Hrm, I just found out that one of the guys I raced against last weekend (and the eventual winner of the race), is professional triathlete James Bonney who competes in races all around the world, including multiple Ironmans and marthons. And now he's racing Cat 5 USCF road races. Pshah!

fyi: when you start out racing road bikes, you have to ride Category 5 for until you've done 10 races, then you move up to Category 4. Based on performance, you move up to 3, then eventually Cat 2. With more time and performance, you get to Cat 1, then after a long ass time you can try to turn professional. This Bonney guy is probably on par with Cat 1 or professional riders, and therefore way stronger than anybody else in the Cat 5 field. I guess he needs to get his 10 races in before he can cat up to racing 4's (and even then it's not gonna be a fair match), but for the time being I hope to God he doesn't show up at the same races I do.

This guy built a battery pack that lets him use two 9-volt batteries along with 2 AA batteries to provide an additional 10 hours of playing time for his iPod. The cool thing is, it does not involve messing with your iPod at all - it's an external battery pack with a built-in FireWire connection, so you just need to plug your iPod into the FireWire port on the battery pack and you're done.

What a film! Just watched Matchstick Men, and after it was over I spent 20 minutes going over the film in my head to piece it all together. During the movie, I kept wondering where the plot was going. Finally, things resolved, and in a big way. Totally entertaining movie, well worth watching.

After it was over, I watched the first 15 minutes again, this time with the director's commentary soundtrack turned on -- good stuff. If I hadn't just watched it tonight, I'd probably watch the whole thing again with the commentary on.

"Libby's Potted Meat is a delicately seasoned spread perfect for sandwiches and snacks. Stir in chopped onion, salsa or pickle relish for variety."

What more do you need? Potted Meat is perfect for sandwiches and snacks! There is nothing better, because it's perfect! Well, it might be perfect if you've managed to avoid reading the ingredients list...

The ingredients of Libby's Potted Meat are as follows:

• mechanically separated chicken
• partially defatted cooked pork fatty tissue
• beef tripe
• partially defatted cooked beef fatty tissue
• vinegar
• salt
• spices
• sugar
• flavorings
• sodium erythorbate
• sodium nitrite

After noticing Potted Meat at a convenience store, I had to buy a can of it. No, I haven't opened it (and I don't intend to). One glaringly huge question comes to mind: "who eats this stuff?" I'm tempted to call their we'd-like-to-hear-from-you! phone number (1-800-727-5777, Mon-Fri 9am-4:30 Eastern) and ask what their sales numbers are for Potted Meat.

I suspect that Potted Meat is the leftovers from making canned dog food, but they didn't know what to do with all the random cow and pig parts when they had made enough dog food. Somebody must have said, "Ah! We shall make something for humans with these extra body parts! And we shall call it Potted Meat!"

Update Sept. 7, 2004: curiousity got the best of us, and we finally opened the can of Potted Meat. Inside was a pourable meat sludge that smelled like Vienna Sausages. Coincidence? No way, because Vienna Sausages are made of the same ingredients. I considered feeding the Potted Meat to the neighborhood cat, but it seemed cruel.

Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" just cued up on the iPod randomizer. It's interesting to listen to music when I'm sitting at my desk working, because I pay attention to things I've never paid attention to before. For instance, prior to today I've never heard this set of lyrics:

You’re a vegetable, you’re a vegetable
Still they hate you, you’re a vegetable
You’re just a buffet, you’re a vegetable
They eat off of you, you’re a vegetable

Um, what? I'm a buffet?

Wildcards announced for this year's Tour de France, write-up at VeloNews and CyclingNews.

The wildcard list announced today:

• Ag2r
• Brioches La Boulangere
• Credit Agricole
• Domina Vacanze
• Lotto-Domo
• Phonak
• RAGT

Consequences: two contenders for overall victory are now confirmed; namely, Joseba Beloki riding for Brioches La Boulangere and Tyler Hamilton riding for Phonak. Oscar Sevilla is also a confirmed entry since he's riding for Phonak this year, but I'm not putting any money down on him for overall victory.

Additionally, Mario Cipollini will ride this year's Tour with his Domina Vacanze team. I read recently in the press that Cipollini had pledged to finish the Tour if Jean Marie LeBlanc would grant his team a spot. Seeing as he's never made it to Paris before, we'll see if he makes good on his promise.

