The Municator

Makebot sent me a link to an article on the Make Blog covering The Municator. Another article.

Apparently the Chinese have made an Intel-compatible CPU for the express purpose of making cheap domestic computers so they don't have to rely on foreign stuff. From their website:

Our ultimate goal is to let the Chinese computer-users use our own-made CPUs in which we do not have to rely on the imported CPUs. Our products are made for ourselves but not for exportation only. At the moment, we have developed the necessary techniques and technologies for developing our own brand-named computers. If we can produce our own products by ourselves, more Chinese computer-users can enjoy the benefits, and this is what we have aimed to achieve.

I suppose that's really smart of them, because they're doing what the U.S. as a whole is too stupid to do—remain self-sufficient. We're so heavily dependent on Chinese shit that it's not even funny. Many stores only have junk that's made in China: it's hard to not buy Chinese even if you don't want to. And that's disgusting. Capitalism is shooting itself in the foot big time.

Tax Junk

This isn't a link, but I want to note it, just in case.

A US tax law allows taxpayers to choose whether they want to deduct the state and local sales taxes they have paid during the year in lieu of deducting state and local income taxes. This is beneficial for individuals who itemize their deductions and live in one of seven "no income tax" states (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington) or live in states where the sales tax rate is in excess of the income tax rate. Taxpayers can choose to determine the deductible amount by relying on actual receipts or by using tables developed by the IRS. In addition, individuals who had large purchases, such as automobiles and boats, can add sales tax paid on those items on top of the amount indicated in the tables developed by the IRS.

"Be smarter at work, slack off"?

MRG sent me a link to an article on CNN Money about how people need slack time to be creative and give companies an edge. Seems like everyone I know is stressed out at work these days because they have too much to do. Too much work, too few competent people to do the work.

Of course, one has to be careful about saying it's ok to slack, because there are some true non-workers out there. The last thing we need is for them to work even less.

Mr. Dada: Gold & Business

I don't recall how I found this blog, but I must've been searching Blogger randomly or somesuch. Anyway, there's this gold investment blog called Dada Says, apparently by a businessman named A.B. Dada. It seems to be legit, though one should always take advice with a grain of salt. Free advice given freely is often wrong. We spend so much time building networks of people we can trust because ascertaining whether information is good or not is often how half our time leading up to decision-making is spent.

Anyway, this Mr. Dada links to an online book called What Has Government Done to Our Money? (PDF). Indeed. I haven't read it yet, but it does look interesting.

This article on the Clinton and inflation was quite interesting.

Then there's another blog by the same fellow called Be Your Own Boss. Sounds like a kindred spirit.

Link Page Back Up

Apparently some blogs hosted on Blogspot were down for a few days, one of which was this one. As such, I wasn't able to take down a bunch of interesting links. Well, when one uses a free service, one doesn't have the right to complain. Much. I suppose it's my fault for not being more with it—perhaps a normal person would be able to keep these things about himself without getting buried. These are confounding times we live in.

Tacnuke North Korea

Apparently North Korea has been test-firing more missiles. They really need to get smacked down. Hard.

Maxxuss

Maxxuss is my hero.

Hard Disk Info

USByte has an interesting explanation of HDD technology. It's extremely simplistic, but is therefore good information for someone who knows nothing about how a HDD works.

Um, the following is work-related, but is kinda interesting. Regarding the so-called "Wallace spacing loss":
Clearance Measurements - References the patent by Klaassen, et al, #5130866.
Head reliability of AMR sensors based on thermal stress tests - A bit more detail regarding the spacing measurement.

松下奈緒

綺麗だな、この人。前にも雑誌の表紙で見て調べた。残念ながら写真集はなさそうだ。でも買ったら嫁に怒られそう！

女性雑誌ランキング

女性向けの雑誌に興味のある人はここまで参考してください。特に、アイドルのものな。

Hostesses

My senpai sent me a note a while back asking about the Lucy Blackman trial. I had forgotten about it, it happened so long ago (2000). She was a British girl who came to Japan to make money as a hostess and ended up getting killed by some psychopath who had drugged and raped a bunch of hostesses. I haven't been able to find info on what happened with the trial of the psycho. Japan's legal system is very messed up. If I were that girl's dad and this was the U.S., I'd shoot the psycho in the head. Twice. With a history like that, trust me, the piece of shit isn't worth allowing to walk around.

Transcript of 60 Minutes bit on white-girl-stalking psychos....
If you still don't mind, here's a page about being a hostess.

