Welcome

Women in Spacesuits

Some people enjoy websites with women in swimsuits. Some people enjoy websites with women in birthday suits. This guy, on the other hand, likes his women in space suits.

This website features space suited women from present day all the way back to the 1950's. The site is fully indexed and features names, pictures and reviews.

Be sure to also check out women in deep sea diving suits and women in scuba for more hot suited action.

Some people are amazing

Well this company has solved the world's energy problems. Laptops will work longer, Electric cars will go farther, and your cell phone will work longer. All according to non-independent testing.

By attaching a Batmax non-ceramic sticker onto you battery, not only do you increase battery life up to 100%, reduce charging time, but also reduces weight in your wallet. He calls it vitamins for your battery.

People who make crap like this and those stupid antenna stickers should be shot.

UPDATE 1-23-05 Perhaps I should try the product before I dismiss it so quickly. The makers of the batmax are sending me a product to test and review. Look for an update on it later.

Isn't he dreamy

I'm back with a storm.

These images were found from some sort of promotional thingy that good old BillG did in the 1985 timeline. He looks soooo sexy.

Notice the Mac in the background.

foxfire... Firefox

I haven't posted in awhile... just wanted to let you all know that I am not dead (much to the chagrin of some people .... Bryant).... just been busy. Anyway this is a post about my love for Firefox

Dear Firefox,
This is my letter too you, that my stoopid IT Director is makng me write before I can take a lunch break. I use Mozilla Firefox... I like it alot. Its good. I also write at a 1st grade level. Did I mention that I like Firefox. The most badassed feature of it besides the tabs and all its other goodies (start typing and it starts finding), is the ability to have plug-ins. I LUUUUV my plug-ins. My favorite one is the Mouse Gestures. Just move the mouse in a certain pattern and BOOM the page is reloaded... or BOOM you've opened new tabs. Also view page in IE is really cool, especially for those stoopid pages that aren't Firefox friendly (like all of msdn.com. But there is another cool plugin called View in Firefox for IE. That's almost as much of a bomb as mouse gestures. Did I mention that I love Firefox. Thank you for reading this. I can go eat lunch now.

-Hux

Personal Sandcrawler

Ever want your own personal miniature sandcrawler a la Star Wars? Only $20,000! NAO Design is the company behind all this. It's even for sale on Amazon!

New products from Apple

Apple announced two new products today. Both of them had been highly anticipated. Both of them are trimmed down less expensive versions of previously popular products.

The problem with apple products traditionally has been while they do have better design, their products were significantly more expensive than everyone elses. So if you wanted to dabble with the iPod, you need to shell out a few hundred duckets. If you wanted to dabble with OS X you had to shell out a few thousand duckets.

Now Apple is dropping the price points on these devices to unprecedented levels. They accomplished this by stripping down a lot of features. While they maintained good design, I think they missed a couple things that might prevent the Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle from being complete successes.

While the Mac mini is really small and really cool looking, the specs on it look rather week. However due to its small footprint and even smaller design, people might forgive that it has fairly weak system specs. We'll see if this mac performs better with the 167 mhz bus than the eMac did.

I personally hate the lack of display on the ipod shuffle. I think it would be confusing to manage 1gb of music without any display. The form factor is kind of big for what it is, but again the price on the device might be the saving grace for this flash based non expandable mp3 player.

You can see photos of the Mac Mini and the ipod Shuffle in the extended version of this entry.

=========================================

Thanks to Mike for the comment:

Click on the images for the full size image

Google Usenet Timeline

Ah Internet Newsgroups. A wonderful medium through with millions of people can convene anonymously and post about anything and everything.

People use Groups to discuss News Events, Technology, Skin Rashes, Fetishes, and philosophy.

Google Groups has archived Usenet Newsgroups back to 1981 and they have posted a 20 year timeline of significant posts on newsgroups.

Significant entries include, the first usenet post, the first mentions of MTV, Microsoft, AOL, and Britney Spears.

Relive the past twenty years through the eyes of the geek world.

Use Google to find things

Thanks to Jason for the heads up on this.

According to this article, you can use Google to browse security cameras. Presumably because google just has crawlers that browse as many sites as possible, by providing the correct search string you can find just what you're looking for.

Here's an example of searching for this particular model of security cameras

In the past, I've seen articles that show that you can find the first digital picture people have ever taken with their camera by doing similar searches using google image search.
Sony digital Cameras
Canon

Post anything interesting you figure out in the comments.

Transformers more than meets the eye...

sweetness steven spielberg is making a live action transformer movie... cant wait to see the sweet sweet cgi...

Music to get the Holiday Spirit

Here's the true Christmas album for you nerds out there. It's a compilation of christmas classics from the 8bitpeoples. The beauty in this album is that that all the music was composed on the greatest music synthesizers ever produced.

Imagine cuddling up next to the fire listening to O Holy night played on an NES, or listening to Let it snow played on a GameBoy.

For those of you looking to get this album, or to gift it as a last second gift, fortunately for you, all of the tracks are available for download.

We're all screwed

For those of you who have been following this blog for some time, you're probably aware of the imminent threat that mass produced robot armies pose on society. We've covered Robot news in much detail providing you with tips on robot insurance, New Robot Development, Severe Advances in Robot Technology, and blatant abuses of the power of Robots.

Now marks the beginning of the end, Korean scientists have now released a new robot that shows the latest in robot technology. A Robot with individual fingers. This marks Korea's latest entry into the global arms race developed under the premise of being able to throw a robotic one finger salute to their robot rival Japan. Over the past year, Japan had released several models that could run, talk, and follow orders. Now, the robots have the feature the only thing that protected us from sharks, elephants, and bears. Opposable thumbs.

Now robots will be able to walk around carrying guns, shooting at people at algorithmic will. They will also be able to seal jars extra tight with robot strength effectively cutting off human food supply. And not only would robots now be able to perform atomic wedgies, but now that they can type they might even be able to use computers and the internet to plot and attack.

My greatest concern now is that the United States is yet to produce and showcase any kind of robot. My only hope is that in some dark lab somewhere, a specially government funded program is developing the US Freedom Fighting robot army that will be able to protect us from these other rogue robot nations.

A Christmas Card the nerdy way

For the Bryantchoung.com Christmas Card, read the extended entry.

Then take the Following text, and then paste it into Spammimic's decoder

This will take the message that looks like spam and bring you holiday cheer instead.

