Free Willy... Bio Willie

just when you thought maybe marketing got a brain cell... nope willie nelson comes along to market bio diesel as bio willie.

Intradepartmental e-mail

"Our System Administrator, John K., has noticed that a computer called Dr. Evil in the Chemistry Building may have acquired a virus and is interfering with the network. If you know anything about Dr. Evil, please contact John at [email address deleted for privacy] or x4523.

Th\ank you for your cooperation."

streamripper

funny antipiracy laws equate to audio like public radio and internet streams as 'permissible' because you can't... save them? - and they liscence music based on their audience instead of having to purchase a copy for each audience menber.

SOO - what ever happened to recording audio from the local radio station, hacking out what you like and saving it on your hd as your own personal mp3?

I got one better.
Streamripper.
just load up winamp, connect to one of their Streaming Media: Internet Radio stations (all free)
pay attention to the servers ip address and port (ex http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1065)
and then power up stream ripper to connect to that server and RE-SERVE that audio back to yourself (or anyone else on your WAN/LAN) and you save on bandwidth, AND get to keep what your listening to.
a few fancy flags when you launch it and it'll auto encode the mp3 title tags, and overwrite/refresh songs if they are larger (oh wait, maybe i do this by another .bat)
anyways, try out streamripper.
fire it up with something like
streamripper.exe http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1065 -d C:\Output\ -r 8008 -s -u WinAmp/5.x -x -t

on a similary topic, THIS site looks like a cool list of rippers that may extend beyond audio and video. I've used teleport pro for many things. IT looks like i've got some things to upgrade to.

enjoy.

Wind Chill

ran into this article on how they measure windchill. interesting. would've hated to be a test subject though. first you are cold and then you have probes in eh-hem interesting places. forget it.

the color brown.

alright nerds. get a load of what you can declare as a trademark and copywrite.
THE COLOR BROWN.
http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/service/trademark.html

Neverending Card.

I got this 'thing' from adventist world radio that was just awesome. I showed it to someone, and they described it as a 'neverending post card'. they throught it was awesome too and had never seen anything like it.

thanks to their descriptoin, i found the pattern for it on the web.
Overview, Pattern and Description.

make it. enjoy it. thank me.

Thing You Didn't Know You Ate

i'm about a third of the way through a book by Nina Federoff and Nancy Marie Brown (ya you know she has to be rich or something since she uses all three names) called "Mendel in the Kitchen." the first bit was a bit ranting (i agreed, but it was a bit over the top and a bit disorganized). but it got better. thus far i have learned a great deal beyond my high school knowledge of biology and how humans have modified plants for eating for thousands of years and recently. anyways, a quote that i found particularly facinating:

"Until 1990, cheesemakers used rennet, made from the membrane of the fourth stomach of a calf; chymosin is the active ingredient. Genetically engineered chymosin was called fermentation-produced chymosin or FPC; it was delcared kosher, halal, and vegetarian in 1994. Five years later it had an 80 to 90 percent market share."

basically scientists modified a bacteria to output the needed chymosin. apparently, modified bactieria is also used to make insulin for diabetics. the old insulin was from pigs and produced allergic reactions, now the bacteria makes human insulin and it is cheaper, more pure, and no allergic reactions.

anyways, i have long had a suspicion that gmo's aren't as bad as people make them out to be and this book basically supports that position. i think it is an excellent read. it is biased, but it has some really good information.

Free games

you guys have all heard of BunGie, you know the makers of Halo? well they have released some of their FPS games for free on trilogyrelease.bungie.org. evedintly you can expand a .SIT (mac crap?) file with stuffit expander for windows and get to some ZIPS that will play on a X86 windows system instead of the origional macs. i'll have to check it out.

No really, don't try this

For those in WA, don't pretend your parents are rich . For those in NV, do not drive your camel on the highway. For those in ID, do not fish on your camel's back. And for those in OR, do not let your animals have sex in the city limits. And for any of us, head out looking for any foreign, uninhabited island with bird droppings - then take possession of it!

compliments of: http://www.legal-forms-kit.com/legal-jokes/dumb-laws.html

I Really Saw It

on the way home from bible study we saw a liscense plate holder that said "i got this new car 'cause i gave my hubby a kidney."

dice replys. to forkev

Okay I will get on blogger and give some input but I am giong to have
to rely on you to get some pictures on the web.... I don't know how to
yet. Here they are.

It's funny

check out the loose parts from yesterday. i love it.

honda commercial

check out this Honda commercial. thanks to kseb.net for the link.

new member alodia

alodia accepts as a member of nerdy tales.
looks like the author of the blog title description needs to pull out that pen and update the description of the primary contributors.

I recommend describing her as second in controll of a large regional church headquarters.
Everyone one knows it's the secretaries AND department heads that actually get stuff done. she's both.

Secretary to President.
AND head of Human Resource Department.
we're running out of people here!

EPSON Inkjet PCB

I read about this last night in maximum pc. The article claimed 20 layers! so I went searching for a picture.

Check out www.engadget.com.

THey describe:

"Epson prints 1mm thick circuit boards on an inkjet.

