The World Community Grid is a project to use spare CPU cycles to help the world. The Grid is Windows only, but Folding@Home is a cross-platform way to spend your extra CPU cycles, in an effortless (for you) quest to cure disease. And of course there's the original donated cycle project, which I'm a part of, SETI@home.
December 2004 Archives
"Doom Funnel Chasers" asks you to launch projectiles through space, plugging the funnels o' doom. Each attempt leaves its own trail, producing a fun Spirograph-ic effect.
It was just last week when suprnova.org, the most popular site online for finding BitTorrent downloads, shut down their site. The MPAA and RIAA crowed, but it appears the celebration was a tad premature.
Suprnova's new site mentions a special announcement today at 5 PM AST on NovaStream.org radio. Rumors suggest that it will introduce Exeem, a decentralized, BitTorrent-driven software client that turns every user into a tracker, removing the requirement for a centralized site such as suprnova, while providing users with easy searchability, the swarming powers of BitTorrent, and a network that is far harder to shut down.
The massive undersea earthquake that caused the tsunami gave a boost to our planet's spin. As a result, days will be a fraction of a second shorter from now on.
Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
The Leaky Cauldron has info on J. K. Rowling's announcement that the sixth Harry Potter book has been completed. Publication date to be announced within 24 hours. Very exciting for some of us named Jenn.
Is the Apocalypse set for April 13th, 2029? Good news, everyone! A collossal asteroid, poetically named 2004 MN4, is calculated to pass pretty damn close to the Earth on that date. How close? Well, the folks at NASA have given it an unprecedented Torino Impact Hazard rating of 4, with chances of impact currently at around 1 in 63, although this will no doubt change as calculations are made.
Happy Holidays!
Just got my Christmas presents :) yay ! the ps2 + gta:sa will get a -lot- of use. The Jennifer rox.
Santa Santa Santa Santa It's Friday, it's Flash, it's Christmas Eve, so....here you go Jenn.
Watch the sky! He's coming soon! With fighter escort!
To hell with revolving rooftop restaurants, I want to live in Suite Vollard, an entire apartment building whose eleven circular units can each revolve 360 degrees. (Unfortunately for me, it's in Brazil.) More photos are here.
Check out what happens when a new Starbucks corporate office employee gets into a bizarre email exchange with a mullet headed prankster pretending to be the CEO / president.
I know this may seem petty, but Ms. Crisholm should have told you how we feel about goatees or facial hair in our corporate offices. While I realize they may be considered stylish and acceptable in our Starbucks outlets, we ask that men refrain from wearing them in our corporate offices as we are trying to uphold a certain image. That includes earrings and other piercings on men, which I do not tolerate at all. Unfortunately, there's little we can do about the appearance of our counter people no matter how much we try. I certainly wish this weren't the case, because most of them have absolutely no loyalty to our brand, and they have done nothing but tarnish our image. I hope you understand our position. Please have it removed by Monday.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express site has this neat little flash globe lets you rotate the planet yourself and select various viewpoints for more detailed pictures of the surface. Some of the pictures are stunning, others just don't look real.
You probably knew that Silly Putty is a non-Newtonian fluid, and that Faraday waves make cornstarch and water do creepy things, but did you know that your washing machine probably has magnetorheological fluid in it? Yes indeed, there are fun and interesting applications for ferrofluids.
This site contains more than 10,000 free eBooks formatted for reading on your Palm, which is pretty neat, being that Palm charges you a nice fee for the same content.
The Dark Room is one of the best puzzles I've seen in a long time.
Jenn's Dad was over to help me tear down the wall in-between the kitchen and the 2nd spare bedroom, there.s only 2 of us for now, so 1 spare bedroom is more then enough... for now :)
And on that note, me and this IP I've only had since October (not July as some websites would have you believe, but what.s a few factual inaccuracies between best buds!), are going to go back to waiting for the day to end so we can go on vacation, and finish tearing the wall down between the kitchen and our 3rd bedroom. If my biggest fan were a pal, they'd come help! But well, inviting people you feel could turn stalker-ish into your house? Yeah, not a great plan.
Oh, and some idiots out there sent me an email asking about the log I posted, yes, I know, it says December 18th, when in-fact the actual traffic mysteriously stopped on the 10th... the magic mystery behind this boys and dumbasses, is that in 2003... there was ALSO a December 18th. a conspiracy worthy of the x-files? I think so. or possibly a course on dealing with time in the real world? Heh, I personally don't go in for the kind of worthless psychobabble, but whatever turns your crank.
Michael Jackson's Thriller...in Lego form! This must have taken days and days to put together. For those of you who remember the video well, you'll be amazed. I love the Interweb!
A glimpse through the Wardrobe (25meg Quicktime file) at WETA Digital's amazing work on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Seems another one of my childhood favorites is being brought to life by those Kiwi wizards. The minotaurs look simply amazing!
