Well, according to my referrer logs, they find it (or at least somebody did) by searching for “streaker avi OR mpg OR mpeg OR mov”, “three vaginas kangaroo“, headline aggregator gay“, or “apple use intel” on Google. Weird…
Month: March 2003
A new way to caption digital photos
I’m an online-news technology buff, and I can see this as a wonderful tool for online news photos. It’s called Fotonotes. Basically, it’s a tool for annotating JPEG pictures inside the pictures themselves. With the software, you can map out specific parts of a photo (say, a person’s face) and then attach mouseover text to it. When you pass your mouse over a mapped piece of a photo you get pop-up text identifying that part of the photo, and a highlight area where the rest of the image is darkened to emphasize the highlight area.
Am I the only one that finds this really cool? The link I got this from has an example.
36 operating systems on one PC
Gotta love the Internet. I submit the item and have it published on Langalist, it shows up 10 minutes later on Bits & Bytes. Does somebody read the same mailing list I do? I think so ;-).
Anyhow, this lunatic has 36 operating systems on his PC (53 if you count DOS window managers) using some nasty partitioning, 6 hard drives, and XOSL, a great freeware boot manager (I’ve used it before, too). What’s sad about the whole thing is that it was published in Maximum PC about 6 months ago (which is where I first read about it), and people are just now thinking it’s cool. Ah well…
Another Google Labs goody
Google Labs is now offering Google Compute. What is it? From ResearchBuzz:
“So is Google Compute a cool new Google search feature? Nix. Google Compute uses your computer’s idle computing power to work on a research problem — if you’ve heard of SETI@Home you’ve got the idea. (The current Google Compute project is a protein research project called Folding@Home, though the page indicates that you may have a choice in the future of what projects your computer works on.)”
Lockergnome Bits and Bytes
Just an FYI, I’m now a contributor for the metaweblog Lockergnome Bits and Bytes, along with a few other folks (like Neil Turner who was kind enough to link to me). But most of the stuff (if not all) of the stuff I post over there will be posted here, too.
Happy Tree Friends
Ken sent me this.
No nudity, or swearing, but plenty of hardcore cartoon violence.
Oh, and you’ll need Flash installed.
What if Dr. Laura answered phones for Microsoft?
Lately I’ve been listening to more talk radio on the AM dial, mostly KBND 1110. Why, I don’t know. But one day I was driving home (I have a 30-minute commute) and Dr. Laura was on the radio. I had never heard her show before, but I noticed one thing about her:The advice she gives to the people who call is, generally, for the caller to change their attitude/outlook/whatever about things, going by the attitude that you need to change yourself before you can change others (which I agree with — mostly). Granted, I’ve only listened to 30 minutes of the show about 4 times, so this opinion is a very unsupported one. Most of the time its the appropriate action, but there are sometimes where I think to myself “Is this really the caller’s fault?”
Then I thought a little bit more. I’ve worked answering phones for software companies doing tech support, and generally, user-errors accounted for most of my calls. But at Microsoft, for example, many calls they probably get are bugs in their software.
So what if Dr. Laura answered phones for Microsoft? I think the conversation might go something like this:
Dr. Laura: Jim in Delaware, thank you for calling Dr. Laura.
Jim: I thought I was calling Microsoft?
Dr. Laura: My name is Dr. Laura, Jim, how can I help you.
Jim: Whatever … Anyway, my computer is brand new and doesn’t have anything installed on it except Windows XP, and I installed Office XP on it, and after I rebooted, I got a blue screen with a bunch of code and a cryptic error message. What do I do?
Dr. Laura: Are you sure the screen was blue?
Jim: Yes. Very much blue.
Dr. Laura: Are you really sure?
Jim: Well, if I squint, it kinda turns green.
Dr. Laura: No, blue is OK, I just wanted to make sure you were sure.
Jim: Oh…uh, OK. So what can I do?
Dr. Laura: What would you like to do?
Jim: I’d like to have a functional computer — what do you think?!?
Dr. Laura: That’s fine, Jim. But are you sure the computer’s the one that needs to change?
Jim: Well, the computer is running your operating system, and I tried to install your Office software, so I’m pretty sure the problem is yours.
Dr. Laura: Let’s not make accusations, Jim.
Jim: Fine. Just tell me how to fix this and I’ll get on my merry way.
Dr. Laura: I think you know what you have to do Jim.
Jim: Buy a Mac?
Dr. Laura: *click* Cindy in Detroit, thank you for calling Dr. Laura.
Or something like that…
How do you get rid of rabbits at an airport?
Put them on a plane and send them to Texas. Only in Miami. Link via Dave Barry.
What’s that in the sky? Is that a UFO or my cat?
This has to be the funniest news ever. Experts say a reported UFO sighting in Norway was probably an electrocuted cat. Link via 3bruces.
Ex-sheriff embezzler still due full retirement pay
This just goes to show you how messed up Oregon’s government is, and it’s no wonder we’re broke. Former Deschutes County sheriff Greg Brown was convicted a few months ago and will serve a 33-month federal prison term for embezzlement. He stole about $250,000 from the people of Central Oregon. And he’s still eligible for public employee retirement benefits (or PERS for you folks within Oregon).