Cool Tool: Lemnis Pharox LED Bulb – seems like a good bulb. ordered.

Sci-fi guru Clarke dies in Sri Lanka at 90 – sad. My lifelong passion for reading was kickstarted by Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert – all gone. Not all of their work has aged well but “Rendezvous with Rama”:amazon is a killer read to this day.

BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : OSU tops Michigan to reel in star QB – ahh it is nice to find yet another way to beat Michigan.

The Buckeye Corner – for the fan who has everything else. seriously, everything else.

* Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Grip Twist Avoids Knotty Situations – kind of cool, i would use if sitting around in the garage, tho I would never go search out * Indexable ratchet – this i would buy in an instant * and this foam cutter seems indispensable for halloween, but a crazy price * why aren’t all screwdriver handles like this?

Snakebots, courtesy Carnegie Mellon University -- awesome, nightmares about snakes and killer robots now.

Diary of a Crossword Fiend: 2008 ACPT Puzzle 7 – haven’t had time to do the puzzles yet but saving for later

* Idea Blob: An Infectious Way to Fund Your Green Business : Ecopreneurist – ok not really green specific but interesting * Reusing worn oil production tubing as jewelry – just looks cool. * Artifical Solar Leaves – cool looking, and in general the idea of making renewable installs more stylish is a good trend * Recent funding news * UK competitor to the Tesla * Enerjar plans * Zero VOC paint at Home Depot * Walmart funding green ideas

CrunchGear » Archive » Canon 5D Mark II rumors are swirling, swirling -- wow iso 12800

OK website alive again. Sadly the feed location has changed for RSS readers and I am not sure what to do about that. oh i guess i can add a redirect. i’ll get cracking on that.

Why dead for a week? Well I tried to change blog software (movabletype to wordpress), hosting (my own server to siteground), and dns registration (network solutions to siteground) all at once. too many moving parts. i got locked in a weird state with dns pointing in the wrong location and dns being locked up due to the domain name registration transfer. lesson learned

* “Darkmans”:amazon by Nicola Barker. This tale is strangely engrossing. Very long. The author challenges you with structure and plot all over the place. One of the reviewers compares it to a david lynch film and that feels about right. None of the characters are fully sane – or are they completely sane and at the mercy of some supernatural being? Or all at the mercy of some incredibly gifted con artist? Or is there something else going on just out of their grasp? Or just out of your grasp?

* “Christine Falls”:amazon by John Banville. Set in Ireland and in Boston, a twisted tale of adoption for sale. Family intrigue, betrayals, murders, deeply flawed and human characters. Great fun.

* “Blasphemy”:amazon by Douglas Preston. Love/hate the book. Fairly typical airport adventure, but with some additional plot depth, which is unfortunately telegraphed, but wrestles with some deep issues about religion, but in a kind of sophomoric way. At times I thought this book would really break out of the genre but then it would collapse back.

* “Sunstorm”:amazon, “Firstborn”:amazon, “Time’s Eye”:amazon by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter.   Some alien agency mashes up earth’s time/space physics for unknown reasons.   The first is zippy, the second drags a little, the third picks it back up tho is a little choppy.  Overall an OK series tho I might recommend Farmer’s Riverboat series as a more memorable attempt.

• Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: ACPT 2008 - Part II, “It Really Begins…” (SPOILERS)
• Orange

For later use…

I don’t want to sign a long term contract or pay a jillion dollars. A quick scan of options:

* RapidFax. 7.95 a month, 150 pages. 30 day free trial * efax. 30 day free trial, but 16.95 a month and only 130 pages. and per page overage charges look higher. I guess you need to pay for all their advertising * Myfax. $10 a month, 30 days free, 100-200 pages included * faxzero. Free limited sending with ads on cover page, no reception * Ringcentral. $10 a month, 300 pages included, low price for overage pages * fax.com. Annoying hostess started talking to me on the home page, i ran away * Packetel offers a very cheap receive only service – $3.95 a month. You have to sign up for 3 months at this price so $11.85. * Smartfax. 6.95 a month, free inbound, 5 cents a page outbound. 30 day free trial

a little confusing. my volume is going to be low. the first month is free from just about everyone. i need to look at cancellation policies a little closer and make sure none of these trap me. rapidfax or smartfax seem like the way to go, tho maybe combining the packetel service with faxzero for outbound might be optimal.

Motivated by Rich, I am finally moving A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way off my own server and onto a hosted service. Back when I started this thing, it was fun to have it on my own box and twiddle directly with the bits. But I am past that, and doing my own MT and OS upgrades has become tiresome.

I am trying out SiteGround and wordpress as my new alternatives. I’ve duped all my content to a new shadow site, and am tweaking that. Seems to work OK, soon I will flip the domain to point to the new site.