The automatic team qualifications:

• Alessio-Bianchi
• Cofidis
• Team CSC
• Euskaltel
• Fassa Bortolo
• FDJeux.com
• Geroslteiner
• Illes Baleares Banesto
• Liberty
• Quick Step
• Rabobank
• Saeco
• T-Mobile
• US Postal Service

So we've got Lance with Postal, Roberto Heras with Liberty Seguros, both Jan Ullrich and Alexander Vinokourov with T-Mobile, and a dark horse in Bobby Julich who just signed with CSC. This year's Tour is gonna be great.

Interesting, I found this tidbit at VeloNews:

Wayne Stetina, Shimano's R&D manager, says, "If you remove the chain when it is only halfway worn out and flip it over," he says, "you will double your chain life." In other words, your chain will now be turned inside out. The other side of the rollers will now contact the gears, and the derailleurs will now be laterally bending the chain the opposite direction. Stetina says that Shimano engineers discovered this phenomenon quite by accident.

I guess this explains why everyone is freaking out and coughing so much at work. Every 10 or 15 seconds, there's a coughing fit followed by serious throat-clearing. I'm not sure how much more noise I can take.

Some good ones from Mitch Hedberg here, and plenty more through Google.

Last week I helped my friend stay put. It's a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load his shit into a truck.

I like refried beans. I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're just wasting time.

Have you been looking for a web-based service that will do rot13 encoding? For free? Well look no more! Visit rot13.com now and you will quickly be able to decode rot13'ified text, such as this excellent 80's movie quote, "lbhe zbzzn jnf n fabjoybjre".

And if you use vim, you can use the build-in rot13 support by typing g?? to encode/decode the current line.

CyclingNews has this interview with Andy Hampsten from February 20, 2004. Good stuff.

We saw Touching the Void last night. I knew the story going into it and still thought the movie was powerful. Probably not the kind of movie for everyone due to the topic (mountaineering), I felt like they didn't really do much to make the audience feel like mountaineering was something important. When we left, my wife and I both kept wondering, "why the hell would anyone have gotten themselves psyched to try what they tried?"

It's hard to relate to their struggle. Most people would never have made the choices these guys made, and thus most people would never have landed themselves into their particular predicament. Anyway, this is one more story for me to remember if I ever lose my mind and consider taking a turn as a mountaineer.

After Walburg on Saturday and Pace Bend on Sunday, I'm tired and ready to ride my bike slowly again. Both events were good, and I learned several things to do (or not) for future races.

Did I challenge myself? You bet. Did I have fun? No doubt. Am I gonna do more? Hell yeah.

I haven't entered a road race in 10+ years, so it's with much anticipation that I await tomorrow's race at Walburg. I'm in reasonably good shape, and not too concerned about being dropped or put into huge amounts of pain. But I'm still totally excited/anxious about actually doing a race. The last few days have seemed like an eternity while I waited for the weekend to arrive. Anyway, as long as I finish with the pack (and I don't get taken out by some squirrely rider) I'll consider the day a success. I haven't been much of a sprinter before, so unless I'm feeling really strong tomorrow I expect my non-sprinting trend to continue.

It's interesting to note the differences in my outlook on racing now versus 10 years ago. Back then, I could barely afford to own a bike, let alone the cost of clothing, parts, race fees, etc. And I took things kinda seriously back then because it was such an investment for me to participate in a race. Contrast that with now, I've got the financial support to race without concern for the costs involved (not that I don't pay attention how much I spend on cycling... I do pay attention) and the extra wisdom to see that I should be out there to challenge myself and have fun. So despite the anxiety, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.

I read about this story a few months ago, but didn't realize it had been made into a movie. Well it has, and Touching the Void looks like a pretty good movie.

Gangsta Years

I had forgotten about this guy, but he came up in conversation today so I went looking for his site and found this mirror. I also found links to monobrow.com, "celebrating the unity of your eyebrow".

I just heard about this guy today. I watched some of the videos. I'm glad I don't watch television. I don't know what else to say.

www.williamhung.net

It's a little old (June 2003) but still an interesting read (well, mostly, I skipped through some of it). Amusing tidbit: the interviewer asked if Carmichael and the rest of the 7-Eleven cycling team used to get free slurpees when they'd stop in a store...

"Are you kidding me," said Carmichael, somewhat surprised at my built-in assumption. "They used to think we were employees."

