franzone.com

Does Amazon know what I am looking for more than the search phrase that I just typed in? Perhaps… but perhaps not so much. I was recently searching around Amazon for a few separate classes of items. The first thing I searched for was headphones and headsets with microphones. Following that I decided to turn my attention to the costs of RAID Arrays to see if there were any reasonably priced options for a home user. To my surprise the first page of results contained not hard drives, raid arrays or anything similar but headphones and headsets. Hmm. Yes, I did look for that to begin with but now I am searching for something else! Anyway, I though it was funny so here is a screen shot.

So I was doing some research on MySQL database security and wanted to do a quick search for two runtime configuration parameters. I did a search for --secure-auth and --old-passwords on google. Do you think I saw any results concerning MySQL database flags? Nope. I saw two hits. One was a YouTube video of Dr Dre and Snoop Dog and the other was a YouTube video of Bob Dylan. Really? That’s some serious searching there. Here’s a screen shot as proof, plus you can click the link above to see for yourself. Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny.

* Click the image for a larger version.

No, it’s not an evil plot to take over the presidency and the White House. It’s also not that singing bush on The Three Amigos. I’m talking about “fractal branching ultra-dexterous robots.” So what the heck is that? A bush robot is a branched hierarchy of articulated limbs, starting from a macroscopically large trunk through successively smaller and more numerous branches, ultimately to microscopic twigs and nanoscale fingers. With its huge numbers of opposable fingers of all scales, a bush robot’s dexterity would greatly exceed anything known. This of course is highly speculative and there are some other technologies which must be advanced in order for these guys to begin to be built including:

1. Computational power increased at least a millionfold in density
2. Means to build mechanical structures over the entire range of scales from macroscopic to microscopic
3. Scalable high-power actuators
4. Scalable high-density power distribution and storage
5. High-strength materials

Why would anyone want to build one of these things? Also when can we expect these highly dexterous robots to hit the assembly line? To find the answers to these and many other questions I’m sure you may have you’ll have to check out this site.

Also it might be of interest to some as to why I posted this. Well… I don’t know; it just seemed cool.

You know that on Friday afternoons you just feel like wasting a little time. Well, this will do just that! I stumbled onto this little Flash game that is so absolutely simple, yet so intriguing. You start with a pyramid of blocks. Just click somewhere within the field of view and block will shoot from the right and collide with… whatever. The animation uses some decent physics so block tumbling ensues and the next thing you know you’ve wasted half an hour knocking over blocks. Fun stuff! Click the image to get to the game.

For the past month or so I have been extremely saddened by my FireFox browser. I’m running Windows Vista (weeping and gnashing of teeth) and it seems like Firefox would just freeze up from time to time. I had network activity and could actually browse the sites I was attempting to connect to with another browser. This symptom has grown worse and lately is such that I don’t use Firefox at all. I have been using Safari for general purpose browsing and then I would open up IE if I needed to use my Roboform addon to login to a site. What a kluge!

We Have A Solution!

Yay, I am proud to submit that I have found a solution to my Firefox woes. I actually do not know what the problem is, but at least I have a way to fix it. I happened upon it because I needed to plugin my thumb drive. I have Firefox (the portable edition) installed on the thumb drive and so I just happened to launch it from there and started browsing the web. It occurred to me after about an hour that I hadn’t had any freezes! So then I headed over to portableapps.com and downloaded the latest version of Firefox they have there. I have installed this on my PC and added all of my addons. Now I am happy as a lark to have my favorite browser back in the saddle.

I’ve never been one who has been completely up to date with fashion. Since I work from home my dress usually consists of shorts or jeans and a t-shirt. My wife and I were watching the red carpet events for the 2008 Finale of American Idol when Randy Jackson caught my eye. He was wearing a bright red jacket with white trim. Suddenly out of the depths of my childhood a memory was sparked and I thought to myself, “where have I seen that jacket before?” Of course it came to me within minutes… it was Captain Kangaroo! Anyway, I don’t know if anyone else caught the fashion revival but I thought it was quite funny.

So you can see for yourself here is a picture of Randy at the American Idol Finale of 2008 between Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell.

And here is a picture of Captain Kangaroo played by Bob Keeshan.

See what I mean!? It’s the same coat.

Log memory usage using declare and ticks in PHP
Dave Marshall, a web developer living in Hull, England, share a really quick and simple trick to allow you to monitor the memory usage of a PHP script. Thanks, Dave!

Magnify’s Really Cool Video and Image Search Tool for Blogs
Mashable.com brings you a review of blogging tool to help you search for and insert both video and images into your blog. The site is called Magnify.net is pretty cool. Go check it out!

Dash.net Releases Public API
TechCrunch gives the low down on a new programming API for the Dash.net service. This allows you to highlight any geographical information you want from within your program - property listings, speed traps, weather reports, etc. There is a video on the site too!

Well, I usually give you five links on hump day to get you through the week. Alas, I am extremely busy this week, so this is all you get!

There is a new Daily Dilbert Widget out that is… better! At least that what Dilbert says. You can get the widget at http://csharptricks.com/Articles/DailyDilbert.aspx.

Most people running blogs and doing… well, anything on the internet these days use social networks. These could include the likes of Facebook or StumbleUpon and other more blog-centric ones like BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog. One of the interesting things about these networks which I’ve noticed is the use of avatars. Avatars are small pictures that are meant to be a visual representation of you on whichever network you happen to be on. In many cases you can use a Gravatar which attempts to be a global avatar that follows you wherever you happen to be on the internet.

So let me ask you a question. Do you use an avatar that truly is a representation of yourself? Or do you use an avatar that is designed to get a higher click-through rate like the picture shown in this post? I’ve noticed a lot of users who have sexy, half naked women as their avatar, but the username will be something like “Ben” or “George”. Anyway, this struck me as funny that sex in advertising even applies to social network avatars. So for a bonus question… how many times did I mention the word avatar in this post? lol

I am in Minneapolis, MN this week for business so I’m not sure how prolific my posting will be. So I thought I’d just drop in a quick note to say, “Happy Monday!” It’d be happier if I were back in my home office, but oh well. In the mean time you can check out a previous of mine relating to travel and work - Code On The Road? Work Portability Review. Have a great week!