DIY Rubix Cube - Archaeology Style

Female Silver Spotted Bengal

Well, I have put a deposit down on a kitty... Now we just need to wait for a new litter.

Screw Jet Skies, I want one of these

This is just too funny

Grapes just got a lot cooler

Hacked Gadgets

Found yet another site that many of you will like.

UPDATE: Vanguard Saga of Heroes

Well, we picked up our guild edition today. We will be starting the guild here shortly.

Along with it, we got 10 trial keys (good for 10 days it appears). If you want one of them (and are considering playing and joining our guild) let me know.

Oh, and we are playing in Kojan on the RP Preferred Server.

Alice 3D Authoring system

I took a look at the Alice demo (which was not easy since the SWF didn't work in Firefox and Firefox crashed whenever I tried to download the WMV)... I have to say, nice approach. Definitely better than Turtle, if any of you remember that. And with the Sims characters being in the next release... Anyways, take a look at the Overview of Alice video.

TomsHardware: Making a custom PC enclosure with Protocase

A little beyond the amount of money I am wanting to spend, but you have to at least check out the pics.

Caffeinated Donuts

Thanks to Brett for finding this link.

Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It

For those of you who think there is nothing wrong with the Patent Office, Copyrights and the entire process... explain this to me: How can Microsoft get a patent on something after admitting they stole it from some Java program (thus providing proof of someone else's prior art themselves)?

In fact, the license of BlueJ says it can not be used for commercial purposes, or included in something for sale... And M$ used it for Visual Studio.

Sushi

So Dino has been wanting me to try Sushi for awhile now... Since I generally don't like veggies, or want raw fish, and don't particularly want seaweed (ok, so I have eaten seaweed ice cream before); Sushi just never sounded appetizing...

Until now... get rid of the Mango bits (not really a melon fan) and I might try this ;)

Simply Catan?

I noticed the google ad at the top of my gmail and... voila...
A beginner version of Catan for kids. It says it is for ages 10+.

Of course, even if the original game wasn't labelled as 12+, the Kids of Catan is listed 4+.

So, all in all.. not sure what their niche target is, but... it is Catan, so I relate it.

Reading the Feed

So some of you have been wondering how to get notified when Malachi posts a new blog entry... Well, this method won't email you or anything -- but is very simple if you are reading this in Firefox....

Look up in the address bar (where it says http://malachid.blogspot.com)... Look to the very right of that bar, just before the little pull down arrow... Do you see an image sorta like this one: ??? Click it...

This will add a new bookmark pointing to my page... but it does better than that - take a look at the new bookmark -- it is actually a folder with the most recent messages automatically created as links in it (and it does auto-update).

Let me know if this suits your needs.


UPDATE: If you go to the main page, you will get just one choice (to add a live bookmark for the blog itself)... If you are on a subpage when you click it, you will get 3 options (one Atom and 2 RSS). The first RSS one is the default all blog entries one. The last one is the one if you would just like to get updates on the comments added to a specific blog entry.

Faux Klingons in the Whitehouse

Dino provided the link to the video in case any of you actually missed it

BTW: David Wu is OUR representative ;)

MetroFi

News was mentioning this today. Might be useful to those of you in downtown Portland.

What mental disorder do you have?

Saw this one on Jessie's blog and thought I would give it a shot...

What mental disorder do you have? Your Result: GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) You can never seem to calm down and always feel anxious for unknown reasons. You tend to not be able to concentrate and have headaches or other anxiety symptoms.
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
Paranoia
Manic Depressive
What mental disorder do you have?

MySpace and GMail

I had been relying on MySpace to email me whenever there was something important to read. I never log in unless I am there to read a specific post.

Well, I noticed today that GMail had marked 150 recent (who knows how many that were over 30 days old) messages as Spam...

I did notify them of this bug (since my filter had already labelled them - they should not be counted as Spam) but if you are having this problem, check there.

Icy conditions in Portland

Thanks to Robyn and Kimmy for providing a link to this video.

FedEx refuses shipment of made-up stuff, empty cans

Quote from here:

FedEx guy: Nope. You can't ship these either.
Me: But... they're empty! It's just air. And... nitrogen? It's, like,
almost 80% of the atmosphere. There's nothing dangerous about nitrogen, even if
it were pure.
FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials.
Me [going into dumbfounded mode]: Bomb... Neon? What? Is there anything
here I can legally ship? How about this bottle of tap water?

Follow the link for the entire story.

News from the Net

If you are a fan of the Mozilla products (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) perhaps you would like the new version of the entire Seamonkey suite.

I would have much rather had this surgical nanobot than actual invasive surgery.

