- Powell Street Festival - August 2-3(27 days)
- 2nd Annual Fearless Festival - August 24(49 days)
- 'Crowd Critic' SWARM09(60 days)
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AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet
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Your Computer As Your Singing Coach
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New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo
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Wil Wheaton (and his GTA obsession) profiled in GEEK.
Bonnie Burton interviews actor, author, gamer, and geek-er Wil Wheaton in this month's edition of GEEK. Snip: Geek: (...) I need to know how far you’ve gotten in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Wil Wheaton: I haven’t been playing GTA IV that long since the game came out—maybe five hours so far. My progress meter is at like eight percent or something like that. I’ve gotten to a point where the story took a rather shocking and unexpected twist. The character that you control in the game is a very conflicted guy with a pretty complicated and dark history. The guy is more real and has more depth to him than any of the other characters I’ve controlled in GTA. Until last night, I may have played one or two story missions to advance the game, but I really just spend the rest of my time driving around and crashing into cars. I drive cars until they catch on fire. I like to go driving through the parks and hit the pedestrians. I’ve noticed a couple of things like if you’re going really fast and you hit a wall or a tree something like that you’ll fly through the front windshield of the car. So I drove really fast down the wrong side of the street on the expressway and hit a car head-on, and the driver shot through the windshield and landed on the hood of my car. That level of detail is just remarkable. But it suddenly felt weird just driving around the city mowing down pedestrians.
Has it started to warp your sense of reality when you’re stuck in traffic yet?
I hate driving. I absolutely despise it. I particularly hate driving in Los Angeles. I’ll be out somewhere with my wife and point out things, and tell her if this was Grand Theft Auto we wouldn’t have to sit here like this. We could just drive over that median.
Wil Wheaton [ Geek Blog / Geek Magazine. Disclaimer: I have been profiled there previously. ]
KDE 4.1 Beta 2 – Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?
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Laptop theft at Clarion West sf workshop -- donations needed
I'm flying to Seattle tomorrow to teach the third week of the workshop and I'm keenly aware of the chaos this will have wrought on the students. The workshop's organizers are soliciting donations -- either hardware or cash -- to get the students up and running. The workshop is incorporated as a 501(c)3 charity, so any deductions are tax deductible.
I am donating all of my teaching fee to the fund. I hope that some of you will be moved to chip in whatever you can afford, to help fund the instruction of the next generation of great science fiction writers.
Here's the note that organizer Leslie Howle has sent around: Four laptops were stolen July 4 from student rooms at the CW residence, and people in the SF community are responding swiftly and generously to help replace the stolen student computers.
If you'd like to donate to help the students replace the stolen laptops, please visit our Donate page and use the PayPal button, noting in the "Purpose" field that the donation is for "Computers."
This is the first time in our more than 25 years of workshops that something like this has happened, and we're doing all we can to get computers for students so they won't lose any writing time. The theft occurred while students were in class, and was discovered immediately afterwards. I called the Seattle Police Department to file a report, and we've taken steps to increase residence security.
News of the students' loss has spread quickly, and I deeply appreciate that friends, alumni, and writers in the community at large are offering donations to help students replace their computers. We'd especially like to thank Jay Lake for his generosity and for alerting others who might donate money or laptops.
This community is amazing and wonderful. Thanks for helping this year's CW writers, and for all your support. It means a lot to me, Neile, and all the rest of the CW volunteers and students. You guys are the best.
Link
The Phoenix TV series
The Phoenix was a short-lived 1982 TV series starring Judson Scott as an ancient astronaut named Bennu of the Golden Light. Extraterrestrials had left Bennu behind as a "gift to mankind" but he was woken too early and didn't know his mission on Earth. The show was kind of a cross between The Incredible Hulk and Erich Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods Around 1982, I was really into both of those, so it's no surprise I thought The Phoenix was a real gas. Here's the opening sequence. The Phoenix (YouTube)
Digitizing Old Magazines?
