 Almost two years ago I wrote about a small Nerdcore film seeking distribution. Nerdcore for Life will finally be shown in California with its debut here at the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival in a couple of weeks! The Nerdcore For Life screening will take place on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 4:15pm at the historical, 300-seat Roxie Theater in San Francisco’s Mission district located at 3117 16th Street. Tickets are $10 and will be available at the box office on the day of the screening or available now on-line at www.frozenfilmfestival.com. Immediately after the film screening there will be a free after-party featuring performances by several of the most popular artists in Nerdcore including San Francisco native Doctor Popular and Stanford alum, MC Lars. The after-party will take place at the old-school hip-hop themed club, the Double Dutch. Located at 3192 16th Street, it is only 500 feet from the Roxie Theater. The performances will begin at 7pm. Check it out! |
I want to be able to film HD home movies and play them on my HDTV right off my server, a Buffalo Terastation, without the use of the camcorder for playback. The technology that would allow this live local network streaming to happen is UPnP. Many devices are just now starting to have this technology built-in, but you can typically hack older devices to become a UPnP compliant server or client. About a month ago, I hacked my Terastation and installed Twonkyvision software that allows you to stream media (movies, photos, and music) to a UPnP enabled client. The only UPnP client I have is my Xbox 360, which only plays Windows media files and has an awful interface for accessing photos and music. Since I don’t plan to hack the Xbox 360, I immediately started researching the possibility of using something else as UPnP client that would play all streamed video formats with ease. Enter Apple TV. Last week I picked a used 40GB Apple TV on Ebay for $150 plus shipping to see if I could hack it and have it become the new UPnP client on my home network for playback of movies stored on my Terastation. While I still haven’t hacked the Apple TV to be a UPnP client for the Terastation, I am very impressed with the default out of the box functionality. |
The company that makes this chair also makes an interesting looking game called Mindball where players try to control a ball using only Alpha and Theta brainwaves. The website says that the player that is most relaxed usually wins the game. Clearly every office could use one of these. |
A new iPhone was introduced by Steve Jobs yesterday at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). The new version of the phone will feature faster 3G speeds, built-in GPS, and half the price of the current version ($199). Wow, how bummed are the peeps that paid $399 less than a year ago!? Very bummed. Luckily, Apple and AT&T decided to give everyone who "bought their iPhone in a AT&T store" the chance to return it to for 90 percent of its value: 100 percent less 10 percent restocking fee. It is still not clear if this deal is available for those that purchased their iPhone from a website or direcly from apple. Most importantly though, is that the new iPhone will feature push email technology and a built in Exchange client called ActiveSync. It is unclear from press reports what additional software corporations would have to purchase to make this work. Most corporations run either GoodLink server (for Palm Treos) or BlackBerry Enterprise Server (for BlackBerry). Some, like my company, actually run both of these for their integration with Microsoft Exchange. Many large companies are leery of installing another set of servers to support iPhone users. It can’t possibly be that difficult to code a GoodLink or BES client for the iPhone can it? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it seems one that could be easily answered at the WWDC. Still, nobody seems willing to talk to the media about the possibility of a GoodLink or BES option. It may not matter though, because at $199 the iPhone just became affordable for corporate users and those users may demand iPhones by any means necessary, servers be damned. Only time will tell if this new iPhone gets the corporate adoption that Apple is looking for. Stay tuned. |
I was sitting around looking at prices for gold and was curious about the difference in density between platinum and gold. After a bit of searching, I found the best place for details about all of the known elements is this nifty dynamic periodic table. I spent a couple of hours reading about elements that I knew absolutely nothing about. When I went to high school there were only 109 elements on the periodic table and now there’s 118 of them. You know you are getting older when the physical world is very literally "changing all around you." |
This guy must have balls of steel. I just saw Iron Man last weekend and have to say that the video of the flight reminded me of the way that Iron Man flew in the film. Clearly there may be military implications to perfecting this technology. It’s hard to believe that this is real. Oh, and the guy has a website dedicated to his exploits too, but it’s in French. |
I have to say that I have gotten used to using twitter and receiving updates from my friend in Hawaii on an almost hourly basis (he tweets a lot). So when twitter went down today I was a bit dismayed and shocked at how it slowed my front page load times to a crawl. Because of this, I have removed the twitter status from my blog pages until they get their act together. |
This new BlackBerry is way faster than an iPhone.
