Hitchens on Palin

Christopher Hitchens has an excellent post on Slate. He doesn't pull any punches...
This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
Worth reading before you vote next week.

2008 Lenovo Magnificent Mile

http://www.magmilerace.com/ Jeff Witt, a PR person for Lenovo, organizes the Magnificent Mile race every year in Raleigh, NC. They are a currently little over half way along their goal to raise $40,000 to benefit the SPF, an organization that is helping people fight diseases like PLS. I was pretty surprised to learn about it from an email this morning as I never before knew about Jeff's involvement (his wife, a runner, being the inspiration for the race) or even about the disease. It looks like they are doing an incredible job and it's great to see Lenovo chipping in and helping their adopted community.

Enter to win an incredible notebook at Geek

I rarely post about work stuff here on my blog, but I wanted to give the readers (all six them) the hook-up. Geek.com, in partnership with HP and WOM marketing company Buzz Corps, is giving away an HP HDX 20.1" notebook that is worth about $5000. Here is the info. If you are insanely lazy and don't even care what you might win, than you can just enter the survey here. It takes about 30 seconds to enter, and you don't have to be a Geek member or anything. Given the effort vs reward ratio, this is probably the best thing you will do all day. Please though, tell some buddies: more applicants = better future contests and more cool gear that you don't have to work for.

Flash Sucks, Deal with it

Did you just upgrade your Flash player and now it won't work? Or you upgraded and it works in IE but not Firefox? Or how about you uninstalled it via Windows Control Panel, but it's still there? Yeah, working with Flash is not as easy as it should be given its ubiquity. This is why people don't upgrade, despite security flaws or don't install it in the first place or block it. Is you are having problems with a recent upgrade, probably 9.0.115.0 then here are the links you need: Cnet to the rescue!

Nalgene Bottles Cause Cancer? Oh the irony...

http://consumerist.com/consumer/nalgene/... nytimes... So Canada's top sporting good retailer pulled Nalgene bottles from its shelves because of a cancer scare. In case you are not familiar with Nalgene bottles, they are overprices plastic (polycarbonate?) bottles that are billed as being unbreakable and are carried around by outdoorsy type people and smug hippies. It's not proven that using the bottles cause cancer, but they are made with cancer-causing materials, so that's not a good start. At the very least the chemical can cause problems with your hormonal system, so it looks like it might be prudent to stay away. It is a cruel, cruel twist of fate the something people use to save the environment, promote drinking water, and to help them with their outdoor activities might be bad for us.

Logic Supply Has a Blog

http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/

Took them long enough!

Just kidding... It's great to hear a little bit more about what's going on over there. I have talked to the people at Logic Supply a few times and from what I have seen they are extremely dedicated to the small form factor market. Their store does a very good job and the people that I have corresponded with have not only been knowledgeable, but also interested in what they are selling and all the different applications that people are putting the gear towards. There is nothing like a blog to give us some insights into what is happening at the company. Hopefully they will be posting some rumors and interesting tidbits when they come along... Something about custom Pico-ITX enclosures maybe?

Bored? How about some mobile multimedia?

If you have a lot of time on your hands here are some links for you... Okay, each of these are ridiculously long so unless you are in an airport or at work you probably won't want to to spend the time to get through any of them in their entirety but they look at some great devices. The Shift video is actually the first time anyone has reviewed the device, though the U1010 was more interesting for me because I am really looking forward to testing out one of those.

Improper Bookmarking

I have developed, and been fighting, the bad habit of dragging bookmarks onto my computer's desktop. This not only creates a giant mess, and makes me look like an insane pack rat, but it makes these links hard to sort though as well. I am generally good about bookmarking to Delicious, but certain items, things I want to act on soon, but that have no deadline (best example- a book purchase from Amazon) find their way to the desktop and stay there, well, indefinitely. I'll post some links as I clean them up...
  • Hudson Soft-  Where can I find a t-shirt with their logo?  I used to love these guys...
  • Sprint Mogul review
  • Intel Mini-ITX board- super cheap, very cool
  • Bnet- I always want to read this site, but never actually have
  • Sparc storage
  • Connected Ventures- keep your eye on these guys
  • Vaja cases- Look great. Wish they had a better selection.
  • Blue Sky Dreams- a book I want to read
  • Core Memory- another cool looking book
  • CNAMEs on Amazon S3- great howto
  • Behind the Scenes at MoMa- could be a good gift

Quick Update

I have been really pressed for time over the past few days, so rather then getting some of my unique observations or keen insights here are some links. They are all things that I have been reading and would like to comment on, but don't have the time right now.
  • Paul Stamatiou on improving web site performance with S3. - nothing too new here, but he does a nice job of explaining things.
  • adafruit laser engraving. - I have been looking for an excuse to have something engraved by them for a long time, next tech toy I buy is getting the treatment
  • must-have Wordpress plugins. - there are about 100,000 lists on this subject, but this one is one of the best
  • MSI Fuzzy Mini-ITX boards. - MSI makes "industrial" Mini-ITX boards. They look great, but their so expensive
  • TableXchange - I know some of these guys. I'll be posting more on their project when I have some time.
  • fancy earplugs - these look pretty awesome. I may invest in a pair of SilentEar earplugs when I have enough time to read the site over
  • Sony TZ coming to the US! - this has been all over the mobile news, and it's a big deal. I can't afford one, but wow, I want it.

How Harry Potter Ends

Awesome podcast at Slate. I don't want to ruin it, but it mashes up Harry Potter with another popular series (not a book) that just ended. Very solid writing... as good as you would expect from Slate.

Post of the Week, and more

I was reading through my RSS news today and I caught a link to Scripting.com, a blog I normally don't read (edit- found it from the Scoble link blog), but it was definitely the best thing I read this week. In it Dave Winer takes on the idea of "net natives" and how people over 30 aren't "inventing new paradigms" as Dave puts it. This is an issue I have largely ignored, because, well, I don't care. I am not sure whether this because I am still on the young side of things, a net native, or if it's something else, but the post brings up some good points, even if it comes off a bit poignant. I'll leave it at that- this is not an issue that's worth spending the time arguing.

Some worthwhile reading for your Father's Day downtime...