Summary of this week:

A week with a wierd schedule

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday May 3, 2010

This week presents me with an odd schedule. I don't know how much Internet viewing I will have. It should certainly be less than usual.

A different perspective on consumerism and materialism: "Part of the cure for over-consumption is to become more materialistic." It actually makes pretty good sense.

Wow! This is an excellent wall desk. It is not Ikea furniture; it is all made by hand. Great.

Dell quietly releases a bunch of new portable computers.

I like this one - a 3D printer that makes things of ice - just add water.

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Tuesday May 4, 2010

My upside-down schedule continues with almost no Internet viewing.

Is the day of the Microsoft monopoly over? Internet Explorer has fallen below 60 percent market share. Google's Chrome is gaining in share.

A company named Clustrix has built a database than can hold a billion or so entries.

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Wednesday May 5, 2010

Crazy schedule continues and no Internet viewing.

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Thursday May 6, 2010

I scratched out a little time today to view the Internet.

Google's latest release of Chrome (still in beta) gives better speed and performance.

Google Goggles now translates text into different languages. That is impressive. The problem with Goggles is that its features and performance will never be better than its name.

The Nintendo 64 is 15 years old today. My kids played with the 8-bit version and so on.

How to restore an old camera.

Forget Facebook and move to Scitable - a social network for science and education.

Recession? Consumer electronics spending rose over 10% this past year.

WiMax is spreading. This claims Washington D.C. will soon be online. I wonder if that covers the western suburbs as well.

The Dell Inspiron 10 uses a different form of 4G.

Another great workspace from Lifehacker. Where do you get those blue neon lights?

101 things you can reduce in your home. But I love my old books.

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Friday May 7, 2010

Sort of back to the normal schedule today.

It seems that the stock market took a big dip yesterday but recovered to not quite so big a dip. All this is tied to stupidity in Greece which is much like the stupidity in California and a few other states. Lesson: Don't promise things you cannot deliver over a long period of time. We used to call that being irresponsible. Perhaps we have another word for it today. It is sad that the mistakes of others hurt the innocent so much.

The integrated circuit was introduced on this day in 1952. The rest has been history. So now I can sit in a coffee shop typing notes that all the world can read instantly, or ignore forever.

The FCC chairman has a proposal for Internet Service Providers. He isn't proposing less regulation. No news here.

This case has its twists and turns. The Attorney General of Virginia is demanding that a college professor at Virginia's state university supply papers and emails. This concerns research on global warming and possibly falsifying data. Lots of politics in this one. There are some fundamental issues at stake. What about "academic freedom?" That concept is important to universities, but I don't recall it in the U.S. Constitution, so I tend to think that someone at a university invented it. Hmmm. Anyways, another issue is that when you do things while employed by a state government, the state government owns all those things. The same goes if you are doing things while employed by a business. Lots of twists and turns here.

I am not likely to try this with my iPad, but you can make a skateboard out of an iPad.

Now this one is fascinating. Wikipedia has added a "Create a Book" option. You can gather a bunch of Wikipedia articles and have them printed in the form of a paperback book. I wonder where this will go. We could speculate about the future of turning e-knowledge or whatever we call all this online content into good old-fashioned books. This seems to be a trend. Your blogging and wiki entries are first drafts or even finished drafts for a book.

IBM opens a cloud computing lab in Singapore. I am not sure why you have a lab for an established technology.

Some people feel that the iPad is killing the sales of those really small portable computers. Others disagree. We live in fascinating times.

I am disappointed that someone had to write this article. It argues that ethical behavior improves the economy. I think many of America's founding fathers write that a long time ago. Our Consitution would only work if people had ethics, virtues, morals, and those such things. Perhaps a lack of such is one of our major economic problems in the world today.

This case allows you to turn your iPad into a laptop computer. I can see some benefit from this idea, but still, isn't this what Apple was trying to change?

The X-51 will fly at Mach 6 (4,700 miles per hour) for 300 seconds. Its skin will reach 2,700 degrees F.

For more quick speed, watch this video of the Orion escape module test. Oh well, the entire project has been cancelled by the current Administration.

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Saturday May 8, 2010

A Senator wants to put government documents online. One of the problems is that the government cannot seem to find its documents.

After 50 years, the Coast Guard has a new type of ship.

Arizona is removing its speed cameras.

Just in time as some Italian officials face jail time for deals made with traffic-light camera suppliers.

A 12-core processor coming from Intel?

It looks like HTC is making a WiMax mobile device. I am ready for all this 4G.

Buy some "shower board," glue it to your table top, and your table is a white board. I love this. I just that kind of guy.

In all the stock market gyrations this week, some people made a lot of money.

Google buys a company that specializes in multi-touch and gesture interfaces.

If you are at the Patent Office and have a huge backlog of applications, there is a simple solution - raise the application fee so high that only big, rich groups can apply.

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Sunday May 9, 2010

Cool your servers by filling the chasis with liquid. Yes, it works. It eliminates the need for air conditioning in the room.

The world of the tiny projectors is expanding. As these become affordable and available, who knows what teenagers will do with them.

The Apple stores on running low on the 3G iPad model. A friend found one for his wife for a Mother's Day gift. No, he didn't buy it for himself and disguise it as a gift for her. She actually wanted one. Anyways, Apple is selling these things as fast as they can make them.

In a less-than-rumor, HP is to release a tablet computer in the third quarter of this year.

Big government grants big business control over the little guy's TV. Oh well. This brings to mind some famous qoute about power and corruption or something like that.

This is a "micro four thirds" size digital camera. I don't follow cameras enough to be able to explain that phrase. I guess it means these cameras are pretty small, but not really small. That describes the Panasonic (Leica clone) camera I have been using for a few years. This size of camera is small, but has a good lens. The one in this post costs $1,000 (too much for me) and has a "retro" look. No doubt it is a good digital camera in a nice size.

55 "write for us" pages. A good list of publishing possibilities.

Will blog writing kill the formal article? It is all a matter of opinion. Many works of fiction are much longer than they used to be. Is the nonfiction short piece moving the opposite way?

Do you work on the weekends? That all depends on what you call work. I guess I do a lot of research and writing on the weekends, but that doesn't seem like work to me.

Finding the time to write can be a challenge. I don't have as much time to write as I wish, but I find some time everyday. We all make the time for the things we love.

Micro magazines? Maybe there is something here.

Distracted? Can't focus and write? Write about that. For me, I stop and make a list of all the things I can think of that I "just have" to do. There, the list is on paper and out of my mind. I am now free to write.

When have you felt the most alive? One of those moments for me was in a class I took where we learned how to crash cars (a long story). It was great fun and exciting. For a few hours after that, I could do anything better than I could do it before the experience.

This may be all the space you need for a work area.

Some thoughts on what is means to be a "journalist." I write in a journal every day. Does that make me a journal-ist?

Microsoft's translating telephone. We are making big advances in speech recognition and translation. We still aren't there yet, but...

Start with what you have. That is much easier than starting with what someone else has.

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