Annoying Backgrounds

I used to read The J-walk Blog fairly regularly, but eventually his religion bashing got old and I wandered away to other sites (hey, it is his site and he is welcome to do as he pleases just as I am free to read it or not). Anyway, I stumbled across a post of his the other day that reminded me of a conversation some coworkers and I had a few months back. We were discussing ways to make a web page that was required reading as annoying as possible. Call it a mean streak, but at least we didn't follow through (or at least I have not). Little did I know how truly annoying a page could be. Take a look at some of these backgrounds, but don't blame me if you end up with a headache.

Give One Get One - OLPC

The One Laptop Per Child Initiative is working to provide access to technology widely available to many children already to those in countries developing around the world. The OLPC XO laptop is designed to provide a adaptable power supply, wifi compatible computer at under $100 per machine. That goal is only able to be reached at this point by large quantity orders at this time, but various other programs are in use to finance the distribution of these laptops.
One of these is the Give One Get One option. This allows individuals to purchase an XO to be donated to a child in another country and have one delivered to themselves as well. This is not a desktop replacement, but it is not necessarily a novelty item either. An added bonus is that Tmobile is offering one year of hotspot access to anyone who participates. So basically for $400 you donate a laptop to a child in a developing nation, you get one for yourself and you get around $240 worth of hotspot access. Not a bad deal all in all. Oh, and you can claim $200 as a charitable contribution on your taxes. How is that for a good deal?

A Real Life BattleMech, Sort Of

This is a reprint of an older article. I am not sure the original is even posted. But the long and the short of all this is that this fellow, Jim "Starfury", built a scaled down version of a MadCat BattleMech for his kids. (Of course it was for his kids... what kind of grown man would build an 18 foot wood and metal model of a 31st century 80 ton war machine... ok, so maybe it wasn't only for his kids!)

Anyway, he and his buddies spent who knows how long designing and building this thing and as such projects often go it went well beyond their initial plans and expectations. Nearly growing to large for the garage it was mostly built in and the fence it had to be moved through, this behemoth consumed months of time and numerous trips to Home Depot (or a locationally closer, similar store).

But, as you can imagine and see from the pictures, it was probably worth every minute.

Facts About the "Surge" In US Troops

The Bird of Paradise Blog put up another good entry lately. I have not had the chance to read his references, but I have found him in the past to be generally trustworthy. The post is speaking about the "Surge" In US Troops for Iraq that President Bush called for recently. It is my opinion that things may not be great in Iraq, but perhaps they are not as hopeless as some believe.

A User's Guide to the Declaration of Independence

As with any site dealing with politics or history, this site has a bias, but the information is there for your study and much of the content is factual in nature (the Declaration of Independence and multiple references and quotes from other sources). The parent site is the Claremont Institute, which I believe I have blogged before, but memory is failing me for sure. None the less, if you have never actually read or studied the DoI, I encourage you to take a look at founding.com's website - A User's Guide to the Declaration of Independence. I don't like the set-up really, but the information is what I think is important.

Teratogenesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, the "redesign" post previous to this one is now out of date. Darn it. Anywho, the word for the day (this is in no way a guarantee, implied or otherwise, of any future words of the day, week, month, etc.) is teratogenesis. I can't remember where I ran across this word in browsing the web today, seeing as how my blissful browsing was interrupted by the reality of needing to unpack the last 20 or so boxes of Move Around the World 2004-2007. Although, I don't mind seeing various parts of God's creation (could do with a bit less desert all in all, but it all has its uses), I am really not fond of the constant need to unpack and place worldy belongings in a semi-organized fashion around the house. I like the end result... now that I think about it, it is similar to children, I like having them and all, for the most part, but if it were reliant upon me to plan their birth and all that, I probably still would not have gotten around to it yet...

Wow, how is that for a rambling, off topic post?

Color and Template Change

So this is the price you pay for trying to update and stay "modern". I thought. "Sure, I will go ahead and update my template. Why not? After all, how many changes could I have made to that thing anyway?" Well, evidently enough to make me not like the way it looked after I went back to the template minus the changes I had made. Anyway, I am not sure if I will keep this color scheme and layout or not, but this is what it looks like for now. Of course the funny thing is, I can change the layout and color scheme as much as I want and this post will be valid... at least until I blog something else in front of it. :)

Lightning balls created in the lab

My mother talked about seeing ball lightening as a child. While I didn't doubt her, I also didn't understand how that was possible. Later in life I found out that it was a documented if poorly understood phenomenon. Now a group of scientists in Brazil have managed to recreate this bizzare natural, event. The article seen here describes what they have accomplished. Neat stuff.