Ok, let me get this straight... An RFID signal that let's you trackle cattle and military personnel up to 4 feet away... And why won't the enemy be able to read the RFID signal of our troups hiding 4 feet away? Of course, if they had this robot, it wouldn't matter.

The New Horizon's probe snaps some new pics.

I've never tried it, but I know some of you (Tony?) would like to know that there is a new version of Ruby on Rails.

Yesterday, I commented on the evil bill trying to make us register as lobbyists. Not only did it fail, but evidentally only Democrats voted for it.

FBI arrests two more executives for the online gambling bit, and now Neteller closes all gambling to US players. In case you are pissed off and want to make your own site, maybe you'd like to see what they were apparently arrested for:

with the creation and operation of an Internet payment services company that facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds

Well this is interesting... Although I have no desire to run Vista, it appears Microsoft will let people legally download it on Jan 30th - the same day you can start buying it in retail stores.

So some of you in your early 20s think it is OK for the government to keep kids from playing violent video games, right? Well, they want to keep you from doing it to. New York is considering requiring you to be 30 to play violent video games.

A single-pixel camera was developed. Didn't we discuss this before?

Hmmm, to get or not to get the Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles? On one hand, I really like Oblivion. On the other hand, I think I really prefer playing multiplayer games (at least with Dino).

The RIAA is now going after DJs that make mix tapes. Ummm, hello? Artistic expression? DJs like Soulwax do an awesome job of mixing two different songs together. Down with the RIAA!

FedEx gets anti-missile defense. Just in time for China to test their anti-satellite weapon.

Could this be the beginning of the end for MySpace?

News from the Net

Fish enzymes that kill the Bird Flu?

I didn't even know Sega was still making Dreamcast games. Or at least, they were.

Political riots in SecondLife?

Germany tries to get the EU to ban violent videogames. Guess Germans aren't as hardcore as we thought, eh?

Does your blog get more than 500 readers? If so, the government wants you to register with them as a Lobbyist. And what if it is Senate Bill S.1 we are fighting against?

Pharmacom doesn't want to produce the cancer vaccine because they won't make a profit. What a shocker.

Here's some info on the Navy's rail gun.

OpenSolaris to soon have the Stink of Evil upon it.

Methane rockets appear to be a success.

Hard drives get faster -- 15000 rpms.

Upon on Netscape breaking RSS. They have fixed it - until July 1st when they publicly break it on purpose.

Quote from here:

In the first movie, "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" will bring a conclusion to the primary storyline of the past two seasons of the SG-1 television series. More thrills and action-packed scenes are planned for this special event movie, which will be directed by Cooper. The suspense will end as fans will see the conclusion of the epic Ori saga.

In the second movie, "Stargate: Continuum" the SG-1 team is now free to embark on new and exciting adventures throughout the endless Stargate universe.

Flash player available for Linux.

Thanks to a Google employee, OSX now has NTFS support.

NASA to be cutting Earth observation... as least publicly....

Largest Twin Primes so far...

Worried about your li-ion battery exploding? Maybe try these instead... in a few years...

News from the Net

Sorry I haven't done this in awhile... being laid up sux.

Proving that HD DVD copyright mechanisms are not really protecting movies, the HD DVD version of Serenity has already made it onto the p2p servers at a mere 19.6 GB. Here is some of the how of it.

The Vice President once again proves that he has no clue what the word "privacy" means

Apple attacks bloggers for reporting on smartphone skins that look like the iPhone. ABC/Disney do similar

As the "mythical" global warming melts the ice in the Arctic, new islands are discovered

XBox360 gets Ghostbusters game and the PC gets a new Starcraft game

Netflix offers online movies in addition to the DVDs

Linux to get open source versions of proprietary drivers (WMV, MP4, etc)

PCIe 2.0 released

People who are brought up bilingual get 4 more years before the onset of dementia

When I look over the Magic of Tubes it makes me think of a nice GUI interface to a Subversion type of repository... too bad it is WinBlows only.

How spyware/adware can ruin someone's life

Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" soon on SciFi

Toshiba announces 51GB HD DVD

The Republican party is now trying to force YOU to copy-protect any podcasts you do.... Cuz we all know there is no possible chance that we would want to have ANY say in whether what WE produce is free or not. Friggin idiots. In related news, they are trying to make it illegal to make NON-commercial audio recordings.

Sun releases BSD-licensed replacement for Fortran

Woman dies from WATER poisoning

VirtualBox (virtualization software) goes open source

A Wisconsin State Trooper wrote some software on his own time, and now the state is trying to steal it

Exoskeleton suit of armor goes on a diet

The US Government requires you to run IE on Windows if you want grants. Not surprising since the NSA is involved with Vista

Finally, they start looking at using the Lego concept to build chips

Solidifying light?

