ABOUT. I WOULD FIND A WORD SIMILAR TO "HERETIC" IN THE 16TH CENTURY - THAT STOPPED DISCUSSION AND PARALYZED THINKING. WORDS LIKE "RACIST", "XENOPHOBE" THAT HALTS ARGUMENT AND CONVERSATION.

HAVING MADE AMERICA A BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL COUNTRY, HAVING ESTABLISHED MULTICULTURALISM, HAVING THE LARGE FOUNDATIONS FUND THE DOCTRINE OF "VICTIMOLOGY", I WOULD NEXT MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ENFORCE OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS. I WOULD DEVELOP A MANTRA - "THAT BECAUSE IMMIGRATION HAS BEEN GOOD FOR AMERICA, IT MUST ALWAYS BE GOOD." I WOULD MAKE EVERY INDIVIDUAL IMMIGRANT SYMPATRIC AND IGNORE THE CUMULATIVE IMPACT.

VIII. LASTLY, I WOULD CENSOR VICTOR [DAVIS HANSON'S] BOOK MEXIFORNIA — THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUS — IT EXPOSES MY PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. SO PLEASE, PLEASE — IF YOU FEEL THAT AMERICA DESERVES TO BE DESTROYED — PLEASE, PLEASE — DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! THIS GUY IS ON TO MY PLAN.

"THE SMART WAY TO KEEP PEOPLE PASSIVE AND OBEDIENT IS TO STRICTLY LIMIT THE SPECTRUM OF ACCEPTABLE OPINION, BUT ALLOW VERY LIVELY DEBATE WITHIN THAT SPECTRUM." — NOAM CHOMSKY, AMERICAN LINGUIST AND US MEDIA AND FOREIGN POLICY CRITIC.

CyberTerrorism Drives Security Firm Out of Business

2006-05-17T08:00:00.000-06:00

Via NeoWin.net... We all hate Spam. One man hated spam so much that he started a company (Blue Security) to fight it. The manner in which he did it was brilliantly simple: simply ask the spammers to stop spamming his clients. Okay, so it's not quite that simple. Since those requests usually go unheeded (or even unread) he took a novel approach, instead of the having only client being spammed ask not to be spammed anymore, he had all of his clients ask that spammer not to be spammed... at the same time... all 522,000 of them. This slowed down the spammer's internet access and servers so much that it served as a DoS attack against them, preventing them from spending further spam. Consider this the internet equivalent of "fighting fire with fire." Funny thing: it actually worked. Spammers sat up and took notice and some even complied with the requests to stop spamming the clients. Then the bad news: a spammer fought back, launching a huge DDos attack against this guy and his little Silicon Valley company. Using tens of thousands of hijacked computers, the spammer flooded him with so much internet traffic that it blocked legitimate visitors from going to even going to the site. It gets worse -- the spammer then sent an ominous message: cease all operations or Blue Security customers will soon find themselves targeted with virus-filled attacks. With this attack and threat, that (in my opinion) elevated this spammer from a nuisance to a Cyber Terrorist effecting interstate commerce. The really bad news: the retaliation worked too -- Blue Security today waved a virtual white flag and surrendered; the company shut down. This sends the wrong message to cyber criminals: if your threat is big enough, and you appear to have the tools to make good on it (like a zombie bot-net at your disposal) -- you win. What we should probably do is something more dramatic: have security firms (such Blue Security, Norton, etc.) from a covert joint strike force -- a crack commando unit surving as soldiers of fortune, as it were -- to "apprehend" and "detain" these cyber-terrorists and "pursuade" them to cease and desist their criminal activities. After all, we have a problem, no one else can help, and if we can find them, maybe they can hire... The A-Team!

Modern Propaganda

2006-05-17T06:59:00.000-06:00

Those of you who know me know that I'm not the most politically correct person in the world... Looks like I'm not alone, and here are a few of the t-shirts, mouse-pads, pens, buttons, ribbons, and bumper stickers to prove it:

HUMOR: A New Hope -- Star Wars Kid style

2006-05-15T18:20:00.000-06:00

When it rains...

2006-05-15T17:15:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was Mother's Day.

The day before Natalie (my wife) had another encounter with a hard object hurled at her face by Porter (23 months), striking her in the nose.
Natalie is the primary music leader had another spat with the primary president -- both during primary and again after church at our home.
While having Sunday dinner at my parent's house Michael (6) was rough-housing with Natalie, grabbed her nose, and caused a nose bleed.
At bedtime that night I was juggling Jessica (5) finishing her cereal, Porter (just being generally crazy), and Michael who needed his pills. In the confusion Porter ended up taking Michael's anxiety medication. So, after a call to poison control, I rushed him to the emergency room and spent the night in Pediatrics with Porter hooked up to the heart monitor. Luckily, Porter is fine. I only missed a few hours of work, which I can make up later this week.
Natalie went to the doctor about her nose: it's broken. She's scheduling a "procedure" with a plastic surgeon for later this week.

I'm not complaining. We really are blessed and have so many things to be thankful for. And even with everything that's happened in the last 48 hours, it's funny (literally funny) to observe that when it rains, sometimes it really pours.

Dell Shanze Pleads Guilty

2006-05-10T15:00:00.000-06:00

Dell Shanze today pled guilty to a reduced charge of "speeding" (down from the original charge of wreckless driving), according to KSL [video].

Totally Awesome Computers: Out of Business

2006-05-09T07:23:00.000-06:00

UPDATED: 09 May 2006 Dell Schanze appeared in court yesterday for a pre-trial hearing. Jury selection for his expected 3-day trial begins today at 8:30 mountain time. [Video] Although he was his usual over-zealous self, he did make a few good points regarding the charges against him, and I've added a few of my own.

If he is convicted for drawing a firearm for self-defense when confronted by three angry men (one of whom was weilding a weapon), two messages are being sent: (1) it's okay to assault someone with a rock, and (2) it's not okay to defend oneself. This is contrary to current Utah Law. This charge should be dropped with predjudice, either that or the State of Utah is discouraging people from being law-abiding citizens and to take the law into their own hands.
The charge of making a false statement is due to differences in definitions: Alledgedly Dell stated he did not brandish a firearm during the altercation. According to Webster.com, brandish is defined as (1) to shake or wave (as a weapon) menacingly, or (2) to exhibit in an ostentatious or aggressive manner. Dell did neither of these, he reportedly drew his sidearm and held it by his leg. The legal definition of brandishing is "to display in a threatening manner," which this display was not. This charge should be dropped with predjudice.
The last charge, wreckless driving, should be no problem to prove with witness statements and Dell's driving record. His license to drive in the State of Utah should be revoked.

UPDATED: 18 April 2006 with a comment from Dell Schanze from and my reply (bottom of article).

I worked for Totally Awesome Computers for four years, from September 2001 to October 2005. I should preface this article with the statement that, although I don't agree with many of Dell Schanze's personal and business practices, that I respect him as an individual and am sorry to see his stores out of business. I don't want to "air dirty laundry" or offend anyone, simply to tell the story illustrating a chain of events and a corporate culture that led to the eventual (and perhaps inevitable) collapse of the company.

Why did Totally Awesome Computers shut it's doors? Personally, I feel the root cause was due to arrogance and shortsightedness. From a business perspective, I would deduce that the company simply was no longer pulling a profit. Things that led to the closure:

Pending Litigation

Carlton May discrimination lawsuit [originally $1.2M, settled for a rumored $250,000; not including personal legal expenses]
Sherrie Young sexual harrasment lawsuit [dismissed]
Carlton May breach of contract & defamation lawsuit [$1.2M, dropped]
Wreckless driving (class B Misdemeanor), Brandishing a firearm during a fight (class A Misdemeanor), Making a false statement (class B Misdemeanor) [pending trial]

Negative BBB Rating

A negative rating with the BBB
Refusal to work with the Better Business Bureau to resolve customer complaints
[ BBB | VAR Magazine Article | Salt Lake Magazine ]

Resignation of Top Management

District Managers
COO (and former CEO)

Questionable Business Practices

CC'ing private emails to the entire company to "make a point"
Cutting employee's pay by $2-3/hour
Expecting employees to work off the clock
Expecting employees to attend meetings and provide transportation without compensation to "optional" mandatory meetings
Devising a plan whereby employees could work more than 40 hours per week but not get paid overtime
Personal attacks on businesses/persons who did not agree with or go along with Mr. Schanze's views

Bad Press

Mr. Schanze's reckless driving and brandishing a weapon charges (video), which cost him business in the form of reduced revenue
Wreckless Driving ("There's a good pattern there of this guy driving like a bat out of hell." Draper police Sgt. Gerry Allred
Calling the Mayor of Provo "full of baloney" and trying to bribe him and city officials (article)
A crash while flying one of his powered paragliders which resulted in his back being broken, which cost him business at Totally Awesome Flying Sports (article)
Reportedly, holes stray bullets were found in the homes behind Totally Awesome Guns and range
Alleged disparaging remarks against homosexuals in an unaired commercial (audio)
A commercial which made fun of a fictional tribe of Native Americas (article), in subsequent emails between you and the Utah Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (that you CC'd to the entire company) where you called Native Americans simple minded and adulterers (and attempted joke at the name of the Bureau of "Indian Affairs")

Poor Employee Morale

Extreme and sudden pay cuts were not uncommon
Pay cuts and extreme reactions by Mr. Shanze resulted in degraded customer service levels
Mr. Schanze wrote an email to the company in which he said he had fired two employees from his Foothill store because they were "gay, Lutheran, and of slight Romanian decent"

Loss of Key Personnel

The death Heath Briggs (purchaser)
The resignation of the majority of seasoned employees (including the head of his Reseach and Development department, COO, and district managers) within a six month period

Government Issues

Rumored "full scale" IRS Audit
Rumored payroll investigation by the US Department of Labor because of overtime practices

Where should Totally Awesome's (TAC's) customer's go now?

If you have a TAC computer at one of the TAC stores that you're waiting to pick up, check the company's website for instructions on where and when.
If you have a TAC computer that you need serviced contact

PC Laptops: (877-596-7283)
Star West Computers in North Salt Lake: (801) 936-8000
Abcan Computer Solutions: (801-790-4190)

If you're in the market for buying a new computer (or parts to upgrade your old one), if you, a friend, or a family member can build or upgrade the computer, that would probably be best. If that's out of the question, consider a Dell, HP/Compaq, or Gateway computer for "standard users." For power users, such as myself, consider AlienWare or Falcon Northwest.
If you just want to share your experiences (good, bad, or indifferent), simply reply to this article (below).

Now that I've said that, to clear things up, Totally Awesome Computers used some of the best computer parts available (in my opinion). They stood behind then with hardware and service warranties that were untouched in the industry. They charged a fair profit for their merchandise. I own two Totally Awesome computers, my in-laws also own two, my dad owns one, and my brother's family owns one. I stand behind everything that I said while I worked for that company, and I still believe in their products. It's a shame that one person could have such an effect on the future of a company with such potential and the lives and well-being of so many customers, and employees and their families.

