Read My Mind!

Sell your DNA! for $$$

What an opportunity!

New Line Genetics

New Line Genetics will pay up to $5000.00 for your DNA! Wow, what a deal (but be sure to read the fine print). ;)

Fortress of Solitude

I just read this article about Norway's brand new “doomsday vault” after having a conversation with a friend who just finished reading the Illuminatus Trilogy for the first time. I couldn't help but read this article as if Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson wrote it. Which turned out to be eerily appropriate. Watch for the fictional character with a cameo appearance.

Bookworm

A fun bibliomancy exercise on PRETTY VERMIN.

BOOKWORM:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag 5 people

1. If we have not checked all items, we get the next item and return to the Checking state and check it.
2. If we have checked all items and they were all in stock, we transition to the Dispatching state.
3. If we have checked all itms but not all of them were in stock, we transition to the Waiting state."

From UML Distilled

Now I have to wonder how a technical book that old ended up being the closest one. (I had been moving books around and it was on top of a stack of them.)

tag your it

All Cranks, All the Time!

"cranks, crackpots, kooks & loons on the net"

If you're like me, and you aren't, much, then you love nothing better than a wellspoken crackpot or an inventive crank. Head straight over to crank.net if your haven't read a good "Reptiloid Conspiracy" story all day, or would really like to hear more about a "Gravity Powered Plane." If meglomaniacs are more your style, they have that too.

Crank Dot Net is devoted to presenting Web sites by and about cranks, crankism, crankishness, and crankosity. All cranks, all the time.

Every day at midnight, a new Crank o' the Day is chosen!

(more)

As You Might Expect...

I took another personality quize only to be reminded yet again that I am an ideal supervillain. But then it's a family thing (family album: 1, 2). I must admit that here I am, all grown up and yet I do not have a secret lair or an army of mind controlled minions. I'll just have to be satisfied with my perfectly innocent plan to track you all with RFID. Mwahahahahaah! Ahem, er anyway... This was my result on the Harry Potter personality quiz.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Loudest Siren in the World

They just tested the tornado Sirens here, and in an effort to explain what they sound like to a friend in Boston, I found the Victory Siren. These Cold War monsters were the loudest sirens in the world. Apparently, they were also a good source for engines for hot rods in the '70s.

What you see pictured above is a Chrysler Air Raid Siren, the most powerful siren in the world. It's the size of a car, measuring near 12-feet in length and standing more than 6-feet tall. It also weighs twice as much as today's typical car. This gigantic siren is powered by an 180-HP Chrysler Industrial V-8 HEMI® gasoline engine. The super-duty engine directly drives a three-stage compressor that blows 2,610 cubic feet of air a minute, at nearly 7 PSI, into a giant siren rotor. The compressed air screams through the chopper and out through six giant horns with an exit velocity of 400 miles per hour. The result is an incredibly loud 138 dB sound (measured 100 feet from the siren). The loudness of this siren is unmatched by any other warning device ever sold, ever. It's also considerably louder than the largest steam whistle or horn. As if that were not dramatic enough, the whole unit, engine and all, slowly rotates one and one-half times a minute on its iron turntable base.

The Victory Siren sounds like this, while our modern tornado sirens (at least around here) sound exactly like this.

(link)

Just Had to Try It

I normally resist the uge to do the "blog meme" thing, but I gave in on this one after seeing in on Benjamin Rosenbaum's blog. I think they missed me so badly because they didn't have a little radio button for "unask the question."

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 69% Existentialist 63% Materialist 56% Idealist 56% Modernist 50% Cultural Creative 50% Romanticist 19% Fundamentalist 6% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

No Wife, No Horse, No Mustache!

IOL: A Step Beyond

This story isn't intended to appeal to prurient interests. I just think it's an amazing story.

Biker Michael Gruber, 40, lost his original penis in a motorbike accident and doctors built him a second one using a mixture of skin, bone and other tissues from his own body.

What's really amazing is that he was then able to father a child normally.

Thanks to Monkeyfilter for the story.

Passive Income Streams for Programmers

Rich Programmer: A Programmer's Guide to Wealth?

A programmer named Steni in Oslo, Norway has been blogging his approach to personal finances since Dec 7, 2004. I've only read a few of the posts so far, but the seem very reasonable. He's not selling anything, just reporting on his success or failure at putting together his personal finances with an aim at becoming independent. Neat sort of research project. In his words:

My vision also includes you. I want you to become financially independent too. I'll tell you everything. What I'm doing that's working, and what isn't working. Maybe I'll let you in on projects -- I don't know yet. Time, though, will tell.

We've all had this same idea. My friends and I call it a "Cash Pump." Create some idea that makes a small, recurring income and then find some way of creating more instances based on the same template. It's an interesting hobby, and can lead to great conversation over a beverage of your choice. I don't know of a way that actually works yet. Maybe Steni does. If not it will make for still more interesting conversation over a beverage.

