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.

Excellent review here – agree with most of it. The integrated wireless and the Amazon.com integration make this thing sing. It has completely changed my reading and my buying habits – if a book I want doesn’t have a Kindle edition, i save it in my wishlist for later, and I’ll probably only buy it once a Kindle version shows up. And the Kindle disease is spreading, I just learned that Dad has one as well!

* Nanotechnology-based clean hydrogen for cars – uses a vapor deposition process to create small catalyst spheres * New aluminum alloy used to create hydrogen – I don’t understand this one as well * Changing fluid behaviour with nanoparticles – interesting camera lens, microfluidic applications * Organic metal hybrids for storage and catalyst use * Solar cell directly splits water for hydrogen – learning from the plant world

* ViaCrunchGear ? Archive ? It’s Wednesday, time to waste your employer’s money, play all your old NES favorites online * Top 3 indy games to watch for – and here is the IGF website

Not sure any of these will reduce my COD4 playing time but still…

Imagenomic - Imagination at Shutter Speed – free and pro versions of noise filtering software – standalone and plugin version. seems to do a great job, has a depth of features that I haven’t begun to tap. I paid for the pro version so I could get the batch feature, I have a couple thousand pictures from bball season taken in gyms with crappy lighting.

Easy, Do-It-Yourself Ghost : Wacky Archives – nice. I don’t know that I have the viewing distance in my yard to make this effective. But not a hard thing to try out.

WordPress is an outstanding blog software and that is why many people choose to use it for building their blogs. SiteGround is proud to host this particular WordPress installation and to provide the following resources, which facilitate the creation of WordPress websites:

• WordPress tutorial
• Free WordPress themes
• Expert WordPress hosting

WordPress tutorial The WordPress tutorial at SiteGround explains the basic how-to-do’s in WordPress and shows how and where to actually start building the blog. It includes installation and theme change instructions, management of WordPress plugins, and more.

Free WordPress themes The WordPress theme gallery at SiteGround contains a rich collection of free to use WordPress themes. The themes are suitable for personal, community and business projects and are easy to customize for the particular use the webmaster might need.

Expert WordPress hosting The servers of SiteGround are fully-optimized to accommodate WordPress-powered websites. Free installation of WordPress is also included in the hosting services provided by SiteGround.

Network Magic Coupons ~ Chris Pirillo – not sure where Chris found these but glad to see them!