Walther G22

My dad was telling me about the new Walther G22 rifle. It looks pretty sweet for a .22, even if it only has 10 rounds. I may have to include it in my list for the gun buying spree I go on when I move back to the U.S. Muahaha. Perhaps I'd better get that FFL after all.

Manko Power

Katy asked me to get her some stickers from this Japanese adult net store that say "manko power". How demented. Especially because it's in romaji. Perhaps they would've gotten in trouble if they'd written it in kana?

All About Pizza in Chicago

Worth studying? Mongo like pizza.

Katy's Gossip Links

Ok, so I was talking to Katy online about random stuff, and suddenly she sends me this incredibly twisted link to a Flash game about Lee Tamahori. The game is really twisted, but I had to go look up wtf Lee Tamahori was. I ended up on this site called The Superficial, which is some wacky celeb gossip site. Katy knew it, and then started sending me links to all these other gossip blogs: IDon'tLikeYouInThatWay.com, The Awful Truth (Blind Vice), and Dlisted. I didn't know she read this stuff. I thought she was a serious PhD student. And now my brain is reeling from nasty pictures of celebs I used to think were hot, like Teri Hatcher (think Tango & Cash, ok?). Good Lord, what has this society come to? But...but...here's Jessica Alba topless sunbathing? Yowza.

Bozzetti

While jogging, I went by Kugenuma station just for the heck of it -- ok, I thought I could cut around the Enoden tracks a different way and there wasn't one -- and passed by this leather goods store called Bozzetti. Handmade stuff is cool.

Check out Limbo

Apparently Dennis Ritchie worked on a successor to the C programming language, called Limbo. This sounds quite interesting...must learn more.

CNN News, 2006.02.02

Some news articles from CNN:
Women sue Wal-Mart over contraception - I'm no fan of Wal-Mart, but these feminist bitches need to get smacked down. Who the hell are they to tell a company they must stock a certain product? That's not capitalism, that's socialism! On the other hand, I'd be happy if morons like this didn't produce offspring, so maybe Wal-Mart should stock the morning-after meds. Incidentally, it's inaccurate to call it "contraception" if the medication is utilized post-fertilization.
How Pepsi outgunned Coke - An excellent article on why the cola wars wasn't everything. Also an eye-opener: if you buy stock in companies you like, sometimes it's not as profitable as buying companies you don't like. (I vastly prefer Coke to Pepsi, but made less than 10% on Coke stock.)
The "Oh, s#&%!" moment - A few good tips for handling the low points of office work. Check out "Managing the boss" and "Adventures in e-mail".
Young and in love with saving - Think about the future. Active investment is becoming a must in Corporate America. Don't trust your future to your employers: when it's time for you to "retire", they won't care about you anymore.

こーじのお薦めブログ

同じオフィスにいる人間（？）が、以下のブログをお薦めしています。どうぞご覧ください。

眞鍋かをりのココだけの話
がんばれ、生協の白石さん！
Monkeyfarm: なんでも作るよ。

フモフモさん！

さっちゃんのお気に入りフモフモさんだ。でも、ケローニョ以外そんなに可愛くないと思う。

フモフモさん同盟までもあるらしい。

OS X Wallpaper

While I was looking for an OS X Tiger image, I found Google's image gallery to be very useful. Unfortunately, quite a few pictures were non-existent by the time I hit the link. There's one with Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes, but it seems to have disappeared. I'm trying to get it from the Internet Archive, but it's slow going.

There's a Japanese guy on .Mac who has a bunch of interesting pin ups involving Apple products (and like me uses Yahoo! BB). Some of it's really funny and imaginative, but the anime-style girls could be a bit cuter. If someone would translate these into Betty Page-type cheesecake, on the other hand....

I also found this interesting unrelated CG art print that is kinda cool.

U.S. T-Shirts

Here's an interesting site that makes t-shirts in the U.S.: American Apparel (note the .net; there's a different company whose domain is .com). They sell wholesale. Hmm, just need to find a quality screen printer, or learn how to do it myself....

Animate! Ohio State

Just so I don't forget the new URL.... http://www.animateosu.org/ is it, after the old server, soyokaze.biosci.ohio-state.edu, was retired from service.

It's amazing how much the old OSU anime club folks were involved in propagating interest in anime over the past 10-15 years. Too bad I wasn't more involved with the non-mundane stuff. I think I maybe timed an episode of something once, copied a few tapes, and hung thousands of flyers. I suppose fandom is not an industry of glory.