Windows Mobile 5 Requests

2006-05-08T07:59:00.000-06:00

I just replaced my HP iPaq 4155 with an ETEN G500 Pocket PC Phone Edition (I know, that's not what they're called anymore, but it's easier to understand than Windows Mobile 5 for Gnomes and Gypsies, or whatever the real name is). There are a few things Microsoft decided to kill from version 2003 to WM 5, and a lot of things they should have fixed that they didn't. That said, here's my list:

Ability to activate Reader.
Where did Ink Support in Pocket Word go? It was there in 2003, but gone in WM5.
S.P.O.T. integration with a Today Screen component to display the content.
Make a standard mini-USB port for sync and charge part of the hardware spec; get rid of proprietary connectors.
Tie in video phone capability to built-in phone application.
Build SIP functionality into built-in phone applications (i.e., Skype could run natively in the phone app, etc.).
Standardize "Wireless" control panels so bluetooth, GSM, GPS, Radio, WiFi, etc. are all on-off-able and configurable from one standard control panel.
Make the X button really close. The reason for having it minimize before was because the programs were already in RAM (as was the OS), and "closing" them didn't accomplish anything, since they were still installed in RAM (that was the theory anyway). Now that programs are installed to persistant storage, and must be loaded into RAM, just like on a PC, the old functionality of the close button is no longer appropriate.
Build in MS Voice Command so 3rd party apps aren't needed (of course, allow voice command to be "turned off" for those that want a different voice command application).
Mandate 3G Wireless with every Phone Edition.
Where text is in focus, enable the hardware volume control to be used as a jog-dial.

To see some other people's lists, check this link: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48503

.MP3 versus .WMA

2006-05-01T19:57:00.000-06:00

I've always been an advocate of the Windows Media Audio format (.WMA). It's DRM capable (but not mandatory), it's a relatively lightweight compression algorithm (it's fast and doesn't suck up much battery life from your media player), and it sounds as good as .MP3 in half the size (so you can have twice as much audio on your player). Windows Media Audio has VBR and CBR subtypes (so you can encode at Constant Bit Rate of 64Kbps through the whole song, or Vary the Bit Rate through the song, so the more "intense" parts use up more bits per second than the "quiet" parts). WMA also has a "lossless" variety. What's the difference between "lossless" and "lossy" compression, you ask? Well, for example, most audio, video, and still image compression is "lossy," meaning, the more you compress the original, the more data you lose. That's not necessarily a bad thing until you get to VERY high compression ratios. Lossless compression is just that, it compresses the original bits down using a compression algorithm which is relatively complex, but none of the bits are lost. The downsides: file sizes are larger, and decompressing typically takes more compute cycles (which translates into lower battery life). So why would one choose lossless compression over lossy compression? For me the answer is simple. When I record my CDs to my Media Center PC, I want to be able to stream my music anywhere I am, or burn custom CDs, or put custom Playlists on a USB drive to play at work, etc., etc. I can always DOWNSAMPLE my original, lossless copy, and I'm not worried about battery life at home. The opposite is true as well, if you have a 64Kbps .MP3 and you want it to sound better (say 128, 192, or 320Kbps), the only way to do that is to re-rip the original, and who has time to find the original, re-rip, then sort out the "versioning" between the two songs ripped at different bitrates? So, along those lines I had an opportunity to re-rip my entire media collection, and I opted for .WMA Lossless. Bad idea. Yes, my collection plays fine through Orb (even when streamed to my Pocket PC Phone Edition over GPRS speeds of about 33.6Kbps). Yes, it burns to CDs just fine (CDA or HighMAT). Yes, it downsamples to a storage card MOST of the time. But, at home I also have an original XBOX with a Media Center Extender, so I can watch live and recorded TV from my Media Center PC (think TiVo without the monthly subscription), I can also listen to my entire music collection and play it back through the speakers in the living room. Well, I USED to be able to listen to my entire music collection and play it back through the speakers in the living room, right up until I re-ripped my collection using WMA Lossless. Now I can see all my music, but when I try to play anything, I'm met with an error message. Nice. I ripped another CD with .MP3 320Kbps compression, and (drumroll) it plays fine through the Media Center Extender. I ripped yet another with WMA Lossless: no go, same error. I considered Ogg Vorbis, but figured if my Microsoft Extender can't play a Microsoft file format, what use is it playing a new-comer format such as .OGG. So now I'm left with either re-ripping my entire collection, or converting my WMA Lossless files into MP3 320Kbps files. I opted for the latter. Presently I'm at 512 songs of 2,755. With failures. So, once I'm all done with the conversion, I'll have to go through the resulting log file, filter out the failures from the succeeds, then hunt down the CDs containing the failed songs, then re-rip them as .MP3 320's. When all is said and done, I'll then have to remove all the .WMA's from the nested library folderset, then wipe the profile's media library to remove the now absent WMA tracks (3 of them), then rebuild the profile's media library (3 of them) to populate with the MP3 tracks. :: sigh :: The moral to the story? Stick with the de-facto standard, even if other standards may have certain advantages, the biggest advantage is ubiquity.

24

2006-05-01T18:53:00.000-06:00

I'm an avid fan of the television series 24. Maybe too much so. Season 3 was airing, and I hadn't watched season 2 (I was introduced to the series late). I headed to my local BlockBuster Video store, and got the first disc, 4 episodes, just shy of 4 hours (not including extra features, but with the "extended scenes" turned on). My wife and I watched the first disc that night. All four hours. The next day I headed back and returned the movie, and got disc 2. Again that night we watched all four hours. Sleep deprived, the next day... well, you get the picture. This pattern continued until the last disc of the episodes: my local BlockBuster didn't have it. It was 30 minutes to closing time. I looked the manager in the eyes and said, "I have a wife at home, frantic to see how this thing is going to end. Pick up that phone and start calling every BlockBuster in the area. Use expanding concentric circles. I can't go home withou that disc!" In restrospect, I'm surprised they didn't call the police. Perhaps the manger was as into the series as we are. So, with another episode airing tonight, I thought I'd re-post this list all about Jack Bauer (edited somewhat for my audience):

Jack Bauer once beat Super Mario Bros. 3 without touching the controller. He just stared at the TV until the game beat itself.
When Jack Bauer was a child, he made his mother finish his vegetables.
If you spell Jack Bauer in a Scrabble game, you win. Forever.
Jack Bauer won the Tour de France on a unicycle to prove to Lance Armstrong it wasn't a big deal. He thinks yellow wristbands are lame.
Superman wears Jack Bauer pyjamas.
If it tastes like chicken, looks like chicken, and feels like chicken, but Jack Bauer says its beef, then it's beef.
Osama bin Laden's recent proposal for truce is a direct result of him finding out that Jack Bauer is, in fact, still alive.
Jack Bauer is the leading cause of death in Middle Eastern men.
Jack Bauer’s calendar goes from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Jack Bauer.
Jack Bauer played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.
Jack Bauer once ate an entire case of sleeping pills. He blinked, but they're not certain that it had any relation to the pills.
What color is Jack Bauer's blood? Trick question. Jack Bauer does not bleed.
Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.
You can lead a horse to water. Jack Bauer can make him drink.
Simon Says should be renamed to Jack Bauer Says because if Jack Bauer says something then you better do it.
When Google can't find something, it asks Jack Bauer for help.
When Jack Bauer watches a pot, it boils immediately.
Jack Bauer can get McDonald's breakfast after 10:30.
In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
When the boogie man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer.
Jack Bauer once killed a group of Samurai Warriors with only a ball point pen. This lead to the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword."
People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.
Jack Bauer has been to Mars. That’s why there’s no life on Mars.
Superman's only weakness is Kryptonite. Jack Bauer laughs at Superman for having a weakness.
If Jack and MacGyver were locked in a room together, Jack would make a bomb out of MacGyver and get out.
Jack Bauer once killed so many terrorists that at one point, the #5 CIA Most Wanted fugitive was an 18-year-old teenager in Malaysia who downloaded the movie Dodgeball.
Guns dont kill people, Jack Bauer kills people.
If you send someone to kill Jack Bauer, the only thing you accomplish is supplying him a fresh set of weapons to kill you with.
ESPN rated Kobe Bryant for Vlade Divac as the second worst trade in history, after Jack Bauer for Behrooz Araz.
Jack Bauer makes onions cry.
If Jack was in a room with Stalin, Hitler and Nina and had two bullets, he would shoot Nina twice.
Jack Bauer and Superman once had an arm wrestling match; the loser had to wear their underwear on the outside.

CSS Reboot Day

2006-05-01T07:46:00.000-06:00

Happy CSS Reboot Day!! What? You didn't know about CSS Reboot Day? And you call yourself as web developer! According to the site, CSS Reboot Day is:

"... a community event for web professionals. May 1st, 2006 at 18:00 GMT Rebooters from all over the world will launch their web standards-based redesigns simultaneously, bringing traffic, interest and a little respect to their sites. There are no prizes or arbitrary winners, just great exposure and the knowledge that we all participated in something great."

Unfortunately I won't have my site ready for the May 01 event, but I am working on it. My first step was finding a new web host. I'm now using www.WebHost4Life.com, they offer not only ASP.Net 2.0, but Microsoft Sharepoint Services as well; a perfect match for what I'm doing at work. My second step was ramping up my skills to include ASP.Net 2.0. Although I do have some experience with ASP.Net 1.1 and "classic" ASP, I've always been on the "upkeep" side of things. I'd never built a full ASP.Net site from scratch. With my new job, I've built a couple (www.PerformanceDesign.com, www.MyLifePlay.com to name a few), but these have been ASP.Net 1.1 sites due to hosting restrictions and pre-existing web application constraints. I really want to dig into ASP.Net 2.0. My third step, and for me the most challenging, has been to redesign my site, but not like any normal redesign I've ever done before. Although this redesign will bring with it a new look-and-feel, it is more a structural redesign than anything. You see, with this version I will effectively be separating my content (XHTML) from my layout (CSS). That, after all, is the purest objective of XHTML and CSS; and I, after all, am a purist (much pun intended). So, I'm not going to say "stay tuned for the next version of the site" because, honestly, I don't know when I'll have it done. But I did want to put in a plug for the big CSS Reboot! While you're at it, take a look at some of these other CSS-centric websites:

And, if you have any sites like these, or want to recommend a good looking CSS-based site, please post!! I'm a sucker for good design.

HUMOR: Who's the Jedi on First Base?

2006-04-26T19:55:00.000-06:00

VIDEO: Texas Chainsaw Commercial

2006-04-25T07:44:00.000-06:00

HUMOR: Star Wars Kid Cameo

2006-04-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

What if the now infamous Star Wars Kid had had a cameo appearance in Episode IV: A New Hope?

