Post Technical Support Disorder For questions 1-9 Post Technical Support Disorder Test I answered "yes". Be afraid. (Thanks Boone!)

Hollywood Gossip Via Darren Barefoot comes gossip from the A-List. No idea how true these are, but an interesting read nonetheless. If you believe the things on the page, pretty much everyone in or around hollywood is gay, lesbian, bisexual or all of the above, along with being a homewrecker and a slut, and involved in various illegal transgressions previous to becoming famous. Or is just a freak. Guess such is the price of fame eh?

A List Dirt Some dirt on the A List.

Best Resume Intro Ever. Saw this in a sig and I just had to follow the link. Will Code for Climbing Gear tells a story I can definately relate to... having the skills, a bit of extra time, and the need for more gear. Well, I can't relate to that now, but I could, once.

On Font Add... A hilarious letter to MS from Anil Dash regarding the font add dialog box. Have to agree with him here. Of course, you can also (IIRC) just drag fonts into the fonts folder, but still. I wonder if progman.exe is still hiding in the bowles of XP somewhere :)

CSS Zen Garden css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design is a site showcasing what can be done with CSS design. Some nice stuff there, I might grab and try a design or two on my personal site. Link from a local vancouver boy over at mezzoblue.

MSN Messanger in Mozilla Nifty, MSN Messanger in Mozilla! The screenshots make it look pretty normal. Interesting to try out. Thanks blogzilla for the link.

Pic of the Day This picture of the day is of the launch of the Spirit Rover towards Mars. Thanks Foot_Note.

Derby Racer Stripped of Title Ever think people take things to seriously? I don't. This cheating little bastard punk was rightfully stripped of his derby racing title after several violations of the racing rules were found. I hope the little 13 year old cheat gets the book thrown at him!

(Note for the humour impared, that's sarcasm above).

Thanks Foot_Note for the link.

Tomb Raider 2 Review Mr Cranky's review of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is absolutely fantastic, and had my lunch coming through my nose, it'd be funny if it wasn't a PB&J. Please it it in full.

You're trying to tell me that Lara Croft can't easily and efficiently kick the ass of a Nobel Prize winner but she can stop a 1/2 ton shark with one punch? Have you seen any Nobel Prize winners lately? Martial arts and kick-boxing isn't really their thing.

Outlook Style Blog Got FoO.com has to be the neatest set up for a blog that I've seen yet. Styled like outlook 2003 (or something like that) it's mucho funky and rather functional. Hell, it even works in Mozilla (which I wasn't expecting). Anyone want to build this interface for a web based RSS reader for me? Please?

Illusions Page Page of illusions, funkyness for your eyes. Via scoble.

A Soldiers Weblog Cool, the unauthorized weblog from a soldier on duty in Iraq. Found via taint.org. I haven't read it yet, but it'll be interesting to see into this whole deal without the media or public relations getting in the way. I'm sure this guy is going to have his own take on things, but I doubt it'll be as sanatized or patriotic as the other "news" agencies out there. Another plus for weblogs!

Online XUL RSS Aggregator XULChannels is very cool. An online RSS reader that uses XUL through the mozilla rendering engine, with no installation required, nothing to download, nothing to run. It still leaves some to be desired, but it's a very cool idea, and shows that mozilla derived browsers have the same capability for "customer" apps as ActiveX based browsers do, assuming that I have the comparision right that is :)

Kill Clippy DIE Clippy! is incrediably satisfying (flash).

New UI for Computers [~stevenf] James Patten has a very cool video on his site (quicktime 5.0) showing a very Minority Report type computer use with a computer tracking and interacting with physical objects laid on a table. You sort of have to see it to understand what I'm talking about though :)

Thoughts on Music My good buddy Bear has some good thoughts on music, online and offline, in his blog. Good stuff.

Mac Browser Comparisions Interesting UI comparision of the various mac browsers (safari, camino, etc). Might be interesting for the UI geeks out there.

Yoda In Ireland 104 pictures of Yodas travels to Ireland. Funny. Via Darren Barefoot.

GUI Gallery Cool, The GUI Gallery. Don't think I've come across this before. Thanks Foot_Note.

Questions to China An absolutely fascinating thread on The Cellar. Basically a guy from China named Billy posted a picture up there (with a couple of false starts) and eventually it turned into a question and answer period from the west to the east, with people asking questions about Chinese culture, food, medicine, gov't, pretty much anything. A really interesting, but long read. Mucho thanks to Brad for telling me about this last night.

A Plan for Physical Fitness The 5BX Plan for Physical Fitness is a scientifically designed approach to physical fitness done by the RCAF. It's designed to be done in 11 minutes per day, and not rely on any equipment or gym facilities. Cool idea, something to try out. Of course, eating healthy is also essencial for getting anywhere with that programmers gut.

