One would think that a sign on top of a house, welcoming landing travelers to a certain city by the lake, would make sense:

Unless the person who painted this sign had a sadistic sense of humor.

HAT TIP: BMEWS

After a much-needed eight-hour rejuvenating post-flight sleep, I’m up....
While things were winding down, Harley Chick passed along this little tool they’ve been advertising on Burger King commercials. Yes, I missed this one altogether even though I found myself watching...Jerry Springer!...for mindless entertainment during the mixed-bag vacation. I put myself through that fabulous alien machine and this is the result.
Oh yes, sorry Internet Exploder users...this image is supposed to be transparent.

Two stories which can be filed under “No S**t!”...first, Kimberly-Clark has announced an automated toilet paper dispenser to limit the number of sheets one can get when wiping their bottoms. This should please Sheryl Crow.
Then in the same column, All Nippon Airways has fitted their new Boeing 787 Dreamliners with...bidets! Just think, pretty soon it’ll all come down to this:

Last fall, I posted a blurb about a luggable difference engine. Now here’s the same tech, applied to the desktop:

I highly doubt Apple would offer such a retro design for their Macs...but it’s possible this shop might do a little retrofitting for a Mac user, given the right price. Nevertheless, it’s such a cool concept in any case.

HAT TIP: Hud’s Blog-O-Rama

Y’know, I think I will b*tch to Domino’s. I ordered a pizza last night, and I found out that they’re giving out free movie downloads at Vongo.com. I go to the page and this is what I get:

Frak that. I ain’t about to defile my Mac with either Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop just so I can get these downloads. This is the sign of Vongo’s lazy attitude toward Macs...and for that matter, Linux machines too.

Windows Vista. What say ye?

Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe are getting hit with cease-and-desist orders for some alleged violation of the DMCA. Why are these guys slapping the papers now, and not when these named companies actually incorporated the disputed technology in the first place? These folks are hard up for money, so the only way to get some would be to hit up the Big Boys.
In a chat with Chancellor Korg, the reader who sent me the link, we both agreed that Apple, Microsoft and Adobe should give Media Rights Technologies, and their subsidiary Bluebeat.com, the equivalent of a Bronx Cheer!

After learning of LGF’s decision to drop this service, I decided to take a look into the matter myself. Sure enough, I found the following on my Firefox browser, having found the same stuff on Camino and cleaning that stuff off:

Frak that.
If any of you bloggers have Sitemeter, I encourage you to switch to another service, such as StatCounter.

NASA’s New Horizons unmanned space probe has been on course for Pluto for only thirteen months, and it’s already paying off huge dividends in its photos from the Jovian System:

This is a false-color photo of Jupiter’s Little Red Spot, located in the bottom right corner, which formed only ten years ago when three smaller storms merged and began to swirl together to form a mightier storm, the intensity of which begins to rival that of the Great Red Spot.
Humankind continues to develop more and more knowledge about the solar system...and beyond.

I’d say someone has a little bit too much time on their hands. George Lucas, perhaps?

Got $3,675 to burn while you’re in Vegas...or at the Kennedy Space Center for that matter?
Well if you do, why not take a zero-G flight and experience what the astronauts train for? I’ll admit right up front: I don’t have the stomach for it. Bummer.
One thing which concerns me though is the plane they’ll use: a Boeing 727. Isn’t that a little crowded and more likely to induce the state of el vomito? Ugh.

I’m not laughing. Is it a laughable matter? Depends on your view of technology. But given that it is equipped with a 128GB flash drive (and not a hard drive) and among other items...a colored diamond for a power switch and an integrated screen cleaner, that should point you in the general direction.
One thing is for sure: this price won’t last long, because flash drives are trending downward, and as ingenious as the integrated screen cleaner is, that will show up in future, less-expensive products down the road. So, whoever’s got a million bucks to put down on this has got money to burn. And since it doesn’t say otherwise, it probably runs Windoze.
Click on the thumbnail for more details.

All IT professionals...and those who like IT as a hobby, should mourn the loss of John Backus, the creator of the Fortran programming language, He passed away last Saturday at the age of 82. Backus wrote Fortran during the 1950s, which reduced the amount of time needed to process data by a factor of 20. He remained at IBM his entire career when he retired in 1991.
My last IT job back East, in the beginning, still used Fortran to write database processing applications, and that was ten years ago. They eventually converted over to C++, and while that’s a litte bit more advanced than Fortran, it still may be behind the times. But I’ll take Fortran over RPiG!
Rest in Peace, Mr. Backus.

I find this ironic in a way, and I’ll explain in a moment. First, The Macker sends Mad Props to Karridine for sending in these pictures of a partial solar eclipse which took place in his part of the world today. He lives in Thailand, so he only got just a tiny little sliver, but it was enough for him to say that he saw an eclipse.
I’ve seen two in my lifetime. One was in 1979 while in Chicago: 90% totality, and man did the sky get DARK! The other was in the early 1990s (not sure when; I want to say 1994) when I lived in Michigan, and that was at about 80%, and yep, it got DARK! then too.
Now, back to the irony. Notice who the link to the eclipse story is...yeah. India! Just to be a nice guy, I e-mailed the Editor and let him/her know how nice of a guy I am to link to their story!

Three years ago I gave up my cell phone when I moved to Arizona, because I couldn’t afford it. Now I’m finally at the point where I can get one again...and I went with Cingular’s Go Phone Pay-As-You-Go plan.
My needs are definitely different today than they were back then. I will use this phone while traveling and for emergencies. One event which eventually led me to this purchase was my truck’s ball joint failure three months ago. I was cursing my lack of a cell phone then, and now I have rectified that.
‘Bout time. ‘Nuff said.