This seems to be a mix of the Monolithic Dome and the robotic home builders I have mentioned before.... Sounds good...

What do you get when the UK sees the TIA of the USA? this

Engineered hens lay eggs that fight cancer

Some people just have too much time on their hands ;) How about printing messages on Guiness foam?

Would you like a Free Solaris 10 DVD?

Canada looks to remove Fair-Use

Netscape breaks RSS 0.9

Although I have never tried Ruby, this might be interesting

Ball lightning created in the lab

North Korea gets a new diet of giant rabbits

Ford does a Electric/Hydrogen hybrid

Ever wonder about the Nature of Procrastination

It seems Intel knows how to handle a little guy that sues them for patent infringement... Sue them back... Too bad tech companies can't just put the good of the consumer in the forefront.

Star Trek XI confirmed... The Hobbit won't be made by Peter Jackson because... well... read the synopsis...

AMD starts yet another motherboard layout, the DTX board

Ever wonder how contracts for big budget games look?

The Gates Foundation goes back on their word - what else did you expect from them

What do you do when you don't want to deal with international copyright law? Well, PirateBay plans on starting their own nation

Looks like the Republican senator for New Hampshire might not be evil

Starting July 1st, Comcast-distributed cable boxes can not legally be forced to stay tied to Comcast

The MPAA caught entrapping people

Looks like HD DVD may have won the war over Blu-Ray

RFID-activated Billboards

Microsoft wants to charge people to get support for Bush's new time changes

Nuclear waste changes the containers storing them so that they degrade faster

Solar-powered car attempts to break record

UK charts now include downloaded songs and an unsigned artist hits the Top 40.

Yet another reason that PayPal is evil

You can now legally get paid to hack Windows Vista and IE7

Well, if you live in Massachusettes, I hope you are not living in a retirement area.

Canadian coins bugged?

Want to run Linux on that PS3?

Quad HDTV shown

Google to be the next Seti?

Looks like you might get your 3D Printer sooner than expected.

iRobot (Roomba) releases info on a new programmable robot

Nanoparticles fight Cancer

World's first Virtual Banking Licenses

NASA goes Metric

You too could own Dracula's castle for $77 million.

Gigabyte introduces solid capacitor motherboards

Want to help PBS decide which new science show to air

Nanoscale optical coax? nice

SecondLife has made their client open source

More ways to do wireless power displayed.

Open Source Energy?

Acer bugging computers?

Dark Matter maps in 3D?

Wikipedia used for AI

A man responsible for many of us living through our early years has died - oh, he created Ramen.

Brazil blocks YouTube

Handwriting Analysis Tool for Tablet PC Results

Attitude
You are optimistic and enthusiastic about your future. However, your impatience causes you to overlook details and ignore choices previously made. You are abstract and imaginative, and enjoy philosophy.

Mental Abilty
You learn slowly, by repetition. You begin with the most fundamental parts, skip nothing, and do not jump around. You make decisions very carefully.

Communication
You keep your inner-most thoughts to yourself. However, you enjoy discussions and are receptive to other opinions. You can be deceitful to yourself.

Goals
You set ambitious, long term goals, though sometimes vague. Fortunately, you have strong will-power, enthusiasm, endurance, and self-confidence, helping you to achieve those goals.

Self Image
You are confident and self-assured, and resultantly set ambitious, long-term goals. However, you are also sensitive to criticism and need approval.

Emotional
You are a cautious person who thinks carefully before acting. You keep feelings inside and do not express them openly, in order to protect yourself. However, you can be empathetic and sympathetic, and forgive and forget quickly.

Social Skills
You are a solitary person, and desire to work alone, and be alone most of the time. However, you do feel isolated sometimes.

New Dining Table/Chairs

Well, after the massive effort of trying to host a little dinner party on that table of ours, we have decided that it is time to do something a little different.

As much as we would rather buy some of the very unique stuff from International Imports (where we got our bed, couch and coffee table) - they no longer exist, and we have been struggling to find a new source of furniture.

Then we saw this table... Nothing special you say? Ah, but look closer... It actually has circular leaves... IE: It is a 54" table, but if you attach the four leaves to the OUTSIDE of the table, then it becomes a 70" table. The 54" size is good for us, and for small (up to 4) person poker/settlers games... But the 70" table... that could actually work nicely for larger groups (6 being ideal, I would think)...

We also bought 6 of those chairs pictured above to go with it. The stain is not quite the same, and the fabric was not interchangeable with another color -- but the circular wood backs look much better than the chairs the table was supposed to come with.

Vanguard

Well, they have announced that the full version will be available in stores on Jan 30th. MSRP $49.99 for normal edition and $89.99 for limited edition.