Asterix and Obelix Movie Cool! It's not english, but I was thrown a link to a page with the movie Asterix en Obelix tegen Caesar, a live action Asterix movie (which looks quite old now).

Google for Asterix and Obelix if you're not up with who these guys are.... I used to read the comics when I was a wee one and still have a full stack which I periodically go through. Great art, great stories and characters. It's all centered around a small village in Gaul, the last outpost against the Roman army, helped by a magic potion which gives them incrediable strength. Definately recommended for anyone, even if you have to say you're getting them for your kids (who should enjoy them as well :)

How to pick up a redhead Great advice from e2, How to pick up hot red headed chicks. The bonus with this Howto is they actually give good advice on the actual words, instead of something generic, like "say something interesting to her." Interesting advice for geeks everywhere :)

Digital Photography Myths 7 Lies & Myths about digital photography, a HOWTO on the Popular Photography website.

Evolution of IT The Evolution of IT has a monkey picture at the top of the page. That should say it all :)

Forklift Safety In this wmv movie, Klaus illustrates forklift safety. In german. Long, but worth it. Thanks BSpudd!

Spider Man 2 News Spider Man 2 info, and Ain't It Cool News was there. A great description of a Doc Ock scene and some pics of him from the up and coming movie. Can't wait!

Backup Solutions The history of the historic quote: "Never underestimate the bandwidth...."

PC Users Don't Switch Interesting article on the ORA network with a few reasons why PC Users won't switch to a mac. Interesting thoughts anyway, and a lot makes sense... though the folks over at macslash are going to have different opinions no doubt.

Beer Warnings Due to increasing products liability litigation, American beer brewers have accepted the FDA's suggestion that the following warning labels be placed immediately on all beer containers:

1. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your bra. (Apparently this has happened to several people?!)
2. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.
3. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like an ass hole.
4. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell the same boring story over and over again until your friends leave.
5. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.
6. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning.
7. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with other members of the opposite sex without spitting.
8. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you have mystical Kung Fu powers, resulting in you getting your ass kicked.
9. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns on the forehead.
10. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and more handsome than some really, really big guy named FRANZ.
11. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe you are invisible.
12. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.
13. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause a disturbance in the time-space continuum, whereby small (and sometimes large) gaps of time may seem to literally disappear.
14. WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may actually CAUSE pregnancy.

Thanks Brian!

Cost Of Embedded Projects A Microsoft funded survey found that Linux was more expensive than Microsoft for embedded development (so spake the the reg). I'm am shocked by this, just shocked....

Userfriendly.org Down? Not any more! "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

-- Obi-Wan predicting what would happen if userfriendly.org ever went down

No folks, I don't know what is going on, but I can't get to our favorite morning web comic destination. Hardware problems? Routers? A new IP that hasn't propagated yet? Who knows, but I know that the good folks are running their asses off right now to get it back up and going. In the meantime, you can get your fix from an archived funny from below from many years ago. Reposted without permission, but I think Illiad would understand.

Update It's up now. The collective geek community heaves a sigh of relief....

Up and Alive! Turns out that while I heard 10am, the good folks at paralynx (the hosts) actually said pm, and due to them moving offices the box didn't get turned back on after we had realized our miscommunication. However, everything is back up and running now. Ok, now for another few hundred days of uninterrupted uptime!

What the Internet Is A neat article entitled The internet is shit tells just what isn't on the net, and why no matter how good google or usenet is, it doesn't compare to real life.

Oh, and don't forget we're going down in about a half hour for the scheduled 10am downtime.

PvP Goodness A random PvPOnline cartoon for all ya'lls amusement can be found here, with an amusing observation on men vs women and gaming, all bundled up together nicely.

UFies Scheduled Downtime Hi Folks. The good folks at Paralynx, who host UFies.org and it's hosted domains are moving shop, so on Tuesday, July 15^th sometime during the day. UFies.org and all it's services, including mail, web, and ftp will be unavailable for some undetermined period of time. I don't know of the schedule or how long things will be down, but I'm hoping not too long.

Please bear with and sorry for the inconvenience.

Update Ufies will be shut down at 10am sharp and I'm told downtime should be only for a couple of hours max.

What do you want from Microsoft The Scobleizer Weblog run by an MS employee who seems like a pretty decent guy has some responses to Dave Winer and asks the interesting question "... tell us what you'd like to see on the Windows platform... I'll make sure the right people see the best responses"

Interesting question eh?. Right now a lot of geeks aren't too Microsoft friendly and this guy is a big player (I think) on the Longhorn team, and we have a chance to respond. A few people have, but I'd encourage all y'all to throw a (politely and maturely phrased) response back to him.

Photographing Firewords Photographing Fireworks via random($foo).

Actually the whole site, and the tips sections look like good reading for the aspiring photographers out there :)

Evolution 2.0 Mockups Looks like the monkies over at Ximian have put up some mockups for the Evolution 2.0 UI proposal. Looks like a nicer UI for sure... can it be out now please? Any UI goones want to critique?