Dear Friend , This letter was specially selected to
be sent to you ! We will comply with all removal requests
! This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate
bill 1621 ; Title 6 ; Section 302 ! Do NOT confuse
us with Internet scam artists ! Why work for somebody
else when you can become rich as few as 27 days . Have
you ever noticed the baby boomers are more demanding
than their parents plus people are much more likely
to BUY with a credit card than cash ! Well, now is
your chance to capitalize on this . We will help you
sell more & decrease perceived waiting time by 150%
! You can begin at absolutely no cost to you ! But
don't believe us . Mrs Simpson of Idaho tried us and
says "Now I'm rich many more things are possible" !
We are a BBB member in good standing . If not for you
then for your LOVED ONES - act now ! Sign up a friend
and you'll get a discount of 90% . Warmest regards
! Dear Colleague , This letter was specially selected
to be sent to you ! We will comply with all removal
requests . This mail is being sent in compliance with
Senate bill 2416 , Title 7 ; Section 304 . Do NOT confuse
us with Internet scam artists . Why work for somebody
else when you can become rich as few as 53 weeks !
Have you ever noticed nobody is getting any younger
and more people than ever are surfing the web ! Well,
now is your chance to capitalize on this ! WE will
help YOU deliver goods right to the customer's doorstep
and process your orders within seconds ! You are guaranteed
to succeed because we take all the risk ! But don't
believe us . Mrs Ames who resides in Utah tried us
and says "Now I'm rich, Rich, RICH" ! We are licensed
to operate in all states ! Do not go to sleep without
ordering ! Sign up a friend and you get half off .
Best regards . Dear Web surfer ; Especially for you
- this amazing intelligence . We will comply with all
removal requests ! This mail is being sent in compliance
with Senate bill 1621 , Title 3 ; Section 305 . This
is not multi-level marketing . Why work for somebody
else when you can become rich inside 49 DAYS . Have
you ever noticed more people than ever are surfing
the web and people love convenience . Well, now is
your chance to capitalize on this . We will help you
deliver goods right to the customer's doorstep plus
use credit cards on your website . You can begin at
absolutely no cost to you ! But don't believe us !
Mrs Jones who resides in Washington tried us and says
"I've been poor and I've been rich - rich is better"
! We are a BBB member in good standing ! Do not go
to sleep without ordering . Sign up a friend and you'll
get a discount of 10% ! Thanks .

Two Competing P2P systems

Today on bryantchoung.com we will be displaying two competing P2P systems. We will also be realeasing all of the source code for both of these competing systems. In 24 lines. The point of both of these exercises is as a proof of concept showing how ridiculously easy it is to make P2P systems and how it may be impossible to shut them all down:

Sample A : Molester 9 lines in Perl

$p=shift;$a=shift;i(shift);socket S,2,1,6;bind S,&a($a);listen
S,5;$/=undef;while(@ARGV&&($_="$p $a f".shift)||accept(C,S)&&($_=)&&close
C){m!^(.*?) (.*?) ([e-i])([^/]*)/!s&&$1 eq$p&&&$3($2,$4,$');}sub e{open
F,'>',$_[1];print F $_[2];close F}sub f{&s($_,@_)for keys %k}sub
g{open(F,'<',$_[1])&&&s($_[0],$a,"e$_[1]",);close F}sub
h{&s($_[0],$_,'i')for keys %k}sub i{$k{$_[0]}=1}sub
a{$_[0]=~/:/;pack'CxnC4x8',2,$',split'\.',$`}sub
s{socket X,2,1,6;$w=shift;if(connect X,&a($w)){print X
"$p $_[0] $_[1]/$_[2]";close X}else{undef $k{$p}}}

Sample B: TinyP2P in 15 lines

# tinyp2p.py 1.0 (documentation at http://freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html)
import sys, os, SimpleXMLRPCServer, xmlrpclib, re, hmac # (C) 2004, E.W. Felten
ar,pw,res = (sys.argv,lambda u:hmac.new(sys.argv[1],u).hexdigest(),re.search)
pxy,xs = (xmlrpclib.ServerProxy,SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer)
def ls(p=""):return filter(lambda n:(p=="")or res(p,n),os.listdir(os.getcwd()))
if ar[2]!="client": # license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0
myU,prs,srv = ("http://"+ar[3]+":"+ar[4], ar[5:],lambda x:x.serve_forever())
def pr(x=[]): return ([(y in prs) or prs.append(y) for y in x] or 1) and prs
def c(n): return ((lambda f: (f.read(), f.close()))(file(n)))[0]
f=lambda p,n,a:(p==pw(myU))and(((n==0)and pr(a))or((n==1)and [ls(a)])or c(a))
def aug(u): return ((u==myU) and pr()) or pr(pxy(u).f(pw(u),0,pr([myU])))
pr() and [aug(s) for s in aug(pr()[0])]
(lambda sv:sv.register_function(f,"f") or srv(sv))(xs((ar[3],int(ar[4]))))
for url in pxy(ar[3]).f(pw(ar[3]),0,[]):
for fn in filter(lambda n:not n in ls(), (pxy(url).f(pw(url),1,ar[4]))[0]):
(lambda fi:fi.write(pxy(url).f(pw(url),2,fn)) or fi.close())(file(fn,"wc"))

Another Meteor Shower

Theres supposed to be another Meteor Shower Monday night. The Geminid meteor shower is promised by astronomers to be the best meteor shower of the year. I for one have been dissappointed by great space events in the past. Astronomers always say that "this eclipse is going to be the best since aught six", or "this meteor shower will blw your mind". And so I go and watch, hoping to see something incredible, but usually going away thinking, that's 1 hour of my life i'm never going to get back. But I still look, in the off chance that there will truly be something amazing as the astronomers promise every time.

So for those of you looking to kill an hour or so, go out around Tuesday Morning from 1am to 3 am with a peak around 2 AM for the best meteor shower of the year.

Google telling you what to search for

So Google, the ever growing search engine is now beta testing a new feature. It's called Google Suggest Search. Basically It types out suggested search terms for you as you type. The results are sorted in order of number of hits, pages, etc.

In Google's words: ""Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers."

Here's an alphabetical list of the top search terms so far for each letter in the alphabet.
a: amazon
b: best buy
c: cnn
d: dictionary (a blow to desperate h. wives)
e: ebay
f: firefox
g: games
h: hotmail (not Harry Potter)
i: ikea (eat your heart out iPod)
j: jokes
k: kazaa
l: lyrics
m: mapquest
n: news
o: online dictionary
p: paris hilton
q: quotes
r: recipes
s: spybot
t: tara reid (she beat Target!)
u: ups
v: verizon (over Victoria's Secret)
w: weather (somehow beat Walmart)
x: xbox
y: yahoo
z: zip codes

Video Game Battle

So it seems like there are a few battles that are going to be fought on the video game front.

There are three players left, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

online :.

There's the online battle, which I believe Microsoft is winning with their Xbox Live. You have to pay for its service, but with features like the headset communications, Halo 2 and soon to be dead or alive. Not only do you get fast broadband only connections, these games are incredibly fun to play online.

NextGen :.

The next generation of console battle is pretty heated, i've seen various things on the net, including killer vidcaps for the xbox 2, a "Cell Processor" developed by Sony and IBM, No doubt that when these consoles are released the next holiday season, they will both show incredible Hi-Def Graphics, so will there be a clear winner? Was there a clear winner in the Playstation 2 vs. Xbox 1 battle?

portable :.

With Portable processing power growing, and the abilities of phones, pdas, and portable devices to play games. The portable gaming field is getting kind of crowded and unclear. Sony and Nintendo have decided to release their new portable devices. After, fiddling around with the Nintendo DS. I was really impressed with the 3d Graphics, the dual display was definitely cool. And the touch screen seems to have a lot of potential. And I like the fact that Nintendo maintains backwards compatibility, has a backlight, wireless networking, uses cartidges, and is reasonably priced. The new sony PSP is coming and it uses small discs, has a memory stick slot, looks like it comes with media software and a remote control, and that oh so cool sony styling. Here are links to photos of a Sony PSP taken apart. It'll be interesting to see if either of these really take off.

A Christmas Card for Nerds

Major Nerd Alert here. Here's today's Fox Trot. I got a chuckle out of it. I don't know why these kind of things always make me laugh?