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Finding Fault With Google's Privacy Policy
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In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped
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There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute
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In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death
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As price of fuel soars, so does a dirigible renaissance?
Snip from an article in today's New York Times about a slew of designers and firms developing new models of airships. These passenger-carrying aircraft float on the wind, rather than being propelled solely by fuel (more precise explanation here). And, ah, hopefully they don't blow up in the sky or whatever. As the cost of fuel soars and the pressure mounts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, several schemes for a new generation of airship are being considered by governments and private companies. “It’s a romantic project,” said Mr. Massaud, 45, sitting amid furniture designs in his Paris studio, “but then look at Jules Verne.”
It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air.
Mr. Massaud, a designer of hotels in California and a stadium in Mexico, has not ironed out the technical details, nor has he found financiers or corporate backers for his project — to create a 690-foot zeppelin shaped like a whale, with a luxury hotel attached, that he has named Manned Cloud.
And, heh, my favorite quote here:
“A dirigible is something magical,” said Jérôme Giacomoni, who was 25 when he founded Aerophile with a friend. “But most of the ideas are crazy.”
Why Fly When You Can Float? [NYT]
Image: Jean-Marie Massaud.
Update: most LOLlable comment in this thread, #4 posted by Chris the Tiki guy... [I]f they're exploring whale shapes, why not other aquatic creatures, like the seacow? That way people can point and say "Oh, the huge manatee!" (...) [I]f Helium is in short supply, I doubt we'll be launching very many lighter-than-air craft any time soon, unless we can figure out how to make hydrogen just as buoyant but less explode-y.
Image: found floating (snort) around on the internet, provenance unknown Something Awful Dot Com's Photoshop Phriday.
Body armor developer shoots himself (video)
This video is not new, but a friend just pointed it to me. It is noteworthy because it shows a dude shooting himself in the chest and not dying. Also, because it includes mock-pizza-boxes crafted for a robbery enactment on television. The mock pizzas appear to be made of palm thatch. How do they do that?
Richard Davis, former U.S. Marine and onetime pizza delivery guy in Detroit, survived a gun shootout (he killed three armed robbers when they attacked him during a delivery). He went on to develop new forms of concealable body armor using kevlar. Those products are now widely used by military and law enforcement personnel, and private sector folks who have reason to believe they will be shot. This video tells a bit of his life story.
Richard Davis: video
[ YouTube, via, thanks, Susannah Breslin ]
Google Creates Tour De France Video Maps
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Arecibo Observatory Facing Massive Budget Cuts
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VW Concept Microcar Gets 235 MPG
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EUROPEANS! You have until MONDAY to contact your MEP and save the EU from a three-strikes copyright rule!
If this bill passes, then Europeans' access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.
Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 -- that's this Monday.
The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you. “One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications (”Telecom Package”), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users..
…this set of amendments creates the unprecedented mechanism known as graduated response in European law; judicial authority and law courts are vacated in favour of private actors and “technical measures” of surveillance and filtering. According to rules set forth by administrative authorities and rights holders, intermediaries will be forced to cooperate in monitoring and filtering their subscribers, or they will be exposed to administrative sanctions” Link
See also: Three false copyright accusations and we'll cut off your Internet access
AT&T To Offer No-Contract iPhone
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Anatomic model puzzles of surpassing loveliness
I just stumbled on Kikkerland's "Anatomic 3-D Puzzles" in a shop and was absolutely enthralled. These are snap-together models (calling them "puzzles" is a little weird, actually) showing the anatomy of various critters, from humans to cows, mammoths, and my favorites, beetles and snails. They're made out of plastic that feels just like the plastic they use for the anatomical models you had in senior biology class, with the same color schemes, but the sculpting is absolutely gorgeous, making them into stylish knick-knacks as well as interesting scientific instructional materials.
Kikkerland's online shop carries the whole line, albeit at about 10 percent higher prices than other webstores that carry one or two. My advice is to check out the items here, find the ones you want and google for a cheaper one at another store.
Link

