Thanks for your concern

Several of you have asked for a followup to my car crash last month. Basically, I'm fine, and thanks for asking. I've ordered this bumper sticker:

OK, there was no sidewalk or pedestrians involved, but you get the gist.

My insurance company was completely understanding.


and paid promptly so I could get a new car. Here it is, being delivered.



(In truth, my company, Amica, has been very, very good.)

I've had a number of exotic medical tests to try to figure out what went wrong to cause the crash.









(That last one briefly turned me into a 1950's woman!)

We used the latest diagnostic tools...



... in the best clinical settings...



... including a CAT scan.



But there are no answers so far. That's probably a good thing, overall. We'll keep testing as long as it makes sense to do so, but at some point we'll probably just chalk it up to the human equivalent of a random reboot. Sh*t happens.

In the meantime, all tests are indeed pretty normal, I'm feeling fine, and have resumed my normal exercise routines such as treadmill work...



... long walks in the pleasant woods...



...and my usual healthful diet.



I know I should cut down, so I left the toothpick.

I have grounded myself from my motorcycles for the time being, not wanting to become a statistic. But scooters may still be doable for local grocery runs and such.



The short form is that I'm OK. Here's proof, a photo of me at the beach!



Thanks for asking.


Tomorrow: The long-awaited report on my home-beermaking experiments! (And no, there was no correlation between the beermaking any my running into a building, honest! :-) )

The Slap Project

Yup. It's exactly what you think. Watch this exceedingly strange video:

http://vimeo.com/3917016

I dare you not too laugh!

Yes, they're silly, often sophomoric, and frequently crude. But I challenge anyone--- anyone--- to read through this list of "Some things Bart Simpson wrote on the blackboard at the start of each episode" without laughing at least once.

Garlic gum is not funny

I will not grease the monkey bars

I will not yell "She's Dead" during roll call

I will not re-transmit without the express permission of Major League Baseball

A fire drill does not demand a fire

I will not burp in class

I will not instigate revolution

I will not draw naked ladies in class

I did not see Elvis

I will not call my teacher "Hot Cakes"

They are laughing at me, not with me

I will not yell "Fire" in a crowded classroom

I will not encourage others to fly

I will not fake my way through life

Tar is not a plaything

I will not Xerox my butt

It's potato, not potatoe (a reference to Dan Quayle)

I will not trade pants with others

I am not a 32 year old woman

I will not do that thing with my tongue

I will not drive the principal's car

I will not pledge allegiance to Bart

I will not sell school property

I will not cut corners (written only on top line, with hatch marks “ “ on subsequent lines)

I will not skateboard in the halls

I will not get very far with this attitude

I will not make flatulent noises in class

I will not belch the National Anthem

I will not sell land in Florida

I will not hide behind the Fifth Amendment

I will not do anything bad ever again

I will not show off (written in Olde English font)

I will not sleep through my education

I am not a dentist

Spitwads are not free speech

Nobody likes sunburn slappers

High explosives and school don't mix

I will not bribe Principal Skinner

I will not squeak chalk (squeaks the chalk while writing this)

I will finish what I sta (on one line; the rest is blank)

"Bart Bucks" are not legal tender

I will not fake rabies

Underwear should be worn on the inside

The Christmas Pageant does not stink

I will not torment the emotionally frail

I will not carve gods

I will not spank others

I will not aim for the head

I will not barf unless I'm sick

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty

I saw nothing unusual in the teacher's lounge

I will not conduct my own fire drills

Funny noises are not funny

I will not spin the turtle

I will not snap bras

I will not fake seizures

This punishment is not boring and pointless

My name is not Dr. Death

I will not defame New Orleans (after the city of New Orleans complained about the opening song in "Oh, Streetcar!")

I will not prescribe medication

I will not bury the new kid

I will not teach others to fly

I will not bring sheep to class

A burp is not an answer

Teacher is not a leper

Coffee is not for kids (each line becomes less and less legible; the last line is a scrawl)

I will not eat things for money

The principal's toupee is not a Frisbee

I will not call the principal "spud head"

Goldfish don't bounce

Mud is not one of the 4 food groups

No one is interested in my underpants

I will not sell miracle cures

I will return the seeing-eye dog

I do not have diplomatic immunity

I will not charge admission to the bathroom

I will never win an Emmy (Seen in the first episode after 1992-93 Emmy nominations were announced, the first time the show was eligible for "Best Comedy Series," but wasn't nominated. The show had won "Best Animated Series" Emmys in the past.)

The cafeteria deep fryer is not a toy

All work and no play makes Bart a dull boy

I will not say "Springfield" just to get applause

I am not authorized to fire substitute teachers

My homework was not stolen by a one-armed man

I will not go near the kindergarten turtle

I am not delightfully saucy

Organ transplants are best left to the professionals

The Pledge of Allegiance does not end with Hail Satan

I will not celebrate meaningless milestones (in the 100th episode)

There are plenty of businesses like show business

Five days is not too long to wait for a gun

Beans are neither fruit nor musical

I will not use abbrev.

I am not the reincarnation of Sammy Davis Jr.

I will not send lard through the mail

I will not dissect things unless instructed

I will not whittle hall passes out of soap

Ralph won't "morph" if you squeeze him hard enough

Adding "just kidding" doesn't make it okay to insult the Principal

"Bagman" is not a legitimate career choice

Cursive writing does not mean what I think it does

Next time it could be me on the scaffolding

I will not hang donuts on my person

I will remember to take my medication

I will not strut around like I own the place

The Good Humor man can only be pushed so far

I do not have power of attorney over first graders

Nerve gas is not a toy

I will not mock Mrs. Dumbface

The First Amendment does not cover burping

This is not a clue...or is it? (in the episode rumored to contain clues to the identity of Mr. Burns' shooter)

I will not complain about the solution when I hear it (in the episode where Mr. Burns’ shooter is revealed)

"Bewitched" does not promote Satanism

No one wants to hear from my armpits

I am not a lean mean spitting machine

The boys room is not a water park

Indian burns are not our cultural heritage

Wedgies are unhealthy for children and other living things

I will only do this once a year

I will stop talking about the twelve inch pianist

I am not certified to remove asbestos

I did not learn everything I need to know in kindergarten

I am not my long-lost twin

The truth is not out there

I am not licensed to do anything

I will not hide the teacher's Prozac

I no longer want my MTV

Everyone is tired of that Richard Gere story

I did not invent Irish dancing

I will not tease Fatty

There was no Roman god named "Fartacus"

Rudolph's red nose is not alcohol-related

Shooting paintballs is not an art form

Pain is not the cleanser

Silly String is not a nasal spray

I was not told to do this

My butt does not deserve a website

I will not demand what I'm worth (a reference to the holdout of the cast for more money)

I will not mess with the opening credits (in place of the couch opening; the rest of the family runs into the classroom)

I am not the new Dalai Lama

I was not the inspiration for "Kramer" (in the episode after the series finale of "Seinfeld")

I will not file frivolous lawsuits

No one cares what my definition of "is" is

I will not scream for ice cream

I am not a licensed hairstylist

"The President did it" is not an excuse (shown the day after President Clinton was impeached)

My mom is not dating Jerry Seinfeld

Sherri does not "got back"

I will not do the Dirty Bird

No one wants to hear about my sciatica

Hillbillies are people too

Grammar is not a time of waste

It does not suck to be you

I cannot absolve sins

A trained ape could not teach gym

Loose teeth don't need my help

I have neither been there nor done that

I'm so very tired

Fridays are not "pants optional"

Pork is not a verb

I am not the last Don

I did not win the Nobel Fart Prize

I won't not use no double negatives

I can't see dead people

I will not sell my kidney on eBay

I will not create art from dung

I will stop phoning it in

Class clown is not a paid position

Substitute teachers are not scabs

My suspension was not "mutual"

