“If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you’ll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they’ll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn’t weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.”
Shadow fo the Giant, Orson Scott Card, p 301
A Roomba’s secret life.
SketchUp was bought by Google a few months ago. Google has now made their version free!
I used SketchUp’s demo (10 hours of unlimited use) a year ago to design an woodworking project for a client, but I couldn’t justify the high price. So I’m giddy that Google is now offering a version for free. A friend and I were talking about this about a week ago and wondering if Google would ever do this sort of thing. Guess now we know. This means Google gets a legion of free designers out there to populate Google Earth with models. How long before every building in Google Earth is modeled in 3d? What are the possibilities then?
(Mac version lists as “coming soon”. Guess I’ll have to be a little more patient)
Are CD’s a good value? bigpicture thinks not.
from Engadget:
Today the intrepid Mr. Fox manages to dig up an application by consumer-darling Apple for an LCD display embedded with thousands of microscopic image sensors that would allow users to video-conference while looking straight into the “camera.” Data accumulated by the individual sensors would be stitched into actual images using special software, which will probably be bundled into future versions of iLife. Since the patent specifies almost as many sensors per screen as there are pixels, some of those sensors could have different focal lengths, with a defacto zoom lens created by switching between them. Apple goes on to suggest portable uses for the technology, such as employing the displays in cellphones and PDAs, so you can add another item to the list of features we’ll be expecting from the iPhone and Newton 2.0 when they finally hit stores.
I bought the DVD set of Firefly from Amazon a few weeks ago. I had seen the show a couple of months back and thought that it was worth owning. Erin hasn’t seen it yet and I talked her into watching the 2 hour premiere episode last night. She loved it! Now I get to take her through the whole 13 episode series and one theatrical movie.
I had forgotten just how dang much I enjoyed watching this show. What a titanic mistake Fox made canceling it after only one (very poorly managed) season. If they revived it I’m sure it would be one of the most highly rated shows that they could produce. It’s one of the few shows that would actually get me to want to have cable TV again. Yes, Katherine, I did just say that.
Don’t miss Barry’s narration of their month long Vienna trip. If you’ve never been there (yes, Barry, we’re still planning on it), it’s a wonderful glimpse into the world of strasses and wassers and oom-pa.
John Martellaro (yay!) has some interesting speculation on the future of Boot Camp.
via gasbuddy.
Go this today while installing software:
This one is going to make Katherine swoon. How about a giant Cadbury Egg? Only at Pimp My Snack. Yo.
(I decided to post this under “Humor and Fun” even though I know how seriously some people take their Cadbury Eggs.)
If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
from 100 Science Facts.
A tour of Microsoft’s Mac lab. Pretty cool.
Well, not a toy exactly a “toy”, but not really a “need” either. Our home theater receiver started going wonky last week. It was cutting out and showing “protect” every so often. It got more and more common until it just quit working altogether. Anyway, Erin gave me the GO to get a new one so I did some research online and decided on the Sony STR-DE598 5.1 DTS receiver. It’s fairly low end, but still does what we need, though I was going to have to kludge together some of the inputs (via the VCR) because it didn’t have as many as we need. I went to Fry’s just to see what they had and Lo and Behold, they had the STR-DE698. It’s the next model up and has 7.1 capability!. I got a really good deal (really, really good) since Sony has discontinued them. I mean, REALLY good- even beating the best online price I could find by about 20%.
The best part is that we finally have enough inputs for everything- even an aux input for the iPod. Now we “need” a subwoofer. I actually looked around online last night for plans to build my own, but I don’t know the first thing about making an amplifier.
Jason
So Tiger Woods calls himself a “spaz” in reference to his poor putting and some overly PC people in England pitch a fit (spaz out?) because it’s considered derogatory. Give me a break. First off, Tiger was criticizing himself and saying that he putted poorly. Second, he didn’t mean any offense to anyone, and it takes a complete and almost intentional misreading of his comments to assume that he did. And third, if you represent a little known organization and want to get some press, it’s pretty easy to find something obscure that you can take offense at, and then go crying to the media that so-and-so is unkind or uncaring or insensitive. This kind of thing is what leads celebrities (and especially politicians) to be so sensitive in what they say that they end up saying nothing at all… and then we get mad at them for that.
So to the overly sensitive PC people out there who think this is a real issue - chill out.
Reminds me of an exchange from The West Wing:
Josh: I really like this guy and I want to hire him.
Leo: So what’s the problem?
Josh: He’s black.
Leo: So’s the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Josh: They don’t hold the door open for the President. I’m not wild about the visual: a young black man holding his overnight bag?
Leo: Josh, I hold the door open for the President. It’s an honor! This is serious business. This isn’t casting.
Then later, Leo asks the SecDef Fitzwallace (who’s black):
Leo: Admiral, would you have any problem with us hiring a young black man to wait on the President?
Admiral Fitzwallace: I’m an old black man and I wait on the President. You gonna pay him a decent wage? You gonna treat him with respect in the workplace?
Leo: Yes.
Admiral Fitzwallace: Then why the hell should I care? I got some real honest-to-God battles to fight, Leo. I don’t have time for the cosmetic ones.
I didn’t mean to drift into areas of race here, but the example illustrates my larger point. We shouldn’t worry so much about unintended insults. Spend the energy on the big stuff.
Moral to the British Spazpolice: It wasn’t meant to be an insult. Show some class and get over it.