Cool Stuff – Page 10 – Blah, Blah, Blahg

LED corks

The perfect addition to your alcoholic-drinks section at home, the Boozehound emergency light is a lighted cork for sealing your liquor bottles.

To prepare for a natural disaster, you need to be equipped. Maximize your survival rate by inundating any and everything that could possibly be used for food, water, and light. In regard to the latter, boozehounds will rejoice to hear that having multiple bottles of “drank” may indeed save them.

Around here, we’re all about the safety. And what’s more important to safety than making sure you have proper lighting for picking your poison in a power outage?

[tags]Boozehound, LED corks, liquor, Safety first[/tags]

Until Monday, Sept 3^rd, you can pick up any shirt at Threadless for $10. They specialize in off-the-beaten-path designs, and have some of the most original offerings I can recall seeing. I may have to get myself an Original Gamester shirt.

Or maybe the birds and the bees.

There are a few others I’d like, as well. May just have to put together an order for some before the week-end is over.

[tags]Threadless, Sale, Deals, T-Shirts, Geek shirts[/tags]

Word Shoot – simple online typing tutor

My older son is still having problems related to writing. Not that he can’twant to write, and has trouble sitting still long enough to write much. After getting the OK from his teacher to try letting him type his journals instead of writing them, my wife has been looking at typing tutor software. Looking around on my own, I found this cool looking Flash-based typing game called Word Shoot. You stand in the middle of a battlefield of sorts and type words on approaching enemies to shoot them down.

Just the kind of thing my son might enjoy, and on the easy level it starts out slowly enough that he might be able to get a few enemies before getting overwhelmed. Sort of a typing-tutor by fire thing.

[tags]Typing, Word Shoot, Typing tutor, Flash[/tags]

Political facts

I’ve been reading FactCheck.org for a few years now, and have been subscribed to their email newsletter as long as I’ve been reading the site. The site, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, works to point out the misleading statistics, factual inaccuracies and errors, and flat-out lies spread by politicians and the organizations that support them. I’ve learned so much about politics over the years just from learning where politicians have mislead us (the general public).

While catching up on my FactCheck reading today, I learned that there is another source of political fact checking on the web now – PolitiFact. Going beyond FactCheck’s more reserved misinformation corrections, PolitiFact gives you the Truth-o-meter to simplify evaluating statements from the bearers of (mis)truths.

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates’ speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.

I think it is worth taking 2-3 minutes to read more details on the Truth-o-meter to see how it works and why it is worth checking. Interested in who is lying or misleading us? Well, here are a couple of quotes for you to check out for factual accuracy. I’ve chosen individuals from both sides of the US political debate, and selected short quotes with short PolitiFact responses or analysis.

Sen. Joe Biden: “The president is brain-dead.”
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sen. John McCain: Sen. Clinton said “the surge of troops in Iraq was ‘working.’ Now…. Sen. Clinton says the surge ‘has failed’ and that we should ‘begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.'”
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 in a news release

I appreciate the fact that those running the site have enough of a sense of humor to even include the Biden comment, and the linked article includes links off-site to explanations of what exactly constitutes brain death. Each story has a graphical label for true, barely true, pants on fire (i.e., liar), and so on. I wanted to include the images for the above stories, but haven’t received permission from PolitiFact yet to do so. If I get a response, I’ll update my article with the images.

[tags]PolitiFact, FactCheck, Truths and Lies from politicians, The watcher watchers[/tags]

Put a smile on your man’s face

Oh, you perverts. We’re not talking about that kind of smile. We’re talking pineapple smiles that last all day.

If you want to change grouches to grins – give that man of yours Del Monte Pineapple Juice. Cater to his fondness for flavor.

Men like the rich, ripe taste of this juice – the definite pineapple flavor it has. They like its freshness-the bracing refreshment it always brings.

See, it’s the taste of that juice we like. The pineapple juice is what we’re talking about.

Honestly, I don’t even know why I post these things for you perverts.

[tags]Man juice smiles, Put a smile on your man’s face, It’s the taste of the juice[/tags]

The size of us, and other things

While playing around with the incredibly cool StumbleUpon tool last night (using the Firefox plugin for convenience), I found a site which shows the size of various celestial bodies in a super-easy to understand visual manner.

Makes our Sun look not so big, doesn’t it?

[tags]The size of us, Celestial bodies, Visual guide to universal sizing[/tags]

Rubik’s cube – 26 moves or less

It’s astounding what one can find on the science blogs, isn’t it? How about information the insight that a Rubik’s cube can always be solved in 26 moves or less? This work beats out last years 27-or-less moves proof.

Daniel Kunkle can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 26 moves. Or at least his computer can.

Kunkle, a computer scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, has proved that 26 moves are enough to solve any Rubik’s Cube, no matter how scrambled. That’s one move below the previous record. In the process of cracking the cube, he developed algorithms that can be useful for problems as disparate as scheduling air flights and determining how proteins will fold.

Rubik’s Cube has approximately 43 quintillion possible configurations. Even a supercomputer can’t search through every possible configuration to find the quickest way to unscramble a given starting arrangement in a reasonable amount of time. So Kunkle and his advisor Gene Cooperman developed some clever mathematical and computational strategies to make the puzzle more manageable.

