Category: Of Interest

Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Woot! Wine!

Woot has a new angle, they are selling wine. Yes, you heard correctly, http://wine.woot.com/”>. For connoisseurs of the grape, this could be an excellent way to acquire some fine wine at fine prices.

For those that don’t know, Woot lists 1 product per day at midnight Central time (GMT -6) and sells it until they are out of stock. It might be junk or it might be an iPod $60 cheaper than anywhere else you could find one. Often the great stuff sells out in the first half hour of listing. Last I checked, Woot is affliated with Overstock.com.

What is woot.wine? We were all pretty despondent when we couldn’t work out the logistics for massage.woot.com. We started to question the very idea of spinning off another new dot-woot. But then woot.com offered our Rinfrescante wine and we were positively deluged with inquiries from friends and family pleading for more (of course the cheapskates wanted more – they got it for free). This was enough “market research” for us. We reactivated our wine-industry hookup and wine.woot.com was conceived.
…
So every week, wine.woot.com will uncork a sweet new wine deal.
Can I really buy wine on the Internet? Thanks to our esteemed Supreme Court, recent and dramatic changes in how wine can be sold and delivered in the U.S. allow wine.woot.com to bring wine directly from the winery to you.
What states can you ship to?Thanks to stick-in-the-mud buzzkilling state legislators, wine may only be delivered to the following states:

* Arizona (expect longer delivery times)
* California
* Colorado
* Connecticut
* District of Columbia
* Florida
* Idaho
* Illinois
* Indiana (expect longer delivery times)
* Iowa
* Louisiana
* Massachusetts (expect longer delivery times)
* Michigan
* Missouri
* Minnesota
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey (expect longer delivery times)
* New Mexico
* New York
* North Carolina
* North Dakota
* Ohio
* Oregon
* South Carolina
* Texas
* Vermont
* Virginia
* Washington
* West Virginia
* Wisconsin
* Wyoming

If your state’s not on the list, no wine for you! Take it up with your state assembly person. We comply with all federal, state, and local laws in providing this wine.

Of course Tennessee is not on the list. We wouldn’t want to lose our reputation as being a bunch of backwards hillbillies. Now whar’s my shine?!

Little sidenote, The Tennessee General Assembly website looks like one of the politicans had his highschool age child build the site. "Pages Created and Maintained by: Legislative Information Services"

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Pee and Poo are now available internationally

A Christmas or two ago I wanted to buy some Kiss & Bajs (that’s Swedish for Pee & Poo) as a gift for someone but they didn’t ship overseas. I even looked into having a friend from Europe buy some and send it to me. This crappy market seems to be growing and as consumers we are gaining choices in how to gift someone with excrement. I have yet to find a website that offers to deliver a flaming paper to someone’s doorstep.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Hanso Foundation Updated

The Hanso Foundation has been updated. "Mental Health Appeal || a drive for a better future"

The Hanso Foundation’s Mental Health Appeal is a world-spanning system of clinics seeking revolutionary new treatments. It is nothing short of a crusade to rid us all of the spectre of debilitating illnesses that truly hold hostage the human race’s drive to a better future.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Cars worth the watch!

Saw Cars (offical site) over the weekend and was very impressed! The storyline has been done before and some of the actors are comically (at least to me) typecast playing the same characters from their other movies but it is great story, unbelievable animation, and a good time. The brothers from Car Talk make a cameo which I found very entertaining since I periodically catch Car Talk on NPR (my favorite NPR show remains Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me).

I found the opening sequence so unbelieveably realistic, for a moment, I questioned whether or not they filmed a real car to start. This movie used 2300 CPU years which means your home computer would have had to be running since 300 b.c. to make this movie; granted, your home computer would have taken much longwe since it probably doesn’t have enough processing power to begin with. Pixar overstressed NFS and had to replace it with SAN.

…the NFS, Brandeau confirmed that it was woefully inadequate for the demands of the new movie. "A gigabyte of memory on our file server heads was nowhere near good enough," he said, adding that Pixar needed something in the region of 32 Gbytes.

… Brandeau and his team found salvation in a SAN. … Pixar eventually opted to replace the NFS with a SAN based on an EMC CX700 box, linked to Dell Linux servers running parallel file system software from startup Ibrix.
[Source]

For those that haven’t followed, eons ago The Muppet Movie ran jokes during their credits. In X-Men:The Last Stand, the credits started running and the bulk of the theatre left. Those in the know remained seated for a bonus scene after the credits. (I am not issuing spoilers at this time but will advise staying to the very end). Cars (IMBD) did something similar running some footage during credits then it went to just credits and most people left. Cars also has a bonus scene at the very end.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Today’s Deer in the Headlights (yes, there’s a pun there)

This is mesmerizing yet somehow very disturbing. I can’t tell if she’s singing non-sense or if that’s something European or Asian. This deserves a look simply from a technical appreciation for the quality of the animation. Playing Zork and Leisure Suit Larry so many years ago one could have never imagined such imagery would ever exist. The animation is, um, so smooth! This girl needs a bra (nws first referenced here). With all that said here is a link to something that is best with sound and is possibly work questionable. Oh, and I promise you are going to have two reactions: 1) You are going to stare mouth agape wondering why you continue to stare and not click away, and 2) you are going to say, "those things really bounce!" I was most impressed with the realism of the thighs and hips.

Update: I keep returning to this thing because the scallion is bugging me! (yes, it’s the scallion!) What does it mean?! Why take such a good animation and ruin it with such a horrid sprite? Something needs to be done about the clothing error on the lower left left too. At one point in the animation of the cloth goes into her leg.

On a side note, can anyone identify the music? I want a copy!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

FDA does something really good!

Young ladies, time to get your paps smeared!

The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it has approved the first vaccine designed to prevent cancer. [source]

Bonus!

Gardasil also blocks infection by two other HPV types that cause about 90% of genital warts cases
…
Some questions remain about the best age for immunization with Gardasil, although the consensus is that girls should be vaccinated before becoming sexually active.

See also The Washington Post:

The vaccine, which works by building immunity against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, was found to be effective in preventing almost three-quarters of all cervical cancers.
…
The vaccine, called Gardisil and developed by Merck & Co., was approved for girls and women ages 9 and 26. It is most useful if given to younger girls, because the vaccine is ineffective once the virus — which is very common among sexually active people — is already present.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Sync your browser settings

Do you leap between computers? A bookmark in Firefox one day at work and a bookmark the next day on the wife’s computer? Remember being at a website but don’t know which computer you were using? Google introduces another tool. Google’s Browser Sync ends your frustrations by keeping all browser information between multiple computers the same. It even claims to remember your open tabs!

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

Give into Google. Resistence is futile!


Posted on by — Leave a comment

Miniature battles

RC battleships

I’ve dreamed of doing stuff like this for years.

We built and sail 1/144 scale Radio-Controlled Model Warships from WWI and WWII which are armed with Co2 powered cannon and armoured in thin balsa. These vessels engage each other in combat on ponds across Australia, endeavoring to punch holes in each others hull with their cannon until one of the vessels sinks or flees. Yes, the cannon really do fire, the vessels really do take damage and sink, and yes, it is legal in all states and territories of Australia without a gun license.

Link courtesy of Make.