TRAILER: Titanic 2 - Back to the Surface

2006-04-14T18:55:00.000-06:00

Of all the movies that could have a sequel, how could Titanic? After all, everybody died and the ship sank. This trailer proves different... coming this summer: TITANIC 2

The Broadband Divide

2006-04-12T07:32:00.000-06:00

Although I haven't tried GoogleTalk, l I have used MSN Messenger's similar feature, and Skype's proprietary VoIP. That said and as cool as it is, other than just talking between ourselves, no "computer based" voice solution passed the "wife test." Vonage, on the otherhand, provides a "magic box" that you plug into a broadband internet connection (like my Comcast Cable Internet), the other end then plugs into a phonejack in your house. Provided that you've unplugged the Qwest POTS (plain old telephony system) line from their box on the outside of your house, now ANY phone in the house can access your new VoIP line through the Vonage service. The service can operate (theoretically) on as little as 32Kbps, but I wouldn't try it on anything less than 128Kbps, and 384Kbps is even better. It's no so much that you HAVE to have the extra bandwidth for the telephony, rather, if you have a computer or two hooked up, one getting updates to the TV listings and streaming your Orb content, and the other one snagging email and hosting "Nick Jr." for the kids, your bandwidth gets gobbled fast. This can causes pops and garbles in your telephone call. Skype and GoogleTalk (AFAIK) both use proprietary (read: super-special, non-standard) codecs to accomplish their VoIP over non-broadband, aka dialup. This is a double-edged sword. Yes, it's cool in that you can have better-than-telephone conversations over the internet, but it's not an open-standard so intercommunication with other services and devices is limited. That's always struck me as odd: Why doesn't Vonage use "more advanced" codecs? They're using the old ones from years back. Sure, that's fine and dandy, but (presently) if you make a call from your Vonage line to another Vonage line, you're going directly over the internet, no standard phone lines needed (similar to Skype/GoogleTalk). If you call from your Vonage line to a "land line" (non-VoIP) then you're calling from your Vonage box to a Vonage box close to the call's destination, which then hands the call off to the local telco for the "last mile" and enables your high-tech phone to talk to the gazillions of Plain Old Telephone subscribers out there. So, in both cases you're going Vonage to Vonage, and cound, theoretically, use some of the newer (and even the proprietary) codecs out there to compress the call even more and free up bandwidth (not just their subscriber's bandwidth, but their own across the backbone as well). In any event, I look forward to the day when I can "ink" an instant message to my friend via ANY IM client, and he/she can respond with typed or spoken words. Someday, perhaps, the technology will improve such that I won't have to know what medium they are using, if I'm calling from my cell phone and they have a web-connected PDA and can't talk back right away, my voice could be converted to IM text, and their IM text reply converted into spoken works on my end. Someday... Postback: http://www.dnsgardner.com/mindofdarbus/?p=254

VIDEO: Dumping your Girlfriend

2006-04-11T21:56:00.000-06:00

There are less painful ways to dump your girlfriend.

MUSIC VIDEO: Tribute

2006-04-09T09:29:00.000-06:00

Here's one of my favorite music videos of all time. For my more sensitive viewers, this one would have an "Explicit Lyrics" tag on the jewel case.

TENACIOUS D LYRICS "Tribute" [Spoken] This is the greatest and best song in the world... Tribute. Long time ago me and my brother Kyle here, we was hitchhikin' down a long and lonesome road. All of a sudden, there shined a shiny demon... in the middle... of the road. And he said: [Sung] "Play the best song in the world, or I'll eat your soul." (soul) [Spoken] Well me and Kyle, we looked at each other, and we each said... "Okay." [Sung] And we played the first thing that came to our heads, Just so happened to be, The Best Song in the World, it was The Best Song in the World. Look into my eyes and it's easy to see One and one make two, two and one make three, It was destiny. Once every hundred-thousand years or so, When the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow And the grass doth grow... Needless to say, the beast was stunned. Whip-crack went his Whoopy tail, And the beast was done. He asked us: "(snort) Be you angels?" And we said, "Nay. We are but men." Rock! Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh-ah-ah, Ohhh, whoah, ah-whoah-oh! This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no. This is just a tribute. Couldn't remember The Greatest Song in the World, no, no. This is a tribute, oh, to The Greatest Song in the World, All right! It was The Greatest Song in the World, All right! It was the best muthaf@#%$n' song the greatest song in the world. [2-part skat] [Spoken] And the peculiar thing is this my friends: the song we sang on that fateful night it didn't actually sound anything like this song. [Sung] This is just a tribute! You gotta believe me! And I wish you were there! Just a matter of opinion. Ah, f*&k! Good God, God lovin', So surprised to find you can't stop it. [Skat] All right! All right!

VIDEO: PIT Maneuver

2006-04-08T10:57:00.000-06:00

Whenever an alleged perpitrator runs from police there's always a risk to innocent bystanders. To truncate high-speed chases police have devised what's called the PIT Maneuver — short for Precision Immobilization Technique. This maneuver places the front of the police cuizer at the rear and to either side of the suspect's vehicle. The officer then nudges his cruiser into the other vehicle which causes it to spin out, usually 180°, facing the oncoming police cruizer. I've seen plenty of these on tv, but I've never seen the running vehicle recover. Not a single time. That's what makes this clip from Oklahoma so completely incredible.

VIDEO, HUMOR: Numa Numa Kid

2006-04-07T18:17:00.000-06:00

This is an "oldie but a goodie." This (poor quality) video clip was my first introduction to Haiducci's Dragostea Din Tei (that's the artist and the song for those of you unfamiliar with her work).

Just a forewarning: She's European, and you know how those crazy Euorpeans like to dress scantily for their pictures, so although there's no nudity in her video or website, the images could be considered "provocative" by some.

The "parody video" is hilarious, and, as with most internet humor, it's gone though all kinds of mutations and iterations, but this (as far as I can tell) is the original. Enjoy!

Streaming Your Music Collection -- ANYWHERE

2006-04-07T07:21:00.000-06:00

I've been debating how to take my music with me for some time now. I thought abhout getting an .MP3 player, but then I'd be carrying around 3 electronic devices on my body all the time — a cell phone, a Pocket PC, and an .MP3 player. Two is just too much already! Ack! Then I stepped back and thought: why get a portable music player when I already have a Pocket PC? In the tests that I've done, playing music (with the screen turned off) for several hours, only drops the battery by 15% or so. That's not bad at all. But storage then becomes the issue. I could get a 4GB SD card (yes, they make them), but the cost for the card alone is greater than the cost of a similarly sized .MP3 player, and my Pocket PC probably won't read a 4GB card. So I purchased a 2GB mini-SD card (with SD adaptor), my Pocket PC is so old that it can't read 2GB either, so now I've got a mini-SD card that I plug into an SD adaptor that I plug into a thumb-sized USB SD card reader, and I have an ackward big thumb drive — but that's another entry. That's okay, my 512MB card works just fine, but it holds a relatively few number of songs. I encode all my music with (un-DRM'd) Windows Media Audio Lossless at about 600Kbps, that's a substantially larger file than a 128Kbps .MP3, and I can't tell the difference in most cases, but I'm a big fan of down-sampling. I know that with a larger file (with greater detail) that I can always make that smaller — but you can't go the other way. So since my media collection is effectively the Fair Use archive of my CD collection I want the archive to be as representative of the original as possible. Sorry, that's fodder for another post. Back to "music in my pocket"... So, to put music on my Pocket PC I've typically followed these steps.

Pulled the SD card from my Pocket PC,
Popped it into my USB 2.0 card reader,
Launched Windows Media Player 10,
Loaded up (or hurridly created a playlist),
Then syncronized that playlist with the SD card (which auto-magically re-encoded at a lower bit-rate then copied the smaller file to the card).

Needless to say, it's not a speedy process, and I can't fit more than 40 or 50 songs on the card (it holds other programs and documents as well). What to do, what to do? So let's try and combine all three devices into one, shall we?

Let's get a Pocket PC phone edition (that way we get rid of the cell phone),
It's (by definition) a Pocket PC, okay, there's two devices in one
The new Pocket PCs can read the larger cards, so now I'll be able to use my 2GB mini-SD card

That will give me quite a few more songs, but still, I've got over 50GB of music at home (I know, I know, some of you are laughing at the pitiful inadequacy of my scanty collection, the other three of my readers are saying "Gigabytes? Isn't that from the Flux Capacitor? 1.21 Gigabytes?"). Granted, with compression I could fit all this on a 40GB iPod or other device with a similar capacity. But that's another device to carry and babysit (charge up, protect, yadda yadda). I've got a Media Center Extender for our XBOX at home, so I can play all my music through our home network via our XBOX on the "big speakers." And there are other devices that accomplish the same thing, some through 802.11a/b/g wireless. Why not extend the reach of my music OUTSIDE my home network and allow me access anywhere that I have access to the internet? Why not be able to dectect the connection speed of a device connected wirelessly to the internet, say via a cell-phone through GPRS/EDGE/EV-DO, etc. and then stream the downsampled music to that device? That's exactly what orb does. Orb is a (presently free) service that contains a "media server" that you (very easily) install on the computer that you've got your music on, then you simply log in to your Orb.com account via any internet connected, web enabled device that can play .asx files (Windows Media Player, Pocket PCs, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and even Windows Mobile SmartPhones). With this servic I could play any song or playlist in my collection! Although I do not have a Pocket PC Phone Edition (I'm saving my pennies) or an unlimited data plan for my cellphone (which will run about $20/month), I'm enjoying listening to my home music while I'm at work. Very cool! Oh, and you can also stream all your videos and recorded TV shows, too. ;)

Star Trek 2.0

2006-04-07T06:15:00.000-06:00

Apparently G4 TV (formerly TechTV) is running a stop-animation pseudo-spoof on Star Trek: The Original Series. As sacreligious as this might sound, seeing Spock dance and karaokee to "My Perogative" was just too funny to pass up!

NEW SITE: www.myLifePlay.com

2006-03-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

As most of you already know, I'm a web developer. Web developers are the people responsible for implimenting the designs of web designers, and hooking them to their "back-ends" (databases, servers, etc.). Earlier this week I launched www.myLifePlay.com, the latest site to be added to my portfolio. myLifePlay, a Performance Design brand, contracts the expertise of personnel and availability of raw materials from my employer: Lifetime Products. Their product line focuses on "Park quality equipoment for your backyard." After having seen some of their prototypes, all I can says is "wow!" These are playsets like you've never imagined! There are basically three types of playsets: wood, metal, and plastic.