The article discusses in brief some of the work done to generate this proof. And as noted in the above snip, these algorithms could well have applicability to other work dealing in problems with massively large numbers of permutations. (via boingboing)

[tags]Rubik’s Cube, World record, Algorithms, Science news, Science[/tags]

Blade Runner Ultimate Collection DVD set

I must admit, I missed this movie when it was first out in theatres. I didn’t catch it until a few years later when I got the video and then again a couple years after that when I got the DVD. Now, I can get the Ultimate Collector’s edition DVD set of Blade Runner for a mere $55. That’s not bad, considering all the geeky greatness you get.

In celebration of Blade Runner’s 25th anniversary, director Ridley Scott has gone back into post production to create the long-awaited definitive new version. Blade Runner: The Final Cut, spectacularly restored and remastered from original elements and scanned at 4K resolution, will contain never-before-seen added/extended scenes, added lines, new and improved special effects, director and filmmaker commentary, an all-new 5.1 Dolby(r) Digital audio track and more. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, Joanna Cassidy, Sean Young, and Daryl Hannah are among some 80 stars, filmmakers and others who participate in the extensive bonus features. Among the bonus material highlights is Dangerous Days, a brand new, three-and-a-half-hour documentary by award-winning DVD producer Charles de Lauzirika, with an extensive look into every aspect of the film: its literary genesis, its challenging production and its controversial legacy. The definitive documentary to accompany the definitive film version.

The Ultimate Collector’s Edition will be presented in a unique 5-disc digi-package with handle which is a stylish version of Rick Deckard’s own briefcase. In addition, each briefcase will be individually numbered and in limited supply. Included is a lenticular motion film clip from the original feature, miniature origami unicorn figurine, miniature replica spinner car, and collector’s photographs, as well as a signed personal letter from Sir Ridley Scott.

That qualifies for w00tness in my book. Hit the Amazon item link for the disc-by-disc details. The disc 3 offerings look most interesting to me.

[tags]Blade Runner, Ultimate Collector’s edition, Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott[/tags]

VMWare Mac-OS X

While this really isn’t of actual value to anyone I know, I think it’s pretty cool that there is a version of VMWare out for OS X now. If you just have to run Windows or Linux in a virtual session on your Mac, now you have the option. I don’t know any Mac-only folks, so that’s why I don’t think anyone I know would benefit from it, but since I’m considering a Mac for the wifey-type-person sometime in the future, I’ll have to keep this in mind for us/her.

If you want to learn more about the product, here’s an outstanding review of the product, with screenshots, actual virtual machine build and test information, and a few comments from others who have tried the tool.

Roughly one year ago VMware announced that they would release a version of their popular virtualization software for the OS X platform. Since that time they have steadily released beta’s versions of Vmware Fusion and with each release seen continual improvements. Now after a year of heavy development the company has pulled back the curtains and unveiled VMware Fusion 1.0.

As a longtime VMWare user in the Windows and Linux world, I have to say that the company behind this puts out a good product. And for the features and options you have, I think you’ll find VMWare Fusion isn’t even cost-prohibitive at its $59.99 price point.

[tags]Mac, OS X, VMWare, Fusion, VMWare fusion, Windows on Mac, Mac virtual machine software[/tags]

Tetris via hook-to-TV controller

I doubt we will be able to get one of these any time soon, but this hand-held controller with TV-out for playing Tetris on your TV looks pretty cool to me.

I have no idea the price though, as I didn’t run the Yen to US dollar conversion. (via Kotaku)

[tags]Tetris, hand-held gaming, portable games[/tags]

Gene for my awesomeness found

Oops. That headline is supposed to read “Gene for left-handedness found”, but sometimes, my self-proclamations of awesomeness just escape before I can stop them.

Scientists have discovered the first gene which appears to increase the odds of being left-handed.

See. Simple story. Simple quote. Here’s a kick-in-the-pants, though.

The Oxford University-led team believe carrying the gene may also slightly raise the risk of developing psychotic mental illness such as schizophrenia.

What? So since I’m a lefty, I’m more likely to go all wacko? Great.

The full article discusses a bit more on the gene LRRTM1 and how it appears to play in assymetry of the brain, hemisphere assignment for speech and emotions, and potential effect as a contributor to schizophrenia. So much from one little series of markers.

[tags]Gene for handedness, Lefty could increase chance of crazy?[/tags]

Reboot gets rebooted

I don’t know how many of you watched or remember the cartoon ReBoot from the mid-90s, but the series will be seeing something of a rebirth in form of 3 feature length films and a web comic. The show was cheezy, but entertaining to many (a group in which I include myself).

“ReBoot” — one of the earliest computer-animated episodic TV series — will be redeveloped as a trilogy of feature-length films by Rainmaker Animation.

Originally produced in 1994, the series was created by MainFrame Entertainment, which was acquired by and renamed Rainmaker in 2006. “ReBoot” aired for several seasons on ABC, YTV and Cartoon Network.

“The idea is to relaunch the brand in a new way,” said Rainmaker Animation executive vp Paul Gertz, who will oversee the project.

Ultimately, the series rebirth appears tied at least tangentially to the comic fan social networking site Zeros 2 Heroes, if I’m reading the article correctly. So today I’ve learned of the coming rebirth of an animated show I used to enjoy AND that there is a social network out there which seems to be targetted at people even geekier than I am. What a learning experience this has been.Ã‚Â Now if someone would just release the entire series on high-quality transfer DVDs (they messed up season 4 in an earlier DVD release – I want all the seasons done right).
BONUS: Unaired “Making Of” video via YouTube.

Extra Bonus: Keep up to date on the revival efforts by fans at the ReBoot Revival web site.

[tags]ReBoot!, Rebirth of ReBoot animated series, Heroes, Cartoons, Comics, Social networking[/tags]

Category: Cool Stuff