REVIEW : LG VX8000 on Verizons EVDO network

A little while back, I wrote about Verizon’s new High Speed EV-DO Network. At the time, Verizon only allowed access to the High speed network through PC cards that allowed computers to access the internet at broadband speeds.

Background :.

In 2005, Verizon will launch the LG VX8000 . It will be the first phone with EV-DO Access. To a nerd, EVDO means high speed internet nationwide without searching for an access point. For regular users, this means enhanced services on phones like, streaming video, faster video and picture messaging, and a richer Phone/web experience. Fortunatly, I was able to get my hands on one and I have thrown together a review of the equipment and the service.

Verizon Wireless has launched a test of it’s service in Washington DC and in San Diego. Somehow, due to my usage patterns, magnetic personality, and nerd factor, I was chosen as one of the lucky few to test this phone.

As I had just used Verizon’s high speed network, I was quite excited to be invited to use their new services for phones. However, because this is a test of the phone service, I will not use the phone as a modem for the duration of the trial.

The LG VX8000 is a Phone that has a High Resolution 1.3 MegaPixel CCD Camera, Flash, MP3/MIDI, Video Recording and Streaming, 3D Gaming, and High Speed Internet Phone.

Contents :.

The LG VX8000 arrived via overnight fedex in a discreet brown box that contained a Verizon branded car charger, basic account info, and the LG VX8000 Kit. The Kit Contained the handset, Wall Charger, Belt Clip, Stereo Wire Style headphones with Mic, Lithion Ion Polymer Battery, Quick Start Guide, Quick Start CD, and Instruction Manual.

Case Design :.

I was incredibly excited to open up the package and to see the glimpse of the future. This was after all, a look into the next generation of phones before they were released. Sadly, the first word that came to mind when I saw the phone was “brick”. LG’s marketing team is going to have a hard time selling this phone on looks. A list of adjectives and nouns I’ve already used to describe the phone are, brick, solid, big, stackable, rectilinear. Coming from LG and Korea, a country that is devoted to making everything smaller and cooler it seems that this phone skipped the design desk and went straight to production.

There are a slew of buttons adorning the phone, The front panel is incredibly flat and adorned by several chrome accents. Really the pictures do not do justice to exactly how ugly this phone is in person.

Although the phone is quite large, 3.8 by 1.9 by 0.9 inches, the square edges make it seem bigger, but the phone is surprisingly light at 3.9 ounces.

Another odd quirk is that the display part of the clamshell seems to be heavier than the number pad side making the phone feel oddly balanced.

Screens :.

LG did do an incredible job with the screens. The Color LCD on the outside of the phone is a very high resolution, and the color is amazing. This allows the outside display to show lots of information including number of bars of service, services available, its own banner, 4 bar battery meter, date and time, and a custom wallpaper. From the front panel, you can also play mp3’s, take pictures or movies, browse pictures, read text messages, and view recent calls and make calls. This is all pretty impressive that you can do this with the phone closed.

Inside, there is a gorgeous display that has great color depth. Inside you can see the same network, battery, and date and time info as on the outside, plus another custom banner and wallpaper.

Buttons :.

Inside the Buttons are well laid out with shortcut keys, two softkeys, a dedicated camera button, and a roomy number pad with big numbers.

The side sports a camera button, a volume rocker, and a voice record button that doubles as a flash on/off button for the camera. This last feature is something I’d been hoping for ever since I got a phone cam. The front flip features a Stop/Play, forward, and rewind button layout that allows you to control your mp3s. The Camera on the front has a focus wheel that lets you specity Macro Mode or Normal mode for your portraits.

Call Quality :.

Compared to the Samsung and the Motorola phones I’ve used in the past, the call quality on this phone is not very good. The earpiece volume seems low and the caller seems distant. The speakerphone feature is nice, but the Motorola V710 definitely had a better quality speakerphone.

Reception :.

Reception on the phone seems decent. I found I was able to get EVDO service through my office and house. Although I did drop an EVDO video stream a couple of times.

Features :.

What the phone lacks for in design, it makes up for in features.

Streaming Video :.

This phone lets you download from Verizon Wireless’s library of Video on Demand. Although the selection is small, it is pretty good.

For news, you get CNN and NBC news, For entertainment you get E!, Sesame Street, and Just for Laughs, For Sports you get Fox Sports and ESPN, for Weather you get Accuweather.com.

After the first day, my phone told me I had downloaded over 90 Megs worth of content. I doubt I had used that much data on a cellular network in my entire life.

All the clips are free, and the quality is very excellent.

The streaming takes about 10 seconds to start for a 3-4 minute clip. You can either view the video clip in portrait or landscape mode. While I like the idea of Landscape mode, because of the distance between your eyes and the different angles they look at the screen, viewing the display in landscape mode is actually surprisingly difficult. I found my eyes being more comfortable with the smaller portrait resolution.

High Speed Web :.

It looks like Verizon has been busy working on Mobile Web 2.0 . Immediately it reminded me of the days when I used to dial into AOL or Prodigy. There are clear categories defining News, Email, Sports etc. These all lead to a web that has been sorted. And as far as I could tell all the sites were designed for Cell phones.

If you go the Search button though, you can enter in a URL. This loads up almost any Webpage and reformats it as best it can to fit the cell phone screen. This combined with Cable modem download speeds is a huge improvement over the Previous crap that they called wireless internet.

3D Gaming :.

Theres a new Category under Get it now called 3D Gaming. These games are all incredibly overpriced, ranging from about 8 to 9 dollars for a 3 month subscription. Curious to see if they were actually worth it, I went for the safe download. The 3D driving game.

Upon loading the game, I was very surprised by the sophisticated menus. Then upon starting the game, I was back in 90’s. The game reminded me a lot of the Need For Speed Series that became popular on the computer when I was in high school. The video was smooth, but was at a really low resolution. The graphics were true 3D with real 3D models of buildings, cars, and a destroyable environment. I was quite impressed with the quality although I’m not impressed enough to go downloading 50 dollars worth of games.

Camera :.

The CCD Camera on the phone is of much better quality than I have seen in the CMOS cameraphones from Motorola and Samsung.

The Camera has excellent low light abilities, gets great color, and makes very sharp photos in the sunlight. You can also set a self timer, the flash is the best I’ve seen so far, you can adjust the white balance, metering mode, and ISO. The only thing that bothers me about the phone is the low frame rate before you capture a picture. But for a phone camera, this is by far the best quality I have seen thus far.

You can also capture 15 second video clips using the Video Camera feature. The clips are low resolution and about 15 frames per second.

My only gripe about the Camera is that when you close the Clamshell with the camera on, the camera turns off. If you want to take a photo with the clamshell closed, you have to start the Camera again with the lid closed.

The Macro Lens allowed me to get pretty close to the subject with the subject sharp.

Stereo Headphones :.

The Stereo Headphones were a nice feature. The Microphone / Volume control / multi-function control button unit was a little high on the string, and made using the controls kind of awkward, but I guess it’s better to have the microphone close to the user’s head. The call quality goes up by using both earpieces. This actually makes the conversation seem more natural because you hear the other person’s voice in both ears.

Battery Life :.

Battery Life is decent when you’re not downloading tons and tons of videos all day. With Moderate usage, it seems like the battery will last at least two days. However, with a phone with this many features you can play with, I would recommend charging the battery every night.

Lack of Bluetooth and Memory Card :.

