FOR DONI:
Zalman Totally No Noise TNN500AF Ultimate Fan-Free Computer Case This case costs a full order of magnitude more than a regular case, but if you can't live with noisy fans any longer, then be assured that this really lives up to its name: Totally No Noise. Ten heat pipes and about 50 lbs of carefully machined aluminum draw the heat away from your computer's delicate parts, so that even a reasonably powerful pc can run cool without any fans at all. This case is about more than just quiet, though; it's a work of real engineering art (well, nerd art, anyway) with many nice touches that make installation and operation a pleasure. No stamped sheet metal, just carefully rounded machined edges, means no more cutting yourself when working in tight spaces. Clearly labeled built-in wiring for the front panel ports and switches, integrated silent 400W power supply with profuse connectors, super-heavy-duty casters with individual locking and leveling, and more. Besides, this thing looks like a Krell relic (Krell or the Krell, either one.) I love it, and I'm getting another. -- Carl Shapiro [For a very extensive review of this item see System Cooling. -- CP] Zalman Totally No Noise TNN500AF $1200 Available from PC Mall Manufactured by Zalman
Five Fists Of Science (Paperback) (graphic novel)
WHICH TO BUY??!?!?!?!??!?!?!! (I really want a semi-pro for when i am working at getting a really good shot)
OR
How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs The Apple CEO is well known for his electrifying presentations. Here are five tips to make your next talk just as mesmerizing -- or close
http://tinyurl.com/qgj5a
VERY USEFUL:
This page is about USB webcam support for Mac OS X. Feel free to browse, download, use, ask, extend, enhance, participate! 2006-04-06: macam 0.8.5 has been released. Download it here. Support has been added for Pixart PAC207-based cameras, QuickCam Messenger, Messenger Plus, and Communicate. It is fully Universal (the component as well) although some cameras may still have issues on Intel-based Macs. Let us know how it works. 2005-11-18: macam 0.8.4 has been released. Download it here. Support has been added for SQ905-based cameras, and it now has universal binaries! Let us know how it works. 2005-08-25: macam 0.8.3 has been released. Download it here. macam now works on MacOS X 10.4 and supports saving images in different formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, GIF) and even more webcams! 2005-03-18: macam 0.8.1b1 has been released. Download it here. macam now works on MacOS X 10.3 and supports image downloads from the ViviCam 3350B. If you are an owner of a QuickCam Express, QuickCam Web or DexxaCam, please have a look here. 2003-02-06: macam 0.8 has been released. Download it here. If you would like the ability to grab snapshots from the command-line, then take a look at the wacaw project.
http://tinyurl.com/h2n7
Windows virtualization on the Mac - here now? Apparently everyone and his cousin must be trying to get at this right now (ah yes, there it is on digg), but some company called Parallels is beta testing some virtualization software for the Intel Macs that'll run Winders right inside OS X. No word as to how well it works yet, but apparently we are just a few days/weeks/months (tops) from a real alternative to that lame dual-boot solution. Play Fear while I compose in GarageBand? I believe the only term for that is: w00t! Anyway, the beta is free, but I'm guessing they're going to charge for this eventually. Get it while its hot! I'm sure someone at Parallels.com is really scrambling for more servers and bandwidth right now... UPDATE: It's a 45-day trial, not a free beta test, I as previously said. Doh!
http://tinyurl.com/fqduo
Fibs.
Terse.
Defined.
As your tools,
Twenty syllables;
How you use them is up to you.
In my first post on Fibs, I mentioned rules and guidelines. I'm gonna talk about some of them here, but the most important thing I can say is that other than the syllable count of 1/1/2/3/5/8, all rules can be broken. The goal is to WRITE. That said...
Since I started Fibbing to focus on word choice, the one rule I've held myself to is "no articles in the one syllable lines." I also try not to use conjunctions, though part of that is that when I use them, I start singing School House Rock and annoy the neighbors.
After those rules, it really gets more subjective. There's definitely a difference between my best fibs and my ones that read far more like I found a 20 syllable sentence and broke it into Fib form. Often, that difference is in focusing on those two one-syllable lines. "Worms./Gross." is, to me, a stronger start than "I/was." If there's a natural break between the lines, in general it reads better to me. If a thought can finish at a line end, that's great. And I, personally, love using the eight-syllable line in counterpoint or as a thought of its own.
