Technically Speaking

The first review is in, and by the sound of it, the Return of the King is a smash hit. Digital Theatre is boasting that they have the first review. Here is a taste:

Not that Jackson added things that rivaled the genius of Tolkien, but he went through the book with a highlighter and streamlined the epic so that the emotions come through clearer and it hit me over the head like a Dwarven hammer. Return has a brilliant way of contrasting innocence and beauty with overt power and truly ugly acts. The theme is set up with a beautiful documentation of Smeagol’s brutal journey beginning with a fishing trip with Deagol. Jackson sets up this premise with simple whimsical country folk who go from fishing on a lush pond to brutal murder.

But unlike other movies that house awful brutality, Return contextualizes it in a way that makes it in no way gratuitous. I contrast this film with steaming turds of post-modernity like Kill Bill and Matrix Revolutions. All three films are loaded with battles, heroes and darkness, but Return gives them something real to fight for friendship, family and the meek who confound the intelligent elite who corner the market on overt power.

Does this get your juices flowin’ ?

It’s the same trailer though. Apple Trailers has a copy of it this time. You can choose your resolution and all. Of course, for me, I have to have it at its biggest and baddest setting..

Make your choice!

MovableType.org has released a fix for the mt-send-entry.cgi script (”Email this to a friend” functionality) that spammers have been exploiting. Be sure to go and download this update.

Get it here

The last time I did a little piece on the iPod, MacSurfer.com got whiff of the scent and sent me an InstaLanche of visitors. The power of the electronic word can be awesome at times. Well, I’m not sure if I will be noticed similarly for this post, but that’s okay. I found, on the NY Times site, a story about the guts of an iPod. The story is very long….Now you guys hear me say this quite a bit. The story isn’t that long but it has much that I don’t really care about. Give me the facts and then I’ll move on. This story has a lot of fluff which makes it long….but it eventually gets to what the title says it is about.

Inside was a neat stack of core components. First, the power source: a slim, squarish rechargeable battery made by Sony. Atop that was the hard disk — the thing that holds all the music files. At the time, small hard disks were mostly used in laptops, or as removable data-storage cards for laptops. So-called 2.5-inch hard disks, which are protected by a casing that actually measures about 2 3/4 inches by 4 inches, were fairly commonplace, but Toshiba had come up with an even smaller one. With a protective cover measuring just over 2 inches by 3 inches, 0.2 inches thick and weighing less than two ounces, its 1.8-inch disk could hold five gigabytes of data — or, in practical terms, about a thousand songs. This is what Apple used.

On top of this hard disk was the circuit board. This included components to turn a digitally encoded music file into a conventional audio file, the chip that enables the device to use FireWire both as a pipe for digital data and battery charging and the central processing unit that acts as the sort of taskmaster for the various components. Also here was the ball-bearing construction underlying the scroll wheel. (The newer iPod models got slimmer by replacing that wheel with a solid-state version and by using a smaller battery.) It is, as Carey notes, an admirable arrangement.

There is more to this so if you are interested then go check out the article.

I searching through my logs, this morning, and guess what I find? Yes, of course, I find a link from avp-movie. I follow the link expecting to find out where the connection to my site is and I find nothing. That is nothing in the way of a link to my site; it’s ok for I found something else. At this site avp-movie I found links to the teaser and the featurette. The teaser is a nice little hype builder, but if you want to get some info on the movie then you need to checkout the featurette. The featurette is the same as what I posted earlier, Alien Vs. Predator — AVP. So enjoy the footage, I’m back to the logs.

With the use of Pentagon funding, university researchers have programmed Segway robots that can open doors, navigate obstacles and chase soccer balls all under their own power. No human guidance.

Researchers say potential applications for the robots include performing search missions on the battlefield, transporting injured soldiers to safety, or following humans around while hauling their gear.

This military program has provided 15 Segways to universities and labs throughout the country. One important area of focus for this project is the development the software that will be the brains behind the robot. The software, called Mobile Autonomous Robot Software, is a open source program that is very compatible with the Segways platform.