Being such a feature packed phone and for its size, I can’t believe that this phone lacks a memory card or Bluetooth. Without either it makes it very difficult to really use the MP3, video, and picture features of the phone without being charged an arm and a leg. This also means that you will have to get a cable to use the phone as a laptop and you will need to use special quasi legal software to get data onto and off of your phone.

This really cripples the usefulness of the phone. I was able to email myself pictures and midi’s to put on the phone, but it seems that Verizon blocks mp3 files.

Overall Impressions :.

I think this phone shows a lot of promise. It has an amazing array of features, but it seems to have lacked proper design. This looks like a phone that was designed around a specific feature set and not around user requirements. The phone lacks style, but makes up for it in well executed features. However, while the features are good, the menuing system, call quality, and convenience features are lacking.

Other than for tech Geeks, I probably would not recommend this phone to a normal user. And even with Tech Geeks, I might even recommend the Motorola V710 because of its removable memory card and its bluetooth.

Photo Samples From the Camera :.

Click to see enlargements of the samples. The phone has a focus ring, The macro seems to do ok, as seen in the watch photo. I think there must be something wrong with my non macro mode.

Pictures and Video of the phone :.

Here is a sample of the video quality of the streaming media. You need to have DIVX installed.

America Catches up to Korea Again

I remember I was in Korea 3 years ago when they had this implemented and working. It's called ringback tones. At first it sounds kind of stupid, but after using it, it has its uses as well and it does provide for some entertainment.

What happens is, you can set your phone number to play a song instead of the traditional ring-ring. This way, when people dial your number, they immediately know that they have dialed the correct number when they hear Justin Timberlake singing your favorite song. This keeps them entertained while they wait for you to wipe, flush, and then answer the phone. Plus, you can't just hear too much boy-band in one day. The only problem is that if you put Elton John as your ringback, you'll have Joe calling you all day.

Verizon is currently testing this service in California, and TMobile looks like they will launch it soon as well.

The samsung feature of a a motorized Flip Cover on the phone I was using that summer i doubt will ever make it to the states.

Marvel's giant slap to the face.

So it was suggested that I don't talk about porn, sex.com, and twelve inch wangs among other assorted things. And on that note, here is a story that doesn't include any of that. Just a really big d*ck. In the form of Marvel.

So there's this game out there called City of hero's (CoH), its a massive multi-player online role playing game. In this game you create your own superhero and go around defeating villians, sounds interesting, something that boys like. Well Marvel doesn't like it, because (and here's a big shocker) you can create hero's that look like Marvel's heros. So they are sueing the people who made the game.

"But in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Marvel argues that the game's character creation engine easily allows players to design characters that are virtual copies of its own superheros, including ``The Incredible Hulk.''

The company singles out a game feature for creating ``a gigantic, green, 'science-based tanker'-type hero that moves and behaves nearly identically'' to the ``Hulk.'' Players can also create a ``mutant-based'' hero powers and a costume nearly identical to Marvel's ``Wolverine,'' according to the suit. "

Sounds like a dick move to me by Marvel.

[Inappropriate content of this post has been edited by Bryant]

And I'm Wasting My Time in Grad School.

while im sitting and spending all day pouring over Old Testament Theology books bigger nerds are wasting all their time playing TETRIS.

Been caught stealing, since I was five.

Well the ICANN (the internet governing body) has a new rule going into effect that basically states that if someone wants your domain name, and you don't reply withen 5 days, they are legally allowed to take it. Here's an article on it. The ICANN's offical policy. So it looks like I'll finally be able to get www.sex.com or rather The Washington Post.com and become a news mogul.

Friggin COOL

So i don't know if this is a real poster or not. But its just so cool looking.

Tech Passion for Fashion

In case your friends don't know you're a big nerd. Pronounce it. It's no longer metrosexual. It's Technosexual or MetroTech. Whichever makes more sense.

Now comes two newcomers in the Fall Lineup:

tempo time tags by vessel :.

Here we have the clip on Digital watch. Because we all know you're too cool to where a watch on your wrist. The rotational movement of the gears in the watch do no good for your CTS.

Get them here

Koyono's BlackCoat-T :.

This T-shirt has a zippered pocket right between your teets so you can keep your beloved gadgets where you've always had them in your mind. Close to your heart. Always and Forever. While having a zipper in the middle of your T-shirt is pretty gay, this is better than the pants they were going to release.

You can see more pictures of the Shirt in action here

REVIEW: Verizon Wireless EV-DO

For those of you that need to be connected away from the office, and loath having to try and hunt for that wireless hotspot at a Starbucks or Borders, a wireless alternative to WIFI may already be here.

I was able to test Verizon Wireless's new EVDO network card today and I was very impressed.

Background :.

What I have been using to connect wirelessly was the bluetooth connection on my cell phone to connect at the standard data rate of 19.2K . While this was good enough for occasionally checking information from the web, it was painfully too slow to do any work.

Today I had to set up a laptop to work in a location without a WiFi hotspot, but that needed to connect at broadband speeds. I had seen Verizon's display kiosk in the store and had previously assumed that the wireless offerings would connect at ISDN speeds, however after reading their website today I was astonished. They claim speed bursts of up to 2.5 Mbps with average connection speed of 300-500K. That is faster than what I get on my cable modem at home.

Whenever wireless companies claim something I have learned to accept that in real life half will do. I get half the battery life on my cell phone. My wireless Access point doesn't come close to reaching half of what it says it can do. So although I was incredibly reluctant, I decided to give EVDO a shot and see what it could do.

Purchasing :.

Getting signed up was incredibly easy. The access card was $150 dollars after a $150 mail in rebate, If I had opted for a two year contract it comes down to $100 dollars after a $150 dollar mail in rebate. There was an activation fee and a contract that locks in at $80 a month for unlimited use. I thought this price was fair considering how much cell phone bills and cable modem bills are. The whole process of signing up and getting the PCMCIA card from the store took about 15 minutes.

Installation :.

The most difficult part about installation was getting the CD-ROM drive to load on the Dell X200. In order to use the network, you need to install connection software. The connection software installation took about 5 minutes and was pretty easy to set up. This connection software was intelligent enough to know when you were on WiFi and when you weren't so that it could use EVDO only when necessary.

Use :.

Connecting to the network takes all of a few seconds and then you're ready to go. At first, I was surprised at how fast google.com, cnn.com and other sites loaded. Then I remembered, their speed claims. So I decided to take it for a spin. I was able to download software from websites at about 200Kbps and I was able to stream a 300Kbps Windows Media Video file no problem. This is when I got really excited. I disconnected the laptop and walked around the office with it. No dead spots. The wireless had full coverage everywhere in the office. The connection software also came with VPN capabilities, but I didn't get to test that out. Instead I used Citrix to connect to our server and it worked perfectly.

Overall :.

I'm hoping that more people will start using this and that we'll see the price of the service come down to a more manageable $50-$60 within a year. Perhaps by then there will be phones that allow you to connect through the phone so you don't have to buy the expensive PCMCIA Adapter. Then you could add the service on as and add-on to your normal service.

This was the first time in a long time that a new service has exceeded my expectations. Perhaps its because I haven't seen any crazy ad blitzes yet that over hype this new technology. At the same time, I'm curious as to why they haven't pushed this technology more. At $80 dollars a month for unlimited use, it sure beats paying for T-Mobile Wifi Access and for cable modem at home. You get unlimited high speed internet with great coverage. Will wardriving soon become an ancient art form?