A belch is not an oral report

Dodgeball stops at the gym door

"Non-Flammable" is not a challenge

I was not touched "there" by an angel

I am not here on a fartball scholarship

I will not dance on anyone's grave

I cannot hire a substitute student

I will not obey the voices in my head

I will not plant subliminal messagores

I will not surprise the incontinent

I am not the acting President (a reference to the 2000 Presidential election, whose winner had still not been determined when this episode aired)

I was not the sixth Beatle

I will only provide a urine sample when asked

The nurse is not dealing

Science class should not end in tragedy

Network TV is not dead

I will not "let the dogs out"

I will not hide the teacher's medication

I will not publish the Principal's credit report

The hamster did not have "a full life"

I will not buy a Presidential pardon (a reference to President Clinton granting Presidential pardons to people who made donations to his campaign)

"Temptation Island" was not a sleazy piece of crap

I will not scare the Vice President (reference to Dick Cheney's hospitalization with a heart condition)

I will not flush evidence

Fire is not the cleanser

Genetics is not an excuse

Today is not Mothra's day (aired on Mother's Day, 2001)

I should not be twenty-one by now (Bart would be 21 in the 12th season if he was 10 in the first season, which ended in 1990, and he aged normally)

Nobody reads these anymore

A burp in a jar is not a science project

Fun does not have a size

I am not Charlie Brown on acid

I do not have a cereal named after me (when this episode aired, he did - Bart Simpson Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch)

I will not bite the hand that feeds me Butterfingers

The giving tree is not a chump

Making Milhouse cry is not a science project

Vampire is not a career choice

I will never lie about being cancelled again (a reference to Matt Groening commenting in an interview that the show was "closer to winding it up." Groening later claimed he was "misquoted")

Fish do not like coffee

Milhouse did not test cootie positive

This school does not need a "regime change"

SpongeBob is not a contraceptive

I will not (Bart then chops up the blackboard with an axe)

My pen is not a booger launcher

Sandwiches should not contain sand

Over forty & single is not funny

I will not speculate on how hot teacher used to be

Poking a dead raccoon is not research

Beer in a milk carton is not milk

A booger is not a bookmark

Does any kid still do this anymore?

I am not smarter than the President

Teacher was not dumped -- it was mutual

I will not laminate dog doo

I will not flip the classroom upside down (classroom is upside-down while Bart writes)

I will not leak the plot of the movie

Je ne parle pas Français

Have a great summer, everyone

Frankincense is not a monster

Global warming did not eat my homework

I will not look up what teacher makes

Pearls are not oyster barf

I will not wait 20 years to make another movie

The Wall Street Journal is better than ever

I am not an FDIC-insured bank

There is no such thing as an iPoddy

The Pilgrims were not illegal aliens

Teacher did not pay too much for her condo

The art teacher is pregnant, not fat

This punishment is not medieval.

The capital of Montana is not "Hannah"

A reader's "aaaargh!" moment

Stephen Yale had what he aptly describes as an "aaaargh!" moment:

I had a 750GB external USB drive connected [to my PC]. I inserted a small 32MB thumb drive to reformat from NTFS to FAT32 and use as a boot disk. I went through the process of formatting the drive whilst talking to a colleague on the telephone. Inadvertently, I formatted the 750GB external USB drive instead of the thumb drive. Aaaargh!

What can I do — if anything — to recover the data from the drive? Am I hosed or is there a chance of recovery?

Don't feel too bad, Stephen. Anyone who works on PCs long enough will — sooner or later — reformat the wrong drive or partition. I confess: I've done it, too!

In fact, the increasing use of digital cameras is making this type of error more common. You see, when you "initialize" a camera's memory, you're really formatting a solid-state hard drive. (Most cameras use utterly standard FAT16 or FAT32 disk formatting.)

People who would never reformat a PC's drive will almost surely "initialize" or reformat a digital camera's solid-state drive many times over the years they own the device. Sooner or later, almost everyone will have a reformatting "aaaargh" moment!

In fact, it's becoming common enough that I made the answer to this letter (above) the lead item in my WindowsSecrets column this week. The other items:

• Are CCleaner's system scrubs too thorough? (I believe they are.)
  
  
• Power-supply dilemma: adding a combo UPS/PSU? (Bad idea. I'll tell you why, and what I use instead.)
  
  
• Windows activation for no reason? (Plus: Why the Black helicopters are landing 0n my lawn! :-) )

And, of course, there's lots more full-length content from the other columnists, too.

You can also rate each column (there's a poll at the end) to let me know how I'm doing. And you can use the "contact" info there to send in questions you might like me to try answering in future columns.

The "Plus" content is available on an honor-system basis: You pay only what you think the content is worth; there's no set fee. Whatever you decide to kick in covers you for an entire year.

More info on the free version (which you sign up for first) and the honor-system Plus version (with my column): https://windowssecrets.com/

Your support there helps me keep me off the streets. :-)

Thanks

You can save the baby! No, wait, what?

(PS: I originally planned to caption this item with something like, "If my neighbors bought that toy for their kids, I'd have to buy toy silver bullets for my kids." Or something. So I went looking for an image of toy silver bullets--- maybe from a kid's "vampire slayer" costume kit or some such. But the search didn't turn out as expected. Note to self: Don't search for silver bullet toy unless you're prepared for surprises.)

Geek alert!

This is one of those posts you'll either love or hate, with little room for middle ground.

It's from the University of Toronto, and is an excellent collection of flash animations that illustrate the principles and concepts of everything from elementary classical physics to chaos theory and relativity.

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/

It's very well done. I hope you're one of the ones who'll love it. (But if not, you'll enjoy tomorrow's post: a product from Japan that will make you go "Wh-a-a-a-t?" ;) )

Want to know the meaning of life?

OK, maybe not the meaning of the whole thing. Or even a very large thing.

Would you believe, one tiny thing? How about an entire web site devoted to--- no, I won't spoil it by telling you ahead of time. Just click, and behold the #1 site in its category, the life-changing wonder that is... http://tinyurl.com/3fuuy

I can only ask: Why?

Just because something can be manufactured doesn't meant it should be.

http://tinyurl.com/6dcvkd

If you had Hubble eyes...

...the night sky might look something like this:


Sometimes, telescopes focus on tiny, tiny areas of the sky, looking at unimaginably distant objects made small by the intervening space. But the sky is also filled with vast objects and structures that are simply too dim for our unaided eyes to see. "Wide field" telescopes capture the weak rain of photons from these objects, slowly building up an image to light levels our eyes can see.

The clouds in the photo above are nebulae--- huge gatherings and scatterings of interstellar gases. Some nebulae glow on their own, fluorescing in actinic starlight. Some simply reflect normal light. Others are dark, and appear only when backlit. There's a wonderful gallery of nebula images here: http://images.google.com/images?q=nebulae

But what those shots don't do is put the nebulae in the context of the sky as a whole. Some nebulae, as the photo at the top of the page shows, are huge, and would dominate the night sky... if only we had Hubble eyes to see them.

Wolfram Alpha: Not Ready For Prime Time

No doubt you've heard of Wolfram Alpha (they style it with a vertical bar, thus: Wolfram|Alpha). It's a new search engine that's nothing if not wildly ambitious:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Really? "...To make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone." Wow! I had to check it out.

I clicked over, read the intro, watched the video, and dived in. I thought I'd start with something simple, objectively knowable, and (frankly) not hard to figure out. I asked "What is the operating cost per hour of air force one?"

I figured it would be interesting to see what the software did. Google would just deliver pages that contained the answer. Maybe Alpha would just do that, but maybe it would do something interesting, like start with the fact that Air Force One is a Boeing 747 and work the calculation that way, from known raw data. I hit Enter. Alpha replied:

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

OK, that's a little disappointing. Maybe the question wasn't as easy as I thought. So I opened another tab and asked the same question of Google. Google instantly replied with 1.3 million hits, the top one of which was this:

Air Force One: $68000 an hour?: The Swamp - May 19
"Does it still cost $68000 an hour to operate Air Force One? ... million in annual operating costs, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said this month. .... thousands of New Yorkers suffering from PST, and all at a cost of 68k per hour. ...
www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/air_force_one_68000_an_hour.html - 67k - Cached - Similar pages -

Skimming the rest of the entries on the Google page shows multiple cost estimates from other sources in the same dollar range, so right away I have a pretty good ballpark answer.

Maybe my test question was too weird. One of the examples Alpha gives involves stock/share prices. So I asked "microsoft original and current share price." That's just two pieces of data--- the IPO price, and the current price. I figured Alpha would report that and (as their demo implies) go on to calculate the difference, show a timeline, and work other mathematic magic. Alpha said:

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Oh, come on. I entered the same thing in Google. The #1 result from Google was for a site offering "The latest Microsoft Corporation share price." The #2 result from Google was for a site offering "Microsoft Corporation Historical Share Prices." Geez, Alpha, you're not impressive so far.

OK. Alpha is supposed to be good with dates; another type of known, objective, numeric data.

I live in Northwood, New Hampshire. There's a historic marker a mile or two from my house that commemorates a goodwill tour of the newly-created United States by Revolutionary War hero, General LaFayette. OK, Alpha, tell me what "date lafayette visited Northwood NH"

This time, Alpha didn't give up. Great! It churned for a moment and then proudly offered to show me... the distance between Northwood NH and Lafayette Louisiana. What?

Google's top result for "date lafayette visited Northwood NH:"

New Hampshire Historical Markers - A Waymarking.com Category
LaFayette's Tour - Northwood.
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMC9X_LaFayettes_Tour

Clicking on the embedded link produced this:

"Upon invitation of President Monroe, issued at the request of Congress, Marquis de LaFayette, Revolutionary War hero, revisited the United States for a goodwill tour which included an extensive visit to New Hampshire towns. He passed this spot June 23, 1825, traveling between Concord and Dover."

Two clicks, and I had the info.

Why is Wolfram Alpha so sucky? Stephen Wolfram is no dummy. I actually met him a couple times a thousand years ago when I was Editor of Byte Magazine. He'd come out with Mathematica, a software package that was unprecedented at the time, and which remains a category leader today.

Maybe Alpha needed plain math to shine.

Using an example from the Alpha site (talk about a slow pitch over the center of the plate...) I entered $250 + 15%. Alpha immediately responded with the correct answer:

287.50

Google can do some simple math, so I typed in the same thing. Google's top reply:

$250 + 15% - Wolfram|Alpha
Input interpretation: $ 250 (US dollars)+15%. Result: $287.50. Calculation:Show details. $250.00 | $250.00\n+15% | $37.50\n | $287.50 ...

Now that was interesting. Google didn't do the math itself, but reported Alpha's handling of the same query. I still had the answer, harnessing Alpha without ever having to leave Google. Hmmmm.

Let's try some harder math. I entered an open-ended equation, also based on an example lifted from the Alpha site: x^2+sin(x)

And indeed, Alpha shone. It actually used the engine from Mathematica to parse the equation every which-way, delivering a page full of graphs and related information.( http://www77.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2+sin(x)

Google went in a different direction when I entered the same equation. Because it's an open-ended equation, Google's first result is an instructional video showing how to solve "integration by parts" equations. The second result is a PDF paper with similar information. The third result is... the Alpha page. (The Google results page: http://www.google.com/search?q=x^2%2Bsin(x))

After this, I'm hard-pressed to see any reason to go to Alpha. Google still produces better results in the kind of categories I use, and when Alpha would be better, Google points me there.

Maybe I'm missing something, but Alpha seems to be NOT a general repository of all manipulable, quantifiable, systematic data, but a very narrowly focused, special purpose engine.

In a word: Meh.

Power-management glitches in XP and Vista

Windows' power management subsystems save both energy and wear and tear on your hardware. But sometimes, things just don't work quite the way they should.

For example, a reader wrote:

"I'm running WinXP Home, fully updated. Recently when I try to modify the Power Option Properties, all I see is this useless dialog. Help!

The fix is surprisingly easy, and that's the topic of the lead item in my WindowsSecrets column this week: What to do when your power management systems malfunction.

Other topics include:

• Managing Vista's Hibernation/"hybrid sleep" System
• USB Longevity Tip
• Curing Netbook Backup Blues

Access to my column is by honor-system: You pay only what you think the content is worth (there's no set fee).

Want to have a question answered in that column? Use the "contact" info at the end of the column to send in questions you might like me to try answering. And you can also rate the content to let me know how I'm doing.

You start by signing up for the free version, and then upgrade to gain access to the honor-system/paid content that includes my column, along with others. More info: https://windowssecrets.com/

Your support there helps me keep the lights lit here. :-)

There's always be an England, part 7,857

Yes, of course, it's fake. But how wonderful that someone would go to the trouble to produce it, just for the sake of a bit of public humor!


(BTW, in a follow-on joke, Mr. von Hogflume has his own Twitter page, along with "Hellen Keller" and others with amusing and/or fake accounts. 8-) )

In honor of the Hubble repairs

With Hubble refurbished and ready to start its final years of service, here's a nice retrospective of history's other most important telescopes:

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16663-important-telescopes

"Isaac's Storm" book review

"Isaac's Storm" is about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed over 6,000 people and remains the worst natural disaster in US history in terms of loss of human lives.

I was hoping for a book like "The Perfect Storm." Unlike the very mediocre move of the same name, the book The Perfect Storm clearly and engagingly explains a truly awesome and rare natural event. It uses stories from people caught up in the event to illustrate what was going on at different times and places and to give you a sense of what it must have been like to be there. After reading The Perfect Storm, you not only have an intellectual understanding of why this was a "perfect storm" (shorthand form: a 1-in-a-million three-way merging of two major storms and a hurricane) and why it was so extraordinary, but you also have a visceral sense of the scales and forces involved.

The Perfect Storm as was an accurate name for the book, which was about the storm. The people in the book act as your, the reader's, eyes and ears and bodies; to let you experience what few have ever seen and lived through. The book is very, very well done; it's multidimensional, being both informative and humanly moving.

Alas, the movie version of The Perfect Storm kind of sucked--- or I guess "blew" would be a better term for a storm movie. It was one-dimensional and focused on the characters to the exclusion of letting you understand what was really going on. Why was this thing called "The Perfect Storm?" The movie never really tells you. OK, it's a really big storm. So what? There are lots of big storms. And (let me speak bluntly) cold-water fisheries like those in the North Atlantic and Bering Straits claim lives in big storms every year. Why was this one special? If you just see the movie you'll learn about a charismatic skipper (it's George Clooney after all!) who died at the helm of his swordfish boat during a really, really bad storm. It's a human interest story, and that's fine as far as it goes. But if you just see the movie, you'll never learn why The Perfect Storm was so important it's covered in meteorology textbooks today.

The book covers the human side in rich detail. But it also gives you a broader understanding: For example, one of the three storms that merged into "The Perfect Storm" was Hurricane Grace; and it wasn't even the largest part of the final storm. Think about that for a moment: This wasn't just "a big storm at sea." The Perfect Storm was so gigantic and powerful, it actually ate an entire Category 2 hurricane as a freaking hors d'oeuvre!

That puts the fate of the swordboat Andrea Gail in a somewhat different light, doesn't it? We're not talking about a big storm here; or some colorful seafarers. We're talking about a rare, truly extraordinary storm that was practically Biblical in power and scope; a storm so awesome that a full-blown hurricane was just a warm-up act. That's the sense that the book The Perfect Storm gives you.

I bought Isaac's Storm with hopes of a reading experience like that of The Perfect Storm. Alas, Isaac's Storm was much more like the movie The Perfect Storm than the book. The author of Isaac's Storm, Erik Larson, seemed to write the book with the idea of a screenplay in mind. The book is scholarly enough with footnotes and sources cited everywhere; but almost all of the scholarship is devoted to illuminating the personalities of Galveston meteorologist Isaac Cline and others involved in the nascent US Weather Service. It's not a story about weather systems as much as about egos and rivalries and reputations, with a little science tossed in. And, frankly, I just didn't find the people involved all that interesting.

There are some nice tidbits about the tug-of-war between the emerging science of meteorology and the then-current, old-timer's, my-bunions-are-hurting type of weather forecast then still in use even in newspaper forecasts. And it was interesting to learn how some of the "Manifest destiny/White-Man's burden" BS meant that the early Weather Service ignored the good information coming from the Cuban weather service, which actually knew what it was talking about when it came to hurricanes.

On balance, I'm glad I read the book--- it wasn't a waste of time. But I can't especially recommend that anyone run out and buy it. It's not a "great read," and I wish it had been.

If you want some of the science behind The Perfect Storm, see this:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/satellite/satelliteseye/cyclones/pfctstorm91/pfctstorm.html

Wood-fueled (wood gas) automobile

Wood-fueled car technology gained some use in WWII, especially in Europe when gasoline (benzin) was in short supply. Basically, the idea is to pyrolyze wood (to heat it in the absence of oxygen) to break down the wood without actually burning it. The end products of wood pyrolysis include charcoal and--- here's the thing--- a kind of biogas actually called "woodgas" that's rich in methanol. This latter can be burned, much like gasoline.

When I saw a new, current woodgas car video posted on Youtube, I clicked over, hoping to see an updated version of this venerable technology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG8iR5DRLpw

Perhaps they have just a teensy bit more work to do.

Backyard science project nearly reaches space

Amazing: This is a photo taken from a hobbyist balloon last summer. The balloon is at 23+ miles (36km) altitude, which is 3-4 times as high as most commercial jets fly, well into the stratosphere, and about as high as a balloon can go. To a human at that altitude, it'd effectively be about the same as being in space.


Some of the apparent curvature of the Earth is from a wide-angle camera lens, but it's still way, way up there, and astonishing for backyard science, done by a bunch of buddies, just for fun!

More on the story:
http://tinyurl.com/2xhuod

http://tinyurl.com/qyeld5

Just pix:
http://tinyurl.com/rx2mef

The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments

This is veeeeery interesting:
http://brainz.org/ten-most-revealing-psych-experiments/

Ever notice that huge "WinSxS" folder on your PC?

An item in my April 23 WindowsSecrets column titled "System folders gobble up free disk space" generated some excellent questions from readers. For example, Joseph Goldman noticed that the WinSxS folder on his Vista machine was huge (the folder's also present in Windows XP and Server):

Could you please address the WinSxS folder? I have seen it at 6, even 8GB. Running the Vista SP1 cleanup doesn't help too much. I looked around the Internet and all I find is do not touch this space guzzler.

WinSxS is short for "Windows Side by Side." It's a compatibility technology for programs that require different versions of the same system files — especially DLLs — to coexist "side by side."

Here's a simplified example: Let's say Windows ships with version 4 of the fictitious xyz.dll but you later install software that's hardwired to require xyz.dll v3.9. Windows places the nonstandard version of the DLL in the WinSxS folder. The system's own copy of that DLL remains untouched. This way, the OS and the other software can both have the version of the DLL they need, thus avoiding the "DLL Hell" that plagued early versions of Windows.

WinSxS is clever, but it's not elegant, and it can end up eating a huge chunk of your hard drive. In this week's column, I'll discuss what you can to to keep it from getting out of hand.

I also discuss three other topics:

• Is it smart to save disk space by capping the pagefile size?
  
  
• More on laptops with no CD or DVD drive
  
  
• Gather ye scattered photo files while ye may
  

Access to these items is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my columns) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!

Animation: Anatomy of a Black Hole

Glosses over some major points, but visually very well done:

http://www.thinktechnologies.com/portfolio/demos/Blackhole.html

Look at these houses!

One example:



http://cubeme.com/blog/category/architecture/page/4/

(BTW, I once visited the "Clingstone" house, below, many years ago when I was covering alternative energy sources. the owners had just installed their wind turbine. Nice place, incredible location:

)

So simple, but strangely compelling

It takes a minute to figure out, but once you "get" it, it gets you!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

When they say "memory stick"...

... they really mean it.

http://tinyurl.com/ck5cuw

Not recommended in bear country

(or around vegans)

http://www.hatsofmeat.com/

Look what came in the mail!

It was an innocent-looking package, well padded and taped, but with no obviously identifying markings.

I opened it.

It was from my sister Susan and her husband John in Pittsburgh. Inside the mailer was this attractive package.



Er, is that what I think it is?



Really? Milk chocolate bacon chunks? Oh. My. God.

I opened the top:



Seriously elegant packaging, eh?

This was the inner package, surrounding a small plastic bag:



And there they were in all their calorific glory: chocolate covered bacon bits!


The chocolate was very soft and in the classic light/sweet, milky American style (unlike the darker, harder chocolate preferred in Europe):


I was almost afraid to taste it. I guess I felt like a dog that barks at cars--- what will he do when he finally catches one? For all my joking about bacon, I actually rarely eat it, and would never have bought chocolate bacon for myself. What on earth would it taste like?

I had to find out:



The bacon was very mild and cooked just to the point of firmness without being brittle. The overwhelming flavor was the chocolate itself, with the bacon mostly adding a strange (but not unpleasant) texture for a candy, with occasional salty notes; an interesting counterbalance to the general sweetness. The bacon was not at all smoky (smoke and chocolate probably wouldn't have worked), and the overall bacon flavor was much more subtle than I'd expected. I'd never thought I'd have occasion to describe the flavor of bacon as "delicate," but this actually came close. Very, very strange!

I consumed a couple pieces (solely for science, of course! (cough cough)) and have stored the rest in my freezer to share as a rare and exotic treat with lucky friends.

Thank you Susan and John, for this interesting, unexpected, and definitely weird gift!

When your PC spontaneously reboots itself...

...something is very, very wrong.

Ken Blan's note to me was succinct, but suggested a major problem:

• "Running Vista Ultimate on HP desktop w/ 8 g RAM and 750 g hard drive. Every so often the program reboots without direction. Please help."

With today's systems, there usually are only two common reasons for spontaneous reboots — and both are fixable! That's the lead topic in my column at WindowsSecrets.com this week.

I also discuss three other topics:

• Outlook files won't shrink (and how to fix it)
• Vista's different power options (e.g. what the heck is "hybrid sleep?")
• Two ways to write-protect USB flash drives

Access to all my columns, past and present is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the weekly paid-edition content (not just my columns) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here: http://windowssecrets.com/

Rook! It's a Chinese Loomba!

What is Netflix trying to tell me?

If you're a Netflixer, you may have noticed they're tweaking their recommendation tools, adding additional qualifiers to what used to be simple, broad categories like "comedy," "drama," "action and adventure," and so on.

Now, I'm finding their recommendations for me are for categories such as:

Critically-acclaimed Cerebral Dramas
Suspenseful Foreign Action & Adventure
Visually-striking Violent Revenge Movies
Dark War Dramas
Suspenseful Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead
Mind-bending Thrillers

Some odd categories there...

I assume it's in reaction to new third-party services such as Jinni.com, which make viewing recommendations based on much finer categorizations than Netflix's traditionally broad ones.

Anyway, it's interesting--- and so is Jinni, if you haven't already seen it. Jinni recommends any/all movies, too, not just Netflix-able ones.

Then and now

2009: Honda unveils dog-friendly car:


Dog-crazy Americans will soon be able to buy a pet-friendly car with a cushioned dog bed in the trunk, fitted with a built-in water bowl and fan and a ramp to help less agile dogs climb in. http://tinyurl.com/d83wdx



1936:

Springtime in New Hampshire

In Autumn, the leaves fall. In spring, it's hikers:

http://tinyurl.com/chb4zd

Planet-hunting spacecraft snaps first images

Test image from the new Kepler deep-space telescope, showing a star known to have at least one planet in orbit:


Story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30249440/

Heart attacks on a plate:

Lots more:
http://tinyurl.com/deqz5a