Air Swimmers - Now this is just too cool

My father sent me a link to this video for a couple of fish and shark shaped balloons with attached remote-controlled moving tail fins and ballast. You can actually make these things swim through the air by remote control. You have to see the video to believe it.

They have two versions available: shark and clownfish.



Man, I wish I'd come up with this.

Celebrating The Smile Emoticon's 25th Anniversary

I created this Original Smile Emoticon Anniversary Edition T-shirt to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the classic computer text Smile emoticon, created on September 19, 1982 by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman. Thank you Professor Fahlman!

It's available in several long and short-sleeve styles for men and women, and in kids sizes as well. Plain Smile edition t-shirts also available.

A Mishap At Saturn

Some years ago, a good decade now that I think of it, I bought a program that I very much enjoyed: Microsoft Space Simulator. It was very cool for its time, particularly for a DOS program as you can see from these screen shots. It's been a while since I've run it. I may still have it stashed away, but I really can't remember if I got it on 3.5" or 5.25" floppies. My current computer has neither so the point is moot. (For now, anyway - I plan to snag one off of an older system before I junk it.)

So, curious to see if Microsoft has followed up with a version that can take advantage of modern computers, I did a search. I didn't find an updated version, but I did find mention of Orbiter.

Orbiter is a freeware space flight simulator that looks a lot nicer than MS Space Simulator, as you can see from its screen shots. Unfortunately, it, or my computer, has a problem. When I tried to load the Saturn scenario from the demo section it instantly reset and rebooted my computer. That's just plain annoying.

I do play to try it again, perhaps with nothing else running, but I would like to hear from other users who have had the same problem with it and hear how they fixed or avoided it.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, give it a look yourself. It looks pretty cool.

A Cooler Monitor

My wife's new monitor, a Samsung Syncmaster 971p, just came in. (Sans memory cards we also ordered, but that's another story.) I'll be setting it up tonight and maybe posting a review here later.

Anyway, she wants to replace her ginormous (it's officially a word now) corner desk with a smaller one. I was doing an image search on "corner computer desk" to find her old one and show an employee just how big the thing is (well, I couldn't very well tell them it's the same one the girl on JenniCam had) and along the way found a blog mentioning the two displays above.

They're pretty cool. The one on the left, manufactured by Sharp, displays three different images at once. Which one you see depends on which direction you view it from. Their press release on it suggests it be used in a dashboard display, allowing the driver to see directions, the front passenger to look up destination information, and the kids in back to watch a movie. I think it would also be cool in a crowded house where arguments over what to watch are frequent and heated. Just add headphones (bluetooth stereo, anyone?) and a couple extra tuners with independent remotes and you're good to go.

The one on the right is very cool too. Back when I was playing more FPS games I would have been drooling over the thing. The company who makes it, Seamless Display, makes flat display panels that fit together seamlessly (or at least with a small enough seam so you can't see it in the example pictures.) If you can't tell from the picture, the monitor is made of three panels, with the side panels joined to the center one at an angle to arc around the user. Sweet.

Where Are You In The Internet?

From xkcd.com - Online Communities. (Click for access to larger version.)

I guess we're somewhere in the blogipeligo. Where else do you spend time?

My Strangest Work Yet...

This has got to be my strangest, geekiest work yet on cafepress.com: Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, ROT13-encrypted.

Yes, that's right. I took the entire text of A Tale of Two Cities and ROT13 encrypted it. Then I scanned the blank back of an old yearbook of mine and used it as the basis for the cover design.

I case you don't know what ROT13 encryption is, it's a very very weak encryption scheme that's really only good for allowing people who don't want to read something to avoid it. It's often used in usenet newsgroups. (Those groups that Google Groups & others repackage in a web interface - they're much better read with a real newsreader.) Both encryption & decryption is accomplished with the same algorithm: rotate each english alphabet letter 13 letters over, so that instead of ABCxyz you get NOPklm. All other characters are left as-is. I actually wrote my own utility program to do the conversions, txt file to txt file. (Yeah, I'm that geeky. Not geeky enough to buy and read a book like this, but enough to get a chuckle out of it - and I hope bigger geeks than me will do me one better and buy the thing.)

Now that I've done this one, it should be relatively easy to do others. The time-consuming part is proofreading the formatting. The cover design was quicker than I anticipated, once I got the blank cover scanned. I'm scrounging around my book collection for other blank-backed books, of course. Can't have them all green, can I?

What I've been doing...

So... what's up with me since Thursday? Been busy busy busy.

Naturally, I've whipped up a few more designs for cafepress. I'm up to 154, if you include size and layout variations for different items. Most recently I've refined the designs for the mugs, converting many to two-sided wrap-around designs; made a few from some renaissance & other fine art in the public domain (admittedly with a tendency towards nudes - I am what I am); and made a couple to let Katrina and other disaster survivors show a little attitude. The link's still in my links, presumably to your left unless you're reading this after Yahoo does some future redesign.

Last week we ordered new computers for home since the systems we had - still running Windows98SE - were getting a bit long in the tooth and doing an upgrade on them would take too much work. We got them local and when I placed the order I told them we'd stop by with a check so they could get started on building them. It wasn't until Saturday that we had time to do so, but as it turns out they went ahead and built the systems so we took them home sooner than anticipated.

