If God had meant people to run around naked, they'd be born that way!
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If you are afraid of spiders don’t click the link below.
If you are interested in graphic programming, especially in Flash graphic programming, especially browers based Flash graphic programming, then you should click the link regardless of how you feel about spiders.
Mover your mouse around. click. Even click and drag the little dude. Then try out the settings menu on the right. Really truly seriously amazing.
(Warning: Web-geek content. Non-technical personnel need not bother reading this post.)
I read about a new CSS framework (still in beta) that’s supposed to help you standardize your site and make CSS management easier. That’s great. But heres what makes it blog worthy.
“SenCSs stands for Sensible Standards CSS Framework, but if you want, you can pronounce it ‘sense’, which makes it sound pretty cool.”
SenCSs stands for … wait, what? S.S.C.S.S.F. and you came up with SenCSs??! See. This is why engineer types (like me) have such a hard time taking art types seriously.
Dude! You can’t go just making up non-acronyms like that just because it “sounds pretty cool.” Come on!!
“Hi. My name is Kevin, spelled G-I-W-7-@-Y-[clicking noise].”
“Nice to meet you Kevin. You must be an art major. Here’s your paper hat. Don’t touch the hot fry grease, mkay?”
Seriously though, check out SenCSs and see if it makes SENSE for your site.
Well, that’s pretty cool, but it’s not the chrome I was talking about.
By now, even non-geeks who pay any attention to the news should know that Google has taken another giant step towards ruling the world (or at least the world wide web) by introducing their own web browser, Chrome. They even released a very googlesque comic-book to educate you on why you need it.
There’s all kinds of talk about how this is the next generation of browser. How all other browsers will now have to play catch-up with Google’s Chrome (whereas that role was previously held by Mozilla’s Firefox). How this browser is designed for the internet of the 21st century (while all those old, crusty browsers you had before were so 20th century. Gaww).
As proud as I am of my geekness, I’m usually over-cautious on new stuff. I wanted a PDA so bad in 1999, but I waited. In 2007, I bought a Treo and now I get both the PDA and phone in one. I waited to start using Windows XP until my work PC was retired and I had no choice, thus sparing me from the trials of the pre-SP1 bugs. I still have not move to Vista. Instead, I’ll probably wait for Win08 which should have all the major headaches of Vista fixed.
The way I see it, the people who insist on living on the cutting edge of technology are consistently getting burned by it. Everyone I know who stands in line to get the latest gizmo the instant it’s available ends up frustrated by all the bugs and quirks that eventually get worked out in later versions or patches or service packs. I let the fools rush in to battle and get skewered, then I step over their corpses and fully enjoy the spoils of their pain.
But not this time. Because I make my living on the web (and arguably spend most of my life there) I figured I’d better jump on this early. As I type, the Chrome installer is ticking away, loading up the google-goodness. I’ll let you know if I run into any major hick-ups.
I already like how the installer offers to import all my bookmarks, settings, and even saved passwords from Firefox.
This one is for you Joss Whedon fans out there! What? You don’t know who Joss Whedon is?! But how?!
Joss is the mastermind behind the Firefly series, which I watched on DVD about five years after it was on TV. Serenity is the movie that tied up all the lose ends in the prematurely canceled series, and I watched it on DVD about three years after it hit theaters. Joss was also responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I never watched cuz it looked stupid, and Angel, which I never watched because, well, just because.
So, as you can see, I’m a die-hard Joss fan.
Okay, maybe not. But still, I really do like some of his stuff and when I heard he did a made-for-the-interweb short, I had to see it. A co-worker… umm… procured a… umm… backup copy… you know… for security and stuff… from a… very reputable… bit-torrent movie pirate site. Anyway, that’s beside the point.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is… what? Why are you laughing? No really, that’s what it’s called. I’m serious! It’s not funny! Well, yes. It is funny. That’s the whole point. It’s hilarious and supremely entertaining and now you can watch it legally and free! At the same time!!
Today, for the first time, I worked from home. To be honest, it was great.
I thought I’d be miserable working on my single 19″ CRT instead of my cushy twin 21″ flat panels at work, but it worked out fine. I thought go crazy working over a laggy VPN remote desktop, but (other than a few hitches in the morning) it worked out fine. More than anything, I thought I’d be battling the temptation to go sit on the couch with a bowl of ice cream, but I actually got some good work done and everything worked out fine.
I didn’t get any extra sleep, but I did have a much more leisurely morning. I did take a shower and dress, but I was able to work more comfortably than at the office (if that’s possible considering our lax dress code). I rode my bike down the block for lunch. I got the laundry caught up. And I redesigned two database tables, three SQL scripts, and rewrote a web service to handle new, more complex, XML requests. All this and I saved one gallon of gas.
I’d say the day was a roaring success. Go me!
I admit it. I am shamelessly clinging to the coat tails of a recently released, blockbuster movie in order to get more traffic. But seriously! There really is a news story about a real life iron man. Honest!