Service is available in the following cities:
• Washington, DC
• San Diego, CA
• Las Vegas, NV
• New York, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Atlanta, GA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Austin, TX
• Kansas City, MO
• Baltimore, MD
• Tampa, FL
• West Palm Beach, FL
• Milwaukee, WI

Halloween Transformer Style

more costume ideas abound, this time we are going old school with transformers.

best one? starscream in my opinion. and she is girl?

Why not to pre-order Halo 2

I remember back in my sophomore year in high school, I learned about this new technology called an mp3. At first only available on select 1337 hacker forums, then people started writing servers so you could download mp3s through IRC. Then people wrote servers that allowed you to download mp3s through AOL chat rooms and AOL's file store page. This was back in the day when CD writers were in their infancy, the fastest internet connections coming into homes were screaming 56K USRobotics modems and the only way to play mp3s was by taking up most of the processor power on your pentium 150 mmx.

Then I went to College. So did Sean Fanning. We both had broadband internet connections and a craving for Mp3s. He introduced Napster. Then the college LAN started to have a whole lot more value for people as we went through napster, gnutella, bear share, audiogalaxy, and kazaa. Through this whole mess, college students were able to build up substantial music collections that filled up their shiny new ipods that had 40 gig hard drives.

Video Codecs compressed videos to ridiculously small sizes, Processor power made playing full motion video on your brand new flat screen monitor an attractive option for dorm rooms, hard drive space increased so that you can record movies and TV's on your 400 gig hard drive, if you run out of space, use your CD-R or even your DVD-R drive. Now people were filling out binders of cd-rs and DVD-R's of movies. If they really liked the movie, they could go out and print out labels for the disc and for a case.

Enter in higher power home electronics. Now we have CD and DVD players that play mp3s and DIVX. The xbox entered the home market with Off the shelf x86 hardware that included a DVD player, hard drive, internet connection, and HDTV connectors. Through a little bit more of ingenuity, mod chips were made that allow you to run whatever software you want on these xboxen. Xbox Media Center allows you to stream movies, mp3s, news, weather, IMDB information straight to your TV.

So does this add value to the XBOX? Should Microsoft embrace custom software developments for the Xbox? At least its the most advanced game platform and they can make fat profits on games. Maybe not any more.

For geeks around the world, November 9th was to be their new independence day. 3 years in the making, Halo 2 will ben released to the shelves. It is probably the most highly anticipated game on a platform. It has made waves of crowds cheer at gaming conventions, people applaud it when the ad comes on in movie theater previews. Now you can download it for free, before its available for general release. With File sharing technology such as Bittorrent, Lots of bandwidth pumping into homes in the form of Cable Modems, Plenty of Hard drive space, DVD Burners dropping to 50 dollars, DVD-R's dropping to 50 cents a piece. Average joes with access to Google can download Halo 2.

Microsoft is taking the harsh stance that the RIAA took of threatening people with fines up to $100,000 for downloading the file. The MPAA has taken a different approach of bombarding us with ads on why movie pirating is bad. Does this signal the end of the Media Distribution system as we know it?

Currently, I can download TV shows without ADs in HDTV quality a few hours after it shows up on broadcast. I can download DVD quality movies after they come off the screen and before they hit the store shelves. I could listen to music straight for weeks and never hear the same song twice. I can get games for free and play them before they hit shelves with a >$50 sticker price. I can download any version of any software and use it for free. You can download books online and read them without paying for them, I can download answers to homeworks, I can download papers. It's coming to the point where I can do whatever I want to do for free, I don't order a newspaper, I read all my news online.

TV producers, Recording Artists, Movie makers are going to have to embrace this new distribution web and ditch NBC, RCA, and Miramax. Finally the new winners of all of this will be the media empires will be the end users. We'll be able to exercise more control over what we see, the quality of what we see, and not have stuff fed down our throats from a select elite.

I can't wait.

Caffeine High

Late night? Then consider using caffeine tablets in your next drink to give you that extra edge. There's also the option of caffeine soap, but usually if you need that much caffeine you're probably not showering much. It's a good thing caffeine isn't addictive - oh wait, it is.

new poster

hey guess what I've now moved up from random commenter to an actual poster with an icon and everything... THANKS BRYANT.

anyways I saw this and was like whoa...
Where was this guy in my youth?

So I'm wondering if he aquired these all legitmately or not?

ALSO fyi- I CAN'T SPELL... that's why I write code.

Gmail Releases new features

I've been using Gmail for a while now. While I've enjoyed not worrying about the maximum size of my webmail, I've also missed using a real email client like Outlook or Ximian. I've been forwarding all of my email accounts to gmail and have been enjoying having a centralized spam filtered place for my email, but it gets to be a pain when i'm on my laptop and i'm offline. Gmail now makes that better by offering email forwarding.

In other related news, the contacts section is also improved.

I have 6 gmail invitations that are open to give away for the first 6 people who ask for them. Leave your request in the comments section.

One small step for the Man, one giant leap for mankind

This might be one of the biggest underated news stories of the 21st Century. The X Prize has been awarded to the SpaceShipOne Team. They made two space flights from a comerial plane in 10 days. This is really a history making event.

Virgin Air To Make Virgin Flight Sorta

Virgin Airlines is about ready to launch a space flight program for the average joe. no wait for joe millionare or at least any joe schmo with $200,000.

REVIEW: Synergy Mouse and Keyboard Sharing

Over the past year I've increasingly become a fan of open source software. Using the internet, you can find a solution to any of your problems or a solution to a problem you didnt even know you had. And best of all. It's fully customizable and free.

This is a review of Synergy, a tool that I didn't know existed, and it has changed the way I use my hardware setup. Read more below:

Background :.

My setup at home has for a long time been laptop and desktop. Previously, when at home, I would use my laptop while on the couch and I used it for basic tasks and it runs Linux, and occasionally use my desktop when I was doing 3D/2D editing or I needed to do something on windows XP. So I always used one or another, but never both at the same time.

Then at work, I was given a dual monitor setup and I started to crave the extra desktop space when I came home. Since I didn't want to pony out the extra cash for a second LCD, I just made do. On a recent trip to Providence, Edwin briefly showed me how he could move his mouse from his XP water cooled box to his new Powerbook. While I thought this is interesting, I was discouraged when he muttered something about it being really difficult to set up.

Installation :.

Being a long Sunday afternoon, I decided I would kill some time and set up Synergy on my machines. A quick search on google brought me to the Sourceforge page for Synergy. After quickly scanning the FAQ. I decided to download the App. The windows software comes in a ZIP File. For the Linux Software. I googled for an RPM that was built for my distribution. The search phrase "Fedora Synergy" will get you that link.

Windows Server:.

Installation on Windows was incredibly easy. I opened up the file called 'Install' This instructed me to unzip the folder into c:\program files\synergy. After Unzipping, I double clicked on Synergy.exe to bring up the GUI. From the GUI I was able to either set up the machine as a Server or as a Client. I decided to leave my desktop as a server, Which in retrospect seems like the best idea, because the Windows Server looks like the easiest to set up. All other Servers require editing text files.

I first added the name of my desktop machine to the list of monitors. I then added my laptop name to the list of monitors. For each monitor, you can specify the orientation of the other monitors in relation to that monitor. What seems logical to me is to have the mouse scroll to the left side of the screen to get to the desktop to the physical left, and vice versa. But you could set it up to have both monitors have the trigger border be the top of the screen to switch to the other monitor.

