…the Brain Bullet! It’s good to know that snake oil has successfully evolved with the digital age. I would love to meet someone who’s actually purchased this.
Wait, strike that. No I wouldn’t. Anyway, click the link, it’s good for a quick laugh. The software purports to do…well, many of the things snake oil would purport to do, if it were re-imagined as a digital product.
An enterprising family member could get me this thingamajig for Christmas. OK actually I’m kidding, though I could see this being useful if you had a fenced in yard and left the dog at home during the day. Depending on the breed it shouldn’t be too hard to train the dog to dump the ball in the bin again too. It’s a dog toy that automatically plays fetch with your dog, for those of you too pressed for time to click on the link, goes for around $150.
Jesus. It’s no revelation that modern industrial society is poisoning us in ways obvious and subtle. New research shows the stuff in rocket fuel is found in overabundant quantities in lettuce and milk. I eat salads comprised of amongst other things red and green leaf lettuce 2 times a day, usually 6 days a week. Because of the diabetes there’s not much I can do about this, I need sustenance and this rocket fuel stuff is less likely to kill me in the short term than high blood sugars will, but …shit! I’d love to get my hands on the decision makers who allow this stuff to be dumped into our water supply.
I’ve been an ebay member for a long time, 7 years according to my profile but I think it’s actually been longer than that, I had to switch identities years ago when an email address I had was no longer accessible to me.
Anyway despite that long usage, and hundreds of transactions, I’ve never been ripped off until now. I’ve had a few questionable trades (one guy sent me a cell phone charger when I had purchased a palmpilot cable and I ended up having to cover the shipping, another guy claimed a chess set I sent him was wrecked in shipping but failed to file the required insurance paperwork), but recently I was flat out ripped off for the first time. It was only $10 or so, for a graphic novelization of a short story by George RR Martin, but it’s not the money, it’s the principle. What kind of person expends the effort it takes to get an ebay account, build up positive feedback, photograph items and list them, all so they can rip off someone for $10? It makes no sense, even if they do it to a bunch of people, which this person seems to have done. You would make more money for less effort working as a clerk at walmart or something. But whatever, I just thought I would mention this since I know a lot of my friends have actually been ripped of more than once on ebay, one for a fairly large sum of money, so I’ve sort of felt lucky until now. Meanwhile, I still need a copy of the Hedge Knight.
For family wandering through, yes, it’s done – I’ve posted this year’s christmas wishlist. For non-family, I’ve tried to be my usual snarky self so you might get a kick out of some of it, but mostly it’s pretty boring stuff.
Help contribute to the networked future – install blog torrent on your weblog. It’s not yet feature complete (it only half works with macs right now but they’re focused on getting that fixed, and mac owners will love their rationale for why this is the priority) but this is another in a long line of examples of the kinds of things broadcast networks should be freaking about, and yet another reason why the damned ISP’s should be enabling fully asyncronous network connections for all of us, two issues longtime readers know I am passionate about. Drop dead simple to get up and running, and the only real requirement is PHP.
This will be up and running on my site as soon as I deal with the recent security issues and get the redesign done. In other words, umm, a year or so from now. Doh!
This is more like a Friday fun link, but what they hey, it’s lunchtime and I’m in a playful mood. Check out Pixelfest – a communal art project where each contributor provides but one pixel to the piece. Will meaning coalesce from the chaos? You can see the seeds of a woodland scene there but it’s not a sure thing that this will end up visible in the whole once it’s done. Contribute your little piece by clicking the link.
Blogbox is a pretty cool idea. They offer a selection of free, open source mini-flash apps you can embed in your weblog. A photo box like the one to the top right on this site (though more fully featured), a link collection tool, a weather box, and a couple of others are available. I linked to them some time ago when they first produced soundblox, their mp3 player. It’s good to see their collection has grown nicely.
It would be exceptionally cool if they integrated support for things like sitebar (a link collection tool which I’m actually running here and gallery. Seems like it wouldn’t be too tough to do.
None of this stuff is likely to show up here in the short term, though it’s possible after the redesign I’ll have two versions of the weblog, one with and one without flash, using stuff like this.
I’ve mentioned once or twice my mild fascination with the Curta mechanical calculator. I’m still angry with myself for not picking one up when I first became aware of them back in 1992 or ’93 – at that time you could get one for under $100. At the time it was a lot of money to me and I never went for it. Now you’re lucky if you can get one for under $1,000. Anyway today I happened across an interactive flash simulation of a Curta. Check it out if you’re curious. And a note for the family – the Curta is very high on my personal fetish list. They’re exorbitantly expensive, but if someone wins the lottery or happens across a way to acquire one on the cheap, this is the absolutely perfect gift for me.
Who needs the yellow pages when you have local.google.com? Like most of their stuff it’s still in alpha, but this is still a very useful and functional tool. Looking for a local taphouse? Google’s likely got the answer. Google has become the acme corporation of the info age.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 