Compared to the Curve, it has much more internal memory, a glossy metallic look, and adds corporate-strength Wi-Fi capabilities to 3G cellular and Bluetooth radios. I cannot wait to get one of these to replace my BlackBerry Pearl. |
Thirty years ago the first spam email message (unsolicited commercial email) was sent to 393 researchers on the Arpanet network. Nobody knew it was the first spam message and wouldn’t call it that until 15 years later, but it was a harbinger of things to come. Now there’s formmail spam, comment spam, trackback spam, and every other form of spam imaginable. |
This tattoo means "end head, begin body" My favorite of the bunch I looked at is one by the name of Mario Jedi, a mash-up of Donkey Kong’s Mario and a Star Wars Jedi Knight into one outrageously "Ooh, that’s going to leave a mark!" |
Coolest spy sunglasses ever! ThinkGeek has these sunglasses with an embedded 1.3 megapixel camera and remote control shutter built-in. The ultimate in "cool as shit" spy gear that would have made me "cuckoo for cocoa puffs" in sixth grade. It’s no fair that kids that have $100 will get a chance to wear these in school, museums and other places where cameras just aren’t allowed. The sunglasses also allow you to enjoy your music via MP3 playback. Built-in earbuds allow you to play James Bond music as you take photos. |
Creepy woman. Check it out if you have some time. What I really like about the animation is that it appears to be truly random. She doesn’t have that many facial movements, but they all seem to be very well randomized. At this rate it seems we are very close to having virtual actors that appear lifelike, not like Buzz Lightyear. Via BoingBoing. |
Via xkcd. |
The war for the next-generation video format war is over. Last week, Toshiba officially announced that it will no longer manufacture HD-DVD players, making Sony’s Blu-ray technology the victor. I feel really bad for some of my friends that bought HD-DVD players in the last couple of months. I will now be waiting for Microsoft to release their Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360. |
It seems that until now very few people seem concerned about disappearing bee populations. Well, Haagen-Dazs is warning that 40% of their flavors need fruits and vegetables that are pollinated by bees. This means that premium ice cream prices will go up and flavors may disappear altogether. Bottom line, if you like ice cream you should consider donating to bee population research. Contact the UC Davis Department of Entomology at (530) 752-0475 and ask how you can help financially. |
Here’s a video on how to open a standard padlock with a pair of scissors and a soda can. Take that MacGyver! I am very glad this kid didn’t go to my high school. I wonder why some gyms and high schools still use these locks. Apparently, unless you have a shrouded shackle or hidden shackle padlock, your stuff is toast. |
I have had a Palm Treo 650 for the last two years and it has served me well. I used it to check work email, keep contacts, check my calendar. Basically, I used it for all of the Outlook functions without having to turn on my computer, which isn’t very practical just to check my availability for an appointment. The Treo was a big clunky device that had poor sound quality, low battery life, and a small screen with a weak backlight. It was so poor as a phone that I still carried a Motorla Razr as my phone. About three days ago, I upgraded to the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and the device is nothing short of amazing. It is small sleek, has a great high contrast color screen, good sound quality, amazing battery life, and even great native third-party apps, like a GoogleTalk and Gmail client. Best of all, the built-in camera is 1.3 megapixels and has great image quality. With all of these features built-in I am going to get rid of my Razr and carry just one device from now on. After two years I saw the Treo as a necessary tool that I simply tolerated. After only a few days with the Pearl I can honestly say that I love it. I understand the strong emotional attachment that a lot of people have for their BlackBerries and understand the term CrackBerry intimately. I can’t put this damn thing down! |
Scientists now believe that birds have special molecules in their eyes that allows them to literally see the Earth’s magnetic field within their normal field of vision. This becomes particularly helpful for the birds when migrating long distances. It is likely that the magnetic field looks like dark or light spots or lines within their normal vision. |
Well, at a very small scale anyway. Scientists have found that when water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage, a floating water bridge forms between the beakers. The water stream can be as wide as 3mm in diameter and as long as 25mm. It’s interesting that while water is everywhere in nature, some of its unique properties are still a mystery. Via BoingBoing. |