Read the interview

Latest news update from CyclingNews:

In an upcoming interview in Italian news weeklyPanorama, one of Marco Pantani's relatives who is a doctor told the magazine that Pantani had become addicted to crack cocaine**. Pantani's parents asked their relative for help in curing Marco's addiction but without success. To save their son from crack, Mr & Mrs Pantani tried to get Marco to check into rehab, but according to the Panorama interview, he refused.

According to the upcoming interview in Panorama, Pantani suffered from insomnia for months. Problems with the wake-sleep cycle can be consequences of doping, according to expert testimony quoted in Panorama and Pantani's doctor-relative elaborated on this, saying "It's difficult to ignore that some substances could turn an athlete into a drug addict. Cocaine and other substances are only a step away."

** This reminds me of something I read a few years ago. It started by watching Traffic one night. The next day was a slow one at work, so I ended up spending several hours reading about crack addiction (prompted by the subject matter of the movie).

I found a summary of a research project that had been conducted to study addictive behaviors in mice. You know the routine - mice are similar to humans in a lot of ways, so a lot of times there's a relationship between how humans and mice respond to the same input.

So anyway, they taught the mice that if they pushed a little button, the mouse would get a little dose of drugs. It was always the same drug each time the mouse pushed the button. They used many different mice, and many different drugs.

Mice that were hooked up to heroin would often run over to the button, get a dose, enjoy the high, and then go do other things (eat, play, sleep, whatever). But the mice that were hooked up to crack only pushed the button to get high - they did not stop to eat, drink, sleep, or do anything else. The crack mice literally sat there pushing the button, getting high, until they died of starvation, thirst, or some other health reason that was directly related to their single-minded focus on getting a crack fix. This is pretty much what humans do, only they've got slightly more self-control (but not much).

In addition to that study, I found countless web pages describing the enormously addictive nature of crack. Even the people who have been clean for months or years are still total wrecks inside because of the urges to smoke more crack. It really freaked me out. Basically, once you're a crack user, you're stuck for life - there's no getting out.

Follow-up: the following excerpt is from http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUanimals.htm:

Most intravenous self-administration studies [on laboratory animals] use limited-access testing. This involves testing the animals for a limited number of hours each day (usually 3 to 10 hours daily) and then removing the subject from the test apparatus and returning it to its home cage. Animals are permitted to self-administer as much drug as they wish, but the duration of their self-administration session is limited by the experimenter. Under limited-access testing, few deleterious effects are seen even with chronic drug administration.

A few studies have tested animals under unlimited-access conditions. Here, animals are permitted to self-administer a drug 24-hours per day, 7-days per week. Psychomotor stimulants such as cocaine produce a rapid deterioration in the animal's health and a high fatality rate. For this and other reasons, this testing schedule is seldom used.

"It's time for music fans to stand up and demand change from the music industry's copyright cartel.

Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work."

Check out Grey Tuesday for more info.

Witchcraft? Supernatural? I had no idea. From Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Main Entry: weird
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural : MAGICAL
2 : of strange or extraordinary character : ODD, FANTASTIC
- weird·ly adverb
- weird·ness noun

Moreau a choisi la Quartz
Click to enlarge

Carnac has been making cycling shoes for about 2 decades from their small factory on the west coast of France. Here's a behind the scenes look in their factory showing how their shoes are made, and includes some history about the company.

Twinkie the Kid
Click to enlarge

I never thought I'd see a Wonder Bread or Twinkie the Kid cycling jersey in... well, ever... I guess I can take that one off my TODO list. *whew!*

Penguin-wacking fun, Part 2, with yetisports2.

From this NASA press release:

"Thanks to two orbiting X-ray observatories, astronomers have the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it.

The event, captured by NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories, had long been predicted by theory, but never confirmed."

The coffin of Italian cyclist Marco Pantani arrives in Cesenatico's tiny church. Photo ©: AFP
Click to enlarge

From cyclingnews:

Marco Pantani's hometown is in mourning. And all of Italy is in mourning for their fallen champion, the people's champion, Pantani. Today, February 18 is the day of Pantani's funeral, with huge crowds expected in his hometown of Cesenatico. Signs declaring "Cesenatico Will Always Be With Our Champion" are festooned throughout this Adriatic seaside resort city, while the fence outside Pantani's parent's villa is adorned with memorial banners and masses of flowers dedicated to the late, lamented Pirata. In Cesenatico's parish church of San Giacomo, a special alcove has been set aside for remembrances for Pantani.

