UK Hulk is anatomically enhanced
Spanish toymaker Play By Play is supposedly shipping a 12-inch tall Hulk doll with a 2-inch penis according to this article in the Sun….
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Page 71 of 72, covering posts published from September 2001 to July 2003.
Self-healing minefield
DARPA has a cool new demo of a self-healing minefield online. The machines will rise……
Windows Server 2003 vs. WebSphere
Microsoft paid for a study comparing Windows Server 2003 running .Net Framework 1.1 against IBM Websphere (J2EE) on Red Hat and what I am guessing is Solaris….
Free soda in aggregate
Ed Kaim of Microsoft built a pyramid out of all of his discarded Diet Coke cans….
Jimmy Conrad
Lengthy profile of Jimmy Conrad in today's Kansas City Star….
Geeks to Gold
Fortune magazine has an article in this month's issue about how researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center have come up with new data heuristics models such as the Web Graph Structure to analyze thought trends in text. Researchers are put before clients to drum up revenue and learn about big problems with big revenue potentials. Sounds like a good place to work, with some really interesting projects….
Computer Science’s lost allure
The New York Times has an interesting article on decreased Computer Science undergrads while the demand for graduate CS programs continue to rise….
Philip Greenspun on engineering prowess
Philip Greenspun had a pretty insightful article last week regarding the focus of our technology efforts….
Buying Sun
The New York Times (free registration required) has a good article today summarizing the rumored buyout of Sun. Since the rumors first surfaced on May 9 Sun shares have been trading at about four times historical volume. Seems like something is up and maybe it's just a matter of JavaOne before we know what it is. As a member of the Java Community Process I am especially concerned….
Metallica as Iraqi torture music
The May 26 issue of Newsweek reports that U.S. military units are using Metallica's "Enter Sandman" to break the resistence of Iraqi soldiers….
Spring in your step
Researchers in England have come up with a new soft-ground soccer shoe using springs to reduce shock….
Naked Cowboy
Naked Cowboy makes between $150,000 and $200,000 a year for performing in Times Square in his underwear….
UCLA defense
Jimmy and Carlos both made MLS Team of the Week for May 10. UCLA is dominating the league's back line….
A team from Stanford has
A team from Stanford has come up with new enhancements to what the world commonly knows as PageRank. They discovered that 80% of the pages on any given site point to other pages on the same site. Topic specific PageRank can become a reality, which definitely has huge possibilities for business intelligence applications….
Amazon’s new search patent
Amazon.com has filed patent 6,564,213 for search query autocompletion strings. A search term is "preferably biased to favor the database items that are currently the most popular." The idea seems similar to Google's spelling correction but with partial strings. If I am on Amazon's wireless site I can see the advantage of typing "Pearl" in the music category for a Pearl Jam CD, but the implications for not discovering Janis Joplin's CD could make the whole thing dangerous….
Grub
I Grub daily. Over half a million crawls so far this month. Good work on pushing through the new client Kord and crew! Local crawl is working well….
The World of Google
What's for lunch at Google today? Google is open about allowing employees to work on outside projects, or even heavily swayed R&D within the organization. How many companies do you know would except a failure rate at the expense of a production line? It is nice to see management thinking in terms of leaps and bounds and not inches….
Grokker
I attended a presentation by Sun Microsystems tonight and saw an implementation of Grokker by Groxis, Inc. Very interesting client rendering design. At 20 MB on top of a Java Runtime Environment I am curious to look at the APIs when they become available….
iTunes for Windows
It looks like Apple is planning on releasing iTunes for Windows. Sounds like a good opportunity for Apple to experiment with some revenue driving applications for Windows beyond QuickTime….
You’re In Control
Dan Maynes-Aminzade and Hayes Solos Raffle from MIT's Media Lab have outfitted a urinal to serve as a gaming platform. The game itself reminds me of Duck Hunt. Given the static advertising above public urinals today, video monitors are probably not too far off either. "John Anderton, you look like you could use a Guinness!"…
I have over 15
I have over 15 gigabyes of music ripped onto my hard drive right now in either MP3 or WMA format. All retail CDs, purchased legally, but now much more efficiently indexed. Now the problem is having my music with me both at home and at work. My current player holds only 64 megabytes : not even a full album at 192 Kbps. I feel proud that my music collection can fit on only the high-end iPod 30 gigabyte model. MP3.com's old model of proving you owned the music and then enabling access to it anywhere makes sense to me. …
Up to speed
Glad to see so many people concerned that I haven't updated my Web page in a while! I passed my Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4 exam yesterday. Athena did really well in her trial runs! I have achieved Competent Toastmaster and Competent Leader status in my Toastmasters club. I bought a Sony Ericsson T68i. My old Nokia 8200 got caught under a leaking air conditioner on my flight to London last July. It is nice to have a phone that actually works now. AEOsports is still going well….
Radio Userland 8
I am experienting with a weblog using Radio Userland 8. Check it out here. Full SOAP and XML-RPC support, but I haven't taken advantage of the RSS aggregates yet….
My new Xbox
I am now the proud owner of an Xbox. Halo is a great game, and so far my only complaint is that I cannot add in my own music tracks to the carnage. I would love to see EA release FIFA for Xbox, but until then I still question selling my PlayStation 2. I think the hot gifts this holiday season will be entertainment related, such as game systems, DVD players, and home theater systems. These items seem like an investment for people spending a lot more time at home, and with their families. A lot of home theater systems…
Long day, world in a daze
Today has been a long day to say the least. I woke up this morning in a daze due to lack of sleep, and after I tuned my TV to CNN Headline News as I normally do before stepping into the shower I felt like I was having a bad dream. Must have been an Independence Day induced dream or something. Everywhere is on heightened alert, even my local Home Depot received a bomb threat today. It is so refreshing to see the support our population has contributed in terms of blood donations, medical help, and strangers offering persons stranded…