Monthly Archives: December 2004

Wrapping Up A Year Of Controversy

December 31, 2004 – 7:23 am

AlterNet had a good line of stories this weekend to round up the old year and ring in the new. I’m running a little late on such things here at MaisonBisson, so let me just quote from theirs instead.
— - —
Daniel Kurtzman’s list of The 25 Dumbest Quotes of 2004 includes this doozy [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (23)



Slacking Is Universal

December 30, 2004 – 9:20 pm

In yet another reminder from Mainichi Daily News that American’s and Japanese aren’t so different, now they’re reporting: coeds say college guys ‘childish, irresponsible, stupid.’ A survey of 300 female students selected from 15 universities located in either Osaka, Kyoto or Kobe reveals:
A majority of the 300 women polled said that their main impression [...]

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (1)

iPod Hacks

December 30, 2004 – 9:06 pm

Hack-a-Day has just given me the best reason I’ve seen yet to take a closer look at iPod Linux: audio input without the cheap dohicky accessories and at up to 96KHz x 16bit. The five step instructions couldn’t be much simpler (well, it might be more complex once a person actually tries it, but the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (246)

Terminal Holiday For 30K+

December 30, 2004 – 8:57 pm

I got to spend the holidays near home this year, and with everything else going on I didn’t really pay much attention to the Comair/Delta problem that stranded over 30,000 passengers last weekend. Now that I’m starting to pay attention to the news again, though, I was interested in ArsTechnica’s discussion of the software glitch [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Let Fly The MacWorld Rumors

December 29, 2004 – 7:27 am

Everybody is gaga (links: one — two — three — four) over the ThinkSecret story: Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo.
Many people in the Mac community have been agitating for a low-end ‘headless’ Mac to compete on price against cheap PCs. The rumored specs include:
1.25GHz G4 CPU
256MB RAM
Combo drive
40 - 80 GB [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)



National Geographic Society Not So Environmentally Conscious

December 29, 2004 – 6:36 am

I know I’m complaining here, but National Geographic seems to have done this wrong. I purchased The Complete National Geographic — 110 Years of National Geographic on CD-ROM a few years ago. The collection of 36 CDs is an archive of every page of every issue published from 1888 through 1998. It was a joy [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (6)

Google 101

December 28, 2004 – 5:40 am

The Economist has a very concise explanation of how Google works, and how it became today’s dominant search engine.
Mr Brin’s and Mr Page’s accomplishment was to devise a way to sort the results by determining which pages were likely to be most relevant. They did so using a mathematical recipe, or algorithm, called PageRank. This [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

High Speed Wireless

December 27, 2004 – 7:02 am

Michael Sciannamea at WirelessWeblog noted that:
BMW, Audi, Daimler Chrysler, Volkswagen, Renault, and Fiat have all received grants from the German government to develop a car-to-car wireless data network using 802.11a and IPv6 technologies to link vehicles to each other to pass on information about traffic, bad weather, and accidents.
They’re calling it “NOW: [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Chernobyl Followup

December 27, 2004 – 4:58 am

I posted a story about a tour through Chernobyl a few weeks ago. The story still gets a lot of hits, and somebody pointed out a few related Wikipedia links about the accident, the ghost town, and the controversy about Elena Filatova, the author of everybody’s favorite online Chernobyl tour story.
Separately, Peace.ca reminds us [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (2)

Free Palm Apps, Now Easier To Find

December 26, 2004 – 7:39 am

Jon Aquino’s holiday gift to us is to make FreewarePalm useful:
Why this work was necessary: FreewarePalm contains a goldmine of ratings of Palm freeware. But it does not provide a way to sort the programs by rating. That is why I extracted the ratings and sorted them.
With over 6000 listings, there’s a lot to choose [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (9)

Heart Warming Holiday Tale For Hackers

December 26, 2004 – 6:55 am

I recently stumbled across Ron Avitzur’s story of the the development of Graphing Calculator, the little application that makes complex math easy to visualize. If there was a collection of essays titled “Chicken Soup For The Silicon Valley Soul,” this would be included.
Pacific Tech’s Graphing Calculator has a long history. I began the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (9)

Requisite Holiday Email Forward

December 25, 2004 – 11:16 pm

Mark Turski’s holiday message:
1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.
2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it’s rare. In fact, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (0)

Happy Holidays 2004

December 24, 2004 – 11:01 pm

The Warren Rocket stands in the the snow on December 4, 2004.

By Casey | Posted in Warren | Comments (1)

Happy Holidays 2004

December 22, 2004 – 11:01 pm

Photo taken December 5, 2004, just north of Warren on NH Route 25C. The snow is real (and much deeper now), but I added the lights for the holidays.
Regular updates to MaisonBisson will return after a short holiday break.

By Casey | Posted in Warren | Comments (7)

Coincidence Is Too General A Term

December 22, 2004 – 2:57 pm

Engadget had a laugh over a story in the Keene Sentinel:
So the other day a UPS driver in New Hampshire was on his way to the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene to deliver some much-needed parts for a piece of medical equipment when he got into acrash. He suffered a head injury and was taken [...]

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (1)