« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
April 21, 2006
Un-Sexiest 100 Men in the World
link to the list... surprizingly bryant did not make the list this year....
is it just me or does cool stuff on the internet seem lacking these days?
Posted by Jesse at 04:09 PM | Comments (1)
April 19, 2006
Fastest Wifi Hotspot ever
So I'm on the fastest Wi-fi connection i've ever been on. 542 miles per hour to be exact.
I'm flying on a Korean Air Lines flight to Seoul, Korea. It looks like Beoing has launched a network of satellites and attached antennas on top of planes and put access points in the cabins. It's called Connexion by Boeing.
I've decided to use gmail, voipbuster, warfish, AIM, orb and dsl reports to do some testing on my own. I'm connected to at 54 Mb/s to the router and DSL Reports seems to indicate I'm connected to the rest of the world at around 80Kb/s. After this, I did a traceroute to google.com to measure up on latency. From the results I was experiencing anywhere from 500 ms to over a second. At first I was getting disconnected regularly while doing my tests, but after a tip from a friend, James, i reset my MTU size settings in XP and now my connection seeems stable.
So on to the apps. Everything works.
Gmail - web email:
There's a lot of 2 way communication going on in Gmail. So while everything works, everyting has an annoying lag to it.
Voipbuster - Voip phone service
You can hear the person you're calling just fine, but apparently the other user hears garbled voice that is partially discernable.
warfish - web based game:
Same deal with gmail, but with graphics. Therefore, my turn which normally takes about 2 minutes took about 10.
AIM - instant messaging.
AIM works pretty much the same as it does on terra firma. Nothing to report.
ORB - streaming video
Orb actually works surprisingly well. My media server is on a Comcast cable modem. The video streamed near perfectly at about 80Kb/S
However while all of these are nice to have aboard the plane, Korean Air Lines also provided a service that detracted from the value of the internet connection. They offered an on-demand library of about 100 tv shows and about 40 movies as well as Single player and networked games available at every seat on about a 8 inch screen.
Overall I was pretty much impressed at what was available. While the technology isn't perfect, It did offer all functionality that was necessary. Hopefully they'll be able to squeeze out extra bandwidth and reduce latency somehow.
Posted by Bryant at 05:10 PM | Comments (4)
April 16, 2006
The heck is wrong with gas prices?
So I went to go fill my up my 4 wheel drive vehicle again and was sad to see that gas has now gone up past 3 dollars a gallon for me. Does this mean gas will hit at least 3.50 this summer? then mebbe 4 next summer? or does it mean that in 3 years i should be expecting to pay at least 6?
Wheres the news media? Are they going to talk about it again this year or are they going to give ita bye because we just talked about this a few months ago?
According to the DOE, the average price of gas used to be around a buck fifty back in 2003. How much longer are we going to put up with this?
I don't get why there hasn't been more of an outrage over this. Essentially it has gotten twice as expensive to drive to work, drive to a vacation for workers.
If you drove 15,000 miles and averaged around 17.8 miles per gallon, 3 years ago this would cost you 1264.04 in gas. At 3 dollars a gallon that now costs you 2528.09 in gas. When gas hits 4 dollars a gallon it will cost you 3370.79.
I had been pretty indiffernt about ANWR before, but now i'm starting to think we should drill the heck out of it. Sure it's only a short term solution, but at least it will make energy costs a little more reasonable until the technology is developed for us to drive eco-friendly cars.
The other thing about eco-friendly cars that I noticed today. Hybrid cars are allowed to go in the HOV lanes. So all the traiditional cars get the stop and go traffic, while the hybrids get to enjoy the highway speeds. However, Hybrid cars really get their benefit in stop and go traffic. The prius gets 60 miles per gallon city and 51 miles per gallon highway. A Corolla will get 26 miles per gallon city and 34 miles per gallon highway. with the current setup, the prius get 51 and the corolla get 26 for a combined 77mpg. If you swapped them, the Corolla would get 45 and the prius would get 60 for a combined of 106 mpg.
The system should be, for every hybrid, they should let another regular gas guzzler go in the HOV. After all, the people driving the hybrids are driving them to benefit the earth right?
Posted by Bryant at 02:03 AM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2006
Another Snubster Update
So I've been pretty busy and haven't been able to update this blog or Snubster much, but Snubster seems to be getting pretty popular. I have the day off tomorrow, so I was thinking about working on a couple new features for Snubster this weekend.
The media has seemed to taken a liking to Snubster. It's been in or is going to be in the School Library Journal, the NY Daily News, Wired.com, Danish National Radio, and Maxim Radio on Sirius.
I'm still wondering if I'm ever going to hear any word from friendster, myspace, or the Colbert Report.
While I'm pretty excited about all of this development, I just wish I had more time to devote to it. I feel like the site could use a little more work. If you feel the same way and you know of any significant issues that may make the site better let me know.
Posted by Bryant at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2006
Brew Crew
every year i am allowed one post to brag about how the brewers are in first place of the NL central... sadly i am only allowed one post because this rare even only lasts for one week.... congrat millwaukee on a 2-0 start..
Posted by Jesse at 08:48 PM | Comments (1)