From Wil Wheaton’s blog: I love that. NASA kept Spirit awake so it (and we) could watch the sunset. Isn’t that just beautiful? We sent a robot all the way to another planet, and then had it do something humans have been doing since before we touched the monolith. We didn’t even learn anything from it . . . or did we? The picture which inspires.
I have a domain — clockworkmind.com --- that I have an idea of using for development purposes, but I haven’t set anything up yet. In the meantime, I set all email messages coming to that domain to forward to my Gmail address. Today, I received 200+ bounced messages from where a spammer used random usernames combined with [at]clockworkmind.com to send out spam to addresses that either didn’t exist or were blocked. There’s a great introduction to the world. :| ...
Page 917 of the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci: Describe the nature of Time as distinguished from the Geometrical definitions. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Donald Crowdis --- curator, television host, blogger, and survivor — will turn 93 on Christmas Eve. His wife has been in the hospital for a while, and he writes about missing her. In Mourning, Among Her Souvenirs
Yep, that’s a cat in a dress… A giant cat in a dress, judging by the mountains in the background. :) Cat dresses apparently are/were available – the catalog says Fall/Winter 2005 – at missglamourpuss.com. If it’s a boy cat? We believe cats are generally pretty open-minded, and metro-sexual to the point of being much more adventurous than your average man. In fact, we think cats are so haute-couture conscious, they looooove to experiment with their “feminine side”- kind of like all those New Romantics dressed up like Vivienne Westwood’s pirates in the 80’s. So while we draw the line at eyeliner, we say leave the inhibitions at the door and get a ballgown onto his cute little booty! ...
The NFL has a clause in their contract that allows them to move the Pro Bowl from Hawaii to an alternate venue for one year. Sites under consideration are China, Japan, Australia and Europe. Right…because if you can’t get football players to go to Hawaii during the winter, London in February will be much more successful. :)
When you’re redesigning navigation on a site, one of the important tasks is to assess your most successful outside search keywords — those that keep people around the longest — to see what terminology your visitors use for your content. For instance, looking at my search stats, I should have a Jackie Manuel section, dedicated to one of the greatest defensive basketball players in UNC history. Why is my site a frequent destination for Jackie Manuel searchers? Because I wrote an article in 2005 about Jackie going to a NBADL team that comes up third in Google’s search for “Jackie Manuel.” ...
Silly String as safety device? Brilliant! Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.
Jon Udell writes about trying to define “the learnable component of effective search.” Last night an old friend who runs a small software company confessed a secret. When he and his staff answer technical questions for clients, they are often “only” searching Google. At one point, he even asked a client: “Do you really want us to search Google for you at $100/hour?” Yes, in fact they did. My friend thought that was crazy. I suggested that it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Effective search depends on reservoirs of tacit knowledge and unconscious skill. Some people possess much deeper reservoirs, and/or can tap into them more effectively, than others. That makes them valuable. ...
Rumor has it that Sam Raimi plans to direct a movie featuring Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Avenger. Please, please, please let it be true! :)