Really brings new meaning to the term “printed circuit board” when Epson goes and creates a process by which an inkjet printer can literally spit out complicated boards. Circuit paths are drawn by conductive ink and layered between coats of insulator ink. Naturally you shouldn’t expect to be able to download and shoot out the latest nVidia or ATI board every 1.3 days they release a new one, but this could mean really, really big things for portable electronics and wearable computing since these boards are only 1mm thick at 20 layers (trust us, that’s pretty amazing)."

Nerdy Weather Info

so i was talking with keith last night about the lack of really good nerdy information on the weather. today i found the fount of weather knowledge. i haven't even begun to explore this place but it is awesome! Western Regional Climate Center
for instance check out this map.

dice finalized senior project

news from the momma indicates dave has finalized his senior project.
and that's it.
SO WHAT IS IT!
Dave?

Can the Government Prevent Stupidity? Nope.

so one of the the things i have on my yahoo homepage is recent additions to snopes.com. i think barbara mikkelson does a great job busting myths in a way that says a lot about how they get propogated. also sometimes things are true.
tragically or perhaps deserving of a darwin award is the story of the guy who said the government shouldn't tell us to wear seat belts. now i am all for freedoms when they don't injure another person. but honestly i think that lack of seat belts injures other people. okay in only a kinda round about way (run over someone thrown from a vehicle, take up space in an emergency room, put rescuers at risk), but also i think that some people need people to tell them to do stuff or else they won't even think about it.

arguments

anyone that thinks they have it bad with their spouse/"significant other" needs to head on over to www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com
and you will find this like this.

When Margret used to go shopping and she'd see, for example, a pair of jeans in a department store, do you know what she used to do? Try them on. I think you're all with me here, but just for anyone who's joined us late, I don't mean she'd go to the changing rooms and try them on. That would be a preposterous idea wouldn't it? No, she'd just get undressed there in the middle of the sales floor to try them on. It took me some considerable time to persuade her that this wasn't normal behaviour in Britain, despite what she might have seen on Benny Hill. Even then, she only stopped - amid much eye-rolling and, 'You and your silly social conventions,' head shaking - to humour me. It rubs a tiny circle from the misted-up window through which you can view the tormented, horizonless landscape that is My World to mention that I'd entirely forgotten about all this until someone sent me a email yesterday that accidentally exhumed the memory. With Margret this kind of thing just gets drowned out by the general noise. I wouldn't be surprised if, a few months from now, I'm here writing, 'Ahhh - that reminds me of Margret's role in the John Lennon shooting...'

road restrictions

someone needs to explain to me why on the radio they always say "snow tires AND chains required on route....." when they ALWAYS mean snow tires OR chains required.

now as far as I understand it there are 3 types of restrictions
1) snow tires. if you don't have snows you have to chain up
2) chains on 2wd, and if you have a trailer you have to chain it
3) chains on everything, 4wd, a trailers.

so whats up with these morons saying snow tires AND chains? the way I understand it is if I put a chain on racing slicks they are 'certified' for winter driving.

check out our road conditions nevadadot.com as of this posting we have over 50 restrictions.

track da flight

ever wonder WHERE the airplane is? it seems there is something called an ASD (aircraft situation display) and I read it in a post on geek.com. searching a tad brough me to fasttrack.flightexplorer.com

Snow Tires Revisited

i read a fairly decent article on snow tires at msn. basically it says that snow tires are a good idea because 1. they are pretty good tires 2. you need them in emergency situations. now to figure out the whole studdless snow tire things that open up when you drive.

biweekly

so do you guys know what biweekly means? I surprised jen by knowing both meanings, and I encourage all true nerds to remove this word from your vocabulary as (as you will see) it is a useless word.

What the World is Coming to

today on npr i heard about the closing of "the last american audio tape manufacturer" (note that it is audio not data tape and it is american not world wide). i remember wanting a walkman (the tape variety) sometime when i was young. i think i did get one eventually and i actually owned like two tapes, maybe. it seems that one of them was copland's appalachian spring. this reminds me that i am approaching the category where kids would classify me as old (actually they probably already do, but i still pretend). i mean i remember renting a vcr from blockbuster when we rented a movie because we didn't own one since it was too expensive.

anyways, back to the magnetic tape. i find it fascinating that some data backup and recording is still done using magnetic tape. i wonder if magnetic tape will ever really die or if it will merely hibernate and we'll be seeing it in a similar form years from now.

craigslist

I read that alot of newspapers are blaming Craigslist.org as the reason classifieds postings are down... so I went and checked them out. a nice breakdown by city, so if you looking for something, or you wanna get rid of something easier (and less expensive?) than ebay hop on over to craigslist and give it a go.

coworkers car

My coworkers car caught on fire after running over a portion of the center barrier that broke off when someone going to other way ran into it. see his site here.

Posting and You

I ran across this in the TDICLUB.com forum. a must read for people less than 20, and over 55. watch it here

rabbit

Rabbit Rabbit TO THE LOT O' YA!

404 not found

check out this verions of 404 error which includes a suggestion to format your computer, and or short all objects inside your computer with a metalic object. AWESOME!