Nice information visualization taken by montioring RSS feeds from various news sources and analyzing the content to find the top 100 words and representing them in a 10 x 10 grid of photos.
The www.tenbyten.org site has a nice flash control to render and navigate the content.
Very nice galleries, vids, and other great Hubble shots at hubblesite.orgthat I ought to get onto my HTPC to compliment Celestia.
Purdue University scientists say extreme weather events, such as floods and heat waves, may increase in frequency and severity during the next century. 
"The more detail we look at with these models, the more dramatic the climate's response is." - Noah S. Diffenbaugh, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, Purdue Climate Change Research Center.
"Critics have complained that climate models lack sufficient spatial detail to be trusted. In terms of looking at the whole contiguous United States, we've quadrupled the spatial detail and, as a result, it appears that climate change is going to be even more dramatic than we previously thought. Of course, we can never be completely certain of the future, but it's clear that as we consider more and more detail, the picture of future climate change becomes more and more severe."
James Irvine Garden, Little Tokyo
The James Irvine Garden in Little Tokyo tells a story that's worth hearing. But first you have to find the space, on a recessed plot at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo. Take the lobby elevator to the basement and walk through an institutional-looking hallway to the doors that open to the garden. The painstakingly landscaped Japanese-style sanctuary is hidden just enough so that it's often empty.
Cross its perfectly manicured lawn, traverse two wooden bridges and you'll discover the fountainhead. The spring represents "the immigrants coming from Japan," says Robert Hori, director of board and donor relations at the center. Then the stream divides.
"One path is a turbulent, chilly path, and the other moves slowly, contains more placid waters," says Hori. "These are the two sides of the immigration experience: those who saw Japan as their homeland, and those who saw this as their own country." In the end, the two streams merge into a pond that symbolizes the great American melting pot.
What's Your Brand Mantra?: Brand as Ecosystem: "Right now we're focusing so much on the customer that we've lost sight of the big picture. When we focus on the customer, we see a person out there separate from us that we need to identify, label and categorize. "
"We need to move beyond a focus on a specific department (silo mentality) to a focus on the interconnections between individuals (system mentality). What are the most critical connections in your company? Why not have VPs over key connections instead of components?"
Teradata Magazine | IN THE BEGINNING: An RDBMS history: "'SQL is no longer a language for real users, if it ever was,' says Date. 'It has become a developer's language.' "
Nice retrospective of the massive research effort going on decades ago to bring us SQL.
Sandia National Labs: News: Team investigates Active Denial System for security applications: Sandia researchers Willy Morse and James Pacheco fine-tune the small-sized Active Denial System.
Rumored to be ready for deployment in Iraq by 2006. What's that burning smell?
"Legal and Illegal Uses. The information on this web site is made available solely to protect the public. Anyone who uses this information to commit a crime or to harass an offender or his or her family is subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability.
Any person who is required to register pursuant to Penal Code section 290 who enters this web site is punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000, imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding six months, or by both the fine and imprisonment. (Pen. Code, � 290.46, subd. (i).) "
A friend with limited internet access asked me to check their neighborhood. My first hits from Google were for PAID sites that give you a samle report for free but charge for a full report that puports to include photos! These are people who, while obviously convicted of the unthinkable, have been through the justice system...they served their time.
How does this help them, after hopefully being reformed by prision, return to try to become a functioning member of society?
What's the avergage rate of repeat offenses? Would the effort and money be better spent on treatment instead of simply incarceration?
Also spooky and confusing, the disclaimer for the CA offical site above seems to mean either:
A) that if youre on the registry, you are barred from using the web site ??
or
B) if youre supposed to be on the registry and, presumably, havent registered yet, you can go to jail for checking to see if you're already registered ???
Does this thing have an expiration, or are you forever to be listed?
A bizzare new flavor of FEAR.
The Huffington Post | The Blog: "HP EXCLUSIVE: An Intercepted IM Conversation Between Bush and Blair"
43 Things.com: "What do you want to do with your life?" and who else is doing it. A global goal blog.
though...One thing is clear: The people posting their hopes, dreams and aspirations to 43 Things probably don't realize that they're effectively whispering them in the ear of the Web's biggest retailer, a multibillion-dollar, publicly
traded company.[Amazon]...from a Salon.com article archived here
"100,000 lines of SharePoint configuration (lists, sitedefs, etc.) and 100,000 lines of C# code...I'm just full of stupid little SharePoint giblets that I'll be sharing over the next few weeks"
crap...I may not be able to escape needing resources like this.
