It’s pretty cool that I got nominated for the Blogger’s Choice Awards (I now have 6 and 3 votes in the two categories, including my votes for myself.) but that’s not nearly as cool as this.

Alt-N Technologies, the company for which I an a senior web developer, has been recognized for a very prestigious award and now stands among the giants.

Alt-N, Bank of America, Bell Canada, Microsoft, PayPal and TRUSTe Honored for Leadership in Online Safety

BOSTON, MA — (MARKET WIRE) — April 19, 2007 — The Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) announced the winners of the first annual Online Safety Leadership Awards. The winners, honored in an awards ceremony on the first night of the Authentication and Online Trust Summit, have all demonstrated a commitment to preserving and improving consumer trust in online channels.

The categories and winners include:

• Long term Commitment: Bank of America
• eCommerce: PayPal
• Public Education: Bell Canada
• Technology Innovation: Microsoft Corp.
• Early Adoption: Alt-N
• Non-profit Leadership: TRUSTe

“We are honored that our commitment to rapidly transform online safety concepts into real-world products for the small-to-medium business community has been recognized by AOTA,” said Arvel Hathcock, founder and CEO of Alt-N Technologies. “We will continue to expand our promotion of online safety features to the MDaemon email server user community by deploying additional safety functionality such as backscatter protection and email certification in 2007.”

I’ll link to the press releases as soon as they’re published.

UPDATE:
AOTA press release
Alt-N press release

Recently, Jess at Apropos of Something linked to an article on Cracked entitled “The Top Ten ’80s Robots (We Expected to Exist By Now)”. Great read, btw. Johnny Five was number ten on the list. Well, lo and behold, the guys at MIT are getting real close to Johnny.

Check out this latest research project. The robot’s name is Domo. Get it? Mister Roboto? Dang those nerds are funny. Domo can recognize human faces and voice commands, can identify objects, estimate their size and make intelligent decisions about how to manipulate them. Domo also has the ability to sense touch, necessary for safe interaction with humans. But most importantly, Domo has human-like eyes, just like Johnny Five.

Fortunately, Domo does not have a shoulder mounted laser cannon nor a homicidal tendency triggered by attempts to turn him off. (“NO DISASSEMBLE!!“) No report yet on whether or not he has a cute Indian side-kick with humorously bad English.

I’m typing this entry in Notepad2 because our office’s internet connection is down. This event has lead me to a sad realization. (Trint turn’s on Word Wrap. Grr.)

During my usual work day I have a lot of short delays. Getting latest from source control. Compiling my project. Copying large amounts of files to the live web server. These are just a few of my daily twiddle-thumb events. It’s during these brief bursts of inactivity that I do most of my web surfing. Consuming the web 90 seconds at a time.

But today, with the net inaccessable, I am going nuts. What is wrong with me? Have I become so dependant on a constant stream of input that I can’t sit for two minutes without some stimulation? Seriously. I’m not making this up. Within ten seconds of staring at the little hour-class icon, I start twitching like a crack baby. I think I need to go on a nice long camping trip. I need stimulus-detox.

Okay. My deployment is done now. Hopefully the web will be back up before I have to do another compile!

My friend and Mac evangelist, RandyPants, (and probably every other Mac person in the world who shows off their MacBook to their friends) introduced me to PhotoBooth. It’s the photo software that comes pre-installed on macs and, based on this video that Randy linked to, it is probably the biggest selling point in Mac stores across the world.

As you can see on my “about” page, I too am a victim of PhotoBooth.

It totally sucks that stamp prices are going up again. I like to buy my stamps in those huge roles so that I only have to go to the post office once a year. But they keep creeping up the price so I have to keep adding more and more of those pesky two cent stamps to get my stuff mailed.

Anyway, if I have to pay 41 cents for a stamp it can at least be a cool stamp! The USPS has put up a pretty cool Star Wars web site where you can vote on which Star Wars stamps will be issued. Go vote!* (But if anyone votes for the lame prequel stamps, you will be banned from my blog in perpetuity! Queen Amidala? I say, “Nay! Nay!”)

*Be sure to use a real email address (You do have a “junk mail” account, right?), because for your vote to count, you have to click a link in an email.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up receiving the “What On Earth” catalog for the first time. But I do know that it changed the course of my life. It was choke full of the clothing equivalent of manna from heaven. T-shirts! Funny ones, weird ones, cool ones, t-shirts that would make me stand out from the pubescent junior high crowd. It was like the first time a baby discovers cake frosting. I was all wide-eyed and couldn’t get enough.

Through college, my friend Galyn and I became famous (or infamous) for our eclectic t-shirts. It became, for me, more of a lifestyle than a fashion choice. The “fat ugly hula girls” and the “big spotted hoodoos” were more who we were than what we wore.

Well, lo and behold, the circle of life has come back around. I discovered only a few weeks ago, that the “What On Earth” catalog still exists and they now have a web site. *GLEE* There are literally thousands of shirts on there site, so it will take me a while to go through them all, and I fear that my t-shirt wish list will soon require it’s own dedicated hard drive. So be it. Never again will I struggle with the question, “What do you want for your birthday?” My response will be the following URL: http://www.surelyyourenotserious.com/blog/?page_id=448

Posting wish lists to the web has always seemed a little vain to me. Look, here! Buy me something because I’m so wonderful, but I don’t have time to talk to you about gift ideas.

However, I do keep a running list of shirts, I’d like to own, so I can send it to Tammy or other family members when the ask “What do you want for ?”

I just ran across another shirt today that I really want and though, “You know, I really should make this list a little more accessible. It is my birthday after all and no one has asked me what I want. Maybe it’s because they don’t know I have a list! And I am so wonderful!”

So, I’ve decided to carve a few minutes out of my work day and get My T-Shirt Wish List online.

Do any of you WordPress nuts out there know of a plug-in that converts your archive links into a calendar? Also, I’m looking for a way to paginate the posts you see when you click a category. Right now, my category views only go back about a year, so dozens of WBQotW’s are lost in obscurity where they can do no good for mankind.

I love math. In college, I graduated with somewhere around 24 hours of math credit. (Don’t get me wrong. Differential Equations is strictly the realm of masochists, but I did manage a B.) So it always intrigues me when I talk to people who genuinely hate math. How could you hate numbers. Of all the things in the universe, numbers are the most honest. 2 + 2 always equals 4. Well… unless your dealing with a number system with a base less than 5. Or… if you’re doing integer addition with non-integer values. Or… Oh, never mind. Here is WBQotW #74 (base ten).

If all good things must come to an end, then numbers are not our friend!

Which Programming Language are You?

Which OS are You?

(Pilfered from Dave)