Friday, December 22, 2006

Building instructions for EVERY LEGO SET EVER

This site has complete instructions for building every lego set EVER. Break your box out of the closet and get building! This was a great toy when I was a kid, and it's fun to look back through these and remember some of the sets I had and some of the sets I really wanted. I wonder if they still sell any of these...

read more | digg story

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Berkeley Data Systems: Unlimited Online Storage

Introducing Mozy Unlimited Backup, a new service that individuals can use to back up an unlimited amount of digital files, for $4.95/month. They also offer 2GB of storage for free. If you're looking for an easy and inexpensive way to setup offsite storage, this is a great place to start. For those of you who are ultra paranoid, they even support encryption, so you don't even have to worry about someone else getting to your files.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

YouTube - Flashback 1981

YouTube - Flashback 1981
I was born in 1981, and based on this "Flashback", so was my destiny as a computer geek. It seems that sometimes even CBS can get in a story that's accurate, to the point and even prophetic... at least in 1981.




Monday, October 16, 2006

Wired 14.10: The Information Factories

Wired 14.10: The Information Factories

From mainframe to pc, from pc to datacenter from datacenter to ...

This extensive article discusses the current evolution of computing power and what new tricks the big players are using to keep up with an every growing demand for computer power, storage, memory access and later the ability of the network to keep everything tied together efficiently. It looks like in another 10 years, the pendulum of computing will swing again, as the phases of the pendulum grow shorter upon each swing.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

A loud and long Sunday night

We've had a typically busy Sunday for our time in Mexico. The typical church service followed by VBS planning so that things can move along nicely during the week. It was pretty normal for the remainder of the afternoon, lunch immediately following arrival back at the hotel, followed by a puppet meeting followed by music, followed by a group meeting where we exchange names for prayer partners and make final announcemnts for how Monday will be for the first day of VBS.

A little different was a dinner buffet (because the hotel didn't and in my opionion kind of still doesn't have their act together) that included desert. Desert after dinner in mexico was a bit different, but certainly not bad and certainly not longer than usual.

The strange part came when it was time for the film. We arrived at the church about 7:50, fairly normal for a sunday. They already had the music roaring and were planning on starting the film inside the church at 8pm! This was wierd, standing outside the church waiting was a different experience in the day light. Even more so, we were'nt able to do music because the church has already settled with their music and there just wasn't time for us to do anything before they planned to begin the film.

But then it gets loud. really realy loud. Apparently, a neighbor of the church was either nearly deaf, had a bone to pick with the church, or just had a need to be obnoxious. He had had both speakers of his sound system facing out of his front window, toward the church at as high a volume as possible without having the sound be totally distorted. This went on pretty much all night long. It was difficult, for two reasons... 1.) Really frustrating to have someone act in such a belligerent manner and 2.) really hard on the ears. Hard to think... hard to hear and to be honest I really feel a bit dizzy from the whole thing.

Anyway, we finished up the film and headed home and we were back at the hotel by an early 10:00. Now it's time to get ready for another full day of interesting sights, sounds, people and hopefully fun.

P.S. See my previous entry for a link to my Flickr Mexico 2006 photoset.

Mexico 2006

Arrival and Day 1 in Mexico! I'll be posting pics to flickr as I have a chance to come back to the hotel and download.

Go here to view the mexico 2006 photo set, where I'll posting all my images.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Photos: Airships on the fly | CNET News.com

Photos: Airships on the fly | CNET News.com

I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking a zeppelin ride anywhere. Like a cruise, only in the air instead. Visually more interesting and faster. Take a look at all the evolving ideas that surround the resurgence of Airships.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

The Top 10 weirdest keyboards ever - Fosfor Gadgets

The Top 10 weirdest keyboards ever - Fosfor Gadgets

If you're in the market for a new keyboard, check these out. My personal favorite is the laser projected keyboard. I think we will see more like this in the future. The most difficult thing about this keyboard is that absence of tactile feel when typing, but that's only because weve become so used to tapping a key. Most sci-fi keyboards you see deal with tapping on a window of some kind, so this doesn't really seem to far out there.

The other keyboard that interests me is the frogpad. I actually found myself searching for all the letters of the alphabet on the keyboard. I can see a good application of this keyboard on aircraft. The new model Airbus has a glass cockpit with a joystick instead of a flight yoke to make room for a keyboard. If you used a frogpad, you wouldn't need to do this because you would only need one had to do the typing (this could also work well for a fighter jet also).

Most of the other incarnations of the keyboard we know deal with ergonomic designs for those who are having trouble with a repetetive stress disorder or disability. Here's to hoping it won't come to that for me sometime in the future.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

digg - Submit Item

Oracle tried to acquire open-source database maker MySQL. I don't belive it, I think Oracle is trying to take out a competitor. The article, however, discusses how this is "an indication of the profound changes the software giant is willing to make as it adapts to the increasingly significant collaborative programming philosophy"

read more | digg story

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Windows .wmf Vulnerability - Patch

Windows WMF vulnerability temporary patch

If you haven't heard about this and you are browsing the web right now, click the link above to get the patch for the recent 0-day .wmf windows vulnerability.