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Saturday, April 23, 2005 Amusement ride traps cousins for 80 minutes. At 1:36 a.m., winds near the top of the Stratosphere were clocked at 61 mph, a Stratosphere spokesman said. Fine said an unexpected spike in wind speed caused the ride to go automatically into a pause mode and stay that way while a sustained wind blew at some 50 mph. McKinnon said she was puzzled that no one gave them instructions while hotel emergency workers arrived at the scene. "I was expecting they would tell us exactly what to do. There was this guy doing sign language. I could hardly hear," she said. "Workers in the booth were laughing at us," McKinnon said. I'd be tempted to laugh too, but geez, not where they could see me. See also: The Insanity ride webpage (flash). Essentially, it hangs off the Stratosphere in Vegas and gives the illusion of falling off. @ 01:42 PM CST [Link] Digg.com is kind of like a leaner, meaner slashdot. Its actually a lot handier than slashdot as there is less editorializing and more articles posted. Anyone can post on digg, but other users have to rate the article up to get it displayed on the front page. I just found StrangeBanna through digg, which randomly generates HTML/CSS templates for anyone to use. Its pretty neat, you just hit the generate link and you keep getting different templates. Find one you like and lift the code. @ 01:31 PM CST [Link] Short piece on the newly formed Chicago Music Commission. CMC website here. @ 11:46 AM CST [Link] Its a flash drive. No its a USB drive. See also: Business 2.0 article on new uses for flash drives. It looks like this U3 company is copying windows profiles (%sysroot%/Documents and Settings/username) to the drive, which is a pretty neat idea. Shame windows doesnt support this kind of thing natively. @ 11:41 AM CST [Link] Mystery ship in Portland! Its just a ship with a couple radar dishes hidden under domes, but I like the idea of people getting worked up over a "mystery ship." Its positively 19th century. Maybe we'll see articles refering to Sony's Aibo as "some kind of wonderful mechanical-eletro canine!" @ 11:19 AM CST [Link] Friday, April 22, 2005 Futurismic is a short-story sci-fi blog. The current story is worth checking it. It takes place in the near future where some people are able to get by with less than an hours worth of sleep per day thus making them very successful because of all the extra time they have. Normal people, referred to as "hibernators" tend to dislike the microsleepers out of jealousy or a bigotry the author doesn't really try to explain. The plot is about a woman choosing between a microsleeper and her hibernator boyfriend. @ 11:20 AM CST [Link] 20% 20% of Americans can't or refuse to remember the Clinton Administration. Should I be glad its only 20%? These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a recent survey taken for Senate Republicans showed 37 percent support for the GOP plan to deny Democrats the ability to filibuster judicial nominees, while 51 percent oppose. Additionally, the survey indicated only about 20 percent of Americans believe the Republican statement that Bush is the first president in history whose court appointees have been subjected to a filibuster Also, I just remembered where I heard the name Ratzinger before. He was the Cardinal who wrote the infamous "don't support and deny pro-choice Catholic politicians communion" letter last summer in an successful attempt to hurt Kerry's numbers and brew controversy. @ 09:50 AM CST [Link] Earth Day 2005: E-Waste. Short piece about how disposed cellphones and computers are leaking toxic elements. Sounds more of proper waste disposal problem than anything else. Its usually cost prohibitive to recycle them. Its your classic "Gas is cheap, why build cars with a higher MPG?" problem. Which of course only makes business sense while gas (or in this case electronics) are cheap. @ 09:35 AM CST [Link] S.W.A.T. Monkeys. is not a new show coming to Fox. An elite American Swat team wants to train a small monkey as the ultimate reconnaissance tool. Wearing a bullet-proof vest, video camera and two-way radio, the capuchin monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go. "Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it. It would change the way we do business," Said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove. @ 09:23 AM CST [Link] Thursday, April 21, 2005 Worth1k: Mate an album. Some clever work here. @ 12:52 AM CST [Link] Instant applause. Check out this guitar pedal which produces a clapping sample. Doesn't sound too hot, but might be useful as a human metronome for clap/sing-along songs. A little happy clapping man lives in there. @ 12:48 AM CST [Link] Wednesday, April 20, 2005 Mars may be biologically active. Or it might not be. Scientific teams around the globe are on the trail of methane seeping out of Mars. And for good reason: The methane could be the result of biological processes. It could also be an "abiotic" geochemical process, however, or the result of volcanic or hydrothermal activity on the red planet. Many types of microbes here on Earth produce a signature of methane. Indeed, the tiny fraction of atmospheric carbon found as methane on our planet is churned out almost entirely biologically with only a very small contribution from abiotic processes, scientists say. @ 10:45 AM CST [Link] [Archives] Search entries: