I think I'll dress as "Waldo" for Halloween...

Er, on second thought...

Revenge of the dustmops

Are you a geek? Want a laugh?

If you're even a little into science, last night's might be the best Colbert Report ever.

The British physicist (and Science Channel rock star) Brian Cox is in the interview segment. Colbert riffs on Relativity and the Higg's boson, showing just how freakishly smart and well-informed he is.

The show's writers were also inspired, with some wonderful geeky humor about the Large Hadron Collider (the most complex machinery ever constructed by humans), which just restarted operation in Switzerland.

Almost the whole show is science humor, except for a few political minutes at the beginning, where Joe Liberman is offered up for sacrifice.

It's a great episode. It'll be rebroadcast on Comedy Channel at 7 tonight, or is available for live streaming http://www.colbertnation.com/home . Highly recommended!

Halloween dinner?

It's a simple recipe, to hear it described: meat loaf with onion garnish, topped with tomato sauce and browned cheese.

But look at the photos!

http://tinyurl.com/ykez6lk


(BTW: October has 5 Thursdays this year, and I write 4 Thursday columns a month for Windows Secrets; so there's no column today.)

Set your Phasers to "Snark"

When The Onion is good, it's very, very good.

Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

Don't get in the way!

This 40-ton dinosaur left fossil footprints up to seven feet (2m) wide!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33191774/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Plan 10?

"Plan 9 from Outer Space" is often cited by film critics as the single worst movie ever made, and its director, Ed Wood, as the worst director, ever. That's quite an accomplishment, when you think about it: Worst move and worst director, ever! (eg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Outer_Space )

As such, it's a camp classic; so un-self-consciously bad that it can be painfully amusing to watch.

Naturally, Hollywood is now planning a very self-conscious remake. Brace yourselves.

http://www.plan9movie.com/index2.html

We all saw this coming

Accidental Mysteries

Reader Gerald Mueller sent in this link to a site mostly filled with "vernacular photos" ranging from the weird to the wonderful. Thanks, Gerald!

http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/

Tweets o' the week

Slowly succumbing to the inevitable, I'm using Twitter more and more, albeit mostly as a news-feed resource. I "follow" very few personal-type users.

I also post there, but in the same vein, it's not "I'm flossing my teeth now!" type stuff.

Here's a sampling of Tweets from me (http://twitter.com/flanga) in the last week.

Incredibly beautiful: Martian Dust Devil Trails , in high res. http://bit.ly/gvc5W

How your brain creates--- and manipulates--- the fourth dimension. http://bit.ly/3teuIs

This could explain Chrysler's troubles. Or not. http://bit.ly/nh6mz
Same script, different company... http://bit.ly/Q0MjE

Awesome Image. The core of Halley's Comet. http://ow.ly/vI6M

Meatscapes: Carnivore fantasies. http://bit.ly/3l9gf

How many brain cells does it take to make a memory? About 20. http://bit.ly/471JAc

"Thank God they found balloon boy, I was afraid that Michael Jackson ordered take out from heaven." (http://bit.ly/dMlWK Harsh language!)

Not exactly Wikipedia... http://bit.ly/geH0I

The good news: They're alive. The bad news.... http://tinyurl.com/yhvb5k3

Explaining that "word on the tip of your tongue" feeling. (The deaf call it "tip of the fingers". Really!) http://bit.ly/3GD9Jq

Duck! Earth-grazing asteroid close pass tonight! http://bit.ly/2G4AAp

NASA Finally Spots Plume from Moon Impact . http://bit.ly/QADFi pic: http://bit.ly/3nfZv9

Automatic driver updates may spell trouble

Automatic software-update tools are great — when they work. However, the more complex and nonstandard your system configuration, the greater the likelihood that an automatic-update tool will go wrong … go wrong … go wrong ….

