That’s what this does. [delinked to avoid corrupting the index when R comes back]

How did they do that?

Why am I doing this?

3rd Alabama Infantry Division - Captain Zilog - Deegez Sports - It’s the Cat’s Ass - Kimberly Thompson

I used to work at Outpost.com. You probably don’t know what that is, but you might remember their famous gerbil shooting commercial. Cyberian Outpost followed the typical .com e-tailer story arc: startup, hard work, lots of fun, roadshow, IPO, rolling in money, trying to be the “first-mover”, building a new building, expensive advertising, stock options, selling stuff at a loss, increasing sales at the expense of everything, falling stock price, burnout, bankers getting nervous, delisting, layoffs, (near-) bankruptcy, the founder calling it quits, and finally, selling out and sending the letter to all the stockholders saying “we’re really sorry”. They still exist now as a subsidiary of Fry’s.

I went out tonight with some old Outpost cow-orkers, and had a great time catching up and finding out the current state of things over there. I was slightly saddened to find out that my “MUNGER” no longer runs, but glad to hear that BroadVision (which sucks) is really truly dead.

So the list of sites above are all run by current or former Outposters. I’m trying to collect them all, like Pokemon. There’s a few more I know exist but can’t remember the URL to… Didn’t Dr. Jeff have a site, happy happy fun fun or something? I remember it was really funny. Also I’ve heard that Darryl Peck (the founder) has a new site, selling used cars (really!). But I can’t find it.

The coffee shop in Kent also has a site now, but that doesn’t count.

FORMER CYBERIANS: Use Google! Find this post! Chime in in the comments department below!

Man, this game is hard! But all my effort is finally paying off. I am in the top 10 players worldwide in the realm of Expodrine in Progress Quest!

My character, Vigo the Unholy, is wicked cool. I’ve got a +67 Polished Pronged Broadsword, and +49 Cambric Banded Diamond Mail Vambraces. I just finished Exterminating the Pit Fiends, and just now I’m looking for the Puissant Talisman. Soon I’ll be done with Act XLVII, I wonder what turns the plot will take in Act XLVIII?

I just hope my boss doesn’t find out I’ve been playing at work. How else can I make any progress?

UPDATE: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!O!O!!OO!!!!! The Council of Roilwachhs must have met to vote on the rankings right after I posted this, I just sank to 79th place. I must redouble my efforts…

Here’s my own software toy, Ball Universe. I wrote it sometime in 1998, and it has been posted on the web before, back in the days of my Geocities page. (I wonder if that is floating around somewhere in Wayback Machine space? It was at SiliconValley/Way/… some number.)

I find it relaxing and infinitely entertaining. You can do all sorts of different stuff if you care to try. There is no point to it.

I was reminded of this old thing by the software toys from the other day, and by the newish fluidballs hack in XScreenSaver. Here’s a page about the code fluidballs was derived from, called Fluid Simulation. An uncanny resemblance to my Ball Universe, I think.

I’ve always had the idea in the back of my head that I’ll come back to this, and try to use the information in this series of articles on Rigid Body Dynamics to make the physics a little better, and see if I can figure out how to add different shaped objects, and spin. A ball knocking over a stack of blocks would be pleasing.

Gary Burd describes his homebrew TiVo for radio… RadiVo? I think car radios should have something like this built in.

I found him on this list of Microsoft Bloggers.

Am I the first to notice this? It’s not even in Google yet…

By the way, the current risk of terrorist attack is ELEVATED HIGH. Citizens, please act accordingly.

Update: No I am not.

A collection of incredibly tool software toys. You have to check it out: They’re little graphical demos, some interactive, all showing off interesting algorithms and strange behavior. There’s some pretty advanced computer science stuff going on in some of them. And, they all come with source code! …If you consider a binary “.fla” file to be source code. Are there free tools for working with that?

This, and one of XScreenSaver’s newer hacks reminds me of something similar I made a long time ago. Let me see if I can resurrect it and post it here… Check back in a few days.

(via Boing Boing)

Looks like CamWorld may be returning to the world of the living soon. He’s gone back to Siberia and promises to relaunch in February or March.

Despite all the space aliens that appear in science fiction movies and books, we have yet to find conclusive evidence for life, even microbes, anywhere in the universe besides Earth.

Through the early 1990s, research showed that the universe, except for the Earth, was possibly inhospitable to life. However, in the past 10 years, a number of important discoveries indicate that habitable worlds may be much more prevalent than previously thought.

Researchers have found life in very harsh environments on Earth, which expands the possible kinds of places where life might exist. In our solar system, scientists have discovered evidence of currently or previously existing large bodies of water, a key ingredient of life, on Mars and the moons of Jupiter. Astronomers also have begun to find planets outside our solar system, identifying approximately 90 stars with at least one planet orbiting them.

Perhaps the notion that “there’s something out there” is closer to reality than we have imagined.

Amazingly, this is from George W. “fundy” Bush’s 2004 Budget Proposal - NASA Section.

My little project, which right now I’m calling Feed on Feeds, is going well. It’s now achieved practical usability, I’m totally off Feedreader, and am in sync with the world of RSS-enabled sites wherever I go.

Right now it’s totally rudimentary. It has exactly four features: Add a feed. Update all feeds. See all unread items. Mark all items as read.

All I need is an install script to create the DB tables, and some very basic security, and I’ll say it’s ready for GA. Maybe I’ll call the first release version ℵ₀. Then I can call the final version Ω.