Wood must be treated to prevent (read: slow the progression of) rot, must be painted or stained regularly, and runs the risks of developing slivers. Additionally, most wood is treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), which contains arsenic which can cause cancer¹.
Plastic (in its various forms) can fade, be brittle, or even be tied to causing cancer if it is of the PVC variety^{2, 3, 4}. Performance Design uses blow-molded polyethylene, a plastic-like material that is light-weight, strong, durable, stain-resistant, fade-resistant, chip-resistant, and won't warp or crack like other plastics.
Metal has always been the strongest, metal rusts, in the past paints on metals have contained lead, and paint doesn't "stick" to metal very well. Performance Design's Powder Coating process addresses those concerns. Basically, powder coating is a cool process where "paint" is electrostatically "painted" on a metal piece, then run through a furnace to its melting point, this physically bonds the (now liquid) powder to the metal, making it hard to tell where the metal stops and the coating starts.

I want one... uh, for the kids... ;)

HUMOR: How to Buy a Computer

2006-03-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I used to build and sell computers while working for a former employer. The question "How do I Buy a Computer" was often asked of me (I even re-wrote much of my former employers "Computer Buying Guide"). And although this Video isn't the way you should buy a computer, it's commentary on computers in general is hilarious. [ Video ]

Don't Buy CRAP

2006-03-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

ZDNet published a video pointing out the shortcomings of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Instead of accepting the total control demanded by the MPAA and RIAA, ZDNet chief editor David Berlind proposes a new acronym: CRAP. Standing for Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection. Berlind details the problems with different content providers using different CRAP mechanisms.

"And guess what? If you try to connect these three universes, they don't connect. Doesn't happen. Sorry. Nada. This music won't play here. This music won't play here. And this music won't play here. That to me is a problem. That's why I say that all these devices, for example, the iPods that you buy out in the stores today, are a load of CRAP. I'm not going to buy any of this CRAP. Stop buying this CRAP. Don't buy any technology that has CRAP in it, because all it's going to do is make it impossible for you to take the content that you're paying good money for and play it anywhere you want."

[ Video | Transcript ]

Monitors: CRT versus LCD

2006-03-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

ZDnet has put together a short video talking about the differences in CRT monitors and LCD monitors, specifically weighing the costs of each against their usable life. One mistake that they make is comparing CRT's of one size (say 19" diagonal) to LCD's of "the same size" (say 19" viewable). Herein lies the problem. CRT's are just like old-style tube-based telvision sets, they have a tube (a cathode ray tube to be exact) which is measured diagonally starting from one edge of the tube to the diagonally opposite edge of the tube. That'd be fine and dandy if the picture filled the entire tube — which it doesn't. To combat this apparent problem, CRT makers will put the "viewable" diagonal measurement somewhere on the outside of the box in itty-bitty font. That 19" CRT actually is actually going to be around 17" viewable (give or take depending on the make and model of the monitor). The same goes for 15", 17", 21", and larger CRTs. Now, that's not saying that there's something WRONG with CRT technology. It has its own set of pros and cons as compared to LCDs. Just keep in mind that LCD technology is based around a grid of liquid crystals arranded in a (usually) rectangular pattern. The size of the LCD panel is the diagonal measurement of that panel — and the entire LCD panel is viewable; in other words, a 17" LCD panel has a viewable measurement of 17" — which means you should compare it to a 19" CRT (remember, that's ~17" viewable). Once you take that into consideration, the cost differential between CRTs and LCDs of comparable viewable size is significantly reduced. LCDs are typically a little more money than CRTs of the equivalent viewable size, but factor in the ease of moving them, reduced electrical consumption, reduced heat output (therefore reduced air conditioning costs), reduced eye fatigue (caused by CRT's refresh rate), and the overall "cool factor," and I think you'll agree, your next monitor should be an LCD. [ Video | Transcript ]

Why Macs Suck, Part 2

2006-03-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

Of Goats and Milk

2006-03-26T22:11:00.000-07:00

I was reading the blog of a friend-of-a-friend (again) and came across an entry about goat milk. I've got a thing for soaps — no, not the kind that you'll find at most grocery stores, but more "back to basics" soaps. These days we use a lot of detergent compared to soap (that's an idea for another post). When I was working for BOWG Advertising one of their clients was Sundance Resort. For a company Christmas party one year, they got us all cabins at Sundance — in the bathrooms they had exotic, scented glycerine soaps. Now, not to sound "un-manly" or anything, but I just loved using those soaps. Natalie and I bought a few bars and used them up quickly. Since then I've tried oatmeal soaps, glycerine soaps, and with a recent visit to the Willow Lane Soap Cottage at Drake Family Farms in West Jordan, Utah, now I can say that I've tried Goat Milk Soap — and Goat Milk Lotion, to boot! We didn't pick up any milk (due to lack of cooling and the fact that we weren't heading right home), but I'd like to. If you find yourself near Redwood Road and 7400 South in West Jordan, Utah, drop by and visit the goat farm.

Some Guys Can Jump... But Not Like this Guy Can Jump!

2006-03-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Spring is the time for gardening

2006-03-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

Spring has technically sprung, though you wouldn't know by looking outside: the snow just melted and there's more in the forecast. My wife and I began a tradition some years ago that our children participated in this year. In mid-February Utah seems to have a "pseudo-spring." The weather turns warm, the skys clear, the ground thaws and even dries out for about a week. This year was no different. Just around St. Valentine's Day if you drove past my house in Syracuse, Utah, you'd have found my wife, our older two children (5 and 6), and I outside working in the yard (our youngest was "working" too, but not accomplishing much more than having gleeful fun). We trimmed most of our roses, cleared out dead brush from the prior autumn, dressed up a few of the planting sites of some of the new trees I'd planted durning a thaw in November, and raking up yad debris. We filled two garbage cans and a large box and had to stop — not for lack of stuff to do, but due to having no room to put the mess. Now, before any of you go flaming me because I didn't compost the trimmings, I have my reasons. I normally compost everything I can (we even put our banana peels around our rose bushes because I've heard they like the extra potassum in the soil). There are, however, a few things that I just can't compost: rose trimmings and "über-seeders" (flowering plants that put forth gazillions of seeds). Yes, over time even the thorns will degrade, but getting poked with a nearly composted rose thorn makes for a nasty infections. Yes, the heat of the pile should kill off the seeds, but not before they've blown all over the yard to become next year's weeds. So now that the weather is agin hinting at "true spring" though has been given to our garden. We've got some hard-scaping that we'd like to accomplish this year, but the question remains: what to plant. We've got our obligatory square-foot salad garden (4 square feet that provide MUCH more salad "stock" than my family could ever hope to eat). We also have our pumpkins; last year we harvested over 50 pumpkins! I've never grown a successful corn crop so we've given up on that, and we grow our tomatos inverted (yes, upside-down) in hanging pots. I've considered growning a small sprice garden, but have been veto'd for the time being: "we have so many spices that we've purchased, we have to use those up first." Then I came across a post at ahoyhoy.org (the blog of a friend of a friend) regarding themed gardens, and since I'll have four (or more) producing square-foot gardens this year, rather than having one for each person (as we'd originally planned but never implimented in practice) I might just theme them.

VIDEO: You can't dance like this guy can

2006-03-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes something comes across my browser window that's just amazing. This is one of those:

Happy St. Patrick's Day, from Napolean Dynamite

2006-03-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

VIDEO: Large Hornet

2006-03-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, I like bugs just as much as the next kid, and have taken the time to instill this love of nature and all things "creepy crawly" in my children... but this guy might be taking things a little too far.

[This is a] Vespa ducalis, [she is a female,] a worker. Note the antennae and abdomen - males have an additional segment and a blunt abdomen, and long curved antennae. Their usual lifespan is merely several weeks, which is why I'm surprised myself. She isn't flying simply because she's busy eating. I caught her intending just to take some photos, but decided to keep her later.

Autistic Teen Scores Big in Basketball

2006-03-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

My son has Asperger's Syndrome, a learning and behavioral disorder that is often mis-categorized as "a form of mild autism." Luckily my son is very high functioning compared to most others with Asperger's. I'm always interested in reading stories about other children with disorders similar to that which my son has, and today I came across a video report of a story I'd heard on the radio not long ago.

When the autistic team manager of a high school basketball team got his chance in the spotlight, he shattered everyone's expectations by scoring 20 points in four minutes. Steve Hartman has more. [Watch Video ]

HUMOR: Apples asks Microsoft to Redesign the iPod Box

2006-03-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

MUSIC VIDEO: Take on Me

2006-03-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

MUSIC VIDEO: I Love You, Always, Forever

2006-03-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to the woman that I love...

MUSIC VIDEO: Alanis (Parody)

2006-03-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

JOB POSTING: Senior Web Developer

2006-03-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

I got an emailthe other day regarding a company wanting to fill the position of Senior Web Developer. Because many of you reading are into web technologies, I am re-posting this here should any of you be qualified and interested. (Mention my name when responding, see if they'll give me a free lunch or something. ;)

We are currently attempting to fill the positions posted below. If you think you might know someone who would be interested in these positions please call me at 801/327-9957 or simply bounce back to this email indicating their names and giving me a current daytime phone number so I can call them to discuss it further. If you are interested in the position yourself, please reply to this email indicating your interest and a good time and phone number to reach you. Also, please send over an updated version of your resume. This position is going to move fast, so please respond as quickly as possible. Thanks! Jani Beecher PROFESSIONAL RECRUITERS 801/327-9957 jbeecher@icw.com
Position:
Senior Web Developer/Interactive

Location:
Salt Lake City, UT

Salary:
Open

Company:
The largest comprehensive marketing company exclusively for colleges and proprietary schools. They offer recruiting, enrollment, retention, and business growth solutions for colleges nationwide. Their services include direct mail, media placement, e-marketing, custom research, admissions training, student retention, and brand creation. Company has been around for more than 15 years and has 250 employees. They are growing rapidly.

Requirements:
7 years of experience with PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and Linux.

Must be highly motivated, detail-oriented, and able to work aggressively under deadlines and can handle multiple tasks at once.

Jim Hensen Presents: The Matrix

2006-03-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

Nuff said.

Depeche Mode + The Sims

2006-03-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered what you'd get if you added two cups Depeche Mode, one cup of The Sims, and a pinch of streaming video? Go to TheSims2.ea.com to find out.

HUMOR: The Simpsons, in Real Life

2006-03-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

Daily Humor: David Hasselhoff, Hooked on a Feeling

2006-03-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that right, it's David Hasselhoff himself, singing and dancing. That guy's got guts!

Darby Gardner has a new site

2006-02-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

My good buddy Darby Gardner has posted a new website. Darby and I go way back to the days of junior high school... Has it been that long? Anyhow... nostaligia aside, here's a shameless plug for his site. Enjoy!