Pantani's personal doctor, Giuseppe Greco had strong words for the media zoo surrounding Pantani's tragic death. "I'm disgusted by all the morbid curiosity [about Pantani]. You can imagine how I feel having lost a patient... but I must say that we tried everything with Pantani, we looked at all the research, I discussed his case with many colleagues so we could have the most efficient treatment possible." But in the end, nothing worked for Marco Pantani. On Monday afternoon, Marco Pantani's parents Fernando (Paolo) and Tonina viewed their son's body in the Rimini hospital morgue. Both were visibly upset and are now sequestered in their villa with friends awaiting today's funeral. Pantani's family want the funeral mass to be open to all, so that all of the fans who supported Marco during his career can bid him farewell. While only friends and family will be able to enter the small San Giacamo church for the funeral, loudspeakers outside will convey the service to the 30,000 fans expected to attend. Pantani will then be buried in the Cesenatico cemetery in his family plot.

Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the World Cup Stacking Association. What is cup stacking, you ask? "Cup stacking is an exciting individual and team sport where participants stack and unstack 12 specially designed plastic cups in pre-determined sequences." Right.

Attention users of Internet Explorer 5 - do not browse web pages that have bmp graphics on them, or you might be affected by this recently-discovered security hole. It's not that big of a deal though I guess, because it only lets a remote user run any piece of code they like, and thus take full control of your computer. No biggie at all.

Marco Pantani
Click to enlarge

Pantani died today, he was 34 years old. It's sad news, especially for a such a great and well-known cyclist. It also illustrates the fact that cycling can be an extremely unforgiving sport. I mean, whether or not Pantani used performance enhancing drugs a few years back seems irrelevant when talking about living or dying. I guess he took things pretty seriously though, and quite likely grew tired of the constant hounding from the press.

For now, the cause of death is unknown (they're still investigating). I'd like to think that he didn't take his own life, becuase that would be a damn shame. We'll just have to wait and see.

Articles at CyclingNews and VeloNews, as well as reactions from cycling notables.

There was a screw up at Amazon.com where the anonymous book reviews accidentally started showing people's real identities. This wasn't some big privacy issue, but it revealed that many authors write crazy, glowing reviews for their own works. Somebody from Amazon said, "we'll examine whatever happened and make sure it won't happen again." Full article here

Saw this on somebody's signature on a discussion board. Pretty funny...

look; gawk; talk; date; wine; unzip; strip; touch; finger; head; mount; fsck; more; yes; spray; umount; sleep; leave

According to Apple's download page: "This software update will upgrade your version of GarageBand 1.0 to GarageBand 1.0.1. This update clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance."

Hrm, doesn't sound like too much of an update to me. I'm curious why a 21.5mb download is necessary for "clarifying specific alert dialogs". I downloaded and installed it anyway...

Get the update now from Apple's website.

photo credit: PezCycling

PezCycling just posted an interview with Bobby Julich. It's clear that Julich is stoked on joining CSC. Now he'll get the chance to be treated like the great rider that he is, instead being just another support donkey for other riders. I've been bothered that he hasn't lived up to the expectations that fell upon him after his 1998 podium finish in the Tour, because it seems like he's gotten a raw deal since then. So it's good to see him get another chance, and I hope he has a great season.

I was just doing some site updates, cleaning a few things up, and needed to disable the default warning messages if a php page has problems. I had to look for it, but found this simple solution - put the '@' symbol in front of the function call, like so:

$handle = @ fopen("somefile", "r");

Digging around through somebody's vim book today at work, gleaned a few tips that I didn't know or have forgotten over the years.

g?? do rot13 encryption on the current line

after :split do <count>CTRL-w- to shrink the window by <count> lines

:set scrollbind with two windows open, the other one scrolls too
:set noscrollbind turn binding off

:set showmatch turns on parentheses/brace matching
:set matchtime=15

<count>[[ move backward to the preceding {
<count>[] move backward to the preceding }
<count>][ move forward to the next }

!<command> run the external command on the current line/range
!fmt format the current line, or current selected range
!sort sort the current line or range

!!<command> run the external command, put the output in the current location
!!date run the date command externally, and put the output at the cursor
!!ls list the files in the current directory, put the output at cursor

It's an abnormally cold day today (low-30's) and everyone's chattering about the freezing rain. We've got a big project going on at work, and there are all kinds of important dates and timelines. So somebody just sent out a 5-page checklist with tasks, where each task has a person's name next to it. Open document - quickly scan for my name - no match! - excellent... - close document. A guy at work brought in Prince - One Nite Alone, a live cd set. Dammit if he ain't the shiznat, this album is awesome.

