Good morning! And it is a good morning, a great morning, everything here is 10-4. (Remember that expression? If you're not old enough to remember the CB craze of the late 70s, it means "everything okay".) Not only is it 10-4 because it is October 4th, but because, well, I feel much better - twelve hours of sleep! - and also because I have this nice little weekend with nothing planned. It is even raining outside, lightly, the sunlight filtered through clouds, dappling the golf course. Megan and I ran out to get bagels, and the lox tastes particularly good today, smokey and salty. It is good to be alive on such a morning, so as to enjoy it!
I decided I was against any kind of government bailout bill, so they finally got their act together and passed one. So be it. My friend Nick suggests this won't keep us from having a couple of bad years, but it will allow us to recover faster. I hope he's right. Slate argues we should stop worrying about the moral hazard of the bailout, and just enjoy it. Huh.
My boss Dirk sent me this presentation: The Subprime Primer. Pretty funny and pretty accurate, I'm afraid...
Has anyone out there tried Fring? This is a VoIP application for the iPhone / iPod Touch, a legal download from the Apple iTunes store (i.e. doesn't require jailbreaking). Apparently when the iPhone / iTouch is connected via WiFi you can make voice calls for free, and interconnect to Skype. I'm going to have to try it, even if it is a dancing bear, it sounds like a really cool dancing bear :)
I cannot read Fring without interpreting it as "Firing"; my brain sticks the "I" in every time.
World's fastest cyclist hits 82.3mph. Wow, my hero.
Tivo have been busy; they've announced a deal with Nero for a tuner card and Tivo software which transform any PC into a Tivo box. Kind of an expensive way to get there, since a TivoHD is only $300 before rebates, but cool nonetheless. Of course you still have to subscribe to the Tivo service...
... and, the Tivo UI is apparently getting a facelift; screenshots have emerged of a new user interface. Looks nice :)
Speaking of looking nice, Lamborghini have announced a new four-door sedan, the Estoque. Wow, Maserati really started something with the Quattroporte, eh? First the Porsche Panamera followed, then the Aston Martin Rapide, and now this... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and these cars all have a bit different look, true to the design cues of their brand. Some work out better than others, and I think Lamborghini may have to do some tinkering here, but they have four years until production...
Some interesting brain food: The Lake Wobegon distribution. ("where all the children are above-average".) In the diagram at right, the red curve is a "normal" distribution, and most are average; the blue box shows the high-end of normal, in which most are below average. [ via John Gruber, who comments, this is why math nerds love baseball :]
All my life I've been waiting for you... the Dell 7609WU projector supports 1920x1200 pixels natively, with 3,850 lumens and a 2,700:1 contrast ratio. Just $5,000. I want one, this is the first projector I've seen which is up to the demands of showing digital pathology in action.
Finally, want to see what you were doing in 2001? In celebration of their tenth birthday, Google have posted a 2001 search engine that looks just like Google circa 2001, and only returns results from 2001 and before... pretty cool. I'm in there, working for Intuit.
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