Greetings! Hello everybody. I'm writing this unexpected, unsolicited e-mail to announce the new online home of Darby & Sheila and family: GardnerSite! You can see it now at www.dnsgardner.com. Unfortunately, though, there's not much there right now. There's a discussion board (forum), a calendar, and my weblog. That is where you, the viewer, come in. I actually have had a difficult time deciding what to include on the website. So, along with announcing the site, I'm also asking for suggestions. That way, this doesn't become just some boring website with stuff on it only I want to see, or think other people want to see. It now becomes a boring website with stuff on it and everybody else wants to see! Anyway, directions on how to submit ideas are listed on the main page of the site. Thanks muchly for allowing me to shamelessly promote the family website. I hope to hear from you soon. - Darb

NEW SITE: www.PerformanceDesign.com

2006-02-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

As most of you already know, I'm a web developer. Web developers are the people responsible for implimenting the designs of web designers, and hooking them to their "back-ends" (databases, servers, etc.). This morning I launched www.PerformanceDesign.com, the latest site to be added to my portfolio. Performance Design is a company that contracts the expertise of personnel and availability of raw materials from my employer: Lifetime Products. Their product line focuses on "Park quality equipoment for your backyard." After having seen some of their prototypes, all I can says is "wow!" These are playsets like you've never imagined! There are basically three types of playsets: wood, metal, and plastic.

Wood must be treated to prevent (read: slow the progression of) rot, must be painted or stained regularly, and runs the risks of developing slivers. Additionally, most wood is treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), which contains arsenic which can cause cancer¹.
Plastic (in its various forms) can fade, be brittle, or even be tied to causing cancer if it is of the PVC variety^{2, 3, 4}. Performance Design uses blow-molded polyethylene, a plastic-like material that is light-weight, strong, durable, stain-resistant, fade-resistant, chip-resistant, and won't warp or crack like other plastics.
Metal has always been the strongest, metal rusts, in the past paints on metals have contained lead, and paint doesn't "stick" to metal very well. Performance Design's Powder Coating process addresses those concerns. Basically, powder coating is a cool process where "paint" is electrostatically "painted" on a metal piece, then run through a furnace to its melting point, this physically bonds the (now liquid) powder to the metal, making it hard to tell where the metal stops and the coating starts.

I want one... uh, for the kids... ;)

XHTML Forms

2006-02-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Via The Web Standards Group, XHTML has introduced some new and very cool tags for us to use with old, hum-drum web forms. Introducing label, fieldset, legend, and optgroup. Take a look at what you can do with some simple style rules, a couple images, and better XHTML formatting:

Poitical Humor

2006-02-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this post by saying that I didn't vote for G.W. Bush (I voted for Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party), but I would have chosen Bush over... who was that other guy? That said... this is really funny! [ .WMV ]

German Engineering Versus Terrorist Tactics

2006-02-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Valentine's Day... Geek Style

2006-02-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

Roses are #FF0000 Violets are #0000FF All my base Are belong to you

From the Mouth's of Babes

2006-02-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

My youngest son can speak almost as much Spanish as he can English! My son, Porter (19 months), likes watching cartoons with his older siblings. His older siblings (Michael, 6½ Jessica, 5) like watching "Go Diego, Go" and "Dora the Explorer," both are English cartoons with a little Spanish mixed in. It was cute to hear Michael and Jessica walk up to "automatic doors" (which don't respond well to "little people") and holler "abre" to seemingly make the doors open for them. This morning Porter found a Hershey's Kiss and took it to my wife. At first she thought he was giving her something he'd found — then, after a pause, he hollered «¡abre!» Once my wife opened it and returned the chocolate to him he was happy.

Microsoft antispyware (Defender) beta 2 now available

2006-02-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

The program formerly know as "Microsoft Antispyware Beta" is now "Microsoft Defender Beta" and beta 2 is now available.

How to use conditional formatting to shade every other row in Excel

2006-02-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

Spreadsheets are great, but sometimes my eyes get lost in the seemingly endless meres of data. Row shading can come in handy, but it's very tedious to apply formatting to every other row, and more so when an odd number of rows (even just one) needs to be inserted — thereby throwing off your scheme. Microsoft KB Article 268568 contains instructions on how to do this programmatically. Here's the code:

=MOD(ROW(),2)=1

MacGyver Superbowl Ad

2006-02-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hide your Email Address in Web Pages

2006-02-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Putting a mailto: link on your website is the easieiest way for a web user to get ahold of you. It requires only a single click on a hyperlink on their part to open their email client, address the email, insert a subject line, and pre-fill the body of the document... and it utilizes the standard email mechanisms out there to record thier email address, server, and path the message took to get to you. It's also a breeze to impliment. The downside, this also allows spambots to harvest your email address easily. There are many ways to obfuscate your email address. Most of which make things more difficult for you to impliment and/or maintain, or more difficult for your web users to use. The former is an inconvenience at best, the latter is suicide (in a business context). After looking at javascript solutions, PHP solutions, ASPx solutions, CSS2 solutions, CSS1 solutions, and graphical solutions, this seems to be the best that I've come across. Basically, this method encodes the entire mailto: string, making things easy for the browser to interpret, but adds a layer of difficulty to the spambots. True, it's only a layer of difficulty, but if your sole purpose is to harvest as many email addresses as possible in the shortest amount of time, the extra time that it takes to develop and run your spambot means less money for you. So the greedy buggers are probably going to let it slide. Even if they don't, hopefully they'll think rationally about the type of users that are going to lengths to obfuscate their email address: that type of user probably has a Bayesian Filter, blacklist, whitelist, or challenge-based system set up to limit the spam they're exposed to. In other words, the obfuscators are the people that the spambot authors don't want to include in their lists because they (the obfuscators) probably won't see the email anyway. Via Colmgallagher.com.

Romance is Lost on Men

2006-02-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

With Valentine's Day Coming up, the following video clips sem fitting... LSFW

Fontastic!

2006-02-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Looking for some fonts? Try TypeNow.Net. They've got a boatload of fonts that range from eligant, to whimsical, to downright looney.

the iPod Flea

2006-02-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

Updated to include old (1999) blog entries

2006-02-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

I was browsing though some old web files and came across an old web log (in the days before 'blogs existed) from 1999. I've converted the majority of the entries (the relvant ones anyway) over to the current blog, so if you go to my 'blog archives, you'll now see June through October 1999.

When Sharks Go Missing...

2006-02-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

When sharks carcases started showing up in the bottom of their aquarium someone had to stay up and track down the culprit.

Apple Newton Nostalgia

2006-02-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Why Mac's Suck

2006-01-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This clip, although very funny, contains some language that our viewers might find offensive. View at your own risk.

Every Ant Tells a Story... and Google's Along for the Ride

2006-01-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

Ants are cool. I think we can all agree on that. And that's what AntWeb.org is all about.

Every ant tells a story. AntWeb provides tools for exploring the diversity and identification of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). These tools have been developed to encourage the study of ants, to facilitate the use of ants in inventory and monitoring programs, and to provide ant taxonomists with access to images of type specimens. Currently AntWeb contains information on the ant faunas of several areas in the Nearctic and Malagasy biogeographic regions, and global coverage of all ant genera.

Here's where things get really interesting... Via The Google Blog, users of Google Earth can now plot all the ants known to AntWeb on a 3-dimensional interactive globe of satellite images.

Spelling Unimportant for Comprehension

2006-01-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

Via my buddy Steve Kangas, I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the fri st and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Microsoft Shunning Internet Explorer for Mac

2006-01-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

I was browsing around in a simple java web browser today and tried MSN's website. This browser doesn't understand styles, so it's not surprising that @import lines showed up at the top of the page. Just below that is the following text:

Why does MSN look like this? Your browser cannot find our style and presentation information and as a result may not display the page properly. You are welcome to use the page as is, or upgrade your browser to its latest version which may address the problem. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the Microsoft Internet Explorer website to install the latest version. If you are using another browser, see the provider's website for more information. If you are using Internet Explorer for Mac, we recommend that you use another browser to have an optimal experience on MSN.

What is Microsoft doing with Internet Explorer? First we find that Microsoft is hacking it's own browser's (improper) handling of CSS2 with the new Windows Vista website and now Microsoft disavowing IE Mac? Wow. I knew Microsoft wasn't devoting much attention to IE Mac these days, but that's just the icing on the cake!

Racisim?

2006-01-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: This post may make you feel uncomfortable, it is not politically correct, it brings up race issues, and (hopefully) makes you think. If any of these things make you upset or uncomfortable, please do not read this post. If you flame me because of my opinions (in addition to not supporting The Bill of Rights) you apparently did not follow instructions. Read the following and form pictures and opinions in your mind about the kind of person that must have been behind the podium.

We as white people, it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a city, a city that should be a vanilla city and I don't care what people are saying uptown or wherever they are. This city will be vanilla at the end of the day.

Who do you think this person is? Some white, racist nut, right? What if I told you the person who said these things was the mayor of a city and that the comments were made on the steps of City Hall? Should s/he be removed from office for those statements? Brought up on hate-crime charges? Discrimination charges? It's definately derrogatory and racist, right? Now, re-read the the quote replacing "vanilla" with "chocolate," "white" with "black," and "a city" with "New Orleans." This is a quote from Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans in an address made from the steps of City Hall to the people of New Orleans on Human Rights Day (a.k.a. Martin Luther Kind, Jr. Day). Here's the video [ .wmv (900KB) ], see for yourself. Are his remarks any less racist and derogatory because he's black? What if he were yellow, or purple, or blue; would they be any less racist and derogatory then? Do you still want to see him removed from offive? Why/why not? Why, if a white person said these things, would they be critisized and threatened whereas if a black person said these things, they are celebrated. Then again, why does it matter?

Rock Climbing

2006-01-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

You've seen people rock climb before, haven't you? They start out slow and methodical, inching their way up the seemingly flat surface of some insanely tall rock face. Finally, after hours of slow progress, careful planning for secure placement of hand- and foot-holds, they breach the summit. What if, instead of slow and steady, you could just "run up the side of the mountain" in just a minute or so? You've got to see it to beleive it! [ .wmv (3.7MB) ]

PNGs and Transparency

2006-01-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

There are basically three types of images that can be used on the internet today:

.gif
.jpeg
.png

.GIFs are nice because they've been around forever, you can animate them (string a bunch of them together and define how long each "cell" is displayed, and if the series of "cells" should repeat, and if so how many times), and they can be transparent (you can specify areas of them that you can see through). Unfortunately, they can only be (up-to) 256 colors deep, meaning color-rich images look poor. .JPEGs are nice because they can handle pictures with much higher resolution than .GIFs. Unfortunately, they cannot be animated and they cannot be transparent. .PNGs (pronounced "PING," and stands for Portable Network Graphic), are nice because they offer better compression than .GIFs (so an images filesize should be smaller, and should load faster), they have all the color-depth of .JPEGs (24 bit, or 16+ million colors), they contain some basic meta-information (author and title, for example), and can be transparent. Unfortunately .PNGs do not (offically) support animation (another format called .MNG was proposed to do that), and their transparency is not (yet) supported in Internet Explorer (6.x). Here's an example of the same image as a .GIF, .JPEG, and .PNG: Now, look at this same page in Internet Explorer versus Firefox (or Mozilla, or Opera). Hopefully Internet Explorer 7 (when it's out of Beta) will support transparent .PNGs. Soon, my site will be utilzing .PNGs as the primary (if not exclusive) image format, and will feature some (hopefully) pretty cool stuff based on transparency. All MSIE 6.x & lower users should still see a usable page, but it won't look as cool. Then again, that's pretty much how it is today: MSIE users see the pages, but they're not as cool as those using a standards-based browser like Firefox.

