In that first frame, is her monitor actually an ant farm?

I think the thing that makes this unappealing is the negative karma waves emanating from Ms. Tam's horrible javascript/flash perversion of a website.

Hmmm. AJAX, LAMP, .net? No! JFP! Everything is in a giant popup that fills your whole screen, but only takes up about 800x600 of the middle of that window! Menus pop up a random distance from their source! Optional: music that starts playing when you hit the page and can't turn off.

I think I need to spend the better part of the afternoon writing an RFC for this cutting edge UI methodology. Also, drinking heavily.

Lucky for them, the dog had just eaten a cheese sandwich.

"If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ’em go, because, man, they’re gone."
--Jack Handey

Except in this case it's a cell phone and hot tar.

Sun does this as well, as does IBM. I suspect it's a marketing strategy, it gives people the feeling that they've purchased something solid and real for the 350% markup they paid to have name brand equipment.

In my experience Sun is the worst - when you buy a custom system configuration, you'll get the case & motherboard in one huge box, and then every single component comes in its own box, many of which are almost as large as the computer box. I'm always worried about losing something important, like a hard drive or power supply, in the christmas-morning like conflagration that results.

Though we did once get a box containing only power cords from IBM that had its own forklift pallet glued to the bottom of the box. That was entertaining.

1. Get a kit plane
2. Paint it silver
3. Throw fancy parties for stupid people with money
4. Take their money
5. Flee the country
6. Profit!

Holy overpriced toys, Batman. Further down the page they have an original Kenner Alien listed for $1500-2000.

I had no idea that Christie's was essentially eBay for people with more money than sense.

My first gadget was a Victorinox Spartan Swiss Army knife, and I have the scars to prove it.

On the writing instrument front, I've always been very fond of the Koh-i-noor Rapidomatic mechanical pencils.

Though the latest iteration of them, the kind that come in blister packs, have been very disappointing. They simplified the internals to (I suppose) make manufacturing cheaper, and as a result they tend to get gummed up more frequently.

I love both the v5 and the G2 for writing, but they're terrible drawing instruments. For that I usually use Micron pens. I never did like Rapidograph pens. Ornery, leaky, high maintenance things.

Oh, the Amazon comments for this cable are an instant classic.

I'm sure they'll be deleted soon.

I am beginning to suspect that audiophilia is actually the larval stage of a new religion.

They have altars in their homes to the god of sound. They sacrifice large amounts of money to this god, believing that these will improve their sounds the same way a shaman dancing around a fire believes that it will bring the rain, or a desperate person will believe that a man on the TV set can cure their halitosis.

There is no logic or reason applied - while much of what they say appears superficially to be scientific language, it's often used incorrectly, or with meanings divorced from the original. Half-remembered hight school physics concepts become articles of faith.

Once they've hit a certain point, the absurdity becomes the whole point of the exercise. It makes them unique while at the same time providing a subculture to interact with. Apparent persecution, in the form of people making fun of them for being frivolous with their money, binds that subculture together.

Still, I can't help but think of them as idiots with more money than sense.

Oh man, I hate having to park in that lot.

It, of course, needs to have a secret panel that opens slowly (linear actuators, gas pistons, etc.) to reveal a vast array of weapons and/or antiquities, mounted pegboard style.

Also, I like your chair scribble.

#8 that's what I was thinking.

Is this thing foodsafe?

More importantly, is it 191 proof vodka safe?

I bought the re-issue of the Hasbro X-wing and Tie fighter a few years ago, and was both excited and saddened that they appeared to have come out of the same molds that the ones I played with in 1979 did.

Excited because it was like tracking down an old friend after 30 years. Saddened because that friend looked like they'd been used and abused in the intervening decades. Clean, crisp details gave way to rounded, sagging corners. Also, the realization that I was now old.

One of these days I should write down what happened when I went hunting for my original x-wing in my parent's attic. It was a traumatic experience.

On first reading I saw "Couple Attacked by 15 Feet of String for 24 Hours".

I had a delicious vision of a pair of the worst fighters in all of human history being unable to defeat a piece of string for an entire day.

After that, the real article was a mild letdown.

I'm kind of confused as to how Lockheed wound up thinking it owned the B-24 in the first place.

(Caution! Aerospace geeking ahead!)
The B-24 was made by Consolidated Aircraft, later renamed "Conviar". Convair was bought by General Dynamics, who then sold most of what was left of Convair to McDonnell-Douglas, and shut down the rest. McD-D then shut down the remaining bits of it a few years later, and were then themselves bought by Boeing.

Also, a real B-24 (from the Collings Foundation) has been flying over my house all week. I've been snapping pics whenever I get the chance.

Check out their schedule, they might be showing up near you:
http://www.collingsfoundation.org/cf_schedule-wof.htm

It looks like logitech caught the problem and flipped the image correctly.

However, now the angles are all wrong and it looks like the speaker is about to tip off the webpage.

That was my first thought too, DNL.

It's a very good thing that original Lego kits don't look as cool as this guys, or I'd be really, really poor.

I still have some ricochet modems, pulled from the scrap heap when people finally cleared them out of desk drawers.

You can still do some interesting stuff with them. They can accept standard modem AT strings and can call each other directly, no base station needed. It's like a wireless null modem cable.

This is why we don't go to Ravenholm.

I don't think the links in this entry go where you want them to go, especially the Stormtrooper one.