RED HERRING | Victory for Censorship Tech
Hmmm...Censorship, eh? That's the boogeyman here. I kinda agree it's creepy in the artistic sense that ClearPlay (and others) will make a living "sanitizing" content for people who want to keep taking the blue pill.
The industry's response seems to be that of Copyright infringement. Arguing that ClearPlay has no right to alter the content from what the creator/copyright holder intended. Seems reasonable...if I produce something I expect it to get seen intact, not redacted the way someone else deems appropriate.
The Bill presumably comes from the spirit that the consumer has a right to protect him/herself from indecent content. That smacks of the moral majority and feels like Censorship.
But maybe thats not a bad thing. I wonder..are the rights it's extending to media consumers limited to indecency? How do we agree on exactly what parts of the content are indecent? The content producers dont label each scene with an MPAA rating...so the choice of exactly what to edit ultimately would have to be up to the consumer's preference and ClearPlay gives them the best decision points it can. But this Bill ought to mean the consumer can use whatever technology available to chop up Copyrighted content and view/play it how ever it wants to.
I might give Baywatch another chance, sans Hasselhoff.
Could this bill possibly only apply to Film? To DVD? I doubt it.
What does this mean to Copyright in other mediums?
Can I get this on my Tivo so I never have to watch another Republican campaign ad?
What else could we do with this? What about software copyright? Can I use some parts of the executable, bypassing others according to my preference?
Hmmm...
I think Celestia will soon be installed on my HTPC!
... The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
HTTPeep - an HTTP inspector
Ummm....this is a slick tool....seems to even work with HttpSoap requests for web services.
In Knoxville, the smallest airport I passed through this weekend I noticed a well done and very useful system called FlightView running in the public terminal on a large LCD. It showed realtime status of incoming flights to the McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS).
Burbank, Atlanta, and Dayton had nothing like this. It seemed to be up to each individual carrier to list their status in their respective areas, or where there were public ones, they were nothing more than block letters on bulbous CRTs.
Nitfy business. Doesnt seem like there's a publicly accessible view, but it was neat to see a smallish airport buying this service rather than installing and maintaining their own. Nice bit of outsourcing content.
Yahoo! News: "More land was changed to cropland since 1945, for instance, than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined"
Stunning.
"A wetland in Canada was worth $6,000 a hectare (2.47 acres), as a habitat for animals and plants, a filter for pollution, a store for water and a site for human recreation, against $2,000 if converted to farmland, it said. A Thai mangrove was worth $1,000 a hectare against $200 as a shrimp farm."
Penny wise...
" it will be the first 'Star Wars' that's a PG-13"
....maturing with the audience that grew up with it? Seems more credible than pimping jar jar and ewoks.
AlterNet: War on Iraq: "Going to War with the Army You Have": "If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idee fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business and military history."
US urges Opec not to cut oil production in face of $60/barrel prices.
Energy Secretary Bodman has "...a lot of things on my plate".
Our Energy Secretary sounds like and utter buffoon here. Slanted? Perhaps. Though it is from a Reuters feed.
The Reuters article is not quite so stinging, but still embarassing.
DigiBarn Screen Shots: Screenshots Funstuff
OMG...some of these are priceless. MS Offcie with EVERY toolbar showing is one of my favs.
deseretnews.com | Anti-U.S. feelings growing: "...Most people fear anarchy more than they crave freedom."
That about sums it up. We havent exactly been the best of stewards in Iraq, despite our heroics and sacrifice. We broke it...we bought it.
Recently working on a death march project where I'm having to do much more coding than has been the norm lately.
That by itself is a treat and is making me forget my normal outrage at these kinds of projects and the organizations that are prone to them.
With about a week into what smells like another 4, I'm realizing/remembering how much the local environment matters to focus and productivity.
In fact, I havent really curled up to bang out an implementation once in this new cube yet. It needs some optimizing.
This is the essence of what Bob is chiming about with observations about how noisy EP can be.
I realize there's a lot you have to do for yourself to make your cube comfy. Headphones are a first line of defense. Mgrs usually hate them, arguing that they get in the way of communication. I've succombed to some good noise cancelling ones.
Hmmm...this noise / distraction issue isnt just a nit from Bob. I didnt think it was when he raised it. Hmmm.
How to promte a relatively distraction free working environment without being hypocritical or militant?
I think there's some wisdom in a) advertising the value of quiet and focus to those in the dept. and b) enforcing respect of quiet from people outside the department.
That is, we dont scold or even point out noise and outburts from within the dept. but we will not shrink from consistiently asking staff from other depts. to respect focus and quiet.