I also have found that my Fibs tend to fall into subsets: Pop Culture Fibs, Rhyming Fibs (traditionally, by the way, Fibonacci poetry is not a rhyming form. But it CAN rhyme, as some who have posted have shown), and Fibs that fib are three examples. I'm gonna post one (or more) of each in the comments below. We've also seen political fibs and math fibs... plus my very own Spam fib. That should be a big category, based on the 19,000 Spam haiku collected here.
Also, a special tip o' the hat to the Word Freaks for their excellent Fibbing.
If you spot any other Fibs online, please drop word to yours truly. But this is long enough, so I gotta book.
http://tinyurl.com/g9te8
NOT CERTAIN I LIKE THE WAY IT LOOKS:
The new Audi TT Coupe (link to this article) Page: 1 2 April 7, 2006 The Audi TT was launched in 1998, taking the sports coupe segment by storm and sharpening Audi’s brand profile enormously. Now the second generation of this iconic model is making its debut. The new TT Coupé is even more dynamic than its predecessor– in terms of its design, its drivetrain, and its running gear. The new Audi TT, like its predecessor, is initially available as a 2 + 2-seater coupé; the separate roadster model scheduled for later launch. The body is constructed in the ASF Space Frame design developed by Audi and consists of aluminium and steel. This is the first time that it has combined different materials alongside each other. 69 percent of the superstructure is made of aluminium. The steel components making up the remaining 31 percent are to be found at the rear end, so as to ensure balanced distribution of the axle loads. To improve downforce, a spoiler is extended from the tailgate when the vehicle reaches a speed of 120 km/h.
http://tinyurl.com/fabjl
Oslo to cut streetlight energy costs by 30% while increasing safety (link to this article) Page: 1 2 April 7, 2006 The City of Oslo (Norway) is developing an intelligent outdoor lighting system to remotely control and monitor streetlights. The first large scale implementation of a control network in a street lighting application in Europe, the system is expected to reduce energy usage by 50 percent, improve roadway safety, and minimize maintenance costs. The project calls for the installation over the next three years of 55,000 intelligent street light ballasts that communicate over existing power lines with Internet Servers acting as segment controllers, which in turn communicate with the City of Oslo control centre over a wireless wide-area network.
http://tinyurl.com/kuesg
Is recycling an essential tool in the armoury of a responsible citizen to reduce the pressure on our ailing planet? Or, as Timothy Cooper argues in this week's Green Room, is it a meaningless ritual that fails to get to grips with the real problems of copious consumption?
http://tinyurl.com/kn54o
Change your appearance, not your shirt HAVE you ever wished you could vanish into the background? Doing a disappearing act could soon be as simple as flicking a switch, thanks to chameleonic clothing that mimics the patterns and colours of its surroundings.
Greg Sotzing of the University of Connecticut in Storrs has developed threads of electrochromic polymers, which change colour in response to an applied electric field. The knittable, washable thread could be used to create T-shirts that change colour or pattern to suit your mood or outfit.
A mixture of differently coloured threads would be knitted or woven into a T-shirt or blanket, along with a small number of thin metal wires connected to a battery pack and a microcontroller. The criss-crossing wires effectively divide the shirt into pixels
http://tinyurl.com/emchb
AeroPress Coffee Syringe This thing makes a really good cup of coffee fast. It's well made, compact, and clean up is easy. The AeroPress is 2.5 inch diameter syringe with a paper micro filter mounted across the bottom. It sits on top of a common coffee mug for brewing. You put in fine ground coffee measured with the included scoop. The scoop is about 1.5 times bigger than the ones you might get with regular a drip coffee maker. You put in hot water at the recommended 175 degrees which is cooler than other methods. You stir for 10 seconds and push the plunger in. Compressed air pushes the coffee out in 10 - 20 seconds. What you have in the cup is concentrated coffee. If you dilute it about 50/50 with hot water you get the strength of a regular cup of good coffee. It tastes great! I have a French press, a vacuum brewer, various kinds of drip brewers, a good espresso machine, and I roast my own coffee. Since I got my AeroPress two months ago I favor it for all my coffee except espresso. It's not fair to call the AeroPress concentrate espresso as the manufacture does but that's a minor point. -- Frank Cox Aeropress $28 Available from Sweet Maria's Manufactured by Aerobie
Recipe of the Week: Passover Walnut Tweed Torte This TreeHugger’s family celebrates both Jewish and Christian holidays so our thoughts turn to the coming week and the Passover seder. For the duration of Passover, Jews are forbidden to eat grains that have been fermented or leavened. This provides the Jewish cook with a bit of a challenge, but there is a wealth of great recipes using matzo meal rather than flour and without using baking soda or baking powder. Our partner’s favourite way to eat matzo is to spread it with margarine and stand over the sink to catch the crumbs. I think this year we will try to broaden his culinary repertoire. This recipe from Gourmet Magazine calls for matzo cake meal. It suggests grinding matzo meal in a clean coffee or spice grinder if you can’t find cake meal. This seemed like too much work, so we just used regular matzo meal and it was fine. This makes a light cake with lots of texture.
