I exercise for about an hour 6 days a week. Usually I watch tv while I’m on the treadmill. Sometimes I play videogames. It’s possible I will be able to combine these activities shortly since a clever company appears to have invented the perfect exercise machine. It goes for about $600 and will hook up to my ps2. I hope sears carries these; I’ll be on the lookout for them so I can try one out. If it works in theory I can replace the weightlifting portion of my exercise with 20 minutes of Gran Turismo 3. Who says convergence is a meaningless buzzword! 😉
Pictures from the Seattle trip
I keep forgetting to mention that I put up images from my trip to Seattle a couple of weeks ago. You can check them out in the image gallery. For some reason I took a host of images of the Seattle zoo and not many of the family, but there’s some interesting pics and as a bonus the world’s blurriest graduation photo ever. There’s also a few cool pics of our hike up Tiger Mountain and various shots of Seattle. So, check em out if you’re interested, and of course witty comments are encouraged.
redesign updates needed
Lest anyone think I’ve forgotten to finish the redesign, or am finished and left it in a state of ‘somewhat suck;’ I’m still working on it. No need to email me more reminders 😉 This weekend is a 3-day weekend so I’ll be spending some time on it. One of the things I’m going to add is more pictures to the randomly cycling ones on the top right – if you have something you’d like to suggest, send it along or post an url and I’ll get it in there.
D-day arrives at work
Tomorrow is the day. After months of rumors, speculation, anxiety, and the departure of my boss (who I really liked), tomorrow we find out the reorg plan for IT here at Bowdoin, and which of us still have jobs after all is said and done. I’m very confident that I’ve made the cut since I was asked to re-think my job title and submit an updated one earlier this week, but I’m still uneasy. Partly because change is always difficult and it’s human nature to avoid it, and partly because some of the management and responsibility changes could go badly for me. So. Wish me luck. Tomorrow at 3 P.M. I’ll find out what the deal is.
A shout out to feeddemon
I’ve mentioned RSS readers and FeedDemon specifically several times here. It’s gone gold and is now commercially available. If you’re running windows this is the by far the best RSS reader at present – go grab yourself a copy. It’s well worth the $30 price. There’s also a 30 day demo so you can get a feel for how it works before comitting to the purchase. As usual, for mac users I’ll point out that Ranchero’s Netwire news is superb. And for everyone I’ll once again chant: get with the program, RSS is a just vastly superior way to conduct your daily net surf. Once you’ve gotten used to it you”’ never switch back 😉
Your tax dollars at work on mars
Check out this excellent hi rez panorama of mars that folks have put together from the photos the new mars mission is sending back. Cool stuff, even if the place looks pretty damned inhospitable. You’ll need to have the quicktime plugin installed to view this.
Alternative explanation for Bush’s aggressiveness towards the middle east?
Take a moment to look over This explanation of ‘Peak Oil,’ the moment in time when we have reached maximum efficiency in the production of oil, and what might happen afterwards. While I don’t necessarily agree with some of the assumptions in the piece, it is thought provoking. It also provides possible insight into the ‘lets get a foothold in the middle east’ policy we seem to be following these days.
Uber cool flash app
Check out this 3d visualization tool. It allows you to explore xml datasets in 3d. It’s very similar to touchgraph’s cool java-based tool, only nicer looking but with less functionality. As a first pass though it shows great promise, I hope they stick with it and fill out the feature set. We’ve experimented with toolsets like these, using them as navigation aids on projects like the Romantic Audiences Project.
HDTV to get radically cheaper?
Analysts are speculating that the price of HDTV sets are going to drop in price faster than had been expected, largely due to new technology Intel is bringing to market this year. This is cool news, I had been planning on getting an HDTV set this year; competiton and an alternative to DLP sets are both welcome. You can read all the details if you’re interested, if not, just keep an eye out for LCOS-based televisions this summer.
Sweet new mod for Battlefield 1942
Check out this excellent new mod for battlefield 1942. It mixes realtime strategy play with the fps action of bf1942, and they’ve managed to make destructable buildings, something I didn’t think could be done with the bf engine. Well worth checking out despite some first-release glitches.