Take reader Jake Jacoby, for example. All he wanted to do was update his drivers. Then the endless loop started:

"I have Win XP as my OS. I've tried several driver-update programs and always get the same results. They detect drivers that require updating. I use their routines to download the updated drivers. However, for some reason the update never seems to take.

"The next time I run the update program, I get the same results — drivers need to be updated. Can anyone help me with this problem?"

Ah, Jake. You're experiencing both the fullest glory and the deepest horror of the Windows world, where there is an almost-infinite number of possible permutations of hardware, software, and user action. It's a tall order to write update software that can handle such a vast range of PC configurations.

No, strike that: It's impossible. Even Microsoft — with an army of programmers and a wealth of insider knowledge at its disposal — occasionally stumbles and releases toxic updates for its own operating system. And the third-party drivers that Windows Update occasionally offers have a success record that falls somewhere between "marginally OK" and "truly awful."

It's really a testament to clever programmers that update tools work as well as they do on the majority of PCs. Indeed, if you have a fairly standard machine with a typical configuration of hardware and software and use it in fairly standard ways, automated maintenance tools may work just fine.

But for you and most of the people reading this newsletter, chances are your system has been — or will be — modified in some way that alters the standard mix of drivers. Maybe you've changed monitors or swapped out the video board or sound card. Maybe you've added or upgraded a drive or reconfigured the PC's network setup.

Also, you've probably hung all manner of gizmos off the USB ports, whether temporarily (like a camera) or semi-permanently (like a printer). Many of those USB devices require their own drivers. Heck, some of you have even changed your system's entire motherboard, introducing all-new on-board hardware.

And I bet you don't always accept the default settings offered by your software's installation routine. To top it all off, there's a near-certainty that your copy of Windows isn't even close to the same configuration it was on the day you first booted it.

Pile up enough of these customizations and changes, and you can end up with a system that's simply beyond the ability of update software to manage.

What to do? That's the top topic in my column at WindowsSecrets.com this week: Easy, reliable ways to keep your drivers up to date--- and when NOT to update! A few minutes, two or three times a year, is all it takes, and you'll never be hassled by automatic update failures again

The other items this week include:

• Make one file appear to reside in many places
  
  
• Capture "uncopyable" text in dialog boxes and folder windows
  
  
• What's with the 'no room on the server' error?

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 column) 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!

Best ever video from Mars

Doug Ellison took the 3D data from NASA's model of the Martian Columbia Hills area and created an amazing flyover video. Mind you, this is from real photos and data, not guesswork or artistic impressions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Sce-EHTRs

more:
http://www.dougellison.com/

How to spend $200 million Real Fast

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest
passenger airplane ever built, sat just outside its hangar
in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.

Then the flight crew showed up for engine tests...

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=513603

Meet the Blob-bot

Made by the same folks who make the Roomba domestic vacuum robot, this prototype is intended to be able to ooze its way through small crevices. Really!



more:
http://ow.ly/uoMd

These are wonderful!

These T-Shirt designs are probably too subtle to affect the people who need the message, but wonderful nonetheless:








More:
http://controversy.wearscience.com

XML web form vs Bakery Staff

XML won.

Need pumpkin-carving inspiration?

Halloween is coming. Here are some geek-inspired jack-o-lantern designs, including a robotic snapping pumpkin and this Death Star:



More:
http://www.walyou.com/blog/2008/10/17/pumpkin-faces/

Another example of why I don't like RAID systems...

RAID is a computer technology of automatic data mirroring via a "redundant array of inexpensive disks." It was invented in the 1990's and made sense then. It still can make sense in some limited circumstances. But many times, in many implementations, it's overkill--- and not very effective overkill, at that.

Some of you know that the e-newsletter I write for, Windows Secrets, comes out on Thursdays. Or rather, it's supposed to come out on Thursdays. This week's issue was massively delayed by a RAID failure that blew the entire Windows Secrets site offline for 48 hours. The RAID array was the source of the trouble and did nothing to help the recovery: The entire site had to be reconstructed from backups. Because of an excellent backup system (entirely separate from the RAID array), no data was lost. But two days of uptime went down the tubes, and the week's issue was delayed.

