Todd's little part of cyberspace -- a place for me to track stuff I like
Is it possible that there could be a patent on burning the recording of a live concert onto a CD right after the concert? Well, apparently there is. Check out the story from RollingStone.com
In case you haven't heard, this is Phish's last tour, album, etc. Trey spoke about it with Charlie Rose. You can download the interview here. Here's the annoucement from their site:
AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TREY 05.25.04
Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk openly about the strong feelings I've been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note. Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys' feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways -- most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don't want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.
So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We're also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you've shown us.
-- Trey Anastasio
This happened in Malaysia. I've never heard of someone being injured when decorations explode. Anyone have more info?
Minister�s daughter injured in balloon blast
Also, this one is crazy. A guy in California was ordered by City Hall to remove balloon poodles from a fence.
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24407~2167411,00.html
This is probably bad for the clown industry.
CNN.com - Spanky the clown arrested on porn charges - May 25, 2004
------------------ a quote ----------------------------------------------------------
Monday night I arrived at the Fuller Middle School in Framingham looking forward to an evening of informative discussion with Gov. Romney about education policy. I was delighted to see the parking lot almost full for the governor's Town Meeting on Education. I felt proud to be a resident of a community that cared about education and took the time to show up to discuss policy with the governor.
I ran the gauntlet of unions, candidates, sign holders and the like gathered outside the public entrance, collecting all of their handouts as I walked into the school. I planned on reading them when I got home.
----------------------- End Quote -------------------------------------------
Guess what? He was NOT allowed to bring in any flyers or information from outside the Town Meeting. His article is enlightening.
MetroWest Daily News - Columnists
Remember TIA, the Total Information Awareness program that our freedom-loving friends in Washington, DC tried pushing through? Well it has a new name, MATRIX, and it's just as disturbing as ever.
The ACLU has put together a really good resource on the program, with some news. Such as Jeb Bush has taken a lead role in selling the program, and they have already started to list people with "High Terrorist Factor Scores."
It's worth a perusal by anyone who values our rights.
http://www.aclu.org/matrix
Someone just sent me a link to this article about Balloon Bombs, which were explosive hydrogen-filled balloons used to start fires during WWII. According to the article they were not very effective. Interesting idea though. At least weren't Balloon Doggy Bombs!
I thought it should have been funnier. Oh well.
Here's one review:
Newsday.com - Nation/World News
Here are the stats for the week. The Mentalist didn't do too well.
Everyone seems to be talking about Google's new email service (at least people on tech news sites) but nobody seems to have finagled an account. It turns out that you have to be invited from someone who works for Google. Some guy set up a page where people can trade and sell accounts. Some of the things people offer are hilarious. It's a must read. Here are the webmaster's favorite odd offers.
Googling your desktop! I can't wait for that. I'd love to be able to quickly and intelligently search my computer for content. The search built-in to windows just doesn't cut it for me.
And Google is coming out with it before MS updates. It's like a war.
Google's Desktop Foray Is Smart, but Risky
Well, sort of. This morning I did the balloons for the Tony Awards photo shoot. I expect them to be on the news.
It was a fun job, combatting 9am Times Square traffic, rain, sudden gusts of air from Subway ventilation, and balloons twisting, tying and popping in the wind.
We ended up moving indoors, but the photo below is from the outdoor effort.
Todd at Tonys.JPG
And here is a link to a photo from the entire event, now indoors at the Minskoff theatre. I did the balloons in the background. There are more of them that aren't in the picture, and they aren't arranged in a terribly complicated manner, but they're there.
Let the free email wars begin! According to a PC World news article, yahoo is going to bump up the mail quota on their free accounts! Yay!
PCWorld.com - Yahoo Boosts E-Mail Storage
This guy took apart his palm pilot in an effort to fix it. I think that voids the warranty, but it makes sense if you can fix the thing. And he did. What was the Big Fix? A bit of tape on the down key to make it more responsive.