Tanning This image is just far too cute.

Kernel 2.6 Info Some good kernel 2.6 info for people interested in trying out the 2.5.* series in anticipation of the soon-to-be-here 2.6 series. Information on some common gotchas (blank screen after decompressing kernel for instance), how to patch, things that are new, things that are gone, things that have changed.

I've personally played around with the 2.5.7[1-4] kernels a bit in trying to get my new motherboard to work (the nforce2 based A7N8X). I didn't notice a huge performance difference, even with the new schedular, but I was running a 2.4 kernel that had all the new 0(1) schedular stuff in it already. There are a few things in GNOME that need to be adapted for the new kernel still, but that'll happen when things get closer I'm sure.

Men Can't Take Messages From a site that claims to be about geeks (good), guitars (very good) and guinness (nirvana!) comes a great post on Why Men Should Not Take Messages ...

Found via the same blog (next post) comes this video which really has to be seen to be understood. Very safe for work, very amusing, and originally found by Scoble apparently. I don't see the post in reference, but hey, Scoble is a cool guy with a neat blog, even if he is a Microserf :)

Bitching about Stuff Bitch about Stuff is a website that allows you to anonymously bitch about things. Afraid that your GF/BF/Boss/Parents read your blog and don't want them to know you hate their stupid chicken @#$^n pot pies, but still want to bitch about it? this is the place. Found via Lazyweb, a site where people can post ideas in the hopes that someone will see them and implement them (another cool idea).

PC Primer A bit late now, but if you're interested in becoming Politically Correct, you should have a read of this primer which will answer such questions as:

Q: I AM A WHITE MALE. CAN I STILL BE PC?
Sure. You just have to feel very guilty.

and many more

Republican vs Democrat Illiad has a good post up up Aspectus.com entitled Republican vs Democrat. Take the test and see what side you are on? Personally I'm both and neither, at the same time (and do think that ATM fees are too high dammit!)

Longhorn Replace Dialog Critique A funny/interesting critique of the Longhorn "replace file" dialog. Lets just say that the way that MS is going with longhorn seems to be the opposite direction of the mac in terms of un-complicating their UI.

Apple Prices My good buddy Engel has some amazingly sane thoughts on Apple Pricing, hardware, and zelotry in his blog. This is a guy who I've had many conversations on this sort of thing with, both in agreement and out, and he's got great points.

Before the G5 was out, the mantra was, "Speed Doesn't Matter." Now, before anyone even has a G5 in their hot little hands, the mantra is, "Speed is Great, Macs are the Fastest." Ugh, doublethink. Hate it.

Read the rest here.

Interactive Diamond Ring Designer Boyfriends, keep your girls away from this diamond ring designer (flash). Sadly it's not as easy as moving a slider to make the diamonds bigger in real life.

Blogging From Space Writings from the International Space Station

While he's living aboard the International Space Station, Expedition Seven NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu is writing about his experiences. His letters are listed below, beginning with the most recent addition.

Linux Browsers Kasia has a great write up on her Adventures in browser-land, head over and read it. I pretty much agree with everything and have ranted about it before, both on the web and in person. I love the analogy of MS as a drug dealer dealing out "broken html". Personally I think that if IE was faciastly stringant in their rendering the world would be a better place (well, on the web anyway). Well, that and having any web designer that has ever put up a "browser detection + this page only works in IE" page drawn and quartered.

Now to wait for the flood of "but IE is so much more standards compliant!" comments from the peanut gallery :)

Happy July 4! Just wanted to say a big "happy July 4^th" to all my friends and readers who will be celebrating today with hot dogs, apple pie, fireworks and the like. Hope it's a good one guys. In honor of this this proud Canadian has thrown up this digitalblasphemy wallpaper.

Scary Places to Send Your Children The last resort sounds like a frightfully horrible place to be sent. Basically it's a detention center for 11 to 18 year olds, the likes of which not even Maury and his "My Teen Needs to be Sent to Boot Camp" shows can imagine. Link via random($foo).

Joke of the Day This one is from a coworker of mine:

16 REASONS WHY ALCOHOL SHOULD BE SERVED AT WORK...

1. It's an incentive to show up.
2. It leads to more honest communications.
3. It reduces complaints about low pay.
4. Employees tell management what they think, not what they want to hear.
5. It encourages car pooling.
6. Increase job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don't care.
7. It eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work.
8. It makes fellow employees look better.
9. It makes the cafeteria food taste better.
10. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted.
11. Salary negotiations are a lot more profitable.
12. Employees work later since there's no longer a need to relax at the bar.
13. It makes everyone more open with their ideas.
14. Eliminates the need for employees to get drunk on their lunch break...
15. Employees no longer need coffee to sober up.
16. Sitting "Bare ass" on the copy machine will no longer be seen as gross.
    Posted by Arcterex at 09:08 AM