In short: It was ugly, and 100% caused by the RAID system.

It's explained more here by someone who was actually in the trenches when the RAID hit the fan. I waited all day yesterday (Thursday) for the site and the issue to come back, but by the time it did, it was too late to post the usual weekly column summary here, as I normally do. My apologies.

Anyway, the top topic in my column this week is:

How To Remove a persistent Trojan once and for all.

Reader Peter Klugherz encountered sophisticated malware that just wouldn't let go of his son's PC:

"My son called me for help last night because his computer has become infected with the Trojan Advanced Virus Remover (pavrm.exe). Among other things, pavrm.exe blocks access to Task Manager. Norton Internet Security detects it but apparently cannot remove it.

"Similarly, I can't find any reliable information on the Web on how to remove it. When I search the Web, many sites recommend the purchase of their own anti-malware software. Do you know of any way to get rid of this software?"

The "Advanced Virus Remover" is some bad, bad malware. In an effort to get you to pay for a service you don't need, the program pops up bogus warnings about malware it's supposedly found on your system. What's more, the warnings are styled to resemble Windows' own security alerts.

As Peter discovered, if you try to remove the Advanced Virus Remover, you find that your access to Task Manager and the Registry Editor (Regedit) are blocked, making removal of this malware harder than normal. But there are several approaches to rid your system of this and similar kinds of malware. Even if you don't encounter this specific Trojan, the same techniques can work whenever a similar problem occurs.

The in-depth topic in my column (finally!) posted at Windows Secrets this week explains how to remove this specific Trojan, and others that work the same way.

Also in this column:

• Restore a Recycle Bin that's missing in action
• USB ports give only intermittent service
• More possible sources of 'nasty' photos found on a PC

Access to the above content is almost free: You pay only what you think the WindowsSecrets newsletter is worth (there's no set fee--- *you* decide); whatever you pay that once gets you access to all the paid content, including my columns, for an entire year.

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.

More info: http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks!

O, thank goodness!

There may be hope for me. And, as you're reading this blog, maybe for you, too!

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?_r=2&em

More public art, both good and weird

I like this--- "The Man Who Measures Clouds," from Japan:




This Swedish one, however, is a little stranger:


More:
http://ow.ly/sY6R

Possible explanation for near-death "out of body" feelings

Fascinating research:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/06/near-death-brain.html

A less-successful sculpture

Hmmmm. Looks OK from the front--- kitschy, but OK.



But the side view doesn't work quite as intended:

Wonderful little sculpture

Be sure to view the large size (click on the image) to get the humor.

Ephemeral Street Art

This is so cool:



This graffito only works for a few minutes when the sun is in exactly the right place. Very, very clever!

Set your alarms!

You may have heard the slightly hysterical reports about NASA planning to "bomb" the moon tomorrow. The tin-foil hat brigade is out in full force over it. (Really!)

Of course, there's no "bomb." A lunar reconnaissance satellite (the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite--- LCROSS) still is attached to the now-useless rocket motor that brought it to the moon. NASA is going to de-orbit the spent rocket it in a controlled way so that its demise can yield a set of unique measurements: The impact will throw up a large cloud of whatever it is that makes up the floor of the crater.

NASA has chosen a deeply-shadowed crater near the moon's south pole as the target, and will try to steer the rocket there. The sun never, ever shines there; it's among the coldest places in the solar system. The thought is that there may be ancient water ice preserved under the dust. If so, ice particles or water vapor tossed up in the dust cloud should be visible and measurable from earth.

Finding a ready source of water would hugely simplify future plans for going to the moon: Water ice can be used for drinking water, or split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. Being able to replenish supplies from local materials instead of having to haul everything up from the Earth makes future exploration much easier to plan and fund.