And the cow jumped over the moon

2006-01-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

My son Michael (6) watched a few minutes of Apollo 13 with me yesterday. He was enthralled by the rocket launch sequence. I asked him some "critical thinking" questions (as I often do to see if he understands the context of what he was watching).

Where do you think they're going? Outer space. Are they going to a planet? No, they're going to the Moon. Why do you think they're going to the moon? To look for the bones. What bones? From the cow. What cow? The one that tried to jump over the moon. You mean the cow didn't make it over the moon? No, Dad; cows can't breathe in outer space. So he must have died and landed on the moon? Yup.

So there you have it.

Mio A701 Pocket PC Phone Edition with Built-in GPS

2006-01-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's just about time for me to upgrade my Pocket PC (currently an HP iPAQ 4155) again. Around 2001 I had an HP Jornada 468; I looked into the future and predicted that "the next Pocket PC I buy will be a mobile phone, too." A good deal of time thereafter a few companies flirted with "extending" the Pocket PC with cellular add-in cards (then PCMCIA format). I bought my wife a (then) Compaq iPaq 3900 series for Christmas, planning on buying her a PCMCIA "sleeve" and cellular card when they were to be released the following February. February turned into July and the cellular card was still "coming soon." I threw in the towel. Within a year or so Microsoft came out with their Pocket PC Phone Edition operating system, followed by devices that had phone capabilities built-in. I've made due without a mobile phone for some years now, but with my recent change in employment, my wife felt it time for us to "go wireless" again. So now we're tethered to T-Mobile for at least 2 years... and my dreams of being truely mobile are tempting me again. I've found a device ("available soon") that seems to "do it all." It's a high-end Pocket PC, decent screen, stanard form-factor, good amount of onboard storage, expandable via standard (not mini-) SD card, quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, with GPS (yes, global positioning!). Now for what it doesn't have: WiFi, 3G wireless, availability in the United States. I'm not going to let those stop me. I figure with the "always on" GSM data connection I really won't need WiFi (not to mention that most times when WiFi is on, phone capabilities are off, oddly enough), it's only a Pocket PC so I won't need blazingly fast wireless access, and I can always import it from Singapore. ;) Problems solved! Features:

520MHz Intel XScale CPU
Windows Mobile 5.0 (Pocket PC Phone Edition)
2.7-inch, 320x240 display
128MB ROM
64MB RAM)
1.3 Megapixel camera
Bluetooth 2.0
Quad Band GSM
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), data speeds of 32 - 48 kbps
Integrated GPS
SD/SDIO/MMC Expansion Slot

Sites that are currently taking pre-orders (or might be able to get a few):

Organic Photovoltaics Absorb From Near Infrared Frequencies

2006-01-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

A research group has developed organic nanostructures photovoltaics that can absorb photons near the infrared frequency. Ewing, NJ | 4 January 2006 -- Global Photonic Energy Corporation (GPEC), developer of organic photovoltaic (OPVtm) technology for ultra-low cost high power solar cells, announced that the company's research partners at Princeton University and the University of Southern California (USC) have achieved a new record in an organic solar cell that is responsive to light in the near infrared (NIR) range of the solar spectrum. NIR radiation is invisible to the human eye. Many so-called "night vision" devices operate by sensing infrared light which is emitted by warm objects and makes up a substantial portion of all energy reaching the earth from the sun. Under only NIR radiation, the Princeton solar cell would appear to be generating power in the dark -- as the human eye is only sensitive to visible light. This latest achievement is the highest level of conversion performance yet achieved for an organic solar cell in the IR portion of the solar spectrum. The Company's researchers detail this latest achievement in the December 2 issue of Applied Physics Letters. The Global thirst for energy is continually expanding. Renewable energy sources have experienced rapid growth in recent years as costs have improved. Global solar cell production has grown over 20% annually for the last 20 years, reaching sales of $6 billion in 2004. This strong growth has resulted in a world-wide shortage of semiconductor silicon driving 2005 solar cell prices higher. Cost is a critical factor in the continued expansion of the solar cell industry. Currently, solar-generated power is four to six times more expensive to consumers than coal-generated power. Silicon crystals are too expensive as a starting material for making photovoltaics cells. The development of organic photovoltaic materials holds the potential for much cheaper photovoltaics. These Princeton and USC researchers (see below) are not only pursuing organically based photovoltaics but they are also pursuing the development of much higher efficiency photovoltaics. The odds are developing a way to double or triple the conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaics will not increase costs per square meter of materials anywhere near as much. So cost per unit of energy produced will drop. Recent efforts have focused on the use of "organic" materials. Organic semiconductors contain the ubiquitous element carbon and are capable of achieving ultra-low cost solar power generation that is competitive with traditional fossil fuel sources. Organic materials have the potential to achieve ultra-low cost production costs and high power output. The materials are ultra-thin and flexible and can be applied to large, curved or spherical surfaces. Because the layers are so thin, transparent solar cells can be applied to windows creating power-generating glass that retains its basic functionality. GPEC sponsors research by Professor Stephen R. Forrest at Princeton and Professor Mark E. Thompson at USC. Professor Forrest's research team has focused on organic "small-molecule" devices that are assembled literally a molecule at a time in highly efficient nanostructures. These devices have layers and/or structural elements that can be extremely small -- at only 0.5 billionth of a meter thick and can be applied to low-cost, flexible plastic surfaces. These scientists want to boost absorption of photons near the infrared frequency range because that is where much of the energy in sunlight is found. One challenge for organic solar cells has been the efficient capture and conversion of sunlight. Sunlight consists of photons (particles of light) that are delivered across a spectrum that includes invisible ultraviolet (UV) light, the visible spectrum of colors -- violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red -- and the invisible infrared or IR spectrum. The amount of incoming photons across the UV, visible and IR spectrums is about 4%, 51% and 45%, respectively. The photons absorbed by a solar cell directly impacts the power output. To achieve high power output, solar devices must take advantage of as much of the solar spectrum as possible. Typical organic solar cells absorb only a fraction of the visible portion of the solar spectrum. In fact, the best organic solar cells absorb and convert only about 1/3 of the total available light utilizing primarily the visible portion of the spectrum. "This latest device demonstrates that significant power can be harvested from the IR and near-IR portion of the solar spectrum.", said Dr. Stephen R. Forrest. "In fact, this novel approach has the potential to double the power output of organic solar devices with power harvested from the near-IR and IR portion of the solar spectrum. With this approach we are well on our way to power levels exceeding 100 watts per meter", Forrest concluded. Imagine organic photovoltaics coating windows especially in hot climates. Instead of letting in the infrared frequencies the photovoltaics convert those photons to useful electricity. So instead of heating a building and thereby increasing the demand for air conditioning the photovoltaic coating could keep out heat and turn it into electricity that would power air conditioners. In the longer run imagine nanomaterials-based photovoltaic coatings that could adjust how much electricity they let into a room or into a car depending on whether a human was in the room or car. When a human was present the material could become transparent to allow ing lighting or provide the ability to look outside. House and car windows could be turned dark or transparent by dynamically changing nanostructures. When no one was in a car or house room the windows could become dark and that would mean the nanocoatings were absorbing the light that hit them and turning them into electric to charge batteries (which of course will be made from some nanomaterials as well). So on a hot summer day your car's seats wouldn't get as hot. Also, the inside trim wouldn't degrade as rapidly due to sun damage. GPEC is funded by electric power industry venture capitalists Kuhns Brothers.

Windows XP WMF Vulnerability

2006-01-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

Via Microsoft:

If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

I normally don't get hit with exploits, but this one hit me hard — so much so that after five hours of painful malware removal, registry key restoration, and many declarations of "Yes dear, it should only be another minute or two" I finally gave in and did a system restore. Thank goodness for regular data backups! Needless to say, I'm now patched and protected (even moreso than before), and doing backups even more regularly. Are you?

Disposable Fountain Pen

2006-01-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Most people who know me would catagorize me as a technophile. I also have an affinity for fountain pens. Some might see that as a contradiction — bear with me. Credit for the invention of the fountain pen is given to Lewis Edson Waterman in 1884. The modern ball-point pen wasn't invented until 1943. Some might say the ball point pen was the evolution of the fountain pen. I see things from a slightly different angle: as of 2006, the ball point pen has had 63 years of improvements, whereas the fountain pen has had 122 years, making the fountain pen almost twice as technologically advanced as the ball point pen. Follow? Up until recently, the fountain pen was lagging behind the ball point pen in one significant area: disposability. I'm not much for disposable anything (I'd prefer to reduce, reuse, recycle), let alone disposable pens, but now there is a disposable fountain pen — and it's piqued my curiosity. That said, I have three arriving at my house tomorrow, so I'll update this post with an objective review once I've put a mile of ink behind me.

A Windows Powered Gas Pump?

2006-01-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has got Windows for your desktop computer, Windows Media Center for your TV, (Windows) XBOX for your video games, Windows Server for your server, Windows Mobile for your Pocket PC or SmartPhone, Windows SPOT for your wrist watch, and even Windows Automotive for your car. I guess it was only a matter of time before they came up with a Windows (CE) powered gas pump. Maybe the pump could Bluetooth with your [ car | PDA | phone | watch ], find out who you are, what kind of gas you normally get, get the pump ready for you as you drive up, so all you have to do is confirm who you are and what vehicle you're in by (hopefully) keying in a PIN via a touchscreen or keypad, then start dispensing. It would take care of the dirty work of billing you, emailing a receipt, maybe even keeping track of your MPG for you. So much for what it could do, we'll have to wait and see what it actually will do. What will they think of next? Via ohgizmo.

Microsoft Hacking Microsoft?

2006-01-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's websites have traditionally been very heavy on their use of tables for layout, something that CSS2 was designed to replace. Tables should be used for tabular data presentation, and most implimentations of tables on the web are for laying out graphics and columns and such, not for their intended purpose. Today (01/05/06), coinciding with CES Microsoft released an updated version of their Windows Vista website which is layed out entirely using CSS and DIVs. That's big news for Microsoft. Funny thing, to make their fancy new website look "right" in Internet Explorer 5, they had to apply the classic MSIE5 voice-family hack. "This hack allows us to prematurely close a style rule in IE5x PC because of a bug in its CSS parsing code."¹ Here's a rule taken directly from their stylesheet:

#t-header {
 position:absolute;
 padding-top: 114px;
 width: 314px;
 background-image: url(images/logo.jpg);
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 overflow: hidden;

 /* WIN IE5 hack */
 height: 114px;
 voice-family: "\"}\"";
 voice-family:inherit;
 height: 0;
 }

So, by utilizing this method, not only does Microsoft seemingly admit that MSIE5 does not fully support CSS2, but they would rather every web developer in the world rely on the MSIE5 hack (themselves included) — rather than just "fixing" MSIE5.