Update: I guess it shouldn't surprise me, but someone is already using "Cash Pump" as the name of some chain-letter scam. My meaning for the term only included legitimate businesses that doesn't require much ongoing maintenance to operate.

What wasn't in the box with my Treo 650

I held off for a long time before buying a new phone (years), but I went out and got a Treo 650 recently. I like it overall, but I can't stand the nasty USB sync with a separate charging cable. It's a total waste of space in my laptop case. I just ordered this neat little cable from BoxWave and life is just a little sweeter.

And here's a little utility that just makes my day.

pSSH is a palm implementation of SSH. It's not terribly secure, but it lets me run emacs on my palm by connecting to the server! :)

Now if this beast would just allow me to use sounds recorded with it's microphone as caller id ringers. I assume the decision to cripple the phone in this way was a pathetic attempt to drive me to the Sprint store for ringers.

A Wearable Computer for The Eldritch Set

Kevin Quest's Art and Metaphysical Tools for Psychic Purposes.

Can't you just see yourself casting Bigby's Interposing Hand in this rig?

#EPPHAT - This hat Enhances Psychic Powers, Healing And Thought. Loaded with Empowered Cystals & Stones. Used as a psychic tool. ~

#POGL - Power Glove. This healing glove is loaded and empowered with Cystals & Stones. Use as a tool for healing.

Purdue Calumet to Create +5 Vorpal Broadsword of Dragonslaying

Purdue Calumet Professor To Forge Sword From Meteorite

Sometime this spring, Harvey Abramowitz of Chicago, a metallurgist and associate professor of mechanical engineering, intends to draw from the world of outer space to contribute to the creation of the strongest, toughest broadsword ever made: "The Dragonslayer."

Of even more interest is an earlier project briefly described at the bottom of the same article.

...production of a self-healing alloy composite in which thin memory shape alloy wires are imbedded in tin alloys. If the system is placed in tension, eventually the tin alloy will crack. By heating the material, the shape memory alloy filaments, which also had been stretched, return to their original positions, effectively closing the crack. To fully heal the material, it is heated enough so that liquid beads of tin form around the crack. Upon cooling, the tin structure is void of all previously formed cracks.

Giant Squid Join Drug War!

As reported here earlier, the armies of Cthulhu are growing in power and physical size. Now they've turned to the same tactics used by terrorists around the globe.
Yahoo! News - Peru Seizes Cocaine Haul Hidden in Giant Squid

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian police said on Monday they seized nearly 1,540 pounds (700 kg) of cocaine hidden in frozen giant squid bound for Mexico and the United States.

This must be what Lynard Skynard meant when they said cocaine smelled like death.

Cool "Horn" Phonograph Hack

I'm a great fan of cool things made from junk, and I thought I had an idea for a great, original hack involving making a phonograph out of duct tape. A quick google search proved I was about two years too late. I came across this incredibly nifty retro phonograph hack. It's so cool because Joshua came up with the idea for a "linear phonograph" which makes the construction elegantly simple.

This is a simple phonograph that you can build with some wood, and some old junk. This phonograph works much like orginal tinfoil phonographs, with the exception that it is a "linear phonograph". I like to call the model designed by me (this one) the "Horn" model phonograph.

Phonograph Makers: Joshua Horn

Who Invented the Cubicle?

I was asking myself that question this evening, and by the grace of google, here is the answer.
Bob Propst invented the cubicle in 1964 while working with Herman Miller. His intentions were to make a better environment than the open plan, sea of desks that were common at the time. But his invention couldn't solve the fundamental problem. Office work sucks. As Yvonn Abraham of the Boston Phoenix writes,

But Propst's forward-thinking motives were misinterpreted by some companies, which simply crammed more workers into smaller spaces and took advantage of the system's huge potential for savings and tax breaks (laws permit businesses to write off the depreciation of cubicles much more quickly than that of traditional offices).

Probst says it even better himself, "...people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rat-hole places.... I never had any illusions that this is a perfect world."
The Man Behind the Cubicle

boingboing has picked up this story, and Mark made the observation that this year is the 40th anniversary of the invention of the cubicle.

Super Blimp for the Army

According to the Undernews Looks like DARPA is finally going to convince the powers that be that blimps still make sense.

airship that can take an 1,800-person "unit of action" anywhere in the world, without infrastructure, in four days. The scheme, code-named Walrus, is just, er, getting off the ground. But the agency is clear about what it wants: a prototype "tri-phibian" (air, land, sea) zeppelin with a range of 6,000 nautical miles, ready to go aloft by 2008.

Image and quote courtesy of and linked to the Undernews.

Bill the Splut's Inexplicable Object of the Week

Don't miss "Bill the Splut's" collection of oddities and misguided consumable crap. Including "Putz Pomade Burn & Stain Remover" and the disturbing "Armed and Dangerous" air freshener dangly. My favorite although I had seen them before are the other faces on Mars (week Twenty-Five).