“One of the focuses of this program is to develop software that would allow the robotic system to learn, so it can better perceive its outside environment,” Walker said.

The Segway can make much tighter turns than four-wheeled robotic vehicles currently used in the military and by researchers, and its high centre of gravity means cameras and sensors can be placed a metre or more above the ground _ a height more suitable for interacting with humans.

The scooters were modified by software engineers at Segway so they could be controlled by laptop computers. The researchers then loaded them up with cameras, sensors, communications gear and other gadgets.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a Segway robot that can navigate hallways and open doors.

So far it looks like the research teams are coming at this with different goals; At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, they are trying to make the Segway robot work along-side its human partner; At University of Southern California, they are working to make the Segway robot a pack mule; At a University of Pennsylvania lab, they are working to use The Segway robot as a locator that can communicate its findings to others. If all of these projects are successful, the Segway robot can become a very versatile instrument for war.

Thanks Michael

* Ozguru - Points out a MT Vulnerability. I came across this same issue while I was taking a walk through the blogosphere. I guess I will have to take some precautions soon.

* McGehee - SpamBots watchout, McGehee gives us a heads up as to who these spammers are.

* mtpolitics - Theories on global warming.

* Ron - Robots thinking for themselves. I can’t help but think of the Terminator is becoming a reality.

* Kate - Brings back the orgasmatron. This has been around for some time now, but it hasn’t prospered much. The inventor has had trouble getting orgasm challenged women to try the device. I wonder why.

* Chris - Do you know who George Gamow is? Well you can find out from Chris as well as a few other special people.

* Charles - If you are looking for an aggregator that will work seemlessly with Mozilla, Charles has got your ticket.

* 2lmc - Shows us that too much customization isn’t really a good thing.

* Beth - An impromptu review of the Canon Elph S200.

* Tony - Hard drives that offend. I’m starting to wonder if it is true that there are people that sit around and try to figure out ways to sue people or just stir up trouble for the fun of it.

* Michael - I’m not one for computer games, but this article about Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon is making me wish different.

* Rob - iTunes cracked? Will there ever be a technique that can’t be broken?

A new tool for precision cutting, the plasma needle, created by physicists and bioengineers, may change the way that we handle diseased tissue and sterilizing wounds.The plasma needle is a tungsten needle 5 centimeters long and 0.3 millimeters across. By applying a high frequency voltage to this needle the gas pass through it ionizes, giving us the plasma.

Plasmas are ionized gases that are routinely used in materials processing and the semiconductor industry. However, the temperatures in most plasmas are so high that they would immediately kill living cells. Eva Stoffels and colleagues at the Eindhoven University of Technology have now found a way to overcome this problem.

Stoffels and co-workers made their device by applying a high frequency voltage to a sharp tungsten needle 5 centimetres long and 0.3 millimetres across. At the sharpest point of the needle, the electric field is high enough to locally ionize the gas but, because the plasma region is very small - less than 1 millimetre across - the temperature remains low. Moreover, the small size of the plasma means that researchers can precisely address local areas of the sample.

This needle can be used to separate the good tissue from the bad. It is even suggested that good tissue can be removed and placed into a wounded area in an effort to accelerate the healing. The technique is new and there are ideas that are in the works for this new technology, but with an instrument of this precision, a lot of procedures can stand to benefit immensely.

“As well as simple cell removal, the technique could also be used to accelerate wound healing by transferring cells into the injured area,” Stoffels told PhysicsWeb. “Furthermore, the plasma source can selectively kill bacteria without damaging body cells and could thus be used to combat infection.”

The group now hopes to improve the precision of its device by developing a scanning probe to include in the needle. It also plans to equip the instrument with a “smart sensor” capable of detecting surface irregularities in real tissue. “This is only a beginning,” said Stoffels. “However, our results give us confidence that plasma will become ‘the surgery of the future’.”

CluelessMailers.org has put together a detailed map detailing the companies and organizations that either provide your email information to spammers or send you spam themselves. I was surprised to see a lot of the names on the map. In particular, Countrywide.com was a big dissappointment. This is a company that I have my mortgage through. Take a look at the map, I’m sure you will raise an eyebrow at a few of the compaines listed here.