Rex Jameson (That’s a comic book hero name if I ever heard one!), engineer for Sarcos Inc., is sporting a new look. It’s not exactly the polished red and gold steel of his comic book counterpart, but when a scrawny geek can lift hundreds of pounds with his robotic suit, he doesn’t quibble about looks.
The robotic exoskeleton is still just a prototype limited to a 30 minute battery charge and it’s still a bit slow to respond to the driver’s movements, but it’s still wicked awesome. Jameson says, “It takes no special training, beyond learning to relax and trust the robot.” Trust the robot? Famous last words! Dude, have you read any science fiction?!
The picture of the suit in use reminds me more of Sigourney Weaver’s cargo loader in Aliens, which is likewise awesome. And of course, my mind races ahead to the (perhaps not so distant) future where soldiers tramp across giant battle fields firing lasers and missiles from their BattleMechs like I did when I used to play MechWarriors every night.
Combine this with “Fusion Man” making his first flight with his jet powered wing suit thingy and you’ve got a genuine fanboy geek-gasm. It’s a brave new world, kiddies. A brave new world.
Although it sure is cool. I’ve been holding on to one of these links for almost a year. The other link my dad just sent me. For all you Discovery Channel geeks out there, let’s start with the AA-12 fully automatic shot gun. “Future Weapons” covered it and talked about some of the really wild rounds they’ve developed for it, including a finned mini-grenade. Watch the video, then come back here for more.
AA-12 on Future Weapons – Clicky clicky
OK. So that’s pretty crazy. A low recoil, fully auto shot gun with a 32 round magazine. Add to that some really amazing, high-tech ammunition and you’ve got a nasty little weapon. What could possibly make it any scarier for the bad guys? How about if you could shoot it from an unmanned vehicle. Or even better, an unmanned flying vehicle.
The “Autocopter” is a remote controlled helicopter. If you know anything about RC choppers (or even real ones) you know that they are insanely hard to fly. It’s been compared to balancing a baseball bat vertically on your pinkie finger in a wind storm while someone is shooting at you. (OK, I’ve never actually heard it said that way before, but now you can say that you have.)
What makes the Autocopter different is that it’s controlled not by juggling a 2D stick, foot peddles and a throttle like a normal chopper. It’s controlled by the arrow keys on a laptop. You click take off, it takes off. You steer it where you want it just like you’re playing a cheap video game. Then you click land and it lands. Amazing.
So, now you take this fly-by-click helicopter and mount the afore mentioned fully automatic shotgun on it and you’ve got one amazing weapon of the future.
(You should probably pause the video to read the captions so you can see when it’s being flown manually and when it’s running autonomously.)
Autocopter maintains level flight while firing AA-12 – Clicky clicky
[Edit: When I emailed the autocopter link to Uncle Robert, who did three tours in Viet Nam, he replied with the following:
“An attack and recon robo-helicopter…I want one, please, pretty please”
The voice of experience.]
Tomorrow begins 2008. Two-Thousand Eight!! We’re well into the 21st century people! I’ve always enjoyed those far-out forecasts of what life will be like in the future. (I’m still waiting for my flying car, dang it.) However, as technology advances all around me, I find myself more and more often blurting out, “That is so Star Trek!!”
Once again, I have bent the rules on English. Before I turned Google into a verb. Now I’ve turned Star Trek into an adjective.
This phrase first entered my lexicon when I walked in on a coworker reading Lord of the Rings as an eBook on his PDA. Because, seriously, Captain Picard always read books and reports on a little, hand-held computer screen. (Someone PLEASE send me a picture of this.) Now, right here in my own life time, I can do the same thing. That’s unbelievable. That’s Star Trek!!
I think it’s healthy for us to look back once in a while and see just how far we’ve come. That gives us the ability to make much better predictions about where we’re going. I found this great forward thinking movie from 1956 on YouTube. (In a 1956 frame of mind, YouTube is incredibly Star Trek!) The best thing about this old flick is how many things they got right. Here are my favorite (follow along as you watch the video):
Here’s another great “future” video. “The Future Is Now” – 1950. From personal video cameras to guided missiles, microwave ovens to solar panels. These guy’s nailed it.
Yes, I had to remove a post. There’s some cool stuff still to say though.
At lunch, I posted about an event my employer is hosting. It’s really cool and has a very high geek score, but the event is hush-hush, not to be publicized at the behest of some of the attendees. Sorry. Let’s just say I work at an amazing company that is changing how email is done.
Now, what’s really neat is that less than an hour after I clicked “Publish”, our companies marketing manager got an automated email from Google letting him know there was a new blog post that linked to our company site. How cool is that?
Of course, he quickly came to my office, and in a very friendly, non-KGB, non-Jack-Bauer way asked me not to publicize the event. My bad. I didn’t know it was hush-hush. Intriguing, eh?
The afore mentioned cracked DVD from NetFlix was Star Wars III, which I ended up buying so we could watch it.
It got me in a Star Wars kind of mood, which led me to this hilarious mash-up of every James Earl Jones movie ever made. There is some PG-13 language in it. You have been warned. I only wish I had the hours and hours of free time it would take to do something so creative and fun.
My favorite part is right at the end when Vader can’t find anything good on the radio.
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