Of course, for those not yet running the pre-order, you can avoid going to the stores and get the pre-order as a direct download.

I have been testing the game a lot lately. It still has quite a few bugs, but has a lot of potential. Of course, they are also patching 1-3 times/day at the moment, so a lot might get fixed before the official launch date.

Dino is having the same problem running it that she had with City of Villains... not sure what it is... could be video card, or just the fact that the hardware is a couple years old. Think we are going to upgrade her box.

It appears that the current requirements for a guild are that we have 6 members... I have the in-game book to do it; but it requires that we all be grouped when I read the book. If you are interested in joining Eilas' Resource Investment Society (name subject to change over next 2 weeks) let me know and I will grant you access to that blog.

Our guild has a long-term goal of creating our own guild-created and guild-controlled city. Yes, player-built cities are possible :)

As a side note, we will be purchasing the $90 one, as it has some stuff to assist with running guilds. One of the things that it comes with is 10 trial keys. I don't know how long the trial keys are good for -- but if you would rather wait for the trial key in two weeks (instead of paying $10 for the preorder, which comes off the games price) then let us know and we will pass them out in 2 weeks when we get them.

Orthopedic Surgeon

Well, I just got back from my appointment with Dr. Thomas. He took an xray of my hip and my knee. He said he doesn't see any sign of avascular necrosis but that I am susceptible for it because of taking prednisone in the past.

At this point, I am going to heal up from my surgery and get myself a primary care.

News from the Net

Researchers create BitTyrant, a selfish BitTorrent client.

The 19th annual International Obfuscated C Code content is now open for submissions.

Cameras (including those for Homeland Security) help Cops catch a killer.

Researchers find way around a patent to provide a drug to the needy.

The equivalent of NASA in France is going to publish its archive of UFO sightings.

While I don't personally use MySQL (or any SQL for that matter), the Falcon Storage Engine for MySQL has been released open source.

Some places, like Unemployment Offices, believe the employer over the employee. Interesting since the studies show that 2/5 bosses lie and don't keep their word.

Interestingly, in light of the previous story about George Lucas leaving the field, he and Harrison Ford have finalized plans and are to begin filming a 4th Indiana Jones this year. (Title put in bold so Dino sees it - heh)

Well, now we know why the FDA approved genetically engineered food... The USDA is trying to make genetically engineered cattle.

The RIAA tries to sue AllofMP3 for $150000 per song downloaded. Now how the hell can they justify that?Let's think about this for a second. Let's say a CD has 15 songs. Let's say Person A downloads the entire CD from said website. The RIAA is claiming that the one CD that the person downloaded instead of bought cost them $2.25 million? Anyone else think that is a bit of a stretch? Sorta like selling a hammer to the US government for a few million?

Scientists claim polygraph tests are unscientific.

D v1.0 soon to be released.

Here's the world's most powerful diesel engine.

Minitel closes its door. I remember using it once from SOU's foreign language office.

Hopefully Google has this fixed by now, but the article was saying it was easy to hijack your GMail contact list.

I was going to check out these HTML-encoded Captchas, but evidentally the guy thought the Slashdot effect was a malicious DDOS, so the demo is down.

A new island rose from the ocean floor.

Here's more fun for Dino - the science behind champagne.

Looks like HD DVD's copy protection is no longer secure.

Technology used to track the recent packaged spinach and Taco Bell E.coli outbreaks.

Remember the flourescent fish? How about flourescent pigs?

Ok, ok... I want to combine this and OLED and those new transparent transistors and.. and...

A new Virtual Reality net??? Oh please don't be vaporware.

Back from the Hospital

Well, got to the hospital about 6:30am yesterday. I had the laser lithiotripsy done yesterday. The doctor said that it appears to have worked this time. I really liked my anathesiologist this time (Dr. Graham). I remember him putting "I don't care medicine" into my IV... I remember being told to breathe when I had a mask on. I remember waking up in my room. Nothing else.

I think the hospital let me leave too early though. I was not supposed to leave until I was able to urinate and not nauseated... Unfortunately, not only had I not managed to urinate for about 4 hours after leaving the hospital; and I was nauseated enough that I threw up a few times; but I was barely able to comprehend that they were releasing me. Not sure why they decided to when they did.

So, at this point, got some pain in my side, back and stomach. Sometimes pain when I urinate. Movement in general is very bad. While I appreciate everyone wanting to see me, give me hugs, comfort me, etc -- for now I would rather not get up, get dressed and answer the door... Hurts to move.

Should be going in to get my stint removed in 2-3 weeks. Probably still in pain for at least another week after it is removed. I will try to be social again when I can, but please bear with me.