And like every other neat project on the net, this one has at least one forum
href="http://discussion.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61836">discussion about it.
What did I learn from it? Even though Palm says you can't replace the batteries on them (so you buy more) you really can. And there are even some links to battery replacement directions. Here are the links from that forum:
Instructions (with photos) for performing T|E battery replacement can be found at:
http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant..._Code=_TungEBat
There's an accompanying video of the procedure at:
http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant...tenEBattery.zip
Why do I care, I don't even have a Tungsten E? I dunno
It seems that you can patent anything these days. Let me quote from this patent application:
"This invention regards a novel and unobvious dietary supplement formulation of relatively specific ratios of fruits, vegetables, and spices that when ingested by the male results in a significant improvement to the taste of the male ejaculate by reducing its generally salty and/or bitter taste while also adding a pleasant flavor that is considered by 98.5% of all customers as very enjoyable. "
no comment
What are the best palm programs? Handango has a list of finalists for the best programs of the year. Interestingly, many of them have been out for years.
I have my suspicion that one of the qualifications is to sell very well at their site, but who knows?
It's worth a look:
Handango Champion Award Finalists 2004
I don't put much faith in political polls, so for what it's worth a recent poll has Kerry beating Bush 51% to 46%.
In a funny prologue to the 'Friends' lucrative run, it nearly didn't make it on TV. The Smoking Gun has an internal memo that trashed the pilot, giving it a failing grade.
Ironic, isn't it.
A Failing Grade For "Friends" - May 12, 2004
Only a handful of people have my blog address, and you are all either friends or family or uber-geeks. Or all three! Then you know that Jen & Chaz just got married, and are probably wondering why I haven't uploaded a zillion pictures. Sorry, they're being edited. I did go through my photos and found my favorite. What do you think of the singing Chatan and blushing Kallah?
And if you put them together do you get a Challah? Yum!
This is pretty cool -- it's a website devoted to pay phones. I never even use one, since I'm addicted to my cell phone. But they are still all over the city, even though they probably lose money. To bad the US pay phones aren't cool little boxes with porn postcards like they are in London.
One of the draws of this site is that it lets you call random people passing by pay phones. You REALLY need to have free time and no life to do that. On second thought, it might make a good drinking game: Do a shot, call a phone, etc.
Besides letting you find the number for random payphones, this site lets you look up callers who have called you. I get a few odd calls on my 800-line from payphones, and I'd like to know where they are calling from (in case they start to stalk me).
There's a cool NYTimes article about it. It's here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/nyregion/13PAYP.html
Yesterday I finished Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card. It's a good book, and a very fast read. I read most of it while waiting for Roger to graduate at MSG, and finished the rest afterwards.
It's the fifth book in the Ender series, but you don't have to wade through all of them to follow the story. Ender's Game is a great story, but I didn't like the ones after it. Dan C. was reading Ender's Shadow a few weeks ago, so I picked it up. It tells the same story as Ender's Game, only from Bean's perspective. It turns out that Bean is actually smarter than Ender, and did some crazy scheming during battle school. And the story of where he comes from is also kinda cool.
Lemme know if you read it.
This is a good place to get serious camera and printer reviews. I went here when picking out my stuff, and I think that he does a good job.
Steve's Digicams - Camera Reviews
Hi Jen-
Are you still shopping for a photo printer? I recommend getting the Canon i560, which I bought after way way to much research. It got it with a rebate for $100, and it's now around $86. It prints very nice pictures. Ask Sheryl.
Hi Hubby-
The blog looks great. I'm so excited to have a fun way to waste time at work. Now get surfing and find things to amuse me :-)
-S
p.s. What's for dinner?
This is what you get the geek who has everything!
This link was the 'tipping point' for starting this blog. It's cool enough to link to, but I have no idea who to send it to, or where to link it from. It's NOT permanent enough to bookmark, but I still think everyone should see it.
If I had the $$ I'd but it. I think that it would be a great gimmick for an entertainer. Although I might need three of them . . . .