The Register is reporting that Jonathan Ive, designer of the original iMac and the iPod, has been named the most influential person in British culture.

Wired has a story about a virus-like game that's spreading itself around through AOL's instant messenger client. Problem is, it's not just a game. Anyone who tries to install it will soon discover unwanted advertisements and other junk on their computer. And once it's on your computer, it sends itself to everyone else on your buddy list (without your consent) so it can burrow itself on their computers, too.

News Brief from The Onion

NEW HAVEN, CT - Police announced Monday that the accidental death of 68-year-old Joseph Lang increased the death toll at 320 E. Oak St. to a staggering one. "We retrieved Mr. Lang's body from his bathtub, where it appears he slipped and hit his head," police officer Chris Ramsey said. "Although we don't expect to find any additional victims, we're continuing our 48-hour search of the two-story home, just in case." Lang is survived by his wife Helen, who still resides in the deathtrap.

A blonde came in and asked for a seven-hundred-ten. We all looked at each other and another customer asked, "What is a seven-hundred-ten?"

She replied, "You know, the little piece in the middle of the engine, I have lost it and need a new one.." She replied that she did not know exactly what it was, but this piece had always been there.

The mechanic gave her a piece of paper and a pen and asked her to draw what the piece looked like.

She drew a circle and in the middle of it wrote 710.

He then took her over to another car which had its hood up and asked "is there a 710 on this car?" She pointed and said, "Of course, its right there."

If you're not sure what a 710 is, click here.

My wife sent me this online psychology test designed to show whether you can spot the difference between a fake smile and a real one. It's interesting, and at the end they tell how you did.

From the info page at the end of the test:

"Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling.

Although fake smiles often look very similar to genuine smiles, they are actually slightly different, because they are brought about by different muscles, which are controlled by different parts of the brain."

CNN story: The Wall Street Journal said that the medical report listed Atkins' weight at the time of his death as 258 pounds. The 6-foot-tall Atkins would have been considered obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's body-mass index calculator. The newspaper also said Atkins had a history of heart disease and heart attacks.

But nevermind that, right? The Atkins diet is still healthy, right? I mean, you'll end up losing weight, right? Or maybe you won't lose weight, but you can eat lots of meat while you try, right? And it sure beats losing weight by cutting off one of your legs!

His wife says the obesity report is invalid, and that Dr. Atkins' weight had nothing to do with his dietary choices.

"Let me state emphatically that I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet" -- Veronica Atkins

I've been getting more of these lately, thought I'd post one here (complete with typos and errors, although I did clean the formatting up a little bit).

From: obiozor.consult@webmail.co.za (funny, below he says to write him at obiozoralex@webmail.co.za)
Subject: Business Associate Needed
Date: February 9, 2004 6:52:01 PM CST
To: obiozor.consult@webmail.co.za

Best Regards
Dr Alex Obiozor

Coming from the same guy who did The Last Emperor (a movie I really like), I expected to like this movie more than I did. As it turns out, I didn't like it at all. It had the feel of a stage production, and just dragged through the storyline in a painful way.

Afterward, it was interesting to watch the trailer (on the dvd) to see how it portrayed the film. Basically, the trailer completely misrepresented the movie, and I would have been even more disappointed with this movie had I seen the trailer beforehand.

Some good tools at Swipe Toolkit about your personal information, what it's worth in the business world, and how you can learn more about what's out there.

High-power image of cholesterol
Click to enlarge

The Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery is full of crazy pictures like this highly-magnified image of cholesterol. They've got ultra-zoomed-in images of beer, computer parts, butterfly wings, fragrances, neurotransmitters, pesticides, ...

There's also a neat video/interactive page that shows some perspective on how small Earth is compared to the rest of the universe.

This article from the Associated Press has more updates about the baby:

Twins are born conjoined at the head when an embryo splits to make identical twins and then stops growing, leaving them fused. Such twins are rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births.