You can also tweak timout settings or a click before the mouse will jump desktops. You can also tweak the port the communication will go over and whether you want to start Synergy automatically as a system tray app or as a service. I chose to go with the service. Just in case.

Linux Client :.

At this point, you can install the client. Installing on the Linux Client was as easy as unpacking the RPM. After that, you can start the client from the command prompt. I set up an alias to kill the client and an alias to start up the client to make attaching and disconnecting easier without having tou remember any IP addresses or arguments.

Hook Up :.

After instlling the client, you can test the client Server Connection. You can initiate a test session on the server. After confirming connectivity, you can go ahead and start the server permanently.

The desktop app runs in the background and takes up about 3 megs of memory and 0 percent of cpu when the mouse is on the server. When you move the mouse to the client computer. It takes up to 20% of cpu. The transition from Server to Client is seemless and instantaneous. The control and typing is smooth and is no different from using a keyboard and mouse connected traditionally. Perhaps if you're a counterstrike junky you might notice some "lag", but I notice no lag at all.

Compatibility :.

So far I experience no compatibility issues with Windows or Linux. It has a cool feature to synchronize screensavers. As far as I know it seems like a smooth and well written app. My only feature request is drag and drop file transfers, which I hear is on the way.

Bottom Line :

For the Price, this app is definitely worth it. It takes minimal setup if you're using windows, a little more if you use only linux or a Mac. Definitely worth it if you have a laptop and a desktop or have several laptops. With wireless networking, its an easy way to not have a docking station or kvm switch. And its a great way to get a fake dual monitor setup. In fact I don't see why this wouldn't be able to scale to a 3 or more setup either. If someone has tried this. please let me know.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

REVIEW: Motorola v710 and Nokia Multimedia Converter

Today I am doing a review on the video playback capabilities of the Motorola V710 phone and how to convert video using Nokia Multimedia Converter.

Read more using the link below

motorola v710 :.

The motorola V710 is a feature packed phone that sports a generous speakerphone, Trans-Flash memory card, Bluetooth, large color screen, Video/still camera and many other features. I will review the phone in depth at a later date. Today I will review video playback on the phone. This is more of a how-to guide as well for people who own the phone.

background :.

Up till now I have enjoyed the video capabilities of my new camera phone. It's proved useful in many occasions including a documenting a drunken race amongst two coworkers in a metro station. Congratulations to Robert.

While it is fun to watch this race over and over again, I find it more interesting to carry around episodes from different sources. Using bittorrent, suprnova or snapstream, I am able to collect TV shows which I can later shrink down a half hour TV show to about 13 megs to watch on the phone when I'm stuck in traffic, on the metro, in the bathroom, at work, eating donuts etc...

Motorola V710 :.

The phone accepts an Trans Flash Card which allow the phone basically unlimited removable storage. Today I'm playing with a 128 megabyte card that was obtained from Buy.com for about 30 dollars.

The phone comes with a built in media player that allows you to create playlists, watch video, pause video, and fast forward through video.

Audio playback is done through an adequate speaker or through the headset jack.

While video playback was smooth and clean most of the time, it would be nice if you could enter the media player into "landscape mode" not unlike the one included on Pocket Pc's that allow for better use of the screen real estate. Also, Don't plan on watching Sporting events on this device. While the image quality is very good for a sitcom, any fast moving images quickly break down the quality of the video stream.

Nokia Software :.

The nokia software is available for free from the nokia forum website. The software requires a free registration process, but it is well worth the price.

The software will allow you to open up any video file you can open up in Windows media player. There are basic preview controls and a preview window. You can then set the resolution of the video, the frame rate, the bit rate, and audio settings.

After tweaking the settings the conversion process compresses the video to a specified location in a .3g2 file format. This entire process took about 5 minutes on my test machine.

3gp :.

The 3gp file format is a new file format that is supported by Apple Quicktime, Nokia, Motorola and others to be the new standard in mobile video for cell phones.

This promises to open up a whole new wave of services when the High speed networks start to unfold across all the carriers. Soon networked Tivos and download services will allow you to get better content without having to do all the grunt work yourself. I predict that this technology is still 2 - 3 year away, using the multimedia converter allows you to preview a little bit of the future.

REVIEW: Hard drive Enclosure from Ebay

Most people who have owned a laptop for a considerable amount of time has had to deal with the problem of a hard drive failure or the problem of backing up large amounts of data off the laptop hard drive onto a new hard drive.

The following is a review of the hard drive enclosure I received from ebay.

background :.

I unfortunately had a hard drive failure, which turned out to be a regular feature on Dell inspiron notebooks. When this happened, I went to the local computer store in Redmond and picked up a regular 2.5 inch Hard drive to Desktop Computer IDE adapter that would allow me to connect my laptop hard drive to my desktop computer. This cost me about 15 bucks and using it left my laptop hard drive precariously hanging inside the case without any real stability.

This was a decent solution as most operations were temporary solutions to get data off or on a Hard drive. Going to a school where a lot of my friends had Dell laptops, I used this adapter very often.

problem :.

At work, we have a lot of laptops as well and people are busy breaking their laptops with spyware and what not so there is a lot of need to get their “personal materials” off of their drives while we wipe their drives clean and put on a new OS.

research :.

This is why I decided to get a more permanent solution. A quick search on google and pricewatch turned up hard drive enclosures for laptops at about 40-50 dollars. Some people even had them listed for up to 100 dollars. Being an ebay junky I decided to search for a better deal.

jackpot :.

The first search for “laptop hard drive enclosure” brought up hits for 2-4 dollars. Thinking this was obviously a good starting bid, I decided to flip through the “completed items” pages. But to my surprise, these usb2 hard drive enclosures were really going for only 2 dollars.

After reviewing the savings-zone’s (the seller) feedback, I decided if he sold over 5,786 items, and had a feedback rating of 99.4%, he must be doing something right.

After wincing at the 9.95 shipping and 1.95 insurance, I decided it was still worth it to get the $2.95 laptop hard drive enclosure just to see if it was really true. I won the auction on Friday. Paid on Friday, and I had the laptop enclosure in my hot hands by Monday.

delivery :.

Hearing my shrieks of excitement, the rest of the IT Department gathered round my latest winnings.

First we were all surprised that there was an actual product inside of the envelope. Then we were surprised that there was indeed what seemed to be a USB 2.0 slim, alloy hard drive enclosure and all the necessary parts. Even a leather carrying case, cables, and a screwdriver.

hilarity :.

Psyched about this new toy we decided to investigate. I first decided to read all the features on the box. This is where the hilarity began. The following is a verbatim listing of the features:

- Big Capacity
- Need not the drive
- Stability reliablely
- The super thin design
- The ultra high speed rate
- Magnesium’s aluminum alloy
- USB interface at High speed, the plug-and-play

1. It’s amazing that a slim hard drive enclosure can have big capacity
2. It’s even more amazing that it need not the drive.
3. I’m glad it comes with Stability reliablely
4. It’s not just thin. It’s the super thin.
5. Not just any ultra high speed rate. THE ultra high speed rate
6. I don’t know who Magnesium is, but he must make some mean aluminum alloy
7. I think I just learned something.

translation :.

