I can remember when an 80 megabyte hard drive was an extravagant, four-figure upgrade to a computer. I remember being blown away in 1998 when I learned that Microsoft’s TerraServer project contained one terabyte of data. Today, I’ve got three terabytes (that’s ~3,000 gigabytes) of storage scattered among a handful of internal and external drives,… Continue reading Stalking the wily petabyte
Newsflash: Motorists are hazardous to bicyclists’ health
This post at the Freakonomics blog cites a Canadian study that found that 90% of accidents involving bicyclists in its sample were caused by “clumsy or inattentive driving” by motorists. The only surprise about this is that the author is apparently surprised, writing: When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem… Continue reading Newsflash: Motorists are hazardous to bicyclists’ health
Bugged
I seem to be in a photographic rut lately, but the insect world has presented some opportunities too good to ignore. I spotted this unknown variety of shield or stink bug on one of the red-tipped photinia in our front flowerbed. I browsed in vain through more than 500 photos via Google’s image search without… Continue reading Bugged
Heavy Backyard Air Traffic
The bees were working over the yellow bells (aka esperanza) in my father-in-law’s backyard, and so I hauled out the camera on Saturday to try to capture some of the action. I was so focused (pun intended) on the bee leaving the bloom in the following photo that I didn’t notice the one that’s on… Continue reading Heavy Backyard Air Traffic
Mantid on Board
We brought a nice lantana back with us from Fort Stockton, a birthday gift for my wife from my brother and sister-in-law. After it was situated on the back porch, Debbie called me to take a photo of what might have been a stowaway on the trip home. He’s wet because she sprayed him with… Continue reading Mantid on Board
Link Love
Ran across a few interesting links I think you might enjoy as you contemplate the wonder that is Friday. Now, about that cover… is a post from the author of the book by the same name, and it deals with how the quite striking cover of his book came to be. The photo shown on… Continue reading Link Love
So you think you can bicycle?
I didn’t know there was such a thing as an Indoor Cycling competition, but it’s an amazing thing to behold. What’s even more impressive is that the guys in this video are doing these stunts on full-sized bikes instead of the little BMX-style bikes you normally see used for such cycling “gymnastics.” (If they want… Continue reading So you think you can bicycle?
DJs of the Future
Via Geeks are Sexy:
Woofer is for Wimps
The Twitterverse is abuzz about Woofer, the tongue-in-cheek “macroblogging” service that so closely resembles Twitter as to make IP lawyers walk funny, and which requires a minimum of 1,400 characters (vs. Twitter’s 140 character maximum). Most of the woofs thus far seem to be either randomly typed characters, or passages from famous books, like Moby… Continue reading Woofer is for Wimps
Jurassic Flowerbed
I stepped out the front door around noon to change some light bulbs and heard a rustling in the flowerbed. Given the number of rattlesnake sightings in our neighborhood this year, I was in no mood to assume the noise came from a beneficent source, so I tip-toed over…and spotted the fellow in the following… Continue reading Jurassic Flowerbed