A friend of mine recently pointed me at the newspaper-associated blog of a “recent Appalachian State University graduate and now a freelance reporter for The Charlotte Observer”. Ms Penland seems like a nice person – but her writing is not at all what I would expect for a blog associated with a newspaper – it …
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Category:hmmm
digital lostness
As with many others, I suppose, I have various email address come and go: perhaps via job changes, or graduating/changing schools, deciding to sell a domain, or any of a host of other reasons. There’s a problem with that, though: when those changes happen, sometimes access to other digital resources becomes…difficult. For example, I have …
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swagbucks?
I’m trying to do some research regarding swagbucks, but so far haven’t found much about them – other than they appear to be legit. Are they the 2011 incarnation of iWon?
menu analysis – burger king
Burger King has a new series of sandwiches called “stackers“. It’s a cheeseburger with bacon (and fairly tasty, as fast-food burger go). They come in three sizes: single, double, and triple. The single is $1, the double $2, and the triple $3. What do you get on the sandwich? A bun, patty, cheese, sauce, and …
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how much does “quality” matter?
For several years, I have done business with Harbor Freight and Northern Tool and Equipment. Both are low-medium cost suppliers of tools, supplies, and equipment. This morning I received the weekly email sales flier from Harbor Freight, and see they have a 19.2v cordless drill for $24.99 (regular price $29.99). This got me to thinking …
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jeopardy! was wrong
A recent Final Jeopardy! question said there are two pairs of countries which differ in spelling by only two letters: Australia/Austria and one other. The answer they were looking for was Niger/Nigeria. Well, I was thinking about this recently and realized there is a third pair: Mali/Malawi. It’s not often you see errors on Jeopardy! …
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nasa searching for new challenges
I saw this in /. earlier in the week. Apparently NASA is turning to the American public for new challenge/contest ideas. I don’t know whether to be impressed that they’re trying to get new perspective.. or scared that they can’t come up with it on their own. There’s lots and lots of smart people at …
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one-way to mars
The NY Times has an interesting op-ed on this topic today. Maybe we should consider sending people on one-way trips to Mars because if they’re explorers as earth-bound ones were, presuming a return trip may be too expensive – or even undesirable. We’ve had lots of experience as humans of sending people on one-way trips. …
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out/open-sourcing education
Along with the /. post mentioned by Jason, is Bob Cringely’s discussion on outsourcing education. What is the emphasis on in-person education from specific professors? I’ve been asked for my transcript professionally once – and that’s because my current employer pays more attention to grades than technical aptitude. I can recall only a small handful …
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safari on linux?
I’ve been wondering why Apple hasn’t made an edition of its browser available for Linux – any of them. It’s based on various open-source tools, and while we all know Apple likes very much to control the user experience, it seems odd to me they haven’t released at least a source edition for Linux. If …
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blackberry menus
For what it’s worth, I wanted to change the 6 buttons on the home screen of my work-issued Blackberry. On my Motorola phones, altering the home screen is a cinch – go to Settings, Home Screen, and you’re good to go. Apparently the Blackberry, while trying to be helpful, I’m sure, makes this much harder …
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generating power
I’ve been reading recently abour various “unusual” power-generation methods. One of those that I’ve seen mentioned in several places is the solar updraft tower. After having read about that, I wonder why more industrial steam stacks don’t utilize something similar: if you’re throwing away the steam, couldn’t you put a VAWT or other energy-capturing device …
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the one hundred ninety-nine dollar.. what?
I arrived in Singapore during the Great Singapore Sale, or GSS. It’s advertised everywhere. It’s the one time of year when [nearly] every store, restaurant, service provider, etc offers big discounts for shoppers. In Plaza Singapura, the mall next to where I work, they’ve been having different vendors taking-over the concourse area on the first …
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that was different
I’ve been in Singapore for two weeks. Today I stopped at a bar near where I’ve been staying for a snack and a couple beverages. It took me a couple-few minutes to figure out what was going on, but apparently the legalized prostitution industry in Singapore isn’t limited to the red-light district. Hopefully I did …
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store brands are sometimes better
I shop at various grocery stores, and the cashiers generally look at my purchases a little askance: clementines, milk, ice cream, pot pies, beer, Ensure – they seem to get confused when I checkout with my selections. I was raised with a thrifty mindset, but am not afraid to spend money for better quality. For …
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black carrot and hibiscus?
Today for lunch I popped out to M&S, which is a supermarket in the UK. With my combo meal I got an M&S Cola. Right on the front it claims “no artificial colours”. And based on the ingredient list, I’ll go along with agreeing. However, near the end of the ingredient list is ‘fruit and …
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the psychology of elevators
I travel for work now, so I get to see lots of elevators. I’ve seen elevators that you pick the floor you want to go to outside the elevator, and then the elevator bank directs you to the one it thinks you should ride to get to your destination the quickest. I’ve seen simple elevators …
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mysql auto-changes data types
I was making a change to a small table today: adding a field that wanted to be a varchar. The other fields that were of type char all magically changed to varchar when I was done with the alter statement that added one field. I don’t know if that’s supposed to happen, but it was …
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fire from the sky
While flying to Sunnyvale yesterday, I had the “privilege” to see a small wildfire from the air. It was very small, on the order of a couple acres, and somewhere nearish to Monterey, and close to the coast. The orange smoke was quite striking from the air. Hopefully, firefighters have been able to get it …
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we interrupt this regularly-scheduled lunch…
…to bring you this update: I just saw a guy climbing the side of the New York Times building here in Manhattan. Not sure if it’s the same guy who climbed the Eiffel Tower, but it was interesting. Definitely not something you see every day.