Although the second head is only partially developed, its mouth moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed.

I went for a late lunch at Chipotle, got there around 1:30pm. As I had hoped, the place was pretty empty and that meant the wait would be short. While walking to the door, I noticed a lady hurrying to beat me to the same door. She parked after I did and got out of her car after I did, but she was determined to get in line first. Whatever, lady, go ahead...

So I held the door open for her, she walked in, successful at beating me in line. Mind you, at this point in the day, there was one other person in line (and it's usually a matter of seconds spent on each person's order). Good job lady, you won.

When I got to the order counter, the burrito girl pulled out the next piece of foil to use and noticed that it had a special sticker on it. That sticker meant my order was free. I almost laughed out loud, because the hasty lady should have gotten the free lunch, not me. I know it's just a couple of bucks for a burrito, but I found it pretty amusing. Maybe she'll take it as a cue to slow down a little bit (that's probably asking too much).

This is kinda freaky. Excerpts taken from the full story at The Register:

A team of US scientists has created viable monkey sperm in mice, using transplanted testicular tissue. From the date of the transplant, it took seven months for live sperm to be produced.

Amusing as the image of a mouse with monkey balls on its back is, the research is being done for a purpose, not just the entertainment of the faculty staff. The technique will initially be used to reduce the amount of experimentation on primates, but could be used to help conserve endangered animal populations. Researchers also say that it is possible that human sperm could be grown in the same way - a novel, if controversial, approach to human fertility treatment.

Never let it be said that Windows isn't working hard to enhance my computing experience. I think they've done a lot of work, no doubt about that. But is my experience any better?

I'm setting up a new machine running Windows XP Professional, and I'm being dragged through the coals again to undo all of the stupid, stupid things that Windows does. Here's a great one.

All text files with the ".java" extension are associated with Notepad by default. Ok, I don't really have any issues with this. My preferred editor is vim, but that's fine, I'll just change the application association so that double-clicking a ".java" file will launch vim instead of Notepad. So far, so good.

I located a ".java" file, right-clicked to get properties, then clicked the "Opens with..." button to switch the associated application. So for a text file, Windows offers the following applications to use to open the file (and no, I'm not leaving any out):

• Notepad - basic Microsoft text editor, ok
• WordPad - another Microsoft text editor... so I get to choose between two shitty Microsoft text editors?
• Internet Explorer - Microsoft's web browser, maybe this is what I really wanted to do with my text file, I should be surfing the web instead of trying to view some silly "java" file (whatever!)
• Microsoft Excel - wait, perhaps I should open my text files in a gigantic spreadsheet application!
• Microsoft Word - no no no, I should probably open that text file using Microsoft's enormous, bloated word processor instead! I'll be able to choose from thousands of dumb, useless word-processing features that most humans don't need, want, or understand. Awesome!
• Paint - screw work, just paint a picture instead using Microsoft's high-quality, industrial strength picture editor that can handle such diverse image formats as 8-bit Bitmaps and, um, 24-bit Bitmaps, and... can it handle anything else? Well, maybe not, but dammit it does a super job with those bitmaps!
• Windows Media Player - I should just watch a movie, and thankfully this Microsoft app can play text files, right? No, it can't? But don't all the other video/media apps out their play text files? Well if they don't, then what the f*sk is Windows Media Player planning to do with my text file? Show me a movie about it?
• Windows Picture and Fax Viewer - maybe my java text file isn't really text, but it's a secret fax and Microsoft figured that out for me. How helpful!

I had forgotten that you can easily run the OS X screensaver application as a desktop background, but I found this Matrix-style screensaver and somehow my brain reminded me that it was possible.

Once you've got your screensaver settings the way you like, open a Terminal window and run the following commands:

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources
ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

Photograph by Fredrik Broden

This article was mentioned on slashdot today, it's called Ten Technologies That Refuse To Die. It briefly summarizes ten things that everyone thought would (or should) disappear forever, including analog watches, tubes (for amps and audio equipment), and Fortran. Here's the slashdot discussion that flowed from this topic.

In technology, as in biology, we like to imagine evolution proceeding onward and upward. As new species and technologies appear, their primitive ancestors drop by the wayside, right? Not exactly. Mammals, birds, and flowering plants - all relatively recent innovations - might seem to rule the earth today. But far older designs, from barnacles to crocodiles, are doing just fine in their respective niches, thank you. New species don't always evolve to replace old ones; they also fill vacant niches, which in turn can actually solidify the standing of older species. So it is with technology.

