More fun things to do with Legos! (Posted at Star Ranger, sent to me by a friend.)

And better yet...Brickstar Pegasus!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Lego "brick" is 50 years old today!

Addendum: A look at Lego by Gizmodo. Best Lego sets in history! 50th Anniversary set! Top Lego videogames!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What's the air velocity of a Balrog? (Via BoingBoing.) Comments at both sites are almost as good as the posting. Geeks. They're grrrreeaaattt!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yes, you can build anything with Legos! Even a Bible!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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General Grievous's ship Invisible Hand...in Legos!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I had to make a journey out to the parental domain and back this weekend. Instead of listening to an audiobook or a podcast on the iPod, I tried setting it to shuffle, seeing what it would come up with.

As you'll see, it seemed to like classical (or Spanish classical) guitar pieces quite a bit. And Tomita. It played two Talking Heads pieces back-to-back and did segue from Peter Gabriel singing in Genesis to Peter Gabriel soloing at one point. Otherwise, a fairly mixed bag. Despite having about six days worth of music on the iPod, it played "Web" from Brian Eno's Nerve Net twice.

I figured, as I was driving with others in the car, that the shuffle method was the most "democratic" approach. (Of course, my musical tastes intervened in picking out the tracks on the iPod to begin with, but I had loaded a fair amount of stuff that I thought others would like.)

I did skip past a Radio Lab podcast and a chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin. I skipped past the podcast as I was driving a rather busy section of Route 80 and could not concentrate on something like that at the time. I skipped past The Children of Hurin as it doesn't make sense to listen to a audiobook on shuffle! The only piece that was too "low" to be workable in the car was a section from Ralph Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony (No. 1). more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hey, how to be utterly profane while sounding very formal and educated!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Oh my. From LOL Cats to...the horror! the horror!

Addendum: Oh noes! Plush Cthulhu meets the stuffed animals! And a Plush Cthulhu FAQ!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Now here's somebody with a lot of free time on their hands. From J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a reconstruction of The Battle of Helms Deep and The Battle of Pelennor Fields...using licorice, gummy bears, chocolate pretzels...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So having a iPod (finally, I buy a gadet before it is obsolete!) and having had some "downtime" at the firehouse last night, I downloaded a bunch of these "podcast" things I've been hearing about. Still having a dial-up connection at home, large downloads are not really an option there.

The new revolution? A way of knocking old media off of the pedestal? Maybe, but probably not. There's an interesting contrast in the podcasts...and the better podcasts are those with money, talent and quality behind them.

Here's an example: William Gibson did a book tour to support his latest novel, Spook Country (still on my personal Mount Toberead). During the course of the book tour he gave probably a couple of thousand talks, interviews, readings and what not (or, it felt like that). I know I've read one of the key phrases he's been using this go round—how if you walked into a publisher in the 1970's and pitched a SF novel with a global pandemic (AIDS) and a climate problem (AGW), you'd be shown the door and they'd call security—several times now. Most of the interviews have hit that highlight a few others.

BoingBoing had Gibson on for one in their short-lived podcasting series (they then moved on to doing short video webcasts but I think that has died as well). It was short. Gibson seemed to be talking to them over a cellphone while outside, so you could hear wind. One of the people from the BoingBoing end of things was dialed in on something (internet telephone?) that had latency problems. Two of the others also had audio quality problems. They kept tripping over each other, and their guest, in asking questions and interjecting useless noise.

Contrast that with this interview done by Rick Kleffel at The Agony Column. The interview runs quite long so you get more than soundbites on how we're living in the future. The interviewer allows Gibson to speak, only interjecting himself when necessary to get things moving again. Gibson even contributes two readings from two novels.

Podcasting may be the radio of the future, but quality will show. I'll be returning to hear more from The Agony Column; on the other hand, I won't be sad about the demise of the BoingBoing effort for long.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 03:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This parody of the style of Dr. Seuss has been revived and is hitting various mailing lists (again). For your amusement...

IF a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report! more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor's take warning.

Half clearing, half cloudy. And as the sun was coming up, it started pouring rain. So the light outside was very red and very wet.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A sea port made out of...Legos!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 02:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Warren Ellis has a humorous revision and restatement of the famous three laws of robotics.

Via Gravity Lens.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Want the truth behind The Lord of the Rings?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...To Do In Nelson's Navy. Originally posted at The Gunroom mailing list.

01. My official title is Midshipman, not Superman.
02. I will not tell anyone that I can have them keelhauled for disobeying my orders.
03. When addressing Lt. Hornblower, I will call him 'Sir'. I will not add 'Lancelot'.
04. The main mast is not 'the mightiest tree in the forest' and I will stop trying to cut it down with a herring.
05. The ship does not weigh the same as a duck. I will not try to burn it.
06. I will not confess to mutiny in ships I was not on.
07. When asking if someone was dropped on the head as a child, I will not use Wellard as a demonstration.
08. I will keep any jokes involving doing the breast-stroke to myself.
09. I will not say there are klingons on the starboard bow.
10. I will not taunt the French. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via BoingBoing, a cool retro-looking spaceship made from...what else...Legos!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You are getting veeeeerrrrrryyyy sleeeeppppy.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lately my spam has been in German. In fact, the German-language offers for illegal software have totally replaced any wishes for a good new year (that usually were either stock scams or pill scams). Today the spam box had fifty (50) variations of illegal software...in German.

Go figure. I guess, though, it is better than the previous foreign-language batch with was in something that would not translate into a readable character set, other than looking like something along the lines of something vaguely Native American!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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