Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Flickr Badge Maker

The Flickr Badge Maker lets you make official looking photo credentials just like a real photog. Since I'm decidedly not a real photog, I made this.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Zombie Dogs

Some times, I just want to stop being a software engineer and work on something cool like ... Zombie Dogs!
Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.
I just hope they're like the ones in Resident Evil or I will be sadly disappointed...

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Clutter

Clutter uses the Amazon web service API to automatically determine the cover art of whatever album is playing in iTunes. Then you can drag the album to the desktop. Later, just click on the album and it will start playing. One down side to this is that our modern MTV / interweb era has given me the attention span of a gnat so I never want to listen to 1/2 a song of anything.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Origins of the Starbucks logo

From Deadprogrammer - The origins of the Starbucks logo. I've never really noticed but that logo is of a siren (a mermaid with two tails) holding her own tails. Apparently they thought this would make you buy coffee and I guess they were right. Maybe it's a subliminal thing...

Sunday, June 19, 2005

GMail RSS Feed Tips

I noticed my GMail RSS feed was not showing new mail in NetNewsWire - so I tried browsing to the feed URL which generated an SSL warning indicating that the certificate belonged to gmail.google.com and I had been trying to use mail.google.com. My guess is that NetNewsWire (and probably lots of other RSS readers) suppress SSL warnings and the connection just fails. By resubscribing with the correct URL - https://gmail.google.com/mail/feed/atom and it works like a charm because this URL works without warnings in a browser.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

California Earthquakes

California has had 4 earthquakes in the past week. To some people this is a sign of "the big one":
She stuffed two backpacks with sweaters, shoes and canned food, and her 4-year-old daughter now sleeps with her instead of in the little girl's own bedroom.
There is zero evidence that earthquakes (other than aftershocks) are related. There is a lot of evidence of people finding patterns where they don't exist. While being prepared for earthquakes is a good idea, you really need to do this ALL the time - not some combination of ignoring the problem and overreacting to the problem. To quote Bruce Schneier:
People tend to worry about the wrong things. We worry about what's in the news. I tell my friends that if it's in the newspaper, don't worry about it because it means it hardly every happens. It's news. News hardly every happens; that's why it's news! When something stops being in the newspaper, then worry about it.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

"Trucker Bombs" on America's Highways

In Iraq they have roadside bombs. In America, we have "Trucker Bombs" - truckers leave jugs with their urine at the side of the road. Nice! From the article:
They are trucker bombs, plastic jugs full of urine tossed by truckers, and even non-truckers, who refuse to make a proper potty stop to relieve themselves.
As if that wasn't bad enough:
Transportation employees convinced lawmakers of the need for the drastic increase with their tales of finding urine jugs as they mowed roadway ditches. "We hit them, they explode. The operator ends up wearing this stuff," Randy Dobyns told state senators.