On a side note, I'd like to apologize to the 1000 other people generating my daily/weekly hits. That "rant" wasnt directed at you. By the way, my sites name is RobDurdle.com not RobxDurdle.com, please have that fixed.
I've two kittens playing on my chest while I type, so I've gotta be quick, bye.\
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n\0 rrrrrrrbcfclrllllrrllorllllllllllllllllllllllllllr
And that, would be Artemis, saying goodbye.
My Mother got me hooked on literature when I was a very little kid. It's something I have to really thank her for. I would only put down a book to go for a bike ride. Also I was fascinated by military and psychological warfare (I've sort of made it my favorite lifelong hobby). So for many of you, the fact that one of my favorite books when I was 12 was Sun Tzu's art of War isn't a surprise. I'll get back to that later.
For now though, please click here. Now for the general public, I've just taken random lines from a 1-megabyte log file, and selected one hostname out of quite a few that hit my site. I wanted to congratulate this person on being my biggest fan. Fan of course, being well known as an abbreviation of fanatic. And as is the case with most celebrities, I am humbled and honored by your deep and intense love for my family and me. If you'd like to join our family newsletter, please, let us know.
Let's move on shall we? I know I'm your most FAVORITE person on the planet, but really now, can't we just be adults? My main thought about this whole situation is "don't start something, wont be something, a'right?"
(Now to cut through the subtlety for a paragraph)
As much as I love watching a good predictable bipolar or anal retentive psychological pattern in a person, I must say that even I've gotten bored of it and it's not even worth my time. If you think very little of me (which is obvious), you might want to imagine where that places you for not being worth the time of a man of such utter unimportance as I.
I pose a general question. How does one predict a thunderstorm?
An answer could be, watch the horizon. If one were to wonder why one were being casually observed from a distance, one might answer, "to avoid the thunderstorm".
This brings me back to why I love Sun Tzu. One of the most memorable quotes I can recall is attributed to him; it is "Keep your friends close, and your Enemies closer". While I have no enemies, it's no secret that some people out there don't like my family and me.
I presume that some of the hits hitting my website are there to keep a track on me, to help others avoid me/my family. I encourage that strongly, I think you should avoid me/my family. I consider it very adult to do such a thing, and I offer you a round of thanks for it. It's OBVIOUSLY not being done to say, watch/wait for a reaction from thinly veiled slurs or attacks, that would be something a child would do, and I have much more faith in the world then that.
In the long and the short of it, I've gotten bored of you, my family got bored of you a long time ago, ergo why they're my family. Step up, be a man, get the fuck over it, and move on. Maybe then, we'll be able to stop waiting for another thunderstorm.
Now, here's a personal story. Back a few years ago, I was engaged to a chick, and she had a wonderful family. I loved those guys, still do, they.re awesome, was very upset to hear about her fathers passing. Now after this woman and I went our separate ways, I didn't contact that family again, and it really hurt. Possibly more then the end of the relationship with the woman. I can understand and have pity on some of you out there, but the proper social thing to do, is what I did. Leave. Some of you may think that leaving was obvious, but unfortunately not all of you think that way, and that's OK, children have to be taught from birth, and sometimes, some things get left out. But regardless, the thing I miss the most about any of my ex's, is their family.
On the positive side, there's Jenn. I love Jenn, and I love her family. Jenn and I dated back in college, but broke up for a couple years, and now we're back together, and I'm ever so glad for it, because I missed her family. When we took our break back in college, I didn't go see her family, despite the fact her Grandmother lived across the road from the college dorm, that would have been improper, nor did I go see her father, despite the fact he lived right next to a place I used to visit, again, it would have been improper. I don't mean to look down on anybody that would, but just to remind him or her, it would be improper and insulting.
Insulting you ask? Yes, insulting. Not just to the family and former partner, but it would have been insulting to the woman I was with. I couldn't picture hurting a woman like that. it would be thoughtless.
Picture it, still being hung up on your ex despite the fact that you're 'happy' with another person? How would that make the other person in this sordid love triangle feel? See, insulting.
Anyway, I'm about to take off to go to the gym, I feel dirty after having this talk with you, and I need to go work out. I hope the intended audience of this little post has gotten the point.
"Don.t start something, wont be nothing".
P.S., This is the only post I'm going to waste on this subject. You're really boring us, fuck off would you? It's so DanBrennan.ca of you. Oh, and we read his site daily for updates, mostly because he's as funny as you.
So I had orginally left today to get 1 kitten, and came home with two. I'm such a sucker, heh. I love kittens though, and Jenn loves the little girls, there so damn cute. She spent a good part of the day when she wasnt in school/at work cuddling with either Artemis and/or Luna.. and she says shes not a cat person.. heh.
If you rely on GPS to get you to work, out of the bush, back to shore, or geocache, it's time to stop. The Bush administration is paving the way to shutting down GPS in the event of an "emergency" so that "terrorists won't be able to navigate."