Also, finding abundant water there, just as it's also been found on Mars, will increase our knowledge of how the solar system--- and we --- came to be. Just a few years ago, Earth was seen as a watery oasis in an arid universe. Now, it's starting to look like water's everywhere!

The satellite impact will be at about 7:30AM EDT tomorrow (Friday, Oct 9, 2009), and it'll be televised.

I, for one, will be watching!

LCROSS FAQ:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/FAQs/index.html

Live feeds:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33196816/ns/technology_and_science-space

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/06/astronomy-service-slooh-will-let-you-watch-the-lcross-impact-live-on-october-9/

Bomb the moon wackos:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2009/10/07/moos.bomb.moon.follies.cnn

Don't let thieves mine your files and backups

Sam Stamport had a nightmarish problem:

"I was the unfortunate victim of a burglary a few days ago. Fortunately I was not at home when it happened so I am OK, but a portable hard drive was stolen with my backup data on it. The computer itself was not stolen thank goodness! The police said the thief probably saw the portable hard drive and thought it was an iPod.

"I got to thinking about how to protect my private data on a portable hard drive AND how to protect my data on my computer's hard drive. I know that I can set a login password in Vista, but are there other steps one can take if a computer or portable hard drive is stolen to prevent thieves from accessing data on the hard drives?"

Sure, Sam! Free, easy-to-use, high-quality disk encryption is available for all versions of Windows and can make all your files and backups totally unreadable by anyone — except you! That's the top topic in my columns in the Windows Secrets newsletter this week, and it includes links to recommended tools.

The other items this week include:

• RAM mix-up (Reader's friend put 10 pounds of memory in a 5 pound bag)
  
  
• Links within documents yield weird error (word processor glitch)
  
  
• Who's using your Wi-Fi connection? (easy ways to find out!)

The guys who run WindowsSecrets put my column in the paid-subscription section which operates on the 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 column) 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!

The best of 11.5 million photos

The task faced by the editors of National Geographic was daunting, to say the least: To pick the best from the magazine's 11.5 million photos (spanning 120 years) for a new coffee-table "best of" book.

Sampling:
www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/10/image_collection.html

Fun with money

No, not spending it. Embellishing it.

Examples:








Many more:
http://www.holytaco.com/25-hilarious-defaced-bills

Someday, I need to attend this

"Burning Man" is becoming huge and organized, so its best days may be behind it. But still, it looks awesome:


http://news.cnet.com/2300-10797_3-10001510-1.html?tag=mncol

13 things that don't make sense

If these don't grind your gears a bit, you're very different from me! =)

http://www.newscientist.com/special/13-more-things

Best of the Ig Nobel prizes 2009

Why don't pregnant women topple over? Do cows notice kindness? Does cracking your knuckles bring on arthritis? And is there more than one use for a bra? These questions and more inspired the research rewarded at the Ig Nobels, which were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University in a ceremony organised by the Annals of Improbable Research:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17899-best-of-the-ig-nobel-prizes-2009.html

Lost boot sector: Big trouble!

The bad-boot blues: Karl Barton encountered one of the worst problems that can happen to a hard drive, second in severity perhaps only to a mechanical head crash.

My mother's Dell Inspron 8100 died the other day. Through the process of trying to find out what went wrong with it, we lost the boot sector of her hard drive. What can I do to recover it without losing the information on it? I purchased a USB to sata/ide adapter and it recognizes it there but nothing shows on windows explorer. I tried another drive and it shows up. Is there a safe and easy way to repair the boot sector without losing the information on it?

A problem with a hard drive's boot sector is bad --- very bad --- but not necessarily fatal. In my Windows Secrets column this week, I'll show you how to use free tools (some of which you almost surely already own!) to fix this very nasty problem.

The other items this week include:

• Running ancient software in Vista
• Lost Outlook Express contacts --- again!
  
• Oops! Trialware/Freeware confusion
  
• Where did these "adult" photos come from?

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 column) 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!