After stopping laughing, the three of us decided that maybe the included documentation might be able to tell us some more. After digging around, I found the “User Menuer” . This seems like a bad post on engrish.com . It’s like the worst kind of phonetic spelling. I can just imagine some poor asian man on the phone with some guy in Texas:

Texan: Naw, I want my prahduct to have a manual.
Asian: Ok. Very good. What you call it?
Texan: A Manual.
Asian: Menuear?
Texan: No a Manual.
Asian: Manuer?
Texan: No, it’s a Maanuuuaal.
Asian: Menuer?
Texan: No it’s a … screw it. Yes. Menuer.
Asian: Very good.

Then the inside of the manual looks like it was read to a person on a word processor who was on the phone with someone who was cutting out every third of fourth word. And then they put that text into babelfish and converted it to French, and then converted it back to English. The end result is a jambalaya of technical words, windows, usb, and “warning”. Following these instructions would definitely make you know less about computers than when you started.

the hardware :.

Fortunately the logic board looks decent. Everything is printed on it nicely, the connectors are solid. The actual enclosure feels like its magnesium alloy, the purple poweder coat on it is actually pretty good. The only thing that bothers me is the USB2.0 logo with the subtitle MOVABLE HARD DISK.

It’s pretty easy to connect a hard drive to the logic board and then you slide the hard drive in to the enclosure. I assume it makes a pretty nice heat sink but it does offer the most secure protection.

design :.

After enclosing the hard drive, I figured out that the 4 screws in the bag were probably for use with the enclosed screwdriver. You can use two of the screws to screw the entire enclosure shut. Although, I noticed while screwing the enclosure shut that the screwdriver is conveniently magnetized to conveniently help you lose your data.

The USB connector cable uses a proprietary connector on one end I have never seen before. On the other end of it are two standard USB dongles. I immediately thought. Is this what they meant by USB 2? I thought it was safest to plug both in. So I did.

After the hard drive loaded, and I was happy that the hard drive enclosure worked, I unplugged one of the plugs. Sure enough it still worked. I have no idea.

final thoughts :.

Overall, the drive is easy enough to set up. Was detected automagically by windows XP. Seemed to operate at USB 2.0 speeds. Came with a nice fake leather carrying case, and was definitely worth the 2.95.

If you have a laptop, I would definitely recommend getting this as a convenient option to lug around an extra drive, attach storage, transfer information, or do a backup, or to get a laugh.

Beta-to the-Max

save Betamax? people are passionate for anything these days. although these people feel that our right to own ipods and dvd burners are linked to the ole school beta. i look foward to bryant our computer expert to get to the bottom of this.

btw, i still remember going to happy house movie store in beloit and not being able to rent anything cool cus we had a beta, then of course i remember nevering playing cool computer games cus i had a mac. grrrr.....

D&D

weird video.

after the meaningless and unfunny intro it kinda nerdy style funny.

Prolly Ten Years From Now This Won't be News

Philly is planning on becoming the first wireless city. soon rest of country to follow. and soon people to start wearing cool star trek com. badges.

Hey, she is cute...

Remember those Tamagotchi things that everyone had? These virtual pets went on your keychain and would interrupt you in the middle of class, demanding food or to be played with. Well looks like they've developed the same thing with girlfriends.

I Love Bees

While Xbox owners across the world await the arrival of "Halo 2" Bungie Sowtware, the creator of Halo has released several trailers for the upcoming video game. Sharp-eyed viewers noticed that at the end of one of these ads, the www.xbox.com logo changes for a split second to www.ilovebees.com, a website about bee keeping. However if you visit the above website it is obvious that something is quite wrong with it, appearing to be hacked by a rouge AI. Bungie, famous (among nerds) for their interest in numerology, old mythology, and conspiracies, seems to be using this as some sort of strange advertising campaign for the upcoming Halo 2. A large thread about this usbject can be found here at the bungie.org forums, and a website dedicated to exploring the ilovebees.com mystery can be found here. The whole thing reminds me of "The Davinci Code" Could the Priori of Sion be somehow involved??

Boundless Picture Messaging

So one of my biggest gripes after getting a picture phone was that I couldn't send picture messages from my Verizon phone to my buddy Joe's cell phone because we was on Sprint.

Enter the the free middleman.

Pixtopix.com offers a free translation service. All you do is sign up and then you can receive picture messages at yourphonenumber@pixtopix.com or nickname@pixtopix.com from any carrier.

I can Bearly resist this

I robot came out last weekend. It's a movie about talking robots that take over the world. Looks like we're well on our way to making this a reality.

ESpring USA is selling bears that have a handsfree cell phone speakerphone built into them. Not only does the voice of the person that you're talking to magically emanate from deep within this plush bear, it also moves when the person talks, so it really seems like you're talking to a bear and not a person. You have to see the video to really appreciate this.

Imagine, instead of staring at a blank wall when you're on the phone, you can have a wonderful conversation with a real life animatronic doll. Instantly, calls to the doctor to get test results are always cheery, cuddly and touching.

There are many different styles of stuffed animal you can get, but what I'd really like to see is a talking snuggles bear. I've always had a soft spot for this incredibly soft and static cling free bear. And I would love to talk to snuggles.

But do I really need it?

So, I'm pretty excited about my new phone coming in from Verizon Wireless. Previously I hated all cameraphones because they looked like larger than average phones with a camera added as an afterthought. After my current phone broke, I was confronted by a wall of phones that seem to be FCC mandated to incorporate a cameraphone. To me, a poor quality camera and phone go together like lamb and tunafish, but seeing as I had no choice, I had to make the jump.

I was actually getting pretty excited about my phone getting to me, until I read this article. The PH-S5000V and PH-K1000V from Pantech & Curitel puts to shame any phone that we'll see in the United States for the next 10 years. It incorporates 1 gig of memory, an mp3 player, an FM Radio, TV tuner, 3 megapixel camera. And the ability to record camcorder videos and TV. This phone almost makes me want to move to Korea.

Why are we so far behind?

The G-Mail-Spot

So I have gmail and I love it. For those of you who don't know. Gmail offers you 1 Gigabyte of email storage. A typical email user will be able to use that for years without deleting a single message. Previously some people, Jesse Namely, paid tens of dollars to have 20 megabytes of storage with Hotmail. Gmail is still in testing, so not everyone can get an account, so it is by invite only.

I've already given away a ton of invites, but now I have at least 5 more.

List in comments what you'll do in exchange for a Gmail invite.

Money is always accepted, but I'd like to see more creative ideas.

That thing got a hemi?

At a former job I used to have this CD-ROM drive that would buzz like crazy and I would joke that I had a gas powered computer. Little did I know that some day I would actually want one.

Toshiba plans on releasing a notebook later this year that is powered by methanol. Although I would think that putting fuel cartridges into your laptop that tends to get a little hot, would create an explosion hazard, but maybe being able to always carry around 10 hours worth of instantly rechargeable laptop power is worth it.

They are working on a second generation of laptops that will allow for a tube to be used as a human input device to help supply the laptop with additinal methane and power the laptop for even longer.

Smell-o-vision

Looks like Jacob Gaffney at the wine spectator is really looking forward to having smells delivered from his computer. He posted an article back in 2000 about a company named digiscents. Digiscents promised to deliver any scent possible by using a system of about 100 smell tanks. I can't imagine that really working, and I imagine that being why we don't have smell tanks on our desks now.

