MaisonBisson

Turkeys aren’t small birds. Along the commute from home to work, they’re as common as pigeons in a city park, but it’s still odd to see a turkey in the parking lot (video link).

The source video was taken with a Sony Clie PEG-TH55 and edited — just a bit — in iMovie.

I saw a link for a Palm-based GameBoy emulator, then was stunned to read about an Atari ST emulator for Palm. A quick Google search later, and I found an Apple //e emulator too!. It’s the old-timer in me, but I really enjoyed the games on those old systems.

More info on the Apple //e emulator for Palm are at Palm Info Center and FreewarePalm. PalmEmu links up a number of emulators for Palm.

[UPDATE]: There’s a review of Palm-based emulators at The Gadgeteer. Thanks to MyPalmLife for the pointer (look there for more info too!).

The ClieSource Forums are an excellent source of info. It turns out that installing the movierecorder.prc (version 1.3) from a UX50 onto the TH55 allows it to record movies. The problem is getting that file….

Isn’t Google great? If that doesn’t work out for you, try searching at the Palm User Message Board, where you might just find it.

Here’s the trick: you can’t just install the app via Palm Sync. You’ll have to copy or sync it onto the Memory Stick, then copy it to the internal storage. Happy video!

[UPDATE]: I found more info and a better source for the movie recorder here.

For example movies shot using the Clie TH55, follow the links in this story about Cliff’s Piranha.

Aside from all the other online dictionaries, Scrabble players may be interested in the following sites:

Hasbro’s word lists for tough times (including Q without U, two letter words, X words, and more). Wordplays.com’s tools for word games is a collection of web apps that would be handy to use (if it were legal to do so) during a game. Mark has developed a number of word lists and other scrabble tools. And we can’t ignore the word lists from the Internet Scrabble Club or the ENABLE dictionary.

Palm users may be interested in Scrabble for Palm and the ENABLE Scrabble dictionary for Palm.

• The PublicIP ZoneCD is a bootable CD implementation of NoCat’s NoCatAuth. NoCatAuth configuration help is available from AmsterNet and Blyx.
• The LEAF Project intends to create Linux-based firewall-in-a-box solution that has uses for wireless.
• LinSpot is a commercial hotspot-in-a-box software solution.
• NoCat, LESS Networks, Portland Community Wireless, and Newbury Open.net are active community wireless operations.
• O’Reilly Wireless DevCenter has loads of news. Rob Flickenger of NoCat has authored a number of articles a couple books there.
• PBS’s Bob Cringely has a few interesting and relevant columns including: using 801.11 equipment to create wireless WAN links, serious cross-country wireless links, how to build your own DSL network using dry pairs from your local telephone company (when wireless just won’t cut it).

On the list of places to visit next time I go out west:

Murphys Surplus Warehouse:

Located at 401 N. Johnson Ave:

El Cajon, Ca. 92020 (Near San Diego)

619 444 7717

Fax 444 6750

8,000 sq. ft. of military and industrial electronics, communications, and MIS electronic equipment.

80s revivals may be played out and we’re not yet ready for 90s nostalgia. Nonetheless, there are a number of songs of the time period that we’re a little ashamed to admit we love. Without knowing why, and in no particular order, here they are:

The Humpty Dance

Funky Cold Medina

Can’t Touch This

Ice Ice Baby

Do Me and Poison

Hotstepper

Mama Said Knock You Out

Goin Back to Cali

Parents Just Don’t Understand

Fight For Your Right

Walk This Way

And everything from Salt-n-Pepa and En Vogue

Oddly, very few of these fine tracks are available at the iTunes music store. Hmmm.

Take Eysenck’s EPQ-R based Personality Test.

The Lexar 256MB Memory Stick arrived. It sucks. It’s not really a 256 MB stick, it’s 2 x 128MB, and you have to flick a little switch to choose which 128MB you want to use at any moment. Let me be more clear: you can only use 128MB at a time, and you have to eject the card and flip a switch to select the other 128MB. I don’t know if it’s returnable, but I think I’ll try.

