Encrypted Mail on OS X

Found a couple links on how to get OS X (1, 2) working with Thawte's free encryption certificates.

Hitachi GST News

The Reuters article, in English (print version) and Japanese, reeks of authenticity. Maybe some good will come of it, who knows.

More on the Eee PC

Ars Technica has some more details about the Asus Eee PC (previous news). I'm tempted to buy the $299 model. $100 for another 2GB of flash is a bit steep, especially since there's an SD slot. The one downer is the battery life: 3 hrs is paltry. I'd expect more since there's no optical drive or HDD.

Pimp My Rice Paddy

Real or Photoshopped, I'm not quite sure. But they look convincing....

ふもふもさんメキシコ版

かわいいじゃんか。

Notary Publics

Since reading about the Thawte CA's Web of Trust, and becoming a notary in their network, I was curious how to become a real notary public. There's an organization called the National Notary Association that has a how-to. eHow also has instructions on how to become a notary public.

Ready?

Here's that disaster preparedness website I'd seen before. I could use the list of stuff to have. Sheesh, they left guns and gold off the list? That's a disservice!

Baby Names

Was looking for some information on issuing of SSNs for a friend and came across a list of top baby names on the SSA's website. Also has a breakdown by year.

Men Want Hot Women

Yeah.

Mental Floss

The past week, CNN's feature "Mental Floss" feature has had interesting articles.

A couple days ago was a list of five nasty parasites. That was pretty intriguing, if not more than a little gross.

Today was a bit on Latin phrases used in American English. Featured were:

Caveat Emptor
Persona Non Grata
Habeas Corpus
Cogito Ergo Sum
E Pluribus Unum
Quid Pro Quo
Ad Hominem
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Sui Generis

The last two I actually didn't know. Perhaps I should take up Latin.

Asus Eee PC & Cute Taiwanese Girl

Slashdot had a post on Palm's announcement of the withdrawal of their Foleo PC handheld from their product plan. Actually, I hadn't paid any attention to this, but the Asus Eee PC that was mentioned in the same post is sort of interesting.

Even more interesting still was that a girl in Taiwan had posted some pictures of a marketing prototype. Never mind the handheld, this girl's cute in some of the pictures! I like her smile, anyway.

Blade Runner Box Set

Noel sent me this link about the upcoming Blade Runner box set. I may just have to splurge. Thing is, I don't know about the Blu-Ray version—will it actually provide any additional fidelity over DVD since the movie's so old? Hopefully this won't incite me to finally buy a PS3....

neomarxisme

Noel sent me a link to this site.

The most recent post was regarding a commercial I'd seen while in Japan, so I posted a comment.

グリソの足跡

ネット検索で「マーティングリーン　ミネソタ」を入れたらこんなのが出てきたよ
気まぐれダイブログ（マンタ）
気まぐれダイブログ
写真付きだ。いろんなところで現れるなぁ、グリソは。

π型人間

今日「π型人間」という言葉をはじめて聞いた。説明として白倉さんはリンクを送ってくれた。自分で見つけたのはこれ。

Corn Syrup is Badness

Yeah, I knew I was right, beeotch! Actually, I probably got the idea reading Neanderthin. Still, I realized that some drinks didn't really quench one's thirst, and from looking at the ingredients I figured out that the common one was corn syrup. That it messes with one's metabolism I didn't learn until later.

PVR

Since I've got digital cable, I've been thinking I need to put together a PC-based video recorder. Subscription-based ones like TiVo just mean another monthly bill, and since I don't watch all that much TV to begin with (the wife does sporadically), it's not worth it. So far I haven't been able to find any Japanese DVR-like devices, so I may have to roll my own.

Hot Deals Club had a blurb about a device called HDHomeRun, which is a networked DVR. The downside is that it requires coax inputs, and with my setup, I'm not sure if it'll work. Furthermore, SiliconDust's website doesn't have any specs or other information that would help me decide whether to buy it, so I'm going to pass.

DVICO, on the other hand, has a product, the Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold, that caught my eye. It at least has an S-Video input, so I could hook up my cable box to it. At $150, it's not too spendy, either. The problem is, it doesn't support Linux. I guess I have to keep looking.

Hide & Go Poop

Joel sent me this one. Crazy vid on YouTube.

PC 'Scope

Following on to the mixer thing, I was wondering how hard it'd be to make some oscilloscope-like hardware that plugs into a PC. Wikipedia has an article on test probes that's enlightening.