Walnut Tweed Torte
1 ½ cup walnuts (5 ½ oz) toasted
½ cup matzo cake meal
8 large eggs, separated, at room temperature for 30 minutes
1 1/3 cups sugar
½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. finely grated fresh orange zest
¼ cup fresh orange juice
1 tsp vanilla
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), coarsely grated using ¼ inch teardrop shaped holes of a box grater
1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Insert bottom of springform pan.
3. Pulse walnuts with 3 tbsp matzo cake meal in a food processor until nuts are finely chopped (be careful not to pulse to a paste). Add remaining 5 tbsp matzo cake meal and pulse until mixture resembles a grainy flour.
4. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium high speed until they form soft peaks. Add 2/3 cup sugar a little at a time, beating until white just hold stiff peaks.
5. Beat together yolks and remaining 2/3 cup of sugar with ½ tsp of salt in a large bowl at medium high speed until thick and pale, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a handheld mixer. Fold in nut flour, then zest, juice and vanilla. Fold grated chocolate into batter gently but thoroughly. Fold in one third of whites to lighten batter, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.
6. Pour batter into ungreased springform pan, smoothing top, and bake until a wooden pick inserted at centre comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan on a rack 15 minutes, then run a thin sharp knife between cake and side of pan. Remove side of pan and cool cake completely. Invert cake onto rack and run knife between cake and bottom of pan to remove bottom, then flip onto a plate.
Serve with whipped cream if desired.
Serves 8 to 10
Cake can be made two days in advance and kept tightly wrapped in plastic at room temperature.
This recipe is from Gourmet Magazine, April 2004
http://tinyurl.com/jsbd5
Biodiesel Boosted by Big Oil? The burgeoning biodiesel industry got a friendly boost from a somewhat unlikely source: big oil. Motiva Enterprises, a large oil company headquartered in Houston, recently announced that the Motiva Enterprises terminal in Dallas will now offer biodiesel at any blend level. Petroleum distributors who deliver biodiesel to retail outlets and other customers in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area can now load pre-blended biodiesel on their tanker trucks. This allows distributors to get more biodiesel distributed, as the deal eliminates the additional cost and inconvenience of making two stops to obtain the biodiesel and petroleum diesel, and purchasing blending equipment. Motiva, a partnership between Shell Oil Co. and Saudi Refining Inc., is among the first major oil companies to provide a blending and loading terminal for the alternative fuel; other refiners who already blend biodiesel at the terminal level include Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. Biodiesel kingpin Willie Nelson was joined by fellow booster Morgan Freeman to announce the installation of a 30,000-gallon heated tank that will allow biodiesel to be loaded onto tanker trucks already fully blended with petroleum diesel. ::National Biodiesel Board [pdf] via ::Seattle P-I and ::Jalopnik
http://tinyurl.com/gp7az
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.8 3.5" SERIAL ATA150 HARD DRIVE - OEM FOR !)) BUCKS NO REBATES!
http://tinyurl.com/cdfao
PORTABLE PLAYLISTS, a way to stream your music so you need not install anything on a work machein to listen
http://tinyurl.com/f8ouv
Windows on Mac, Simultaneously: screenshots:
http://tinyurl.com/kmfjx
GMC PAD
GM West Coast Advanced Design Studio
Designers: Steve Anderson, Senon B. Franco III, Jay Bernard, Phil Tanioka, Sidney Levy, Brian Horton, Alessandro Zezza, Christine Ebner, Frank Saucedo
Why commute? Adapt. That’s the thinking behind the GMC PAD, which offers an innovative look at an urban loft with mobility. It’s a home ownership concept that enables cultural and geographic freedom for the modern city dweller. The GMC PAD features a diesel-electric hybrid system for propulsion while in DriveMode, and serves as a generator for the onboard power grid for LifeMode. The media rich environment is unlike any other, and comes with an endless variety of entertainment, information and security options. With the GMC PAD, home is where you want it. And commuting is what other people do.
http://tinyurl.com/jbn8f
