Who bought whom? Our trip to Disneyland this weekend might be interesting. I’m looking forward to riding “Licensed Users of the Caribbean”. 
Disney acquires Pixar: The aftermath
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Author Archives: Mike
A high-performance, high-economy biodiesel car
This is the kind of car that I would really want. It goes 0-60 in 4 sec and gets 50 MPG. The kicker is that it wasn’t developed by anybody in Detroit, Japan, or Europe. It was designed and built by five students in a Philadelphia High School auto shop. I’m starting to get really annoyed that cars generally get no better millage today then 30 years ago. It makes you think that there really is an oil-company/auto industry conspiracy going on.
What would happen if Microsoft redesigned the iPod?
This is a funny video spoofing the difference between Apple and Microsoft packaging styles. The part that gets me is that whoever did this really paid attention to Microsoft’s design cues as the end result does smack of a typical MS product box (in the extreme of course).
A new member of the family
The MacBook Pro I ordered way back in January showed up in Southern California yesterday. It made pretty good time taking only five days from Shanghai, China to Murrieta. In fact, it would have been delievered Sunday if they did deliveries on Sunday.
How is it? Fast. Very fast. I read about how Universal binary programs (those built for both PowerPC and Intel) are, of course, much faster than PowerPC ones emulated in Rosetta so I have kept my eyes peeled for Universal versions of the apps I use.
Before getting to work on it, I copied the contents of the hard drive for a backup and then copied all the user data from our PowerBook. I’ll get everything tricked out as best as possible and then make the switch tonight.
Now that leaves me with the old G4 iMac and the PowerBook I need to clean up and get listed on eBay. Need a Mac, let me know and I’ll make you a deal to save me the trouble.
Palm update
I was able to get Becky’s palm working in relatively short order. The only problem was with the iSync connector for the Palm software. The Palm software is installed with incorrect permissions so the iSync connector can’t install. I was able to resolve it by following the tip on Mac OS X Hints (I used a less brute force method but this led me in the right direction). Once resolved, it synced without problem and now she can see my schedule and I can see hers.
I also got a copy of Bible+ which is a free Palm bible reader. It works quite well and even allows a split screen to compare two different translations. The only think I haven’t yet gotten is a copy of the NASB translation as it is commercial and I need to purchase it.
Geeks are better dads
Growing up as a geek, life was not always easy. I had my fair share of ridicule and scorn, but generally came out of it unscathed. None-the-less, I’m enjoying that more and more people are realizing that we weren’t mistaken to take that road in life. We tend to make a better living, are better lovers, and now dads.
One Billion Mazes
For the maze solving craving in all of us. You can drill down to any of 1,000,000,000 mazes on this site. That’s right, one billion (with a b). For me, the resulting link downloaded a file without a pdf extension, but adding it made it come right up. Most of the time, it should just pop up in your browser if you have Acrobat installed.
If they ever do a site with one billion sudoku puzzles, then I would be in trouble.
Pick a theme, any theme (almost)
In the sidebar of the front page, there’s now a popup that lets you select which theme you would like to view this blog with. The cool thing is that it is a per user (per browser, actually) setting so everyone can see something different. If you have a theme you’d like me to add, just let me know.
What? How many computers?
I just saw a post on slashdot asking what people’s first computer was. Me? That’s easy, an Apple ][+ that my dad bought for the family during the summer of 1983 (if I remember correctly). The true test of the geek, though, is if he (or she) can name all the computers they’ve owned. Let me see if I’m up to that challenge:
- Apple ][+
- Apple ][e
- Atari 130XE
- "Fat" Mac
- Mac Plus
- LC
- LC III
- Quadra 605
- Power Mac 7200
- iBook
- iBook (Dual USB)
- iMac G4
- Powerbook 15"
- Mac mini
- Mac Book Pro 15"
To be honest I think I may have missed one or two in the middle but man, that’s a handful, huh? Granted that’s over 20 years so I’m not too out of control, right? Right?!
Sandia National Labs going to save surfing?
While I grew up in Encinitas, CA, I never became a surfer (shocking, I know). Sure, I did some boogie boarding and body surfing, but was never good enough to even consider being a poser. I did appreciate the surfing culture and was saddened when I read last year that Clark Foam was ceasing production of surfboard blanks, the foam core of a surfboard that is shaped into the final board.
While there is some debate that Orange County simply wanted that business out of their area, the fact is the foam used Toluene Di Isocynate (TDI), a chemical that caused some environmental concerns. Rather than fight, they are likely going to stop production. The interesting part is that Clark Foam produced the blanks used in 90% of surfboards in the U.S. Needless to say the surfing community is concerned.
The twist of the story came yesterday with Sandia National Laboratories offering to help. They have developed a foam used to protect the electronics in nuclear missles. It doesn’t use TDI and they are working to license it to surfboard manufacturers. That is a colaboration I never would have guessed.