1-Wire Devices - Maxim – interesting low cost control wiring and protocol. Maybe useful for halloween projects. Via Wes Felter

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - Long Term Viability of AppleTV – I wonder about this too. It seems like there are a kajillion boxes (for instance XStreamHD) and offerings (for instance Amazon Unbox) in this space. My gut tells me that this kind of service is going to get rolled into every settop box, dvd player, game console, just like DVR capability is getting rolled in. The need for a separate box is not apparent to me. I think this dynamic is going to kill off DVD players and their hidef ilk as well.

William Brent’s Search for Cleantech – good summary from William Brent

Rich likes the new Time Capsule. I may get one. Already ordered the new slim notebook. And the mac pros with the refreshed video card options look great. We are teetering on becoming a mac-only household.

Nanowires convert heat to electricity - nanotechweb.org – this seems very interesting. the huge amount of electricity we waste as heat is an appealing target. I wonder what savings could be made in general by replacing bulk machined wires and components with nanoengineered parts – as this article suggests, it seems like a lot could be done to improve conductivity and reduce resistivity.

cityofsound: The Personal Well-Tempered Environment – lots of interesting ideas for increasing our energy and environmental awareness by bringing the information to the fore in our daily lives.

Oklahoma, Ohio State ink series for 2016, 2017 : Fanblogs College Football Blog – nice announcement. With this the future now looks like:

2008: @USC 2009: USC 2010: Miami (FL) 2011: @Miami (FL) 2012: Cal 2013: @Cal 2014: VT 2015: @VT 2016: @Oklahoma 2017: Oklahoma

Exciting games. Wish we could dump the 12th game or replace it with another quality opponent.

Clams Convert Air Into Food – perhaps the breatharians are onto something.

Too bad for them that their black has already been trumped – new “blackest” material – “You could think of a material that basically collects all the light that falls into it” – oh my gosh we are manufacturing black holes now, I knew this nanotech stuff was dangerous.

Perhaps it will distract them from the abject misery that is their life – Catfish fishing

The Kindle has clearly helped me push my reading pace up. Particularly for classics which are cheap. I am at the point now where I look first for Kindle versions, and only occasionally buy non-Kindle books.

* “The Scarlet Pimpernel”:amazon. A rousing tale of adventure and deception and love. Great for all ages, wish I’d discovered when I was young. OK there are some misogynistic and racial threads in here that are clearly dated but still a good tale. * “Siddhartha”:amazon by Hesse. Something about Hesse’s voice really appeals to me. Perhaps it is just the eastern philosophy. Perhaps I needed some peace in the aftermath of the BCS championship game. But still this is a simple but deep book. Contrast this with most of the bestselling selfhelp and business dreck out there. * “The Importance of Being Earnest”:amazon by Oscar Wilde. Sure I’ve seen productions of, but this is still a very readable play. 10x better than most of the romantic comedy cruft that we see on film. * “Person of Interest”:amazon by Theresa Schwegel. Good story about an undercover cop and how his secrecy has pervaded and corroded his entire family. Eventually there is redemption but not without a lot of pain on the way. The first third drug on a little but helped to establish the mood of the latter parts of the book.

* my PC won’t boot with it attached – apparently there is some bios tweak i can do – yuck * and even when i can see it, the pc doesn’t recognize it as a drive

the hardware seems nice but this is too much trouble.

* Feature: Customize Your Mac with Leopard Power Tweaks. If nothing else I’d like the “Revert the blue dots to Tiger’s black triangles” tweak, those blue dots are just not very noticeable * iTunesFS – i know i will need this someday * Make custom rings with garageband

Camera Shy? Pentagon Builds a Portable Lens-Destroying Laser and also linked in this article, technology for automagically finding sniper scopes.

Printable, Flexible Carbon-Nanotube Transistors – on the road to processing power embedded in damn near everything – boxes, clothing, walls, desktops, paper, pretty much everything.

And here’s one application – objects invisible to sonar, and apparently emitting no sound – via a sound cloak