2020 Hindsight

Rebecca Blood: 13 ways to save Orkut

Good points, all.

(I haven't signed in to Orkut for days and days since the early days of checking it out. But then again, I've been curtailing lotsa web-based random activity.)

How to do your own 3D anaglyph imaging (red blue)

A special feature on the JPL site. How to make your own red-blue anaglyph images, from dual camera shots all the way through Photoshop post-processing. ('Twould be fun to play with this and post results here.)

Choice words @ World Wide Words

site for word lovers. Michael Quinion writes about international English from a British viewpoint.

One thing the site has is a list of articles on some aspect of the language (including Welsh origins of terms such as balderdash and flummery). And the mystery of the origin of skedaddle .

tentative agreement reached on grocery strike

Just heard this on the radio; The link leads to the MSNBC report. Oh, I hope it's true. Though I customarily shop at Trader Joe's and the latino market around the corner. 70,000 workers have been on strike for the last 4 months.

DENIM - web design/UI prototyping software

very cool. Windows, Linux/Unix, and MacOSX.2. Will hafta check this out! Brought to you by the Group for User Interface Research at Berkeley.

Diana's Secret Video/Audio tapes

MSNBC has a story about how NBC (oh, how those news media companies love that thing called 'synergy') will air 2 hours of broadcast of secret Diana videos and audios.

I learned of it through Richard Hess, the person who did the audio restoration, and who recently presented lotsa cool info at a workshop on audio restoration that I attended.

Note his 'Now It Can Be Told' disclaimer:

Undertaken with the strictest security and the author's representative present. Do not ask me about this, buy the book. As always, I did not retain any copies of this material.

DNA research finds ancestral details

Take a swab of inside your cheek, send it off, and pay the fee to find out your genetic origins.

Scientists know that all people are 99.9 percent alike, genetically. But

it's that other 0.1 percent that can reveal clues, Frudakis says. DNA

Print's scientists identify markers or "signature characteristics" that vary

substantially by race and are passed down through the generations.

That test, which is so far unique, looks for "ancestry informative markers"

that reveal a person's proportions of four ancestries -- European, African,

Native American and East Asian. The company returns a certificate indicating

the consumer's "admixture," identifying the proportion of each ancestry.

Other companies sell more specific tests that compare Y chromosomes

inherited from male ancestors and mitochondrial DNA from females with

databases of DNA from people indigenous to specific continents and regions.

Complete list of Spirit wake-up songs

as provided by Mission Manager Mark Adler to ATSNN (Above Top Secret News Network). [via Periapsis, who may put together a list of Opportunity wake-up songs]

Lost In Translation

Saw Lost In Translation yesterday. Excellent on so many levels. The cross-cultural bits were hilarious, and recalled to mind a site recommended by a friend who at the time was working overseas in Japan: Engrish.com.

Feb 23: Sometimes Management Just Doesn't Get It Day

A friend suggests that today should be known as Sometimes Management Just Doesn't Get It Day.

BTW I have often joked that February 23 should be a holiday

which I call "sometimes management just doesn't get it day".

The first attack on the U.S. mainland since the War of 1812

came Feb. 23, 1942, in the midst of one of President Roosevelt's

fireside chats. A Japanese submarine rose out of the sea at

Goleta, 12 miles north of Santa Barbara, fired 13 shells at

the Ellwood oil field and caused $500 in damage. Oil field

supervisors handed out pitchforks and told workers to defend

the beach. [Source: LA Times article, Nov 2002]