Read the rest of the article

This is really unfortunate. Hopefully the little guy will be alright. I copied the full article below, story online here. Here's another picture (different from the one currently shown).

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A Dominican infant born with a second head will undergo a risky operation Friday when surgeons try to sever the appendage and prevent hemorrhaging from shared arteries.

Click for larger version

Led by a Los Angles-based neurosurgeon who successfully separated Guatemalan twins, a team will spend about 13 hours removing Rebeca Martinez's second head, which has a partially formed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

Eighteen surgeons, nurses and doctors will take several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries and close the skull of the seven-week-old baby using a bone graft from another part of her body.

"We know this is a delicate operation," the baby's father, Franklyn Martinez, 28, told The Associated Press this week. "But we have a positive attitude."

Cure International, a Lemoyne, Pa.,-based charity that gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying for the surgery and follow-up care.

I use a text file to keep track of my todo list, so I wrote a short syntax file for vim to display items in different ways. Posting here in case anyone else might benefit.

1. Create "todo.vim" in your vim syntax directory, and add the following to it:

   syntax region todoDone start=/DONE\|^\s*:/ end=/$/
hi def todoDoneDefinition gui=italic guifg=#0020A0
hi link todoDone todoDoneDefinition
syntax region todoTodo start=/____/ end=/:/
hi def todoTodoDefinition guifg=DarkRed guibg=LightGray
hi link todoTodo todoTodoDefinition

2. Edit "filetype.vim" in the main vim directory, adding a rule for .todo files, like this:

   " TODO
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.todo setf todo

3. Add some keyboard mappings to quickly create new todo items, or mark existing ones as complete.
   

   " set up some mappings for todo list
map <F3> o____:
map! <F3> ____:
map <F4> 4sDONE^[b
map! <F4> DONE:


4. Now you can edit a .todo file with syntax enhancements using F3 and F4 function keys to create and edit todo items. Your text file should be named something like "mylist.todo" (just end use .todo as the filename extension), and have this kind of structure:

   ____: need to update something
   ____: write email
   DONE: fix broken thingy
   DONE: eat food
   ____: re-arrange furniture

New Anger-Powered Cars May Revolutionize The Way We Drive

Microsoft has leaked plans for Xbox Next, version 2 of their not-so-popular Xbox console. They're going to exclude the hard drive this time, since they realized it was a dumb addition to a gaming console. They also say it will be powered by three 64-bit processors from IBM (a shift from the current Intel-powered Xbox), just like those that power Apple's G5 machines.

Brought to you by CSC, this textbook example demonstrates one of the most swift and effective methods of killing morale. Excerpts taken from The Register:

A large chunk of CSC employees hoping to enjoy some time off received word last week that any vacations must be cancelled to help the company meet business goals.

Workers at CSC's San Diego Regional Center (SDRC) found out that there will be no holidays or sick days allowed through the end of the fiscal year, according to docs obtained by The Register. This is the second year in a row that employees have been forced to give up their vacation days to meet lofty productivity goals, and the practice has left a bad feeling in the workplace.

Here's a new way to waste time online.

The trailer is out for Starsky & Hutch, the movie is supposed to open March 5.

As good as any Texas weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today signalling a long winter this year.

I can't believe this is real. Somebody, please wake me up... "Engineering geek names son version 2.0"

Tacking Jr. or II onto a boy's name is too common, a new father decided, so the self-described engineering geek took a software approach to naming his newborn son.

"I wrote in the birth announcement e-mail stuff, like there's a lot of features from version 1.0 with additional features from Jamie," Jon Cusack said.

Talk about an uphill battle... I have two words for this effort: Good Luck.

www.anybrowser.org

I just heard about the Darwine project over at sourceforge, based off of WINE.

The goal is to allow Mac users to run Windows applications without using a Windows emulator (like Virtual PC). So instead of installing Virtual PC and a copy of Windows, then running your programs within that environment, with Darwine you'll just double-click the .exe and it will launch and run -- no Windows involved.

The website says they plan to use the QEMU cpu emulator, which will save them a ton of development time. Hopefully Darwine will reach a usable state in the near future.