A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Dremels, Drill Bits, and Other Pumpkin-Carving Tools — excellent set of tools from Brett. Funkins are awesome as they keep forever.

The eyeballing game. Angle bisecting and right angling are apparently my special skills.  I pretty much suck at finding circle centers and making parallelograms tho.

A SWOT Analysis On America. Don’t agree with many of the detailed points but the core idea of looking at our situation with a SWOT analysis is a good idea.  Too often as I read the papers these days, I don’t really understand the goals and strategies of some of our government actions.  A reasoned discussion with a clear decision framework would be nice.

• Playing AVIs on a mac. Thanks Rich. I’ve just been deleting these emails mostly.
• Find open files preventing disk ejection on mac
• How to MMS from iPhone. Thanks again rich
• Bring the ribbon to notepad. not sure I really want…
• Customize windows start menu folders
• Bunch o chrome tips.
• Killer commands for ubiquity. Can’t decide if I like ubiquity or not

Here you go via Make. I wouldn’t use beaded styrofoam personally, i’d go with the blue/pink sheets of insulation, they cut a little more cleanly. But a fine guide, i like the way they used a greeting card as a stencil.

Fort Sumter | mgoblog. - oh I love seeing these elite Michigan grads deal with loss, they get so tangled up in their intellectual undershorts and start questioning the very nature of humanity, the fabric of the universe, etc etc etc. Har har har.

Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Are You Smarter Than A Bolt?. — awesome bolts that give you feedback when you are overtightening. I need hardware like this. I really need stud-finding, conduit-avoiding nails.

Calacanis: Apple to release networked HDTVs - Nate Lanxon, MP3 & Digital Music Editor - Technology Blog at CNET.co.uk. — this would be good. The current state of the world where you have to buy some separate box and whack it into your media center to get IP-delivered content is just not going to succeed, the mainstream isn’t going to go thru this brain damage. The IP receiver has to be built into the TV or the media receiver or some other piece that people understand and know they need.

• The Living Severed Hand! via lifehacker. Nice
• Halloween spell book
• Hallowindow via make. Truly awesome and simple as hell if you have a home theatre system you can move around.
• Stirring cauldron. These can look really nice

College Football Polls - CBSSports.com 120, BCS and AP Top 25. Wow the polls this week are a total hash. I’m starting to believe we need a playoff. No problem with the top 3 in some order. But SC #4 in the coaches ahead of Oklahoma? SC did not look that good Saturday. And Texas Tech has beaten exactly no one and rises to 5? Oklahoma State beats a vastly overrated Missouri and climbs 7 spots? There are going to be a lot of changes going forward. Texas plays Missouri, Ok State, and Texas Tech in the next 3 weeks, and Texas Tech and Ok State match up, so this mess will all get straightened out. My bet is Texas wins all those and stays near the top, and Oklahoma rises back up near the top. No real problem with the Buckeyes at 11, they need to demonstrate that they are a complete team and have yet to do that.

Must read - UW Dawg Pound. Ouch. When you read this, hard to understand why the U doesn’t move in midseason

The Big Picture | Modern Finance. — in case, like me, you need reminding on what these things are

Aidtopia Haunted Mirror. - akin to the exit mirrors at the Haunted Mansion, but pretty simple to build.

ExtremePumpkins.com - Extreme Pumpkin Carving. — some awesomeness here

Player safety? Bah…. (Blogging the Buckeyes). Not only do we not pay these kids, but we don’t protect them as well as we protect football-playing adults.  That is pretty sad.

Daily Trojan - Virus expands reach; 275 students now infected

Word of the day: fissiparous. Prone to break apart, fractious. Great word, never saw it before. Per xwordinfo, never been in the times crossword as an answer or clue.

Whew. TP looked like all-world at some points, and like a freshman at others. Beanie looked awesome. The receiving corps seems to be struggling to figure out how to work with Pryor and vice versa. Hard-hitting game, I think I counted 4 guys out with concussions or near concussions.

And now look how the next 3 weeks set up in the conference. Penn State, MSU, and OSU are atop the conference with 2-0 records. Penn State is at Wisconsin, then hosts Michigan, then at Ohio State. Michigan State is at Northwestern (who is 4th in the standings), then hosts Ohio State, then to Michigan. Ohio State hosts Purdue, then at Michigan State, then hosts Penn State. The race will probably be a lot clearer by the end of the month.

For your discussions with UM elitists:

• Detroit swears in new mayor, necessary since the last one is going to jail
• He will preside over a city in population and school enrollment free fall
• Auto sales are tanking
• The wolverine has pretty much given up

Go Bucks.

• Clickjacking. Pretty ugly form of attack.
• Self-powered wireless light switches. Pretty cool, instead of running line voltage to every lightswitch, they harness ambient power and send wireless signals to outlets. Now if you just combine this with…
• …Dirt-powered lamps! Or bacteria powered lamps. Way cool
• Rich’s guide to your basic canon lens set, if you are willing to spend $4-5K on lenses
• Charging station designs to hide cables. Hate dangling cables.
• Combo phone/keyfob. Damn I wish this problem would get solved for real.
• Probably too little too late, but a nice home phone base station with web/wifi functionality.

• Coalescent by Stephen Baxter. Historical speculative fiction about a sub-species of humanity which has developed hidden alongside us. In the hands of Stephen King at his prime, this would have been a killer tale. Still a fine tale but not overwhelming.
• Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais. Solid detective tale tho not particularly novel. LA ex-cop PI gets pulled into a police case. Some of his old colleagues hate him, some help him. Pretty standard themes.

Great advice from Brad Feld. Valuable in these troubled times.

• MAKE: Blog: Creepy crawling skeleton.
• Big Daddy Costume. if you have played bioshock you get this
• Skeleton Disco Ball.