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welcome to another edition. this will be a mixed bag, but i’ll sort by source.

From some publication on the Left Coast in LA, word is out that Mr. Wizard died yesterday. I hate admitting this, but for some reason when I watched this on NICK as a kid, I always thought Mr. Wizard was Patrick Stewart. TRAVESTY OF TRAVESTIES.

Next up, from the pages of make!

Surreal Wallpaper! Queue jokes about eating shrooms without all the hassle. But I’m intrigued. Maybe I’ll find a great little room of my own just for putting up this paper.

In early alpha, Wii Media Center X. I’m pretty excited to toy around with this one so I can stop using my XBOX for media. But that’s Bias, since the XBOX hates on my network at home.

A spanish blog noticed a small picture “hidden” on the Windows Vista Business CD. Conspiracy? I think so. God I despise M$, not that this really has anything to do with them. I just thought I’d let you know.

And now from the top lists of Reddit

Straight dope’s response to: Can you open the hatch of a commercial airliner in midflight? BUT WHAT ABOUT IN THE MOVIES?

I would include a more in depth explanation of my beliefs, but I don’t think that this blog is the correct venue for this. Suffice to say that I completely disagree with the idea of “God Said Pi=3” and another article on the same topic, sited by the other. Why don’t you site the Missler/Numerology explanation of the original Hebrew manuscripts that was given in the comments section? And finally in answer to Mr. Dutch’s Question: Your humility. In your presentation of pi, you pridefully assume that you know more than God. This hubris causes you to assume that your interpretation of the Word of God is absolute and final. And with that I will always disagree.

And back to our regular programming. I hope google really isn’t evil. Now that they are moving into universities their market will expand a great deal, as will their access to more information. While I applaud the business of their movements, I am still concerned.

Ninja? In Italy? Who is Russian? Oh the cultural hilarity that ensues.

And now, my new RSS subscription filed under fun: The Fake Steve Jobs Blog!

An instructable on a sphere speaker array. I’m adding this to my growing list of diy summer projects. I didn’t check out the research on this, rather, i’m intrigued by this project simply because of my girlfriend’s paper lamp room. A spherical speaker would go really well in there.

I forget where I stumbled on this, but here it is: a nautical map of internet communities. This reminds me of the software war map, but I forget where I saw that. Oh well, moving on.

Next up are a series of make goodies I found particularly interesting for various reasons. The first two are guitar hero hacks! I’ve always wanted to turn my old fender into a guitar hero controller. Chalk one more up to the diy project list. The second looks like a piece of software that turns your guitar hero controller into a sampler. I’ll have to combine that with some kind of midi hack for my reason/ableton setup.

The last make tidbit is a write up about the new WORLD OF WARCRAFT REWARDS VISA CARD. Oh holy crap. I’d get this but I don’t play anymore. Maybe if they came out with an LOTR card, and I actually got LOTR, and played LOTR. But I’m too busy playing Gears of War and Saints Row right now.

Stumbled onto this cool site that documents speed traps (apparently truckers call highway cops “bears”), new little factoid for me. Unfortunately I didn’t find it too useful for the Philly area mostly because if there is a trap listed they try and get you to buy some book or something first. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just file this under “one of those great ideas that is ruined by commercialism.” But see for yourself.

Really neat artist site. Of particular interest were the dress tents. A visually fun stop on in the vast infinity of the internet.

Great question about light bulbs on MAKE. I’m not very well versed in most of the physics behind lighting electronics, and typically just ignore that little print on my bulbs and lamps. I assume, well, it’s ok because 1) someone sold it to me, it must be pretty OK and 2) I haven’t had a fire yet. The comments are the most helpful part of the post.

I don’t know who this bing guy is on cnn money, but this article was pretty funny. Find out what your dream bu77$1T job is.

I’ve never read freakonomics, but somehow I get their blog feed, presumably some sort of marketing scheme. At any rate, I came across this article today about an interesting poverty solution (I’m not convinced about the effectiveness of it) and a lamed reference to an abortion “victory.” I particularly like the comment about paying people to act middle class.

Nice write up on the new LOTR MMORPG from yahoo. Screen shots included. I am planning on getting into this game late summer. I can’t wait.

Interesting reddit post about a photo and caption from Katrina. Race plays a big role, but some of the agenda-ists are crying foul illegitimately. There is a snopes write up that seems to dispel the race card.

Interesting article and awesome pictures of plastered ant colonies.

And we’re back after a grueling weekend.

Interesting, common sense blog article on Free and Open Sourced Software (FOSS). While this article is probably a little oversimplified, I’m always interested in the benefits/drawback of free software that you can reprogram yourself (if you’ve got the programming resources).

A new virus was discovered in Australia after three patients received transplants and subsequently died. Their organs were from the same donor. Somewhat gruesome, but the doctors seem upbeat simply on the fact that they were able to detect and will be able to test it further.

Mac’s are hack-proof… sort of. I didn’t see any specifics on the rules that were laxed to make this possible. I find it interesting that he spent 9 hours programming the site to exploit the security hole. Intense.

I’m not totally versed in N. Korean culture. But this UK Times article about a man not selling them anymore giant rabbits for consumption is just cool. (That they are using rabbits as food, not that he’s not selling to N. Korea anymore). Because rabbits reproduce so quickly, this seems like a great way to relieve some food shortage issues.

The Twinky vs. the Carrot? A great article on obesity, caloric pricing, the Farm Bill and politics. Via Megnut.

Some phenomenal hand-made electronica instruments. I really need to try my hand at some of this. Sigh. Via Made.

A free and open sourced bass synth modeled after the Roland TB-303. (NOT A CLONE, mind you). Another musical project endeavor. Sigh, sigh.

Article from BBC on sleep and how much you should be getting. 8 hours isn’t really standard, the article says about 7.25 is OK. I think I need like 9, because I’m always tired at work. There’s just not enough time in the day for sleep.

The leader, Boris Yeltsin, is dead. His career seems to be marked with varying highs and lows. He seemingly ushered both democracy and economic decline into Russia.

Japanese like the wii so much they’re making cell phones with motion-based games. I just wish that instead of having their own games, they could connect to the wii and be used to some capacity. A NINE+ BUTTON CONTROLLER WITH MOTION! overkill? nahhh

Microsoft wins the stupid award of the day. They forgot the save as… button (from fumbled.org, don’t know if there’s a better source). I guess I’ll just have to save over all my old files or something. I’m just glad I don’t pay for their crap.

I know that I never speed . So, for those of you that do, Yahoo put together some tips for fighting speeding tickets. Stick it to the man!

I guess if we can’t get them to get along together, might as well keep them apart. Treating Iraqis like bad children sounds like a great idea. From the guardian.

I like the fact that there is a quiz is on a voting site that coyly admits that voting is really just a high school popularity contest. (WELL IT IS). So I was interested to find a popularity contest between God and Science. You’ve got to put your faith in something.

More 4/20 madness. Of course don’t we all know the best smoking is in Amsterdam.

Yahoo News is reporting yet another win for the Wii. Well, duhhh… Now if they would just make some more/decent games for the thing.

Not many people know about a really old game called zork. And really I’m not even sure how I got a hold of an old DOS version. At any rate, I stumbled upon this map of the dungeon from the very first original of the game (I assume). Found through kottke. I can only think of one other person in this world who would even remotely care about this. It’s that kewl.

Surfing through a google reader version of megnut, a funny link to zip lock bags caught my eye. Curious, I now want to make poached french foods sans zip-lock baggies.

In other gaming news, GTA IV is killing me because I can’t read anything about it from work.