Football: Big Ten Announces TV Plans for First Four Weekends of 2008 Home Schedule - The Ohio State Buckeyes Official Athletics Site - OhioStateBuckeyes.com – here you go. I expect to be at the USC game.

* “We Disappear”:amazon by Scott Heim. Drug addict son returns to small-town childhood home to care for dying mother and unwrap the mysteries of her life. Some bizzare david-lynchian moments. Just ok, never really hooked me. * “Free Lunch”:amazon by David Cay Johnston. Central premise about corruption, government subsidies abuse. Some solid examples but way too much diatribe. One good prescriptive recommendation – 100% public funding of all political expenses, no gifts whatsoever. Oh and I hate the “the rich are taking ever more of the pie” argument – this may well be true but the analysis is terribly incomplete – there is no discussion of globalization, of the incredible advantages the US had post-WWII that are finally being whittled away, there is no discussion of the fact that a growing economy naturally will create more spread at the high end of the income distribution. * “A Fine Balance”:amazon by Rohinton Mistry. Strap on your hard hat because this is a relentless and long tale of tragic injustices and disasters battering away at every character in the book. No one ever achieves a balance, tragedy rips away at their joy. No one comes away untouched, many die. If this book is truly reflective of India in the 60s and 70s, man that was a tough time. * “Altered Carbon”:amazon by Richard K Morgan. A real ripsnorter. Nanotech, virtual tech, multiple layers of conspiracy, a hard-bitten anti hero. My second read of Morgan and both have been great fun.

Considering buying Lojack for a new laptop – wonder if it is worth it.

I started taking graduate matsci courses several years ago at the UW via the Edge program, and also took some on campus. I have found it hard to continue though as the UW materials science school doesn’t have a deep schedule, and they have decommitted from the distance learning effort. So I am shopping for other programs.

Columbia’s program – CVN - Columbia Video Network – seems to be among the most complete with a full schedule of courses. And they offer a full MS degree via online. And you can start as a non-matriculated student. Florida has a program as well. And so does USC, tho the courses offered is a smaller slate than Columbia’s.

We have these plastic Stockli 7 liter watering cans that we love – but after years of use they are breaking down. I can’t find any US source for them which is a bummer. But these Dramm - Watering Cans seem to be an equivalent and are available widely. So we will give them a try – the 7L size are great for outdoor use – big enough to carry a lot of water, but not so big that they are unusable.

* Many Tricks · Witch – super useful task switcher, let’s you see all windows within an app * doug’s applescripts for itunes – a ton of scripts for manipulating your song library * Geektool – show system stats on the desktop

Infectious Car Art – pretty cool stuff.

Clever Uses: Magnets Kill the Cell Phone Speaker Buzz – an old but effective idea

Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Power-Drill Tent Stakes – OK I love to use power tools but I tend not to carry them while camping, not even if I ever car-camped. I guess this is for people setting up tents at shows, etc.

Hard-ass quote for the day:

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.

-- Lou Holtz

Now that I have a PS3 I want to serve up photos etc to it. Trying to decide between all the choices out there:

* Google’s new media server * Free Media Player Streams iTunes, Syncs Content, Converts Video for iPod, PSP and Xbox 360 - SimpleCenter * WMP 11 of course * One man’s guide to all the choices out there * Eyeconnect seems to be liked on the Mac * or Mediatomb

I have a TON of photos and I need something that will perform well, not clear which of these is the way to go. Time to start experimenting I gues

I’m going to convert sometime in the next 6 months to an HDMI receiver I think – here are some Sony units – CrunchGear » Archive » Sony is adding three ES receivers to its 2008 line-up – I am wondering if I have to convert my current TV as well – it doesn’t have HDMI input, only component – will these receivers convert HDMI in to RGB? Need to learn more about the technical and DRM aspects of this.

CrunchGear » Archive » ‘Image Fulgurator’ ruins photos with hilarious results – this is awesome.