Now in 2004, Jacob Gaffney has posted again about a new device called the Olfacom that is trying to do the same thing. The Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB), and France Télécom have been working on. But as we all know if it's French it can't smell very good.

I for one could care less about being able to have smells delivered to my computer. In fact I would consider it more of an annoyance. Imagine if you got a virus on your computer that took over your smell box, or what would spam mail smell like?

Sometimes we all need vacations!

woah this place is a ghost town and to know people are posting for me in my absence***** anyway, todays post is www.makayama.com. this software company makes a program that will rip a dvd onto a pocket pc and have the file be out 100megs and the quality is pretty darn good! granted it does take about 3 hours or so on a smoking fast laptop to re-encode a movie but hey its great to have movies in your pocket.... peace... jesse

Endless Graphpaper

It's 4 in the morning. I need to finish my Computational Geometry Homework. I need graph paper, What do I do?

Go to this site and print some more. Oh and they have so many kinds!!!

ASCII hot or not

For those of you who only speak in Binary:
01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 00110000 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 00111000 00111111 00001101 00001010 01001110 01101001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101100 01110100 00101110

For those of you who only like to see things in ASCII :
Hot or Not in ASCII

Jam Sessions become LAN parties?

Soon, when you and your buddies get together for a Jam session, it might end up looking more like a Lan Party. You might all be plugging into a hub rather than an amp. You might be recoring on a high powered laptop instead of a high power amp, and instead of rocking the house, you might be able to pump the music worldwide.

Enter the era of the really electric guitar. Announced a while back, Gibson has finally launched its digital electric guitar. Right now most of you are probably thinking while this may be cool, Why did Gibson decide to replace the plug with an Ethernet Jack? First you'll get Distortion free audio that you can feed directly into a computer. Second, each string will be on its own channel with a special pickup that can act as an analog pickup or an acoustic pickup. This means that you can spatialize, distort, and separate the chord by string. I haven't heard it yet, but this may completely change how music sounds in the future.

I can already envision gibson digital guitar v 2.0 ... Wireless ethernet.

Lasers on your retina

Ah yes. The technology needed to becoming a personal cyborg is finally falling into place. I'm estimating that in the next 5 years i will be stronger than Johnny 5 or the T-1000. The BBC is reporting that the technology for implanting images on your retina using a "high tech monocle" that shoots lasers into your eye is already in use in the auto industry and the military and is making its way to commercial grade electronics. Now previously, I was opposed to shooting lasers into my own eye, but if I can have a full display directed onto my retina wherever I go, I think I'll take it. Imagine, reading the internet anywhere anytime.

Now all I need to get is:
- The OQO as a replacement for my neural network processor, a learning computer.
- Get a wireless headset for my cell phone.
- get robotic legs
- get a super cool robotic outfit.
- get a tivo for all my robotic activities

Leave any other robotic necessities in comments.

Laser Weapons finishes Testing

Sure the Military is looking to use directed energy weapons in a an offensive role on the battle scene, but we're also concerned about protecting our commercial airliners. Lockheed Martin has completed testing of its missile defense system that is supposed to direct a high energy laser to protect America's commercial airliners from attack.

My only concern now is that when this laser is fired, and some of this "high powered laser" inevitably reflects and refracts and leaks are we going to have people on the ground getting getting burned skin and retinas?

World's softest mp3 player

So we've seen the world's smallest flash drive and the world's smallest mp3 player. Now I introduce to you the "World's Softest Flash Mp3 Player." I wish there was a more creative name for this toy, but the AT-MP3 is a stuffed bear that has more than just fluff. Inside it contains enough capacity to jam out enough tunes for about 2 hours. I'm not sure where they stuff all of the controls and the headphone jack, but as an alert to potential buyers, you probably need to train your kids to not pick up animals and look at the butt for a headphone jack.

TIVO your life

So i'm not sure if anyone will actually buy one of these, but it is an interesting concept. The Deja View is basically a 30 minute TIVO for your Life.You wear a "wearable camera", which basically means that you take ordinary looking glasses from the 80's and add a bulky black box to them. This camera in turn, records everything you look at. An attached storage module keeps the last thirty minutes of your life recorded. If they incorporated the ability to skip through life's boring parts, then they might have a marketable product.

Ew.

Tron was the first "computer animated" movie but also a very not so good movie. As always, there are throngs of dutiful fans to it. This fan, however, really went too far. Is the tight "unitard" really necessary? Lots of unnecessary "glamour" shots here.

Money From Space

So you've probably received an email before that tells you of some nigerian royalty that needs help moving millions of dollars and wants to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them transfer it.

A few have fallen prey to the scam, commonly known as the 419 scam where the scammer asks you to wire him a few thousand dollars for the "account management or transfer fee" and then he promises to send you the hundreds of thousands of dollars in return. A few have fought back, wasting the time and money of these dirty scammers.

Now It looks like the 419 scammers are moving towards a new technology age. Now they have started using the credit card numbers they have skimmed to buy goods over the phone. They have even changed their story to be more up to date by saying a Nigerian astronaut is stuck on a Soviet Space station, and has accumulated paychecks while in space.

Apparently this is Nigeria's second largest source of income. I say we should just cutt off Nigeria from the internet. Post any other great email scams in comments.

Windows is music to my ears

I've been posting a lot of nerd alerts lately. Maybe it's because i'm a nerd. Read the extended entry to see music made with windows sounds and sound recorder.

Free lunch

What's better than being wired? Being wireless. What's better than being wireless? Getting FREE wireless. Here's a national listing of businesses with Free wireless hotspots. Here's a list of the top 100 top wireless college campuses.

What else can you get for under a buck? How about getting an interview and brycon.

World's Best and Worst

World's Smallest USB drive:
512mb's in the size of a coin. I remember getting excited when my dad brought home a 2MB hard drive he bought for 80 dollars.

World's worst/best Supercharger and Turbocharger:
Worst in the fact that they're fake. Best in the fact that they're cheap.
Power Scoop
Turbo Charger

World's worst Easter Egg:
Worst because it was a loaded gun.

Tek Panel as Seen on TV

The apprentice is winding down to the last episode this week. It's been an entertaining series that provides for good entertainment, has helped Donald Trump's ailing conglomerate, and shown us how women are better at selling lemonade and airplanes. I hate how Kwame has managed to slip through the cracks and make it to the finals even though he has shown little to no leadership ability, just the ability to slip by. In addition to Kwame's weaknesses, his choice of Omarosa, the pathological liar, has all but secured success for Bill. I'd be willing to bet my life on it.

So now that we know how the show ends, the only thing that remained unanswered for me as a nerd was, "What is that crazy cool computer that they have in the Suite?". The answer is the Tek Panel 300, the world's first integrated 30 inch widescreen PC. The TekPanel is a lovely marriage of Flat Screen TV, heavy duty PC, PVR, and DVD player. It has decent specs as a computer, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a nice profile. While it weighs in at a hefty base price of over $6,000 dollars I still nominate it as the coolest home PC out there.

Noah's umbrella review

Looks like nerds can finally walk safely in rain storms. The Bright Night Illuminated Umbrella contains batteries and lights so that you can walk to your destination in a shower of light. Although the umbrella's bright green pattern is eyecatching, even more eye catching is the resemblence of the reviewer to noah.

Star Wars Clone Wars Mirrors

Link submitted from Glen:
Star wars clone wars episodes