ZZZzzz...  what?  Oh, I have to post, yeah, right.  Nodding off here for some reason, too much sleep over the weekend I guess...  and too much work today as a result.  And looking at my schedule I have two solid days of meetings coming up.  Whew.  Well too much work is better than not enough.

I am hoping to escape my schedule briefly, to see Star Trek.  Too many nice things have been written about it, looks like a must-see, and in fact a must-see-in-a-theater-with-DLP-projection :) 

From the New Yorker's 5/11/09 issue, one of their most interesting for quite a while: How David beats Goliath (Malcolm Gladwell analyzes how underdogs win, basically, by working harder and being unconventional), The Fifth Blade (ruminations on marketing in the canonical razor / blade market), Brain Games (an interview with unconventional neurophysiologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran), and my favorite, the controversial and thought-provoking The Instigator, about Steve Barr's Green Dot charter schools, which are slowly "taking over" Los Angeles and which [under Obama's administration] might become a nation-wide phenomenon.  Much food for thought... no wonder it takes me an hour to shave every morning :) 

Howard Kurtz thinks Lack of Vision to blame for Newspaper Woes.  Weeell...  is it really lack of vision, or just changing times?  Could a forward-thinking newspaper really do anything to prevent being replaced by electronic online media?  Any more than a forward-thinking buggy manufacturer could have done anything to prevent being replaced by cars?  I honestly don't think so, newspapers are old tech, and they won't survive.  I used to think books and magazines might make it, but now I think their days are numbered too, the Kindle and its brethren will see to that.  One day there will be no physical media left. 

The Robot Hall of Fame is expanding to include Da Vinci, Terminator, and Roomba.  A worthy selection, the Da Vinci surgical robot especially (my daughter Megan had heart surgery performed by a Computer Motion robot which was the Da Vinci forerunner). 

The Shuttle Atlantis has a perfect lift-off, on its way to repair the Hubble Telescope.  Although we don't necessarily think about them that way, the Atlantis and the Hubble are "robots" too, and one is being used to perform "surgery" on the other :)  We are surrounded! 

Jeff Atwood: the browser address field is the new command line.  And that means Google is the new operating system.  Which is not too far from the truth, and getting closer all the time...  His post has a great list of various shortcuts showing how Google can parse what you enter: 

weather San Francisco (weather report)
CSCO (stock symbol)
time London (time conversion)
san francisco 49ers (sports news)
5*9+(sqrt 10)^3= (arithmetic)
Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow (people)
earthquake (topical news)
10.5 cm in inches (unit conversion)
population FL (information lookup)
Italian food 02138 (business search)
movies 94705 (movie search)
homes Los Angeles (real estate listings)
Seattle map (map)
Patent 5123123 (patent lookup)
650 (area code)
american airlines 18 (flight information)
036000250015 (UPC code)
JH4NA1157MT001832 (VIN number)

Things I hate: when web designers use fancy techniques to create unconventional user interface conventions.  For example, if you want a button, use a button which, when clicked, works like a button.  Don't make a graphic which looks like a button and which, when clicked, somewhat acts like a button, but somewhat doesn't.  Facebook, are you listening?  (probably not :) 

I've found the worst offenders to be sites afflicted with AJAX, because they are so browser dependent; half the time they don't test with Firefox, and half the time Firefox doesn't do what IE would do, so a quarter of the time badness results.  Flash is unconventional but [at least, mostly] consistent.

Things I love: LaCie RAID arrays which hold 10TB for $2,000 and which look like HAL.  I mean, how awesome is that, both the price point and the design?  What's interesting to me is that this is a classic attack from below, these storage arrays are designed for consumers and sold at consumer prices, but they pretty much duplicate the functionality of "commercial grade" arrays which cost an order of magnitude more.  Yeah you can talk about MTBF and all, but let's face it, these drives will be obsolete before they break.  Remember 200GB drives?  I have one in my closet, sitting next to an 80GB drive, and both are awaiting their next use as doorstops.  They were superceded long before they stopped working. 

No word on whether, when you go to switch it off, it says “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that”…

Since I have nothing better to do, I am contemplating switching to Windows 7.  As in, installing the RC right on my main computer, and living with it.  I've run it under a VM enough to believe I could live with it, and perhaps over time could learn to like it if not love it.  I need a reinstall anyway, my XP has become excessively cruftified.  Stay tuned...