Interesting Amazon Lists, etc.

Listmania: T-shirts - Various t-shirt books.
Listmania: for Fun and Profit - Random hobby books, many of which are interesting.
Guide: Ditch Your Designer - References to doing one's own design.
Guide: Know how a print can be original - References to traditional print-making (not t-shirts).

Airsoft Arms

Edo sent me this link to Airsoft Arms, an airsoft gun and miscellaneous military item shop near Columbus. Looks like the orange tips are mandatory; the manufacturers must make them specially for export.

Small business info & Merchant accounts

Found some useful info on merchant accounts at About.com. There's other useful-looking stuff on there too.

Another site has more detailed information. Looks like charging for others is a no-no. Unfortunate.

Why I quit the company

Yoshi has a link to this interesting article from his blog. It's about how being a salaryman sucks circa 1992. I don't think too much has changed since then, except that there are a lot more "freeters" running around.

Well, being a salaryman does suck.

Fortune: New ways to get ahead

It's easier to move up by moving sideways? That might be true for women, hee hee. Ok, that was infantile. Believe me, I've been worse.

But the fact remains that if one's current field isn't something they can enjoy, moving to a field that one can get into and therefore excel is the smart thing to do. Perhaps I need to get back into software.

Airsoft Guns Again

I wrote a post about airsoft gun sales sites in the U.S., but neglected to post the manufacturer's pages.

東京マルイ
KSC
SIIS

There's a long article on Wikipedia Japan also.

A company called Sanken does import/export of toy guns. Cool!

White Rabbit Express

Noel tipped me to this service. Competitive analysis can be depressing at times.

"White Rabbit" reminds me of this candy that I used to like as a kid. Most people probably think The Matrix movie instead.

Random Anime and Fansub Related

The Fansub FAQ - From way back in '99.
Animania - Some guy's paper on anime. He interviewed Will Ray.

I guess I was looking for references to soyokaze.biosci.ohio-state.edu, that's what brought up the spate of hits.

UMD Movies Going Bye-Bye

(Reuters) Apparently UMD as a movie format is dying. Good riddance! Sony's business decisions lately are really stupid. Why did they think consumers would pay more for a format that has inferior quality, can't be copied, and can only be played on the PSP?

This is like they are killing their music player sales by mandating that SonicStage be used. Music check-in, no re-burning—the software sucks! I probably would've gotten a Sony player rather than an iPod if they only would ditch the software. iTunes or SonicStage is no-contest from the users' perspective.

Also, it's too bad that they didn't use Hi-MD for the PSP. However, since MDs have no copy protection and are slightly larger in size, I suppose that wasn't possible. Still, the gaping hole in the UMD cassette is another blemish on the format's resume.

Sony's technology is amazing, but the people making the business decisions are idiots. If they didn't act like they think they can dictate to consumers, then they might actually take over some market share.

Microsoft Product Lifecycle

Turns out that MS is eliminating support for Win 98/ME at the end of June this year. No big loss, but I had to check up on Win 2k. It's ok until 2010, it seems. See their Product Lifecycle page for details.

Airsoft Sites

SoftAirPro - FAQ
IceFire - FAQ
Pyramid Air

Net Machine Shop

I finally found the Net machine shop featured in Wired that I couldn't find the URL to: http://www.emachineshop.com/. Cool. Now I can proceed with my plans for world domination. They also have a sister company, Pad2Pad, that does circuit board etching. Build it!!

山本遊子のブログ

ここだったけど、ここに移った。以前名前をどっかで見たかな。今別の検索でサイトに巡り合った。

向こう側のアパート

隣のビルのアパートの賃貸情報を見つけた。実は、この部屋が良かったけど、引っ越した時に空いていなかった。ちょっと残念だったけど、結局あまり家にいないんで（いつも会社にいる気がする）別にいいか。

The Lie Behind the Lie Detector

Gotta learn how to pass a polygraph.

Fujitsu's 200GB 2.5"er

Turns out Fujitsu's 200GB Mobile drive is a 3-disk longitudinal product. It's interesting that they could get three platters to fit into the standard height. Fujitsu's product page contains limited specs.

A Margarita Recipe

Intriguing.

Japanese Post Office

This is extremely useful info for me! The Japanese Post Office has a nice online reference site for EMS now. Further, they have details on shipping food items to the U.S. There's a link to the U.S. FDA page on Prior Notice of incoming food items, as well as an online manual.

Watson's Weapons & Raufoss

For biiiiig guns, check out Watson's Weapons. Mostly .50BMG stuff. You can get armor-piercing incendiaries! Now only if one could get Raufoss Multi-Purpose rounds, some Norwegian AP ammo that apparently the Navy uses. The stuff uses RDX high-explosive, and detonates within the target after penetration. Ouch. I hear it's $30/rd. Now that'd be worth buying a 50-cal for!

Snopes, the Plague, and Ben Stein

This came up recently after talking to Katy about her dissertation on infectious (typically fatal) diseases. We'd discussed the merits of quarantining HIV/AIDS when it was in its infancy, and she convinced me that it wouldn't have been a good idea after all. The comparison was to the Black Plague, and the differences were that the Plague was visually recognizable and was fatal in a short timespan. HIV/AIDS is not outwardly visible and takes sometimes many years to kill, so quarantine is not feasible: There's no easy way to recognize the victims, and people don't want to go into quarantine so they wouldn't come out and say it. Anyway, I read up on the Black Plague on Wikipedia, and found out some stuff I didn't know, like there were three "varieties". The salient point was that the "Ring Around the Rosies" children's rhyme doesn't refer to the Plague, or so says Snopes, one of those myth debunker sites.

Another fun entry they had was a quote from Ben Stein regarding the state of America today where stupid celebreties are all-important and freedom of religion has gone out the window. There's one other one on the nature of stardom and role models that's worth reading. Ben Stein is cool.

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。