But that was many moons ago. Now I don't have time to watch video of any kind anymore, and even if I had the time, I'd spend it doing something else. Like going into business.

Oh yeah, the infamous fansubbing organization, Lost in Translation (whose punned moniker predates the movie of the same name, is also located on the new A!OS server and is apparently back in action. Their version of subs for Mononoke Hime is actually better than the one on the official DVD!

Gold Is Up

Gold is up to over $550 an ounce. Nuts. Just when I was thinking about buying some more, the price spiked on me to $450, and it's been going up since. It's all this damned economic uncertainty that had me looking to buy more too. Silver is up considerably too. Looks like the stock market is too shaky for some investors. Almost all of my stocks are up, however....

Sobering commentary about the U.S. economy in an article on Kitco. On the other hand, there's bogus price target article there, too, so this must be taken with a grain of salt. (Takedown: First of all, the x-axis is inconsistent: there are multiple entries per year as well as omitted years. Second, there is no statistical support in that graph for a long upswing. From the bottom of the last cycle in 2001, gold prices were increasing at $25/yr. Lately it's been more, so the extrapolation is by no means linear. Even if it were linear, there's no guarantee how long the upswing would continue. The thing that bugs me about gold investment is that there's a lot of unreliable commentary made about it. That's not to say it doesn't happen on Wall Street, of course, but they tend to be more rigorous with their graphs.)

There's also an article on MarketWatch regarding the gold prices. One thing I never understood was why investors, both individual and institutional, insist on buying issues of things that were already well into their ascent upward. That just means they missed the boat, and may be buying at prices too high. Gold is different from typical paper securities, I suppose, in that it has the attractiveness of usefulness even in the face of economic collapse.

Well, with the volatility of the gold price lately, I'm sure there's money to be made in timing the short cycles.

Dashboard Widgets

Make:Blog also has an entry about constructing an RSS widget. Funky how those things are internally. I didn't realize they were basically Dynamic HTML. No wonder Dashboard is so damn slow!! Anyway, there are useful links to Apple widget info: Dashboard Tutorial and Dashboard Reference.

MakeBot

Make magazine is cool. There was a post on the Weblog chief's blog, which also linked to coverage about CES, about MakeBot. MakeBot sends the latest links from Make via AIM at configurable intervals. Neat.

東京トイレマップ

Many moons ago, I saw the funniest graffiti on a website documenting the locations, conditions, and artwork of public toilets around Tokyo. By complete coincidence, I ran across the site again, called Tokyo Toilet Map, again a couple days ago. The beautiful piece of graffiti is here (not suitable for work).

日本語版はメイン。英語版より地図が細かいし、日本語でのコメントのほうが面白い。

OS X for x86 Howto

To avoid being hitched to the TCM ball-and-chain, there's the warez'ed pre-release OS X for x86. I found this guide on how to install the hacked OS on Intel-based machines. There's a release of the howto for the 10.4.3 binaries as well. One just has to manage the 4GB download.... A Russian site has various patches and installations. There's also the OSx86 Project site that has news, forums, a wiki, and other such stuff for consumption.

Okaya Electronics and Ricoh's mini-ITX

I was looking for electronics parts stores in Japan, and ended up checking out Okaya Electronics's site. That wasn't what I was looking for, but they're apparently selling a mini-ITX alternative to Via's boards. The board is made by Ricoh, which I didn't know produced such items. Anyway, the board has GbE, SATA, and a LVDS port. Funky. Now I just need to find a place that sells cheap LVDS-compatible LCD screens....

GPG for OS X

So I started using PGP's commercial product, but then got to thinking, since this is closed source, I don't know if they've built in hooks for the government to decrypt one's messages. Actually, it'd be naive to think that the government didn't require that of PGP Corp. Therefore, I'm looking into open source options for my encryption, whereby I can compile the stuff myself. The point is to not let a government less and less interested with maintaining the rights of its citizens have access to my communications, for whatever reason.

The open source option is GNU Privacy Guard, abbreviated GPG. Another one of those great open source pun acronyms. There is a version of GPG for OS X, but it's command-line only. From there, one needs a front-end for the OS X mail application, Mail.app. There's a Mail.app plug-in called GPGMail that fills this gap.

There are expedient download links for these two applications, GPG for OS X and GPGMail, but unless one builds the apps oneself, that defeats the purpose of using this open source software.