G3

Mark Woodman recently introduced me to a new online RSS reader called News Alloy and after a few days of using it (and finding the config settings), it’s really grown on me. The only problem that I had with it (and with NewsGator when I was using that) was that I had to manually open up a browser and check for new items. There really isn’t a quick/easy notifier of new items.

So after a bit of “Wouldn’t it be cool” discussion, I decided to write a quick Yahoo! Widget simply named News Alloy Checker to handle this situation. Thanks a bunch to Mark for the widget’s nifty look:

At work I’m doing some work on a revamp of the web side of our product. One of the first things that came to mind when I was given this task was trying to banish all of the old school ways of making web pages, and trying to go with a more standards compliant way. Well, XHTML was kinda shot down for the first pass of the revamp, but I did manage to get buy-in on CSS. Mostly because it’s obviously way better and more extensible for broadstroke changes and “skinning”. Consequently, over the past few months I’ve been asked to introduce some CSS nooblets to the whole big idea. Recently I threw together a quick list of starters for getting into the mindset. I decided to post these not only as a reminder of some solid starting points, but also for archiving purposes. Here they are.

So, I remember the days when I used to go hunting with my dad and my uncle. It was fun times. We kinda had the whole “Men being men” thing going on there. And I loved the times that I got to be the one to aim and fire on our dinner.

My dad was a surprisingly adept hunter. He knew how to mask human smells from the deer naturally, where to sit, etc etc. But at least we were using some level of hunting skill to get our meal that day.

I saw this article about how technology is pushing the envelope in the hunting world and I continue to be amazed at the things we’re doing with technology. I mean, as a technological concept, “hunting” from the comfort of your living room is pretty interesting. But seriously, what’s the next step? Dare I ask. Or when you think of it … is this just another one of those concepts derived from our military? I mean, this is basically what we’re doing with finding and eliminating enemies from afar, right?

Crazy world we live in, that’s for sure.

Fun with physics…for the full article click here.

That’s going to be really hard to fit in the bathroom. For the full article and pictures click here

Looks like the U.S. is at the top of the spam-producers this year. Big surprise, considering where we are on the technology + population curve.

Read the details in this article, which points out that “anti-spam” legislation “isn’t working.” <sarcasm>Gee, that’s strange. Laws don’t prevent crime? How can that be?</sarcasm>

So, apparently Ted Neward of JavaGeeks.com is getting harassed by Sun’s lawyers for misuse of the word Java. This is my favorite part:

We understand that Javageeks.com is not a formal business entity; however, the trademark law is concerned with the use of confusingly similar terms in connection with the distribution or advertising of any goods or services, regardless of whether those goods or services generate revenues, and regardless of whether they are used by “formal” business entities.

In other words, “We don’t care if you’re an organized entity or not, we don’t care if you’ve ever received any sort of money from anybody over the site, we don’t even care what you do (Hell, for all they care, at least according to this missive, I could be selling coffee off the website and I’m still in trademark violation, it seems), you can’t have the javageeks.com domain name.

*sigh*

I mean seriously, what’s Sun’s deal lately? Check out this unintentionally hilarious page on how people should and shouldn’t use the trademarks.

Good grief. I hope the smacktard that Ted is dealing with decides to actually LOOK at the website before his next response.

Scientist are a step closer to a technology that may surpass fuel cells. Diesel powered turbo-generators built on a microchip. For the full article click here.

Pretty funny story about a Toshiba-gone-haywire:

Mystery signal traced to TV

Seems the faulty set started emitting the international distress signal…. which was picked up by satellite and relayed to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. The owner of the TV was clueless about the signal, so they asked him nicely to turn it off.

The kicker: If he turns on the TV again, they’ll fine him $10,000 a day.

Time to buy a new TV, yo.

Google Desktop just plain rocks! Good grief! After seeing a bit about it on Brad’s blog on Thursday I decided to give it an install and go to lunch. I got back from lunch and lemme tell you ….. it IMMEDIATELY changed my work life. From emails to source files to web history, I was instantly able to get to so many things I thought were lost in the void, AT GOOGLE SPEED!

Now, a few downsides I noticed were the fact that it doesn’t yet support Mozilla Firefox, and it only indexes AIM chats right now, but it’s beta … it’ll get there soon enough. I would like to be able to point it at the .log files that Trillian creates, but I don’t see an option for it.

Anyhoo, I’m seriously drinkin’ the Kool-Aid on this one. You should give it a try.