Sunday was mostly spent celebrating my wife's birthday - I'm married to an "older woman" for the next month and a week. We went visit her folks and all went out to Macaroni Grill, then back to her folks' house for cake & ice cream and family time. It was nice. The book I got her turned out to not be a substantial as anticipated - it looks a bit like a trade paperback version of a Time-Life book. Oh well. I guess when you shop Amazon you really have to keep in mind that you really can't judge a book by its cover.

Saturday and Sunday night were spent setting mine up and learning my way around configuring Windows XP Professional. For us, that means switching it to classic mode and tweaking away as much as I can of the random quirky behaviors MS decided to add. (If we could have gotten Windows 2000 we would have.)

The first step was to switch to the classic theme to get rid of the candy/toy user interface. After that it was a matter of exploring all the configuration options offered up by Windows, and research the hidden ones (like the hidden Power User user type) on the ol' interweb. And, of course, transferring over my data from the old PC (whole drive copied over to C:\OldC on the new system for convenience) and installing my software. Let me tell ya... hunting down Y2K patches for legacy software is fun!

It's not over yet, of course. I've got most of the essentials - Agent, SeaMonkey, Miranda-IM, ftp clients, ssh terminal, spreadsheet, VB, PSP7, PageDefrag, etc. Beyond that, and one or two other work-related items, it's pretty much going to be install-on-demand. Then I've got to get my wife's new one set up. Wish me luck.

I'm planning/hoping to compile a list of the tweaks and configuration changes I've made, and my reasons for them. For now, here's a useful little program I used along the way. It makes a lot more Windows components optional than are normally, allowing you to strip out the programs and services you know you don't need, giving you a leaner, meaner, computing machine. There's a free limited-capability/unlimited-term trial version available for download.

A-Rockin' And A-Geekin'

I feel like simultaneously rockin' out and geekin' out, so...

It's Time To Roll Out The Barrel... And Find Out What's Inside Today!

A little semi-random homage to ZOOM there.

I've added a few more links, some of which are my own.

Sysinternals This site is an old favorite of mine that has since been taken over by Microsoft, so it's a bit more cluttered and less informative than it used to be. The utilities there, though, are invaluable. My favorites...

PageDefrag - I have it set up to defragment my registry, virtual memory, & hibernation files on every boot.

Filemon - A great hacking tool. Lets you monitor & log file accesses on your system, and filter it by program. Great for figuring out where the heck a program is grabbing a file from, or trying to if it's not finding it.
Regmon - Similar to Filemon, but monitors registry access instead. Find those hidden settings.

Quackwatch A great resource for researching dubious medical claims. I know I've referenced it a couple times in Yahoo Answers.

John's Secret Stores

Shameless plug here! I've been going through my digital photos and picking out a few that might look good on mousepads, mugs, t-shirts, etc., and setting them up on cafepress.com. Free money, if anyone buys them. So far I've got four "stores" set up...

John's Secret Store - Gettysburg I: Path & Fence - Based on a couple pics I took of a split-rail fence and trees along a leaf-strewn walking path in the Gettysburg battlefield.

John's Secret Store - Gettysburg II: Lee - Based on the Robert E. Lee statue on the Virginia soldiers monument. This was at the same location as the path & fence.
John's Secret Store - New York - Based on a couple pictures I took of New York and the Brooklyn Bridge lit up on a cloudy night, from across the river in Brooklyn.
John's Secret Store - Roses - While visiting my brother and his family I spotted this rose in the back yard and snapped a couple close-ups. I cropped them down to just the blooms and tossed them up on a variety of items just to see what sells.

There will be more. I've got a shot or two of a duck figurine in the same flower bed as the rose that might make a good journal cover or mousepad. And I plan to dig through my older photos as well. It seems fairly easy once you get the hang of it. If you've got a high enough resolution digital camera or scanner, or a good paint program (The GIMP is free) and some artistic talent, you could make a few dollars yourself. They also let you self-publish CDs, DVDs, and books, but I haven't looked into those options.

Who Knew The Flu Could Be So Cute?

Yes, that cute little guy is a plush orthomyxovirus, or flu virus to us laypeople. He's just one of the many cute critters produced by GIANTmicrobes. So next time you're laid up with the flu, or athlete's foot, or Lyme disease, or gonorrhea or any of a number of otherwise icky maladies, curl up with one of these cute little cuddly friends and let it take some of the hurt (or itching or burning as the case may be) away.

You can also get Giant Microbes at Amazon

Let The Good Times Roll

Three more links have accumulated...

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database I only just discovered this one when I searched for a good representative link for a book I mentioned in a recent blast. It looks to be an extensive searchable database of science fiction (or speculative fiction, as it was earlier known and some prefer) authors & works, including listing of the various editions of each work published. Example pages: Isaac Asimov, Foundation, 2004 Spectra hardcover edition.

Think Geek Some of the geekiest t-shirts, toys, gadgets, books, etc. you'd ever hope to find. A few select items: Blue LED Faucet Light (Lights up the water streaming from your faucet), T-Qualizer Shirt (A t-shirt with a light-up graphic equalizer display that actually responds to sound), and The Red Swingline Stapler (Excuse me! That's my stapler!) Like I said, it's geeky.

PostSecret People from all over send in their anonymous and very creative postcards telling the world of a secret they have been keeping. Some are posted each Sunday. Others are published in the books the site owner compiles periodically. (I gave a copy of the first to my wife last Christmas.) It can really touch your heart in any number of ways, perhaps the most valuable being when someone posts the same secret you've been keeping. It can be very therapeutic to send one in too, I imagine. And sometimes they're funny or uplifting. Well worth a look. Search Amazon.com for postsecret.