Scientists are reporting that the polar icecaps on Mars contain huge amounts of water — enough to “blanket the planet in 36 feet of water” if it were all melted. This suggests to me that the terraforming of Mars is more feasible than it previously seemed. If we can warm the planet, it will provide its own oceans.
Source: Instapundit
Almost everyone has multiple phone numbers now. And some of these numbers change over time, as you move from one employer or mobile phone company to another. Notifying everyone you know of the new numbers is chore, and callers still have to guess which number is the best one for reaching you at any particular moment. But what can be done about all this?
The folks at GrandCentral.com believe they have a solution. If you sign up with them, they’ll give you a single phone number that you can give out to everyone, replacing all of your previous numbers. When someone calls you, all of your phones will ring, and you can pick up the one that’s most convenient for you. You also have a single voicemail inbox for all these phones. And if you change jobs or mobile phone providers, your unified phone number will remain the same.
I can think of some disadvantages to this approach, but it certainly is innovative. David Pogue’s New York Times article explains it in detail, and lists a bunch of extra features that I haven’t even mentioned here.
Here’s an interesting math quiz. It’s short (only eight questions), but you have to solve them mentally: no pencil or paper, except to record your answers. I answered five of the eight questions correctly. I won’t go into detail until you’ve had a chance to try the quiz yourself. Click the link below to see where I went wrong.
If you use WordPress to run your blog, you should check to make sure you’re not running version 2.1.1, which was compromised by a cracker who gained access to a WordPress server and tampered with the download file. The WordPress folks have released a newer version (2.1.2) that is safe to use. If you are running 2.1.1., you should upgrade to 2.1.2 immediately.
Source: CNET.com’s Security Bites! podcast
I don’t know why I find this game so addictive. It makes no sense if you stop to think about it. I mean, mining for gold by shooting a mechanical claw into the ground and using a winch to pull up whatever it grabs? That would be silly even without the gophers that sometimes carry diamonds in their teeth. And the barrels of TNT that explode when you touch them (who buried those, and why?). But for some reason the game is fun, so I keep playing.
UPDATE: There’s also Gold Miner Special Edition, which seems to be exactly the same game with fancier graphics.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion is a tough read, even for dedicated Middle-Earth fans. If you don’t think you can get through it, there’s a condensed version: The Entire Silmarillion of J.R.R. Tolkien in One Thousand Words. It’s actually several years old, but I didn’t encounter it until this week.
The ThinkGeek Annoy-A-Tron is an electronic device with a single purpose: to drive someone crazy. It’s a tiny circuit board (smaller than a business card) that generates short beeps at random intervals. The idea is to hide it somewhere near where your victim works (a built-in magnet helps you do this) and watch him or her go nuts trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. The Annoy-A-Tron can run for up to a month on the (included) watch battery — and of course you can sneak in and install a new battery if you want the torture to continue.
It goes without saying that this gadget is evil. But you have to admire the ingenuity of the diabolical genius who designed it. And it only costs $9.99, so it’s an infernal device that even the most cash-strapped villain can afford.
Here’s an interesting gadget that I learned about from the Daily Giz Wiz podcast. It’s the CommuteMate Flameless Flare, a roadside safety device. This has several advantages over traditional safety flares. It uses LEDs and runs on two AAA batteries, so you can’t burn yourself or set your car on fire. There’s a powerful magnet in the base that lets you stick it right on your car if you need to. The Flameless Flare is reusable, and it’s remarkably inexpensive — Amazon.com currently lists it for $4.79.
If you’re wondering how Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is coming along, take a look at these photos. They include the new B5 logo and numerous pictures of sets and costumes.
Incidentally, if you read the Wikipedia article about The Lost Tales, you may notice that the Notes section includes a link to this Usenet article from 1996. In it, B5 creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski (JMS for short) answered the question “What would it take to convince you not to retire from television after B5?” (Retiring was his stated intention at the time.) JMS gave three answers to that question:
Wikipedia links to that article as evidence that over a decade ago, JMS was already talking about doing an anthology series. But in fact, The Lost Tales is all three of the things he expressed a desire to do. It’s an anthology show and a complementary B5 spinoff. It’s also revolutionary because it is being released directly to DVD, something no TV series has done before.
So who asked JMS that question in the first place, anyway? Well, actually, I did.
I had never heard of Jonathan Coulton until a week ago. Last Saturday, I went to a gathering of friends at the Sealys’ house, and when I arrived, several people were in the middle of listening to various tracks from Coulton’s song “Code Monkey”, which he had made available for download by people participating in last November’s “Code Monkey” remix contest.
I didn’t pay very much attention to all this during the actual gathering, but I was curious enough to look up the contest winners page the next day and listen to the original song and the various remixes. The remixed versions didn’t impress me very much, but Coulton’s original version was instantly addictive, and I’ve been playing it repeatedly and singing it in my shower and my car ever since.
Today, I was checking the webcomics that I read every day, and saw these characters making a guest appearance in Freefall:
Hey, I recognize those robots! They’re drones from Silent Running.
Inevitably, I found myself reading the Wikipedia article about that movie. In the article’s trivia section, I read that Silent Running is “referred to heavily in John Hodgman’s compendium of fictional trivia, The Areas of My Expertise.” Wait a minute — John Hodgman? Isn’t that the guy who plays a PC in those annoying Macintosh commercials?
Yes, it is. And in the Wikipedia article about him, I learned that he has collaborated on various projects with Jonathan Coulton. Yes, the Jonathan Coulton who recorded “Code Monkey”. The guy I had never heard of before a week ago.
Is everyone else’s life as strange as this, or is it just me?
UPDATE: Minutes after posting this entry, I read a review of The Astronaut Farmer and learned that the cast of that movie includes Bruce Dern, who played the lead in Silent Running.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I later discovered that the first sentence of this article is incorrect.