The Doom That Came From Finland

Jan Stafford an Editor at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com is running a contest for tall tales concerning the origin of Linux. How could I resist?
Who wrote Linux? The spy who loved Linux
My entry (With apologies to Charles Stross and H.P. Lovecraft):

I will not reveal how I came across the following information. Suffice to say that the price at which this knowledge comes convinces me of its reliability.

As Mr. Service observed, there are indeed "Strange things done in the midnight sun." Not the least strange is the occasional glimpses by those folk who live in the northern climes of the secret remnants of those "Old Ones" who were senescent when our world was young. The fields of cosmic particles trickling through that boreal hole in the magnetosphere combined with the preserving cold has kept certain artifacts well stored indeed, waiting to be discovered by the curious or the foolhardy. One such researcher into forbidden knowledge was a young Finnish man named Linus Benedict Torvalds who's secret wanderings and arcane interests were the stuff of legend at the pubs in Helsinki.

One cold December near the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, Torvalds stumbled across a black, star-shaped object buried in the ice along the southern shore of lake Inarijarvi. It was perhaps a meter across and obviously very old. From his studies, Torvalds immediately recognized it as an Enterprise Server of the Elder Gods (E.S.E.G) mentioned in the dread Pnakotic Manuscripts, perhaps even one of the later E100K/StarShoggoth units with the squamous neural mesh interconnect and support for a slaved Batrachian storage unit. His stunned surmise was confirmed when pressing the small hypercube-shaped "ON" button brought the unspeakable thing to life with a glitter of eldritch blue LEDs.

A man of lesser courage or greater wisdom might have turned the machine off, if machine is a proper word for a thing as much grown as built, and run from that place never to return. Instead Torvalds, better equipped by his native tongue than most to use an Elder God voice interface, intoned the ancient System Administrator Password "Ia! Ia! Yog-Sothoth who guards the gate and is the gate. N'flgthwpt%Opus" A snaking tentacle whipped from beneath the ice and plunged its needle tip into the back of his skull instantly recognizing him as the descendant of an ancient line of food animals and coders created by the Elder Gods. At the appearance of the trapezohedron prompt he changed to the Shub-Niggurath directory, known as the root directory of the woods with a thousand branches and the black goat with a thousand young. From there he changed to "usr/src" where he found the prize he sought. The very source of life itself, the kernel of the Elder Gods.

As the tentacle released its hold, he realized that he now contained all of the knowledge of the ancients, and to his horror, the ancients were not POSIX compliant. The server dissolving into a noisome mush behind him, Torvalds staggered home where between fits of raving madness he attempted to do what no human had ever contemplated, to create from nothing an operating system in defiance of the laws of nature and of nature's gods.

By July, the deed was almost done. Only one great obstacle remained.

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Gcc-1.40 and a posix-question
Message-ID: <1991Jul3.100050.9886@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT
Hello netlanders,
Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix
standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably)
machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be
nice.

He could not admit the terrifying truth, so he referred in passing to a descendant of the well known KthulOS known as "minix" to put the inquisitive off his trail, but had someone only seen through his guise, had this blasphemous request been ignored that orphaned and twisted Operating System which now rules over us with its ever-available eye might never have been. Brave lawyers and coporations have sought to restrain it with ancient patents and cures, but now, now it is too late. The only penguin ever to be born in the North now owns us all.

Dark Passage

Dark Passage is a New York based group of incorrigible busybodies who enjoy sticking their noses in dark places. Sounds like a great time.

A dangerous and entirely unscientific application of archaeological principles to inspect evidence of previous human habitations and demises, preferably involving an amateurish and histrionic analysis of human relics, case and site assessments based on children’s diagrams of parlor games, and palindromic investigations of imaginary crime scenes. Equipped with expert witnessing skills and third-grade chemistry sets, we are always ready to take the stand.

courtesy of: Uncle Bear

Magnatune: We Are Not Evil

In, Why I created Magnatune Records, John Buckman explains a bit about why he put together a music label with the motto "We are not evil." This is a surprisingly well realized site with nice, open format downloads including MP3, CD-quality WAV, OGG, FLAC and MP3-VBR. The music is varied (not all electronica) for instance "Very Large Array," for melodic rock or Jay Kishor to get your raga on.

Magnatune was born out of some observations I'd gathered about the music industry, along with personal experiences from my wife releasing her CD on a British record label.

Everyone Needs a Sushi Watch!

Sushi Watch with Miniatures
according to the site:

Quality Fashionable Watch with Miniatures Great For People Who Love Sushi and Sashimi! These watches make great unique gifts for all the holidays!

How cool is that? I think I might even put up with the hassle of having a watch at the airport again for this one.