So today was the nicest day in terms of the weather, but it didn't turn out being that nice for me.  I guess it was too boring, or I wasn't productive enough, or something.  Better a sunny day in which I sat outside and read, or a rainy day in which I hunkered down and got a lot done.  Sigh. 

I did get in a nice ride as the sun was going down, and even managed a self-portrait as I barreled down Hidden Valley...

A visual comparison of the Obama federal budget deficit, and the requested spending cuts.  The largest orange circle represents the FY2010 budget, while the little dot at the top represents the cuts.  I point this out not because I think there should be more cuts, or because I think the cuts should be proportional to the overall budget, but just to show how preposterous it is to defend the size of the overall budget by saying there are also cuts.  Which Obama's economic team are doing... 

From the Scientist: Cancer research, stimulated.  "The US federal agency tasked with tackling cancer has laid out a plan to double the number of cancer research projects it funds, prioritizing first-time grants to young researchers and emphasizing genomic approaches to understanding the disease."  So be it, excellent.  One of the best things that could be done with stimulus money, IMHO.  It would be great if they also emphasize funding innovative small companies with excellent technology for cancer researchers :) 

An interesting project from Google: Similar Images.  Next up will be content-based image retrieval - searching for images using images.  And that will be really useful.  If it works :) 

One thing Google can do with their image database is run the algorithm backwards; they have a lot of keywords indexing images, and now that they can match images to each other, they can associate common keywords with matched image sets.  Eventually you'll be able to take a picture of something and Google with it, returning a text description. 

According to AskMen.com (!), here are the Top 5 Cool Things in Space.  Their coolest was the Horsehead nebula, which I have to admit is pretty cool...  (but how about a color photo, eh?) 

Here's something even cooler: Saturn, as seen from Cassini.  I just never get tired of looking at these, they are so amazing.  There are some nice pictures of Titan, too! 

Well I'm off to bed...  let's hope tomorrow is as nice as today, but ends up feeling nicer...