Archive for September, 2005

Google To Buddy Up With NASA

Friday, September 30th, 2005

Schmidt’s Google To Buddy Up With NASA – Forbes.com

This one looks pretty damn cool.

According to another article, Google will open up a million square feet worth of office space in NASA Ames research center.

My goodness it would be good to have a few hundred GOOG shares right about now.

Barring that, I look foward to seeing Google Mars and Google Moon. I want to see how they represent the alien station on the far side of the moon.

600 barrels of loot found on Crusoe island

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Guardian | 600 barrels of loot found on Crusoe island

Obviously the money belongs to Arturito. Finders, keepers. Too bad he’s not sentient, yet.

What would a sentient robot do with $10B?

It sounds like too much money for it to be good news, ya know? Papal rings??? Incan statues??

I seriously think it should be excavated by ARCHAEOLOGISTS, and super tight security around the whole thing.

000 to 999 in emacs

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

There have been times that I’ve needed lists of numbers in order. Mostly for programming things. Today I created such a list using emacs via a keyboard macro.

To use it, do M-x edit-kbd-macro and then choose a key combo. (I always use C-x e). Then replace whatever is in the buffer with this text:

;; Keyboard Macro Editor.  Press C-c C-c to finish; press C-x k RET to cancel.

Command: last-kbd-macro
Key: none

Macro:

C-SPC			;; set-mark-command
0			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
1			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
2			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
3			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
4			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
5			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
6			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
7			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
8			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
9			;; self-insert-command
C-x r k			;; kill-rectangle
C-x C-x			;; exchange-point-and-mark
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
0			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
1			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
2			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
3			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
4			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
5			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
6			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
7			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
8			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
9			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
C-SPC			;; set-mark-command
ESC < ;; beginning-of-buffer
C-x r k			;; kill-rectangle
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
0			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
1			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
2			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
3			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
4			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
5			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
6			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
7			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
8			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline
C-e			;; end-of-line
RET			;; newline
C-x r y			;; yank-rectangle
2*C-b			;; backward-char
C-x r t			;; string-rectangle
9			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; newline

C-c C-c to compile the code and then switch to an empty buffer. C-x e and in a couple seconds: bang
000
001
002
003
...
997
998
999

Magic.

Skype – The whole world can talk for free.

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Skype – The whole world can talk for free.

Skype rules. skype to skype calls are always freeeee!!! Calls from Skype to phones are amazingly inexpensive!!!!

Download Skype!!

roachfiend.com » BugMeNot

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

roachfiend.com » BugMeNot

This awesome extension is like a dream come true for getting into free registration sites.

mailinator.com is quite nice, but this is even *faster*.

btw, mailinator has a cool new look and more functionality, such as a semi-realtime spam map, showing where the most spam is coming from right now….

Star Wars III

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

Star Wars III

Nice movie. I loved the monsters and lava and the final fight
scenes. The classic scene of heros (fighting anti-heros) on a raft
about to go over the waterfall piqued my senses when that water was a
river of lava. How incredible.

The transition of Anakin’s body into a burned mess was quite
believable. I can see why he would have risked attacking from the low
position, and how he fucked up doing it. Lava burning off the suit
and not actually burning the entire body was definitely believable.
Very Jedi for Obi-wan to leave instead of kill his previous prey.

The transition from Darth Vader as burned mess to wearing a black
suit seemed a bit too fast. But I enjoyed wearing the mask for a
second. Red tints his vision forever after. No wonder he is so
angry!

And man, when Darth Vader first breathed… Woah. I remember
that noise.

Not quite as amazing when he first spoke. Not…. a believable
transition, I guess. Too abrupt, maybe.

I (being a great movie director) would have had the newly costumed
Darth Vader say something like, “shit, I can’t feel Padme’s presence
anywhere,” to explain why he might agree she was dead. She could have
just died and he just come alive and it woulda been perfect.

Also, I was surprised at how quickly Anakin broke his allegiance
when Mace Windu was killed. I don’t remember the scene exactly, but
the switcharoo seemed pretty quick.

How did Darth Sidious plant a code 66 in all his fighters? Were they his
army? That set of scenes was fuckin’ scary. I was glad to have some
pre-knowledge of who must live.

I liked the explanation for why storm troopers are used in episode
IV. Not that they didn’t have the CGI technology in the 70s, er, the
future, but that Darth Sidious had all droids shut down. But I don’t
otherwise why he would do that.

If C-3P0′s memory gets wiped, I don’t get how he will recognize
R2D2 when they are reunited on Tatooine. And why do they end up
there? I may have missed that.

I liked the fight between Yoda and Darth Sidious. It wasn’t as surprising
as the one with Count Dooku (sp) in the previous movie, but still
cool. I like how they didn’t try to make it More Than the previous
fight. They made it just the right amount of cool. Oh, and when Yoda
walked into the room and those red cats tried to stop him but just
crumpled… that was money.

In the final scene, good job on the image of Uncle Owen watching
two suns set. Just like the first movie. Uh, I mean the next
one.

Oh, and Leia really looked like Leia and Uncle Owen did too.
Great casting. Not as difficult to find non-speaking actors, I
guess, but still cool.

Dude’s Drivel » Deep Impact vs. Missile Defense

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Dude’s Drivel » Deep Impact vs. Missile Defense

This is cool, but I’m actually testing trackback stuff. I don’t understand it quite yet.

1000 feet closer to space

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

LiftPort Staff Blog » Blog Archive » Photos & More from 1,000-ft Robot Test

Also: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050923_spaceelevator_test.html

I love the idea of a space elevator. Or fifty around the globe. How big of a ribbon will they have to be????

nanotechnology detects cancer proteins in single drop of blood

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=31091

This seems to herald a day where the family physician (or anyone) can do a quick test to see if we have cancer. Totally kick ass.

themes

Monday, September 26th, 2005

I just installed the Batavia 1.5 theme. I didn’t like the color, but I like the design, especially the little squares around the top of the calendar. Dude said it’s easy enough to change the colors, so that’s what I did. It wasn’t trivial; the feedback loop took a few steps, but I’m pretty happy with the colors now.