For when you think, "Gee I wonder how I could make..."

The wikiHow page is something of a cross between wikipedia.com (the bane of traditional journalists and encyclopedia salesman everywhere) and any number of How-to sites (Howtoons being one of my favorites). If you need some ideas on how to do something or you are just board and looking for some new ideas for projects, wikiHow is an interesting place to start.

Ace Hardware Breaks New Ground in Physics!

According to a recent press release Ace Hardware, in conjunction with Presto canners has managed to make a device able to create a stable link to alternate dimensions. These dimensions can be used to do amazing new feats such as canning 16 GALLONS of material in what would normally be 16 quarts of space. This new functionality shows a four fold increase in capacity. Researchers may be looking at this new technology to aid in particle physics research at areas such as the LHC and other high tech facilities. Look for new breakthroughs at http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com!

Social Engineering Strikes Again

Angela Valdez of the Washington City Paper recently publish a story on the multi-year crime spree of Ameenah Franks. Franks did not pull bank jobs or white collar stock market scams. She did not deal in any large scale frauds or violent robberies. She took relatively small amounts of money (the cash she found at the time) from people she had never met before. How did she manage this? By doing something that I have said for years is a major vulnerability in any security system, acting like you belong.
She walked into numerous building around the DC area and casually searched through desk drawers, file cabinets and common areas nabbing the cash that she found. Citing her intelligence as one of her greatest success factors, she would not only not avoid confrontations (a standard practice for most people when gaining illegal access), but actually would make a point of talking to people. Although caught a number of times and now serving time for her continued thefts, it is not immediately clear how much she has stolen over the years.
To me, more than any purported intelligence, her arrogance seems to play a large part in what she did. She, like many people who knowingly commit criminal acts, justified her actions in numerous ways. It appears that these justifications fed back into her assessment of her own intelligence (I know this is wrong, but this is why it is ok. Other people around me didn't think of it this way, which proves me to be smarter). The confidence in confrontations also seems to be more based in arrogance than anything else. It could be argued that without a healthy (or unhealthy depending on your viewpoint) dose of confident self image one could not pull off the thefts that she did, but it seems that one of the larger reasons she was caught was because she continued to make mistakes based on her belief that she was smart enough to get away with it all. In the end her pattern of behavior and a few persistent and rightly suspicious people put a stop (at least temporarily) to her thieving spree.

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.

Musical computers

If you are one crazy, music lovin', record makin' monkey (or are just curious about how a computer could help you with recording music) this link from PC Magazine might help. I haven't had a chance to read it thoroughly, so let me know what you think.

Is your degree worth what it cost?

Diploma mills have been around for some time, but with the emergence of internet they have come back with a vengence. The people that run these businesses, have become more clever and adept at concealing their true nature. This About.com article may help you decide if the institution you are considering is more interested in your money than your education.

Steve at GRC (Gibson Research Corporation) has a page that generates pseudo-random strings of characters that can be used for passwords. GRC has been known for years as a security resource and generally credible website for learning about vulnerabilities and how to remedy them. I remember reading an article that Steve wrote about being attacked by someone who had taken offense at being characterized as a script kiddie (although Steve didn't remember making such an accusation). The DNS attacks caused him no small trouble and to me showed the basic problem with much of the networks and technology today. If someone has it in for you personally they may not be able to accomplish exactly what they want, but they can almost certainly accomplish things that you would rather them not. I don't like to bring up problems without solutions, but, unfortunately, for this problem there are no easy answers. Thicker defenses and mitigation of damage done is the best most people can accomplish. If you cannot confidently protect certain data, then you had better do your best to make sure that you can do without it, get it from multiple independent sources or somehow do without it for the time you think that someone might be able to deprive you of it.
Many people (myself included) have gotten used to using inovations in technology to do things not possible (or perhaps reasonable) ten years ago. We need to understand how to get by without these things for short term outages or more permanently. A more pedestrian example of this is the power outages that have affected the Seattle area in the past couple of weeks. People have become so dependent on consistent electrical power that over the period of a few days at least eight people have died due to an inability to cope without electricity. As a society we are moving toward a similar dependence on information. Just something to think about.

Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Encryption

TrueCrypt is another way to protect your data and actions from whomever is threatening you (remember, it isn't really paranoia if they are after you!). The biggest advantage I could see with a lot of this is protecting thumbdrives and other mobile media that you could accidentally leave behind in internet cafes and such. Those silly things are almost designed to be lost I think. Anyway, the worry I have with most of this stuff is that I will forget the codephrases or other access parameters and not be able to access my data.

Religious Freedom Catch 22

Perusing the news, I found this story on the New York high court's decision against Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities objects to providing contraception to its female employees, as the CC sees these avenues as sinful in alignment with the Catholic church. The court chose to see CC as more of a business than a religious institution, thus stripping them of legal protection for not providing employees with contraception. They said that it was not legal for CC to impose its beliefs on its non-Catholic employees. I contend that if CC attempted to restrict its hiring to only Catholic employees they would quickly be sued for discrimination. So what are their possibilities? The court was quoted as saying that they were attempting to protect the state's "interest in fostering equality between the sexes". Now perhaps I am just completely blind, but how exactly is forcing CC to provide contraception to its female employees "fostering equality between the sexes"?? Talk to me.

Judges under fire?

This NPR story caught my eye, or rather my ear. I was listening in the car when I heard this report concerning Proposition E in South Dakota. Now, I have to admit that although I listen to NPR, it is with a rather cautious attitude and suffice it to say that rather often I disagree with their opinions, but appreciate the news coverage. But this may be something that NPR and I can actually agree on.
Supposedly, there is a proposition on the ballot for the upcoming election in South Dakota that will allow people unhappy with their result in the judicial system to take their case before a board of jurors specifically chosen to listen to such cases. If the board finds that the person's case has merit and agrees that the person was treated unfairly, the person is then given the right to sue the judge in question for damages. This does not negate or overturn the judge's initial decision, but opens the judge up for civil lawsuits concerning professional decisions. This is bizzare. How many cases end up with at least one party, if not both, dissatisfied with the judge's decision? Also, there is no appeals process for this amendment. If the board finds in favor of the individual, the judge has no option but fight a lawsuit. I really can't see how this is a good idea. It seems to being gaining opposition from many angles. Businessmen, lawyers, farmers, educators and many others are coming out to speak against this movement. It does have its supporters, but I am guessing that at least some of its early support was gained by misrepresentation and subterfuge. Arguments like "Aren't you tired of crooked judges abusing the judiciary system at their own whims?" and "Do you believe that common people like yourself should be able to have some method of making sure judges don't kowtow to special interests and power groups?" that are followed with rousing assertions of "Then, my friend, you are FOR Prop E, which puts the power back into your hands and out of the hands of power mongering crooked judges!". I will freely admit that the previous situation is complete conjecture on my part and I have no basis for it other than my own experience with human nature, but I could easily see situations like that happening. But now, with it gaining exposure, Prop E is being seen for what it really is; a push by a minority of people unhappy with the current state of affairs to enable them to address their grievances at higher levels than needed and skip the systems built-in and very sensible protections. But, that is just my rambling $0.02, what do you think?

time management

This is a great group of ideas on how to effectively mangage time in a business environment. Not all the ideas are applicable to all situations, but something to think about is the fact that there is a very good chance that there is someone out there doing more than you do with less than you have on a regular basis. No need to be offended, just find out how they do it differently and see if that method will work for you. It will not always be something you can or will want to incorporate, it is something to consider.

Exo-Suits and Super Powers

I have only been able to find articles that link back to the Live Science article... which makes me somewhat uneasy. It would have been nice to find some other method of verification. I don't really think it is fake, but even yahoo news linked back to LS instead of quoting a more original source. Oh well, anyway, this is a suit being pioneered by engineers in Japan. The implications of this suit are facinating. Although I wonder how much of this will come to fruition and how much of it will go the way of the House of Tomorrow; being made obsolete by superior tech not yet invisioned before the original tech (the powered suit) is fully realized.

Wild animal powers

While browsing I will run across pages like this one on the top ten "senses" that animals have that humans do not. While most of them are not actually senses we do not possess, but merely aspects of the senses we do have but are unable to access; it is still interesting to read. The main site http://www.livescience.com looks like a fun resource to peruse as well. And speaking of all things geeky... has anyone seen the new Mars photos? They are supposed to be quite spectacular.