Nice one, George. Why not shut down the fire-departments, too, so that "terrorists won't be able to survive fires started by those GPS powered bombs?"
The president also instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain areas, an enemy's access to the U.S. navigational satellites and to similar systems operated by others. The European Union is developing a $4.8 billion program, called Galileo.
Cult leader proves his divinity by being buried alive and resurrecting himself. Except for the resurrecting bit. Good try though, better luck next time.
I'm glad they're working hard on this, I have a lot of pity for the people out there with undiagnosed bipolar/schizophrenia disorders. There are quite a few good web resources for it I'm noticing, also Schizophrenia.com. One of my neighbors growing up had schizophrenia, it's a very disturbing disease.
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1930s. I'm so about the great detective. I grew up reading all the books and all, this rocks so hard for me.
It's a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.
20 questions, AI style. Pretty amazing... and addictive. It guessed "Superman" in 15 questions, "harmonica" in 18..."tampon" in 20.
20,000 genes and splices: the Colonel's Secret Recipe revealed! Even the fanciest chickens won't be able to ignore their genetic cousins now.
Well, if the track record of straight marriages is any indication, this was bound to happen sooner or later. "Less than seven months after same-sex couples began tying the knot in Massachusetts, the state is seeing ts first gay divorces."
Supreme Court of Canada approves gay marriage. Although agreeing that religious groups can't be forced to perform any ceremonies, the Court stated in their ruling that defining marriage for civil purposes in Canada as a lawful union of two people would be constitutional. The ruling validates future legislation legalizing gay marriage, which is apparently almost guaranteed to pass early next year.
Short, to-the-point messages for use in traffic as needed. Road Rage Cards. Perfect for Jenn when she's driving, she seems to somehow find all the idiots in town, and drive near them. Heh.
See also these STFU cards you can hand to strangers who are talking too loudly in their cellphones about stuff you don't want to hear.
Have a good day Ms. Beyer! "Before you are rude to another telemarketer, you should keep in mind that he or she has your phone number and your address." Texas Telemarketer sends a threatening letter to a hanger-upper.
Sex education from the BBC, flash-style. Willy Wonky and Funny Flaps.
The end of an era confirmed. IBM sells its PC business to China's Lenovo. Is a future Apple partnership in the works?
This, is my kitten, her name is Luna. Well, technically it will be my kitten in 2 more weeks, Luna is still nursing from her mom and is too little to leave yet, but give it another 2 weeks and she'll be in her new home.
End of an era IBM may sell its PC division to Lenovo, a Chinese company, due to its decade-long dwindling importance in comparison to powerhouses HP and Dell - in a market they helped invent in the first place. Seems like a good enough reason to reminisce about the old bastard.
The History of Maps from the the oldest map of the world to prehistoric globalization to early modern worlds to nautical charts. Myths and facts.
Doctor Who returns in a few months, here's a teaser for us ubergeeks who can't wait. (Realplayer warning on the link!). The "new" Doctor Who returns to BBC sometime in the first half of next year.
These are the toy tanks and they shock the people. I'm buying one for Austin and Simcha.
Because GMail (and other popular email clients these days) blocks images by default, porn spammers have now begun to use 1980s style ASCII art in order to get their message across.
This textfile contains one simple example, with the words HOT GIRLS in big letters - it cunningly gets past spam filters by not containing any actual words in the body text. As its content is only apparent to humans, it will be tricky to catch by any filters - as long as the whitespace remains intact, the actual text can just be any random garbage. In theory, every spam email could be totally unique.
I confidently expect to see a renaissance in erotic ASCII art in the coming months, until someone figures out how to filter out this type of spam...
hahahahahaha
GuitarBot "In designing GuitarBot, our goal was to create an electrified slide guitar that was versatile, responsive, capable of fast and slow playing, easy to control, with high-quality sound, modular and portable. We also wanted to extend, not simply duplicate, the capabilities of a human guitarist."
Don't miss the video [16 meg Quicktime]. Brought to you by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.
Being a huge electronic music fan, the Quicktime movie blew me away.
So been going to the YMCA a lot lately, not as much as I'd like, but still almost enough. It's neat because I'm already starting get back some of the musscle I lost over the past few years.
This scientific paper was published two years ago. It may be an oldie, but it's a goodie. Computer scientist Markus Kuhn demonstrated a way to read CRT computer monitors at a distance using a photosensor, even if you're not facing the screen.
An image is created on the CRT surface by varying the electron beam intensity for each pixel. The room in which the CRT is located is partially illuminated by the pixels. As a result, the light in the room becomes a measure for the electron beam current. In particular, there is a little invisible ultrafast flash each time the electron beam refreshes a bright pixel that is surrounded by dark pixels on its left and right.
So if you measure the brightness of a wall in this room with a very fast photosensor, and feed the result in another monitor that receives the exact same synchronization signals for steering its electron beam, you get to see an image like this (after using a mathematical signal processing technique)