Turning video cards upside down

2006-01-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Via xbit labs, Asus has stumbled upon an idea that has long been a question among computer system builders: why are GPU chips mounted upside down? Technically, the card is manufactured will all the components on the top (according to the AGP and PCI Express specifications. Here's where things get interesting. AGP and PCI Express slots are attached to the motherboard in such a way that they are, in effect, mounted upside down. According to physics, heat rises. So here you've got a very hot graphics processor with a big chunk of metal and a fan on it (aka: the heatsink or "cooler") to try to dissapate the heat, but the heat is naturally trying to go UP (into the PCB) not down (into the HSF. Does that seem contra-intuitive to anyone else? With this card, Asus has done something novel: rather than rebuilding the entire card upside down (or rightside up, depending on your perspective) they can left the "guts" of the card on the same side, but moved the GPU to the other side of the card. According to Asus this results in cards running up to 30 degrees (F) cooler! Presently this is only on their 6600 series video card (better than both the cards that I presently have, but not anywhere near the REALLY heat intense 7800 series cards), but hopefully the writing is on the wall and we'll start to see more inivative thinking!

Heath Briggs

2005-12-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

Heath Briggs was a man not much older than I. Husband and father of five (with another on the way). I first met Heath when I began working for Totally Awesome Computers in mid-September 2001. He was a stern and somewhat crass man. He intimdated me — and even scared me a bit. After getting to know the man it became evident that he had his vices and bad habits, just like the rest of us, but that he was a good man — and over the course of my sojourn at TAC Heath and I became good friends. In fact, of all the people I worked with at TAC, I consider Heath among one of the top few... Heath passed away December 29, 2005. His services are tentatively scheduled for Monday, 02 January 2006. Heath, you will be missed. Save me a place in line up there. Obituary:

LIBERTY – Our loving husband and father, Heath Tad Briggs, 31, passed away Thursday, December 29, 2005 at McKay-Dee Hospital of complications from a blood clot. Heath was born April 30, 1974 in St. Anthony, Idaho to Dennis and Kim Banner Briggs. He married Coleen McCormick on April 11, 1997 in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. He was a member of the North Fork LDS Ward, and served an LDS Mission to Jacksonville, Florida. He loved working with the youth in his church callings. Heath enjoyed snowmobiling, boating, motorcycling and baseball, but most of all he loved his family. Surviving are his wife Coleen McCormick Briggs of Liberty; their children, Jared Heath Briggs, Nakell Coleen Briggs, Nalani Kay Briggs, Ammon Tad Briggs, Ireland Marilyn Briggs, and their soon to born daughter, all of Liberty; his parents, Dennis and Kim Briggs of Teton, ID; mother-in-law, Marilyn Stephens-Burton of No. Ogden; father-in-law, Mike McCormick of Slaterville, UT; grandparents, Sam and Jeri Banner of Brigham City, UT; and Bert and Arminda Briggs of Teton, ID. Also surviving are two sisters and two brothers, Heidi White, Olathe, KS; Holly Francis, Layton; Brandon Briggs, Moscow, ID; and Britt Briggs, Rexburg, ID. Funeral services will be held on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 1:00 p.m. at Myers Mortuary Chapel in Ogden, 845 Washington Blvd., where friends may call on Sunday from 6 to 8 p.m. and Monday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Interment, Ben Lomond Cemetery in North Ogden.

&

2005-12-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've become a fan of two html tags that go unused all too often. These tags a beautifully simple, rendered intuitively to the end-user, and serve a much needed function for noobs without getting in the way of us geeks. <abbr title=""> & <acronym title=""> These tags allow for the in-line definition of acronyms where the definition is expanded onHover. One downside, Blogger does not allow <abbr title=""> & <acronym title=""> tags in their comments. (Blogger, are you listening?!) A simple work-around is to use <a title="">, but that will render as a hyper-text anchor link (rather than an abbr or acronym definition). This style might be able to be unified with a class designation ("hoverdefinition")and handled by a style-sheet (where one would define acronym, abbr, and .hoverdefinition as having the same visual appearance, for example). It's not a very pretty solution as you'd have to add the class="hoverdefinition" attribute to every <a title="" ... > tag, which I doubt end-users making comments on one's blog would even know about. Maybe Blogger will hear our plea and allow these tags in their comment posts. (Maybe I'm just over-zealous about these tags. ;) ) On a related note, does anyone have any neat CSS tricks used with these tags? Please comment!

Embedding Graphics in HTML

2005-12-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

You've seen images on websites before, but what about images in the html code itself? No, I'm not talking about your typical <img src="(URI)" ... /> reference to an image, but actually sticking the image (base64 encoded) into the page itself. Here's what the code looks like to do it (linefeeds have been entered to facilitate viewing on the page).

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My Old Boss (SuperDell Buck Schanze) in the News

2005-12-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

Are you keeping up with the crazy antics of my former employer, "Super" Dell Buck Schanze? If not, here are some links to recent news:

Web Developer Tools

2005-11-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Microsoft confuses me... As most of you know I've been a web developer for close to a decade now. I've seen the lay of the land change from flat HTML files, database-enabled files using .pl and cgi, and now to open-source dynamic sites created with any syntax markup tool, php, and mySQL (and equivalent tools from Microsoft). I've always been a coder: get down to the nuts and bolts, take out they stray tags, make your code readable to the next guy, and I've always preferred notepad as my coding environment, but I've appreciated the clean-code and javascript image roll-overs created with Adobe's Image Ready. Anything to help simplify life, right? So now I'm confused. Microsoft has three products aimed at web development.

FrontPage: When MSIE 4.0 came out, they released a fun little tool called FrontPad (which was either a precurser to FrontPage, or a dumbed-down version thereof, opinions vary). FrontPad was short-lived, at best: a WYSIWYG HTML editor that wasn't very WYSIWYG. FrontPage filled in the gap left by FrontPad's shortcomings, and FrontPad went away.
Visual Studio .NET: Soon developers wanted a more programming-like model than a web development model to work with. This has obvious advantages and disadvantages alike. Imagine being able to write a website as if it were a program, yet maintaining the cross-browser / cross-platform / cross-medium nature of the web. The downside? It's almost programming and almost webcoding... or some of both, depending on your perspective. Yet that's exactly what Visual Studio is supposed to do. (And it's one of the tools that I'm using at my current job.
Visual Web Developer & Visual Web Developer Express: Visual Web Developer Express (VWDX) may turn out to be the FrontPage replacement, if there is to be one. Is it a hyped up version of FrontPage or a dumbed down version of the non-express version of Visual Web Developer?; Visual Web Developer (not express) combines a lot of the data connectivity that Visual Studio .NET has in it with a lot of the coding capabilities of Visual Studio .NET, supposidly without the complexity (or sticker price) of the full Visual Studio Suite.

Anyone out there have any experience with Visual Web Developer?

Landing Pages

2005-11-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

One of the responsibilities of my new job is creating landing pages for specific items/categories to aid in "organic" search engine results. Here are the pages that I've created for this purpose thus far:

Researching Recursion

2005-11-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

While researching recursion today I came across this definition:

Recursion n. See recursion See also: recursion

Here's a much better, although much less funny, definition:

In normal procedural languages, one can go about defining functions and procedures, and 'calling' these from the 'parent' functions. I hope you already know that. Some languages also provide the ability of a function to call itself. This is called Recursion.¹

A Change of Scenery

2005-11-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

After more than four years of working for Totally Awesome Computers as a "Jack-of-all-trades" I have finally re-entered the web development world! For those of you who know me well, you know that I've been involved in some aspect of web development since 1995 when I worked for the Escalations and Account Management Group at Prodigy Technical Support (as an aside, Prodigy is now apparently part of SBC Yahoo!). From there I worked as Iomega's Online Support Web Developer, and then to Interactive Technology Director for BOWG Advertising. After that I did some contract work and freelance web development before I took a job at Totally Awesome Computers. I knew from the day I started work there that it was just a "college job," but I got sidetracked from completing my degree (which I'm now within a semester or two of) by the potential that the company offered. Unfortunately, potential is one thing, realizing it is another. I started back to school 3/4-time, and then full-time. About a year ago, when TAC had an upper-management turn-over (all the district managers and the COO resigned their positions) and Dell Schanze passed out $2.00/hour pay cuts to virtually all non-technician positions (I was hit with a $2.25/hour pay cut). Ironically, because of my positive attitude about how I was going to prove my worth at the higher pay, Dell sent an email to the company listing me as one of his "personal hero's of the day." It was about that time that I took Dell's advice: "if you think you can get a better job somewhere else, take it. I'll write you a beaming letter of recommendation." So I turned on my Monster.com, Dice.com, CarrerBuilder.com, and other daily email alerts for Utah jobs related to the web and/or internet communities. On Average I responded to one or two postings a week. A position came up advertising for a "Sharepoint and ASP.NET Web Developer." I'd been TAC's Sharepoint Administrator for 6 months or so, and had some basic experience with ASP, so I applied. It turns out this position had been posted by a head-hunting firm (Management Recruiters), who were eager to set up an interview for me. After several interviews I was offered the position at Lifetime Products in the Freeport Center. I tendered my resignation to the VP of Operations at TAC, with just over two weeks' notice. Now that I've been at Lifetime for two weeks, I'm really enjoying the people that I work with, the professional atmosphere, and the challenges that I'm faced with every day. I'm now responsible for these sites:

www.Lifetime.com
www.BuyLifetime.com
www.PerformanceDesign.com
www.LifetimeMetals.com
www.MammothBball.com
and the corporate Intranet (Sharepoint deployment)

The project that I'm working on now is two-fold, the purchase and roll-out of GoogleAds and improvement in natural/organic search engine placement for www.BuyLifetime.com (specifically for 8x10 shed, outdoor shed, 8x5 shed, and shed accessories).

JavaScript Frustration

2005-10-26T19:27:00.000-06:00

I'm a web developer by hobby (and soon to be by profession, again), JavaScript is arguably the most common, easiest, and simplest "quick and dirty" way to make your web pages dynamic.

So, let's say you want to modify your form's "Reset" button from its default behavior, and add a dialog that basically says "Are you sure you want to clear your form and start over?" Well, that's easy enough, right?
var return_value = confirm("Are you sure you want to clear your form and start over?"); The return values are easily handled: true or false.

But the buttons... [OK ] [ CANCEL ] That's not what I asked! My answers should be [ Yes ] [ No ], shouldn't they?

