Spectreman

Thanks to the wonders of online video, I ran into the opening clip of one of my childhood heroes, Spectreman.

Sometimes too much technology and 3D graphics just gets in the way. This is a classic of the 70′s Japanese school of visual effects. Take that Pixar!

Server in the house

Finally a book that geek parents can relate to.

Alas, it’s just advertising material from Microsoft, promoting its Windows Home Server. But at least it’s refreshing.

Back to Sea World

Aside from a few days taking a break from it all, the month of August has been all about hard work at Slife Labs, preparing Slife 2.0 for Windows and also an update to Slife Teams. But August has also been the month of the Olympics.

I have to say I am impressed by the NBC coverage of these Games. What’s on TV at prime time is not bad and they’ve even shortened the athlete’s personal lives (drama) segments. But what has been absolutely superb is NBC’s online presence. It’s possible to watch anything, live or recorded, from the comfort of your office chair. I am sure productivity all over the world has gone down this month.

So, congrats to NBC for pulling this one off, despite the monstrous demand. There are only two days of the Games left and by now, Michael Phelps must be heading back to his tank.

The event I am excited about the most though, is the very last one: the marathon. There are some incredible runners in Beijing and this is going to be fun to watch, despite the fact that the Olympic marathon seems more like a lottery than other big long-distance races.

Crayon Deluxe

There’s so much of the same in the world of software and web apps these days that is really hard to be wow-ed by anything new. Well, check out this new game, called Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Pretty cool, huh?

(via Jackson Fish Market)

The Gas Pump Icon Myth

Maybe you bought a new car and are re-fueling it for the first time. Or you are returning a rental car and need to fill up the tank. No matter what, it always happens – you need to figure out if the gas cap is on the right side of the car or the left.

Well, maybe those days are over. Rumor has it that your fuel gauge indicates whether you need to choose the left or right pump. How? Check this out:

The tiny gas pump icon in you dashboard holds the answer! If the hose is on the left side of the pump, your gas cap is on the left side of your car. If the hose is on the right side of the pump, your gas cap is on the right side of the car.

Now for the not-so-good news. I wish this was true. It makes a whole lot of sense for this to be true, but I can’t confirm it. I read about it on a Brazilian blog about cars and the contributor claims that this is true, but perhaps only for Brazilian cars? I am not sure.

How can we test the validity of this claim? There’s only one way, we need to do some research. Does the gas pump icon in your dashboard correctly indicate where your gas cap is? The world needs to know!

Anecdotal Premonition

A while back, between 1998 and 2001, I used to write and save notes referring to things I read in the newspaper and found interesting. Over time, I ended up with a small database of anecdotes. Nothing too deep or too long. It was mostly a copy and paste job really.

I didn’t have a real reason for doing this, other than to keep a record of stuff I thought would be fun and useful to remember one day. Well, today was the day. I’ve been re-organizing things in my computer, motivated by the move to Atlanta, and ran into my newspaper notes folder. Since I was at it, I took the time to read some of them.

Here’s one from 2001:

“A few companies are working on a glass window with the capability to clean itself whenever it rains or water is thrown at it. The glass windows are coated with titanium oxide which supposedly prevents the formation of stains when water with particles of dirt runs dows the glass.”

And another, dated March 23rd 2001:

“Mir came crashing down last night here in the US. A few fishing boats refused to leave the area in the South Pacific where the remaining pieces of Mir was supposed to fall because according to them, “the tuna is biting”.”

Finally a note from April 1st 2001, indicative of things to come:

“Afghanistan is in pieces, because of the extremely aggressive ideology of Taliban, a religious group that controls the country to a very large extent and also because of all the UN embargos, led by the US, which claims that Afghanistan is home of a guy who is the number one suspect in the bombing of several US embassies.”

Banana 2.0

Some guy is pretending to be Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and is imitating Michael’s linguistic style to talk about foods instead of new social networking and Web 2.0 sites. Today he posted about the “banana”.

“Fruits are nothing new. Over the last few years, countless varieties have been launched… strawberries, blueberries, oranges, cantaloupe, grapes—I could go on. But all of these fruits have been very Food 1.0, requiring washing, peeling, cutting, and other helper applications. I like fruit on my cereal, but, wow, does it have to be so difficult?

Well, my sources just moments ago filled me on a new fruit, the banana, that has all the killer features other fruits have been lacking, and which I’ve been calling for for some time now.

Bananas require no special gizmos to get down to business. Just peel back the conveniently hard nub at the top and get instant access to the tasty fruit inside.

This might get very popular very fast.”

That’s pretty good. I love it!

Wyoming for July 4th

Andrea and I headed to the mountains for July 4th. We spent some time in Laramie and Casper. Good quality time with the family and just very relaxing overall. Here’s one of the things I did:

I hadn’t gone fishing in many many years. Caught some trout, three if I am not mistaken. But they were too small, so we just tossed them back in the water. But we caught enough fish for dinner that day.

I really thought that I wasn’t going to hear from the iPhone in Wyoming, but then Andrea’s brother showed up with one, so I got to play with it for a bit. Very nice design and package, extremely slick all around. But the keyboard is awkward, maybe it would get better after a few days.

Burritos

My political post of the month.