Spamdemic Map

Source: LockerGnome

Lockergnome has the scoop on the latest version of MyIE2

A browser based on the Internet Explorer engine, MyIE2 takes the best elements of IE and marries them to more advanced features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and customizable skins. Some of our favorite features include the ability to set up bookmark groups, such as news or blog sites, that open on start-up; the ability to autoscroll Web pages without the mouse; and pop-up and content filters for blocking ads and specific content formats you don’t want. Version
0.9.10 of MyIE2 has been released.

Humans?”>intriguing question - Is the human species sustainable?. According to a statistical device, known as “confidence limits”, that measures what the sustainable norm should be for species populations, humans are well outside the norm for sustainability. In fact, we are 1000 times numerous than what we should be.

“Our study found that when we compare ourselves to otherwise similar species, usually other mammals of our same body size, for example, we are abnormal and the situation is unsustainable,” said Charles Fowler, co-author of the paper and a lead researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fowler likened the concept of normality to body temperature, where measurements can fall above or below the accepted average. A temperature of 105 degrees F, for example, is considered abnormal and unsustainable. In his paper, Fowler and colleague Larry Hobbs argue that the human population, now measured at approximately 6 billion, falls outside the range of sustainability, which puts us at risk.

For us to be in the acceptable norm our population should be around 6 million people. This number seems a bit small to me. I would admit that we are overpopulated, but 1000 times overpopulated, pleeaasseeee! But on the other hand, how many other land species have a total population of 6 million? How many species come close to numbers in population? If our number are that far out of whack, what would it take to correct this situation?
(more…)

There is a story today on Slashdot, the geek news site, that the Ritz single-use digital camera has been hacked. The $10.99 two megapixel (CMOS) fixed focal length camera with no LCD was announced in July and carries the ‘Dakota Digital’ name but is made by ‘Pure Digital Technologies’ of San Francisco. Software has been wirtten which allows the pictures to be downloaded to a computer using USB and printed without consent from Ritz. We said back in July that we didn’t think this was a good thing for consumers and now its not good news for Ritz.

Today I am trying to follow links from one site, through many sites, leading back to my own. I have know no idea where I will be going or what I will see, but I expect it to be quite a journey. I’m going to start with one of the greatest linkers I know - Jay Solo. Perhaps this will get me off to a good start.

HERE WE GO…

Digital Cameras - Jay is looking for a new camera. Any one have a suggestion for him?

Jay links to Acidman

GO FIGURE - Acidman talks about a nearly impossible feat. Well maybe it’s just a rare feat.

Acidman links to Michael Moore

Thanksgiving Critters - An amusing picture for Thanksgiving.

Michael Moore links to Jane

Australian Defends Jackson - More news on the Michael Jackson circus.

Jane links to Marie

Top 10 Signs That..

.. You’ve Eaten Too Much. - Keep this in mind when you are eating today.

Marie links to Rori

Hot Ken - Rori has the hots for Ken. Yeah, its that Ken.

Rori links to Gothamist

The Simple Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie - More on Paris Hilton and uh, Nicole Richie

Gothamist links to Paul Frankenstein

SPAM Warning - This is something I will have to look into. Spammers are getting quite creative.

Paul Frankenstein links to smitten

not for the faint at heart - I thought that I watched my logs like a hawk. This is beyond my attention span. As I browse this site I find it to be very interesting, so I am adding it to my BlogRoll.

smitten links to Diablo

Well, Pussy Ranch is an interesting site but unfortunately, I’ll have to back up and try another route. If you have the time, check out the photos link here. This girl proves exhibitionism is alive and well.

Trying again…..
smitten links to Karen

TravelBlogue - The world through the eyes of some travelers.

Karen links to TroubledDiva

Miscellaneous bloggery. - I’m so far out of my known blogosphere. It is good to see that link love continues to make the blogosphere grow.

TroubledDiva links to Plasticbag.org

Off to Norfolk… - Pictures of scenery.