Well, you're asking a CONFIRMation type question, and sometimes YES/NO, RIGHT/WRONG, MORE/LESS, UP/DOWN, NEXT/PREVIOUS are the answers that would best fit your question, but how do you modify the buttons of the CONFIRM() function? Simply, you can't.

So what are our options? Well, VBscript (and to an extent Jscript) will let you do this, but those are only a MSIE solution. You spawn a popup (and have to deal with popup blockers and properly passing values between browser windows). You could unhide a hidden [div] containing the CONFIRM question and answers in a layer with a higher z-index. Hey, why not make an interim page storing all your submit data between full-browser pages? The most creative solution I've seen was a professor at Weber State University who quickly compiled a Japplet and used it to pass parameters from the html form to the applet to the JavaScript.

:: Sigh ::

Anyone have any more elegant (client-side) solutions?

Project "Vista Tablet": Part 3 of 3 (Software)

2005-10-26T18:46:00.000-06:00

Windows Vista is the version of Windows to follow Windows XP. It's due out in 3Q 2006 and should be the biggest leap in "enhancements" since the jump from Windows 3.x to Windows 95. At the time of this writing, Vista is in Beta 1 but has released some "previews" of what Beta 2 will become. The version available at the beginning of this expirament was CTP build 5219 "based on code which will become beta 2." The installer is powerful, yet surprisingly simple. No more do you need to disconnect your card reader, Zip drive, extra optical drives, and external hard drives to avoid Windows being installed to drive G:\, it's smart enough to make your hard drive C:\, like it's supposed to. Partioning and formatting your partition is surprisingly simple, dare I say "elegant?" The installer is now substantially more simplified, but the "finalizing" process takes far too long (and doesn't give you a time estimate: my P4 3.0 took ~6 hours to finish this, my PM 1.4 took about 2 hours). After that the majority of my devices worked out of the shoot. Exceptions include my tablet's buttons (including the "auto-rotate" switch), the touch-pad's scroll toggle, and the RealTek(?) integrated modem. I can live without those in the short-term. Vista (in the 5219 build) differs from the Windows XP "selling points" of "no need to teach it how to recognize your handwriting, it just does it." That was plain stupid. Here you've got a device capable of adapting to your writing style (no, not based on a training model like voice recognition, but based on usage, and corrections) and what do you do? You turn it off in the name of marketing. Smart. True, the recognition was decent (almost on par with Apple's ill-fated Newton -- in its last incarnations before Steve Jobs neutered then killed it), but it didn't get any better. In Vista, not only does it appear to "learn" from you, you can also train it to recognize your style of writing. Full circle, I suppose. Microsoft didn't stop there, now the stylus isn't just another mouse pointer, as it was in the original and SP2 Tablet PC releases, it actually functions like you'd expect a stylus to interact with the OS. Simple things like screen taps, double-tabs, tap-and-hold (similar to right-clicking), etc. The text-input-panel (TIP, the panel that allows you to input recognized text into text fields of "stupid" (read: non-ink-enabled) applications) now slides off and onto the screen (not quite as one would expect, yet) rather than being placed as a non-standard toolbar on the Windows Task Bar. Gestures are now supported natively. You can flick your styles one direction to scroll up, another to scroll down, another to copy, another to paste, yadda yadda. Though I haven't used this (other than the "scratch out" gesture) on the tablet pc, I used them frequently on my Pocket PCs and moreso on my Newtons. The move to gestures (or "flicks") is both difficult to "get right" from the aspect of implimentation, but also indicative of the maturity of the operating system as a truely pen-enabled environment. On some non-Tablet-centric notes, Glass is very cool, with transparency being utilized more in the new UI, again, this requires some finesse to "get right" and Glass isn't quite there yet, but the potential is, and so is the foundation. Other pillers expected to be in the upcoming release of Vista were either not present or not fully implimented, and stability was an issue. That said, for being a "pre-beta 2, community technology preview," the resulting product was nothing short of amazing. Most OS betas don't last more than a day or so on any of my "daily use" systems, this one lasted a full week under normal load before the lags, reboots, and frustrations became higher than I could effectively deal with. You might read that in a negative way, but it's the opposite, it's a VERY positive thing, lasting 5 times longer than most. Stay tuned to the MSDN blogs on Tablet PCs and Windows Vista... I'm sure you'll be impressed!

What's your IQ?

2005-10-26T18:29:00.000-06:00

Via The Classic IQ Test, my IQ score is 122. "This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others. "Your Intellectual Type is Word Warrior. This means you have exceptional verbal skills. You can easily make sense of complex issues and take an unusually creative approach to solving problems. Your strengths also make you a visionary. Even without trying you're able to come up with lots of new and creative ideas..." (Just be aware, this "free test" will most likely send you a bunch of spam email if you give them your real email address.)

Halloween: Car Commercial

2005-10-25T12:37:00.000-06:00

It's just about Halloween, so here is a car commercial, just for you Halloweenies.

Do you know your geography?

2005-10-25T12:23:00.000-06:00

Via SheppardSoftware... I got 86% with an average of 32 miles in 389 seconds.

Inspirational Thought: Attitude is Everything

2005-10-25T11:57:00.000-06:00

Via some chain e-mail... John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood andalways has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how hewas doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employeehow to look on the positive side of the situation.Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?" He replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose tobe in a bad mood.I choose to be in a good mood."Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or... I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life." "Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested. "Yes, it is," he said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react tosituations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life." I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins! Wanna see my scars?" I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or... I could choose to die. I chose to live." "Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. He continued, "..the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me intothe ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'. I knew I needed to take action." "What did you do?" I asked."Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said John. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Gravity.' Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead." He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

Project "Vista Tablet": Part 2 (Hardware)

2005-10-12T18:30:00.000-06:00

So now that we understand how Digital Ink can be used, and how meta-data behind that ink can be leveraged, what hardware does one need? Well, what hardware do I have? I have a Fujitsu Lifebook T3010, which is a convertable Tablet PC (you can use it as a standard laptop, or rotate the screen and fold it over the keyboard to use it as a slate), running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (Windows XP Pro with SP2 and the Tablet PC API and applications). I've upgraded it to an 80GB HDD, 768MB RAM, and it comes standard with an Intel Centrino and Extreme Graphics 2 chipsets, with Wi-Fi (802.11g). Next for the expirimentation with Windows Vista... stay tuned.

Project "Vista Tablet": Part 1 (Background)

2005-10-11T17:24:00.000-06:00

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook T3010 Tablet PC (convertable) based on Intel Centrino, Pentium M (1.4), and Intel Extreme 2 Graphics running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (2005) and have been very impressed. For those who may not know, a Tablet PC is a laptop computer (with or without a keyboard) that can accept "digital ink" via a stylus and a special display. One can use the stylus in several ways:

as a pointer (similar to the way you'd use a mouse),
as a pen with which to capture free-hand drawings,
as a pen with which to utilize hadwriting (or character) recognition,
or (my favorite) as a pen with which to capture "digital ink."

Digital Ink is similar in usability to how one would interact a pen with paper. An "ink enabled" application (MS Word, MS Journal, MS OneNote, MS InfoPath, MSN Messenger, Agilix GoBinder, etc.) is one that allows the user to input "ink," which appears in the user's native handwriting. That's where things get really exciting. Once the Digital Ink is in the application any number of things can happen, the application can:

simply store the digital ink as a "set of scribbles" with no more meta-data or "meaning" than a set of semi-random scratches on a pad of paper,
treat the digital ink as a set of "organized scribbles" which it recognizes as a set of basic symbols (squares, rectanges, circles, triangles, ovals, lines, etc.),
treat the digital ink as a set of "organized scribbles" which it recognizes as a set of specific symbols (letters, numbers, characters), which it then parses into strings of words, phrases, and sentences.

It's this latter use of captured digital ink wherein the true potential -- and paradigm shift -- can occur. Imagine writing a letter in your own hand-writing. The computer parses your "set of scribbles" into arrays of possible words, phrases, and sentences (any one, or a combination of which may accurately represent your intended data. Here, most people would think the next logical step is utilizing fuzzy-logic to translate the digital ink into plain text. Why not leave the ink alone, don't "change" it into plain text. But you can't search through scribbles other than by eye, right? Right... so instead of having the digital ink transformed immediately (or after a short delay, read: handwriting recognition), have the system store meta-data about what the digital ink could be behind the digital ink objects. For example, digital ink that was written intending to be the word "Hello" could have supporting meta-data of:

Hello
hello
Hell
hell
jello
Helio

Add to that digital ink that was written indenting to be the word "world", which could have supporting meta-data of:

World
world
wool
would
whirl

Of course the meta-data is contingent upon your handwritten digital ink, and results may vary. That said, now you can have digital ink (your original, handwritten inked data), and can search on it as well (including the phrase "Hello world" as in the case above). The paradigm shift then is to recognize and store meta-data from the original ink, while maintaining the original ink... and enabling the usability of your application (or OS) to utilize the digital ink as the native format rather than plain text "recognized" from the ink.

Humor: Too Much Gaming

2005-07-28T09:08:00.000-06:00

What happens when you play too much Counter Strike, the popular computer game where counter-terrorists work to rescue hostages? It becomes real... Watch and see.

Prediction: Voice Recognition and Text-to-Speech

2005-06-30T11:47:00.000-06:00

Voice Recognition is getting pretty good these days... so is Text-to-Speech... but what would happen if you combined them? Imagine a world where you could have 95% accuracy in voice recognition, and 95% intelligible text-to-speech. We're pretty close to that now. Add one other component: I'll call it Voice Font(tm). Imagine a text-to-speech "font" of your own voice. Where anything you type can be run through a font and made to sound as if you'd said it, just like a Font applied to plain text might make something appear in calligraphy. Tie it all together: Talk into your phone, your phone converts your voice into text then sends your Voice Font and message to the recipient. The recipient's phone (computer, whatever) then receives text and converts it into YOUR voice. They respond in kind. The potential bandwidth savings by sending text only is staggering. We've been focusing on how to expand our bandwidth, we can just optimize our bandwith usage.

nor shall private property be taken for public use...

2005-06-30T11:16:00.000-06:00

The U.S. Supreme court, in a 5-4 decision, earlier this week the the FIFTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution, which states "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation," shall be interpreted differently. Now, "Public Use" is better defined as "Public Benefit." In otherwords, if some developer wants to build supermarket in your neighborhood, but 50 houses have to be demolished to be able to do it, they can petition to the local government on the grounds that the public will benefit more from the supermarket than they would from those 50 houses. In short, private property rights have been all but eliminated by this ruling! The assurance of private property and the rights that accompany it are one of the planks in something that we call the free-enterprise system, it's what encourages (by protection) individuals (and firms) to improve a plot of land and thereby grow the economy. Without this protection, the incentive is removed, and the risks associated with investing escalate. It's time to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and urge them VERY STRONGLY to act now to overthrow the Supreme Court's ruling. Or you could do nothing... and wish you had when they're bulldozing your house to put up a strip mall.