San Jose Grand Prix Preparations

San Jose is grinding to a halt due to preparations for the inaugural San Jose Grand Prix this weekend. Even walking around downtown has become a chore. More pictures of the preparations here.

Built a bench

Despite the fact that it was 100+ degrees in San Jose this weekend, I spent Saturday finally finishing my bench for the backyard. This was supposed to be my "test" bench to make mistakes on (and make them I did!) so the wood for it was only about $20. I'm pretty sure my neigbours must hate me because the table saw makes a LOT of NOISE but I still have all ten fingers which is exciting. The next bench I build will be a) smaller and b) made of better wood. I still have to sand and finish this bench but having spent most of Saturday working on it, I was pretty much sick of working on it. More photos here.

Slashdot as a primary source?

The NY Times had a recent article on Google and click-fraud which contained the following:

A Slashdotter using the name AnObfuscator sums up the feelings of many toward Click Defense: "Their main product is to prevent, you guessed it, click fraud. Hmmmm, a few minutes ago I didn't know that such a product existed, but now that they've sued Google, I do."

So apparently if you need to write an article, crap people write in the comments of Slashdot articles is considered a primary source? It's not just the NY Times - I've seen a number of publications doing it. It's right up there with using Google "statistics" - counting the number of hits they get on search terms from google as facts.

Mail.appetizer

I recently upgraded my laptop to OS X 10.4 - for the most part it's been a success. One thing that stopped working was a Mail.app plugin I had called Mail.appetizer. It shows any mail when it is delivered in a semi-transparent window so you can read it with a few clicks. This means you don't have to switch to mail to find out that the new mail you got was something that you don't really care about. I didn't realize how reliant I was on it until it stopped working. Anyway, Stefan Schüßler who develops it has released a beta version which runs in 10.4 and adds a bunch of new features like allowing you to delete an email or open the message in mail. The app is donation-ware which I will be doing since I am so dependent on it.

Ariel Atom

While I'd really like a Ferrari, I'd definitely settle for this. Any car where bodywork is an option has to be good. It weighs less than 500 kg, has 300 hp and does 0-60 mph in 2.2 seconds (here are the specs and it's street legal). And the whole thing costs less than $30,000 US. Make sure you watch the video.

Scoble gets his Steve Ballmer interview

Scoble has been wanting to interview Steve Ballmer since Microsoft's Channel 9 began so it's refreshing to see it finally happened. So a Bill Gates interview must be up next?

Chicago Millenium Park Podcast Tours

If your planning a trip to the windy city this summer ... don't - it's always insanely humid between July and September. But if you must, check out Millenium Park which has a self guided walking tour podcast. There is a PDF map of the routes to take with corresponding mp3 files.

And if you go to Chicago, Cereality - the all cereal restaurant - is now open across from the mercantile exchange. Apparently the people who work their have to wear pyjamas and they have free wifi.

Augmenting Google Earth with KML

Via Make, here is how to augment Google Earth information with your own by publishing it in KML (the Keyhole Markup Language).