Baghira for Qt/KDE

Check out Baghira for KDE. It's pretty slick looking. It allows transparency and shadows as well as generally changing the look/feel of the window manager.

Command Line Image Manipulation Made Easy

Check out this short overview of ImageMagick for doing simple imagine manipulations from the command line or in batch.

One-Minute Rechargeable Batteries

Toshiba has developed a new lithium ion battery that can recharge to 80% in one minute, and to 100% in only a few minutes more! These things should ship stock on all remote control cars and toys!

Linux Box Built Into An RJ-45 Connector

Here's a crazy little gadget... it's a Linux box built into an RJ-45 jack housing!

Canine Tug-O-War

I heard some growling from the other room and snuck in to see what was up. I barely had time to grab the camera to capture an impromptu canine tug-o-war match. They were really going at it. A couple times Maggie was completely in the air as Buster tried to win the match. But ironically it ended in Maggie literally running circles around Buster doing many victory laps! Funny stuff!
Click for larger image.

Barbecue Panorama

I finally got around to stiching together the barbecue panorama from a while back. Click the image below to see the full size one. If you're using Internet Explorer and it resizes the image on you, simply move your mouse away from the photo, then bring it back and hover over the picture for a few seconds. You should see an icon appear in the bottom right that will let you show the image at original size.

See how many "duplicate" people you can find. :)


Click image to enlarge

Very Cool "Transparent Monitor" Trick!

Check out this gallery of images using a photography trick that makes the screen appear transparent. Some of the images are really impressive. Any icons or open windows appear to float in space because you can see behind them. This trick is probably only convincing from a relatively small "sweet spot" viewing area, but it's still cool.
UPDATE: Larger gallery here.

Oregon DOT Switching to SUSE Linux

In a move that is intended to save Oregon tax payers 30% of their current expenditures, the Oregon Department of Transportation is migrating to Linux on their IBM zSeries mainframe. So does this mean our taxes will go down or we'll get to wait longer before they go up again? I hear neither is the case, but it's still good to see large organizations keeping up with the times. I imagine it's a lot easier to find someone that knows Linux system administration that zOS administration (or at least that will be around for another 20 years and isn't already on the verge of retirement).

Elegant Forkbomb

You wouldn't think the following innocent looking 13 characters could cause so much chaos.

:(){ :|:& };:

They are often referred to as "Jaromil's Forkbomb". When typed into the command line of a Bourne-Shell compatible terminal (such as bash or zsh), they create a repeating fork task that will very quickly bring your Unix-like system screeching to a halt.

The Scene

A fictional account of how movies get spread across the planet in TV show form. I briefly looked at episode one and found myself wanting to know what happened in episode two. There are currently five episodes available on their site.

Comcast to Offer Tivo DVRs Mid-2006

In a recently announced deal, it seems Tivo will be providing software that runs on Comcast's current DVR boxes starting in mid-2006. I've never owned a Tivo personally, but they seem to be the gold standard that everybody compares other DVRs to. I've heard the only dual HD tuner Tivo costs over $1000 and is only available through one of the satellite companies. This will be a nice boost for Tivo to suddenly get millions more customers. Hopefully the customers won't directly bankroll this whole deal on top of what we're currently paying.

SmoothWall Express 2.0

Brief review of SmoothWall Express 2.0 firewall distro. This can turn an old Pentium with 32MB of RAM into a powerful firewall for your home network.

The Unix Philosophy Explained

This seems to apply to Linux as well, but here's an interesting article discussing the Unix Philosphy. It explains (albeit briefly) why we have short, lower case commands, that operate with input from stdin and output to stdout. It's this "filter" behavior that allows command piping to be so amazingly useful to the creative people of the world.

Play Windows Games Under Linux

Here's a "Joe User" look at TransGaming's Cedega, the commercial version of the program formerly known as WINE-X. It lets you play Windows native games on your Linux box. Cedega is a subscription-based product, running $5/month with a 3 month minimum purchase.

Firefox Unlocks Floodgate, IE Drowns

In what sounds like a very hypothetical situation, there really exists place on the net where you can surf with Firefox and get hosed by IE. What's next? Adware and trojans broadcast over TV and Radio and picked up my your computer's microphones???

Office Emptying Body Language Techniques

A funny list of body language techniques to get people out of your office and to leave you alone. I love the Thousand Yard Stare myself.

First Persistent Environment Linux LiveCD

Any interesting twist to LiveCDs that many saw coming, Puppy Linux was the first to release a Linux LiveCD that burns your files and settings back to the very CD Linux loaded from. It's a special multi-session bootdisk that is about 50MB, leaving over 600MB for your personal files. Each time something is updated, it will burn the changes to your CD when you shut down. I bet Knoppix will end up with something like this before long. This replaces using a USB thumb drive to store you files because this works with a simple/cheap/disposable CDR (which the drive fills up from too many sessions, it simply asks you for a blank CD which it uses to burn a copy of itself and your (newly compressed) files ready for the next bootup. It's a slick idea!

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Catch up on the latest info about the characters from Lost.

Here's some info on Locke as well. There are no spoilers about future episodes or anything in either of these links. Just background of the characters and actors (particularly Terry O'Quinn)

How To Securely Erase a HD

A quick article showing you how easy it is to securely erase data from old or discarded hard drives. Most people do not go through this much trouble and it's amazing what can be found on random hard drives you find.

Behind The Scenes at Google

An hour long streaming video of Jeff Dean (from Google) describing some behind the scenes info about Google.