Maxim also has an article on designing a low-jitter clock, which can be used to drive high-speed ADCs. 1 GHz should be achievable. Using a USB interface would be too slow to do real-time processing, but by capturing into memory on a trigger and transferring the data, the PC could handle high-speed captures. Real-time could use less bandwidth to approximate the signal to the limit of USB 2.0.

Audio Mixer Circuit

I was looking at building a simple mixer circuit to mux two PCs' 5.1 audio sources to 5.1 speakers. My current KVM switch only has two minijacks, so it can't handle 5.1.

Googling "simple audio mixer circuit" turned up a page of links to mixer projects. Some ones I liked:

Simple Mixer
FET Audio Mixer
Six-Channel Mixer and Amp

Water Guns & The Glock FAQ

Noel sent me a link to a Wired News article about underwater weapons. Interesting, but of limited depth.

The more interesting thing was mention of The Glock FAQ, which has a lot of details about Glock pistols.

Lotus Notes on OS X

If I were really intent on getting away from Windows: There's a version of Lotus Notes for OS X, as well as the AT&T Global Network Dialer necessary to tunnel to the company network. Hmm.

Fading Photos

More on archival of photos. All the more reason to archive important images to film!

lhaca

Just in case I forget where to get a decompressor for LHA/LZH, here one is. The URL is amusing, "buttya" looks like "butt yeah!" Wonder if it's supposed to be "butcher" or something.

Optimus Maximus

The OLED-topped keyboard is finally reaching production in limited quantities.

But who's going to pay $1560 for keyboard, and a non-ergonomic one at that? Not I, sir. Though I must admit that it's kinda cool.

C&R FFL

Found this helpful link regarding obtaining a Curio & Relic Federal Firearms License. The main useful bit:

What is a C&R or Cruffler?
C&R is nothing more than a way to facilitate collecting.
You may have certain firearms shipped to your C&R FFL address, just like a FFL business.
The easy definition is firearms that are 50 years old or more.
-There are also some collectible firearms allowed.
You can write to the ATF asking them to determine a firearm a C&R.
-It looks a little difficult; requiring you to demonstrate why the firearm is collectible.
It is not a business.
-It MAY NOT be a business or it will be taken away fom you.
If you can own a gun you can get a C&R license.
The ATF determines who may have a C&R.
-Cities have little to no say in whether you may get one.
It does require you to keep a logbook.
-You must record EVERY C&R purchase.
You don't have to record non C&R firearms purchases in your C&R bound book.

One of my old roomies got a C&R, way back when, hence my lingering interest.

Also found a couple articles, one mirrored from Shotgun News with more info, another on importing, and then there's C&R Buds that has a bunch of useful C&R info.

"Last Ditch" Arisakas

Info on identification of the Arisaka so-called "last ditch" model.

STEREO Pictures of Earth

My Dad sent me this link to the STEREO website. Actually, he probably sent it a couple weeks ago. Anyway, the site's got some pretty sweet pictures of the sun. In stereo. Bitchin'!

祇園での遊び方

「一元さん」についてもうちょっと知りたかったので、ネット検索したらこの記事が出た。かなり面白い。行った御茶屋は「今後もどうぞ来てください」って言ってくれたっけ？

Lee Iacocca on Chrysler and the Future of Detroit

CNN Money had an interesting interview with Lee Iacocca. A couple interesting blurbs:

AT: Do you blame the Japanese for Detroit's decline over the past couple of decades?

LI: I've taken on the Japanese forever. Toyota's a great competitor. Nissan's coming on strong. Honda's always been great on engineering. They're good companies, but they had advantages. It's unfair competition. Their market is closed to us. They still manipulate currency. When they come to this country they don't have unions, and that's tough to compete against. Sometimes I think their trade practices are predatory.

AT: In the '80s you suggested raising the gas tax.

LI: Yes. I went to see Reagan and said, "Let's put a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline. That's $50 billion. We can cut the deficit in half." He said, "You've got to be out of your mind. You don't tax gasoline." And he laughed. So we never did it. Our state and federal taxes add up to about 46 cents a gallon, compared with $5 in Europe.

A 50-cent gas tax? Why not? There's nothing that says people have a god-given right to cheap transportation. Of course, our economy depends on it. And in general more taxes are bad. Still, by having artificially low gas prices, we encourage its waste.