<<< watching more movies

Home

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:23 PM >>>


Sunday,  01/27/08  10:27 PM

Still raining!  Amazing, we've had a lot of water fall down from the sky around here.  I guess we need it, but it is easier when it doesn't come all at once...

So, yesterday I spent the day installing dimmers.  (This is doing something worthwhile by way of procrastinating from doing something else more urgent :)  In this case, I *finally* posted all the thousands of pictures I had queued up to my personal website.  (I'm not linking it because, well, all those old photos are only interesting to us, not to you :)  The photo gallery there is a sort of Flickr-before-there-was-Flickr; written by me using Korn shell scripts.  Yeah, I wouldn't do it today, but I did it then (1999!) and there it is, so I use it.  When we lived in Northern California and our parents didn't, we used this as a way to keep them abreast of their grandkids progress.  Then we moved back to Southern Cal and I stopped updating.  But we kept taking pictures, and having an online photo album is really cool.  I love seeing what my kids looked like in 2003.  Now that I'm up-to-date, maybe I can stay that way... 

Meanwhile, back in the world...

Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point, Blink) has a great blog; he's been posting about the War on Drugs.  Steroids in sport, that is...  "Just to be clear: I'm not advocating that steroids be legalized. In fact, I think that's probably a terrible idea. I'm simply puzzled. The professional sports establishment is in the midst of a major witchhunt against alleged users of performance enhancing drugs. But no one--so far as I can tell-- has articulated a coherent explanation for what should be banned and why."  It is true; what's the difference between taking prescribed drugs for rehabilitation vs. taking steroids for performance improvement? 

TechCrunch posted a roundup of companies presenting at Demo 2008.  There seems to be a trend toward "real" businesses instead of companies trying to be Google's or Yahoo's next product feature.  I especially find Voyant intriguing; "a web-based financial software offering intended for individuals who want to gain 'direct control over their financial health'. The software is particularly useful for generating 'what if' scenarios and forecasts stemming from your current financial situation."  Cool.  I could be a user :) 

I just love The Truth About Cars, aka TTAC, a fantastic car review site.  Check out their review of the Ferrari F430: "the F430’s interior is something of a shock, a radical departure from Enzo’s philosophy of selling his customers an engine and throwing the car in for free", "Firing-up the F430’s 4.3-liter V8 is like watching the opening scene of a James Bond movie: predictably ridiculous, yet giddy-making in its promise of extreme violence", and my favorite, "The F430 gently whisked me from the daily grind and gawking SUV owners. If Jimi Hendrix was reincarnated as a gearbox, I’d be standing next to his Fire."  Wonderful.  (Oh, and the F430 is pretty nice too :)