Plasticbag.org links to BlackBeltJones

Them++: Cybermen in the networked city - What is a Cyberman?

BlackBeltJones links to 2lmc

Outrage at Girl Scouts who like hunting for beaver - Believe it or not, it isn’t what you think it is.

2lmc links to antimega

pork martini - Never heard of it, but I like pork and I like martinis…

antimega links to Joi Ito

Creative Commons Moving Image Contest deadline approaching - Should I enter?

Joi Ito links to BoingBoing

Streaming obsession du jour: LynnFox’s vid for FC Kahuna’s "Hayling" - Check out the funky dreamscapes.

BoingBoing links to Geisha Asobi * Geisha Asobi doesn’t have any permalinks *

BREAST TEST REAL or FAKE ? - Being the technical person that I am, rest assured that I scored high on this so-called test. (Actually I was only half right…and they don’t tell you where you went wrong.)

Geisha Asobi links to J walk Blog * Geisha Asobi doesn’t have any permalinks *

Soup In The Movies - My wife loves soup. This should interest her greatly.

J walk Blog links to Venomous Kate * I know Kate LOVES…LOVES… Did you hear me? LOVES martinis, but does she love Pork?

Sidebar: You all don’t know how hard it was to join all of these links to get back to my neighborhood. You really need to give it a try. Once I saw Joi Ito, I knew I would be able to get back. I’m not there yet but I wanted to put this note here. Hopefully I can get back to my site in only a few more links.

If You Build It, They Will Come - I think she spelled “come” incorrectly.

Venomous Kate slinks to Tiger

My only comment is I cannot comment - Ahhh, No Comment

Tiger links to ME

OK now! That was a tough challenge. I’m happy to see that my theory is correct. Maybe we can figure out the degrees of separation on the web. It would have to be less than six. What do you all think? Venomous Kate, I would love to see you try this exercise. I’m sure it should be a bit easier for you.

UPDATE: Now that I am a bit rested, I went through this chain-link searching for typos, misspelled words, and wrong words. I think I have it all sorted out. I haven’t double checked the links though. I’m afraid that I can’t do this thoroughly, so please let me know if I messed one up.

MSNBC’s Newsweek has a lengthy preview article on some of the happenings behind the scenes of ROTK. I am posting this to start the hype going on the last movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Here is an excerpt:

“The Return of the King” also delivers spectacular battle sequences - which probably goes without saying, given Jackson’s lifelong fascination with warfare. (Tell him you’ve seen an early screening of “Master and Commander,” and he’ll nod excitedly and ask, “How are the battles?” Tell him you’ve seen “The Last Samurai,” and he’ll nod excitedly and ask, “How are the battles?”) In “Return of the King,” the enormous cast of good guys helps wage what WETA Digital’s Jim Rygiel refers to as “World War Zero” against Sauron’s orcs and trolls. The Battle of Pelennor Fields outdoes even the Helm’s Deep section of “The Two Towers” in scale, and it resonates far more because the characters have become richer and because the story is now filled with stark, Shakespearean familial dramas. Families are always more interesting than Good and Evil.

Yes, there are visually arresting moments: The elephantine creatures called Mumakil charging like tanks. The evil orcs overrunning the bone-white citadel of Minas Tirith. Aragorn and an army of ghosts on the offensive. But this time, there are just as many emotionally arresting moments: Faramir (David Wenham) leading a suicide mission just to prove his worth to his father, Denethor (John Noble), who’s deranged with grief after the death of a more beloved son. Eowyn, disguised as a soldier and trying to protect her wounded uncle King Theoden (Bernard Hill) from the monstrous Witch King: “I will kill you if you touch him!”

This is something I didn’t know, the glacier ice of Kilimanjaro have shrunk by 80% between 1912 and 2000. The cause isn’t global warming, it man that is the culprit again. The deforestation of forest at the base of the mountain exposes the glacier the heat and winds of the region. The trees exhaled moisture that replenished the glacier but that natural shield no longer exists. Prof. Euan Nisbet, a Zimbabwean scientist now working at the University of London, may have a solution.

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