Monthly Archives: September 2006

Hacking, Innovation and Indigestion

Well, I didn’t spend the entire night at Yahoo! last night, but I did eat a great deal of their pizza, with the net result that my 42 year old stomach is bitching at me big time. Guess I’m no longer used to a diet of Coke and pepperoni.

The presentations are about to begin. [...]

HackDay 2006 and Where’s Mark?

I’m spending the day at the developer presentations at Hack Day 2006 at Yahoo in Sunnyvale. You can check out the pictures here. As I write this, there are 246 pictures tagged with HackDay06, I wonder if any of them have me somewhere in the background.
I tell you what, if anyone spots me [...]

Bug Attacks Germany!

From Google Maps, a continuation of my previous big bug theme. Quick, get those two tiny Japanese girls to summon Mothra!
Technorati Tags: Big Bug, Google Maps
Addendum: Dan pointed me at this explanatory thread.

My MacBook drops connection regularly!

The one problem that I have been having with my new Macbook is with its network. I have a Linksys WRT54GS router with the DD-WRT firmware loaded on it, and when I am running on battery power, during periods where network access lulls the wireless from my Macbook disconnects. I haven’t really confirmed [...]

Mirror grinding machine

Courtesy of Hack A Day, here’s a pointer to all sorts of telescope making stuff, including a nifty mirror grinding machine. I’ve got a dual spindle Elgin style machine in my garage that I must admit to my embarrassment, that I’ve never actually used. Cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: Telescope Making

Oakland Athletics, AL West Champions, 2006

Well, the inevitable finally happened: the Texas Rangers beat the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles California or whoever those guys are, and Oakland beat Seattle, clinching the AL West Championship in a 12-3 drubbing of Seattle. The A’s are headed to the post season after a two year hiatus. Congratulations to all the [...]

Remote Flying with VR Goggles and a Camera

Cool combination of gadgetry that gives you the feeling that you are a bird, by using VR goggles mounted atop an RC plane. As you look around, the remote camera tracks your head movement and looks in that direction as well. Too cool.

Yahoo! Hack Day Is Coming

Yahoo! Hack Day Is Coming, and it looks like fate has conspired to force me to go. I’ve maxxed out my vacation time again, and so was going to have to take Friday off anyway, so I decided to register and see what I can learn about all this Web 2.0 goodness. [...]

ICFP proceedings

Courtesy of Lambda the Ultimate, it appears that the ICFP 06 is over, and some of their stuff is available online. In particular, I glanced over Ghuloum’s tutorial on constructing a Scheme compiler, and it looks really good. From his abstract:

…We show that building a compiler can be as easy as building [...]

Arduino Microcontroller Board

How good of a microcontroller board can you get for $32 in quantity one?
A pretty nifty one.
My robotics project has stalled, but this controller might actually help energize it.

Two of My Pet Peeves

Blogs that don’t allow comments.
Blogs which remove comments (real comments, not spam or abuse).

I’m periodically deleting blogs in category 1 from my blogroll. Sadly, I’m discovering more and more in category 2.

Big Bugs!

Ants herding a caterpillar. VideoSift
I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality,
I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
Addendum: the video is very cool in using foreshortening and very large depth of field. Thanks to [...]

MT15 computer

This guy is even more crazy than me: he built a computer entirely out of surface mount transistors (well, nearly entirely, it’s got a few TTL level parts, but the CPU and ALU are entirely built from discrete surface mount transistors (3000 of them).

MT15 computer
Technorati Tags: Electronics, Homebrew Hardware

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Weird Al is the greatest.

YouTube - White & Nerdy

New Gadget: An Apple Macbook

Well, yesterday morning I got notification that my new Apple Macbook had shipped from Suzhou, China, and later that day, it had arrived in Anchorage, Alaska. This morning, I found that it had been through Indianapolis and then on to Emeryville, California, and was on a truck for delivery.

And here it is.

This one is [...]