I did find that Nick Coday records and encodes videos for Clie. They look pretty good, but file sizes are larger than I expected. I still don’t know how to encode my own videos into a compatible mp4 format, and Nick’s vids won’t open in QuickTime on my computer. They error with “an audio elementary stream descriptor is corrupted/expected type=0x65736473 (‘esds’); found type=0x00000000 instead.” They play on the Clie anyway.

Unrelated to videos, Mapopolis makes an interesting looking map application that works with or without GPS. SuperUtility allows you to delete read-only and protected files from your Palm. The iGo Pitch Solo is a universal Palm and Pocket PC presentation adapter that plugs in via USB.

Just ran across 24-7media.de. It’s a cool site. Their Flash design is top notch and I really like the metaphor. Does it work? Yes, in the limited context they’re using, it works well.

Best of all — or most disturbing, who knows — is the soundtrack. Composed by Yuko Ohigashi, it’s haunting and mysterious.

The 90s saw a resurgence of interest in dirigible airships. People believed their time had come again, but few are flying today. The CargoLifter, a cargo airship designed for loads of 160 metric tons (that’s over 175 US tons), is in receivership, and little has been heard of the Zeppelin NT.

Links and more info:

• Story about the CargoLifter (via Google Translations), and a CargoLifter image gallery as well (also via Google Translations).
• A story of the rebirth of the Zeppelin and pictures of an inaugural Zeppelin NT flight.
• Centennial of Flight essay on modern airships

Matt Miller’s NPR commentary about the Bush budget includes the following details:

• A deficit of 521 billion means borrowing almost 1 out of 4 dollars in the budget.
• It includes 300 billion in tax cuts that go mostly to the rich, but ignores the 25 trillion dollar shortfall in social security and medicare that will start to come due in five years.
• Bush plans to send an addendum to the budget to cover the growing costs of the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan after the November elections.
• Finally, bush plans to blame this spending on congress instead admitting that the real problem is the huge tax cuts that have shorted government revenue from 19% of GDP to 16% almost overnight. Meanwhile, government spending is actually down to 20% of GDP from the 21% it was through the 1980s.

What’s the lesson here? We’re borrowing more to get fewer government services (like no healthcare), while Bush mortgages our future to grandstand on taxes. To make things easy, Miller wants us to remember the following mathematical facts: 20 < 21 and 16 < 19.

I hope someday to have a need for flight planning software, so I’ll keep these URLs around for a while: Mac Flight Planner and Flight Math.

Now that the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation’s Atomic Testing Museum. is open, you don’t have to wait for the DOE’s occaisional tours of the test site to get your radiation fix. Lawrence Livermore National Lab has a review of the new museum.

We caught a show at the Amargosa Opera House (official site) in Death Valley, just a short drive west of Vegas. The Opera House deserves a story of its own and the views and scenery of Death Valley are just beautiful.

Getting around Vegas is easy; a simple Vegas strip map is all you need. Meanwhile, it’s fun to look at the conventions and conferences that will be running during your stay.

We never made it to this fondue restaurant, and I didn’t make it to the site of a 1988 rocket fuel explosion (reported in this 1997 story about a similar accident). My suspicion is that the site of the explosion and the old rocket fuel production facility has since been leveled and casinos built there.

Photo galleries and videos of our trip are online.

I might get around to telling the story later, but for now all I have is a couple movies and a few pictures. There’s a short video of the koi and gardens at the Flamingo, an album of snapshots and nightlife, an album of pictures from the very unique Amargosa Hotel and Opera House, and a short video of our short visit to Crystal, NV.

We saw Zoomanity and a show at the Amargosa Opera House. We drove through Death Valley, danced ourselves silly at Coyote Ugly, and did a hundred other fun or stupid things.

I blame Missouri. Kansas City in particular.

I’m sure there’s probably another airport like this somewhere, but I don’t know about it. KCI, MO, is setup so that you have to exit and re-enter security areas just to change planes. Then, if you need to use the bathroom or get something to eat, well then you have to go through security again then too. Of all the airports to suffer a three hour delay in, KCI might be the worst.

Then somebody pulled a fire alarm, and we all had to exit and go through security again.

I’m just glad the flight home is direct.