Ruddy Solaris
I have a serious love/hate relationship with UNIX and LINUX systems. Where I love them is that when they're up and running, they tend to stay that way. However, when they're not, they're nearly impossible to troubleshoot.
Happy Thanksgiving
A Happy [American] Thanksgiving to those south of the border. I'm not sure we actually have anybody from there reading the blog, but if we do, enjoy Turkey-day!
Wired on cellphone carriers
Link: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/10/10-reasons-to-h.html
Alas I have to agree with everything in the referenced Wired article.
The flip side is that most of us put up with the cellphone carriers because the product they sell is darn useful. Is it still worth it despite their rather antisocial behaviour? Guess so: I still have an active cellphone.
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Hat tip to Biocurious...
For those who have pen computing at their disposal, this video of a game called "Crayon Physics Deluxe".
It's a little bit like The Incredible Machine, but with an entirely different sort of twist. You can draw objects into existence. From the video, it appears you can make stairs, ramps, cars (!), plenty of things to drop, and even make yourself a giant golf club of a sort.
Who knows when it will be out and about, though, since Kloonigames is usually a "let's see how much of a game I can code together in fractions of a month", but I'm cautiously optimistic :)
Russian Wussburgers
I got to learn a few interesting bits of trivia from a Russian coworker or two today.
It all started out with one of them looking at the consent/health forms for the flu shots that were being offered...
Fecal Transplants
It sounds like something right out of an old Saturday Night Live skit, but fecal transplants are real honest-to-goodness medical techniques for use, for example, when antibiotics have knocked out everything except the really nasty bacteria.
CBC covered it not too long ago. It was purportedly on television as well, but I didn't go out of my way to catch that special :)
Yes, it essentially involves taking a healthy person's poo, screening it, making an enema out of it and putting it up the patient's pipes.
Disgusting, perhaps, but with the good results reported in trials and application of the procedure in Scandinavia and the U.S., we might take a page from Buckley's mixture: it [seems] awful, and it works.
Thomas Louie at the Foothills hospital is one of the few practitioners Canada-side who performs the procedure. He has done his research on nasty bugs like Clostridium difficile.
He's also working on other less-disgusting techniques for lesser sufferers, including treatment with Tolemaver, a polymer which can bind to the toxins that C. difficile produces.
Wired on Xkcd
Link: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/11/xkcd
Link is to a Wired story on the true geek's webcomic. Funnier and more cutting than Dilbert, Xkcd also has a very romantic heart. Give it a whirl.
Why "24" wouldn't have worked in the early '90s
Link: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1788161
Cellphones and high-speed internet connections have significantly changed how action films/TV are written and paced. Link is to an extremely funny revisioning of the "24" pilot, set ten years earlier.
(Via Wired)
Bollywood does Busby
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw
Busby Berkley didn't die; he just moved to Bollywood and started producing in Hindi.
Star Wars viewing order
Link: http://www.kottke.org/07/09/star-wars-viewing-order
Kottke -- y'know, there's a permanent link in the right hand bar, but I like highlighting specific posts of his -- poses this question:
Let's say you're a new father and a movie fan. When your child is of an appropriate age to start watching movies, in which order will you show him/her the six Star Wars movies?
This is an conundrum that has to be solved quickly; Ritchie and Dena only have another six years to figure out the answer before Axel makes the decision himself...
Finding somewhere good to eat
Link: http://rob-donoghue.livejournal.com/275931.html
I've seen this done with other areas of interest, but never with restaurant recommendations:
"The Baconator"
Link: http://www.thewvsr.com/baconator.htm
Link is to an extremely funny expose of the current top-of-the-line Wendy's burger.
Stupidity is its own reward
Having demonstrated my innate gullibility by going to one of their "network previews", the geniuses over at Television Preview decided to reward me with more tickets to their next event. Actually, they gave me four tickets this time instead of the two from the previous go-around.
Gosh, maybe they'll have a show made within the last ten years to bore me with this time.
The CBC on poor student knowledge of Canadian history
Link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/11/09/canadians-quiz.html?ref=rss
This is the lead paragraph on a CBC story about the poor knowledge of Canadian youth:
If you know why 1867 is a noteworthy year in Canadian history or what top job Sir John A. MacDonald held at that time, then you've already outsmarted most college-aged Canadians on parts of a basic pop quiz.
