DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COLD, SEASONAL FLU & H1N1 SYMPTOMS

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COLD, SEASONAL FLU & H1N1 SYMPTOMS

This is a good comparison of Cold, Flu, & H1N1 symptoms.



From http://www.village.sussex.wi.us/documents/DIFFERENCESBETWEEN.pdf

Flute sings for Rockband 2

Afterlife- Avenged Sevenfold on FLUTE (Rockband 2-Expert)

My son's Music teacher showed this video to his class. If she can do this with a flute then can we do it with a guitar? Or saxophone?

Misheard Lyrics - Green Day and Nirvana

This one is for Nick! ...and Will!

Holiday - Green Day - Misheard Lyrics




Smells Like Teen Spirit Misheard Lyrics

Misheard Lyrics - Pearl Jam & Manfred Mann

Does anybody really know the lyrics to this song?

"Make me fries..." LOL! :)

MISHEARD LYRICS - Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbetter



"Another Roman in the night!" :)

MISHEARD LYRICS - Manfred Mann - Blinded By The Light

Can Prosecutors Be Sued By People They Framed?

At lunch today we talked about the NPR story Can Prosecutors Be Sued By People They Framed?

The Supreme Court has indeed said that prosecutors are immune from suit for anything they do at trial. But in this case, Harrington and McGhee maintain that before anyone being charged, prosecutors gathered evidence alongside police, interviewed witnesses and knew the testimony they were assembling was false.

The prosecutors counter that there is "no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed."

This sounds like the prosecutors are immune from both Criminal and Civil suits.

Happy 4th Birthday Gina

Happy 4th Birthday Gina!!!!

xkcd - Lego





And I would like to encourage you again (like we did on Gina's 3rd Birthday)...

Please register to be an organ donor at:

http://www.donatelifecalifornia.org/

Thanks,
Tom

Proton Locks!

Proton Locks! www.protonlocks.com




Proton Locks! www.protonlocks.com

100 Famous Rock Guitar Riffs - one take

100 Famous Rock Guitar Riffs - one take

wow!

How many do you recognize?
(how many can you play?)



http://www.brodiecumming.com/events.html

The Ranch

Our family calls my sister-in-law's Swanton home "The Ranch".

The YELLOW CIRCLE shows "The Ranch".
The GREEN CIRCLE shows the Lud and Barbara McCary Ranch.
The BLUE CIRCLE show the Bud McCary Ranch (Lud's brother).

The shaded red area shows the approximate fire boundary.







The photo of Barbara McCary (below) could have been taken looking over the field north of her house (green) looking toward "The Ranch" (yellow).

Lockheed Fire

UPDATE: latest fire info here:
http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=361

I think my sister-in-law's house is just behind the trees on the far side of this meadow.



I found this photo in a slideshow that was on a Google map showing the Lockheed Fire - started Aug. 12, 2009. My sister-in-law's house is near the word "Swanton" on the lower left edge of the fire boundaries (the tan area on the map).

Five Dangerous Things for Kids

I have mentioned this TED talk to so many people that it is finally time to post it here.

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, spells out 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.




This 4 minute follow up was just posted (June 2009) by TED...

Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering demonstrates that kids can do practically anything!

The Perfect Loss

This is the perfect loss!

Digital Lloyd

Lloyd Chambers and I have never met but we have some of the same interests: photography, macs, computers, software, Sun, Yosemite, hiking, blogging, etc... The difference between my photos and his photos of Stanford or Half Dome or Fireworks or a Sunset inspire me to try to be a better photographer.

His Mac Performance Guide has helped me optimize my MacBook Pro and presented Storage and Backup options for our family's network of iMacs, MacBooks, iPhones, and iPods.

But his focus is on photography and his blog, a mix of tips for advanced photography and computers, is very interesting and beautiful.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

We saw a midnight opening showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this morning. It was a good movie, but there were a lot of differences from the book. Some new events were added, and some critical events from the book were left out of the movie.

Seeing the movie in a theater after midnight with hundreds of fans was fun. There were a lot of people in costumes, lots of laughter and applause.

Free Coldplay CD

Gina, Donna, Jay, and I went to see Coldplay in their Viva la Vida Tour show at the Shoreline Amphitheater (across the street from the Googleplex). It was a great show and they gave away a free CD entitled LeftRightLeftRightLeft which is also available as a free download from their website. Enjoy!




The Scientist is one of our favorite songs, and the music video is quite a trip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWLpTKBFcU

How Bacteria Talk

I agree with Kevin, the TED talk Bonnie Bassler: Discovering bacteria's amazing communication system is a great talk.

She said "You think of yourselves as human beings, but I think of you as 90 to 95 percent bacteria".

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

65 MPH Ukulele

We saw this on the way to work this morning!



The 65 MPH Ukulele!

TED: Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web of open, linked data

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

This talk refers to another great TED Talk (Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen) which is an excellent example of what can be done with linked data. It would be useful to watch Hans before watching Tim.



As my friend Richard pointed out, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA is English.

World Water Day

Today, March 22, is World Water Day, when the world is asked to focus on the issues that a lack of clean water poses to our society. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide don’t have access to clean water, and that lack of water is a serious cause of disease and economic hardship.

So today we were discussing: How Much Water Is Required to Make Beer?

We thought that we may use 50 gallons of water to make 5 gallons of beer. Most of the water is used for cleaning and sterilizing all the equipment. But this does not count the water used to make the ingredients.

According to this graph from the Economist article "Thirsty work" 300 liters of water are required to make 1 liter of beer (or 1,500 gallons of water to make 5 gallons of beer). But that pales (pun intended) in comparison to the the water requirements of wine (3X) or coffee (4X).



Another interesting graphic from the GOOD blog article "Transparency: How Much Water Do You Use?" shows direct and indirect use of water for common daily activities.

The most disturbing part of the image above is the suggestion to save 35 gallons of water by not taking a bath. ick.

Keyboard Viewer

I want my daughter to read my blog, and she wants to know what symbols you can make with the option or option-shift key (on her Mac), so,...

This 67 second Keyboard Viewer video (from the Apple Quick Tip video podcast) shows you how to use the Keyboard Viewer to access characters and symbols available using the option or option-shift keys.

Angee (Lead Genius from the video) shows you how to enable the Keyboard Viewer:
* System Preferences -> International
+ check the "Keyboard Viewer" checkbox and
+ check the "Show input menu in menu bar" checkbox, then,
* click the (American?) flag in the menu bar, and,
+ select "Show Keyboard Viewer"

Now hold down the option key, to see this:


Or hold down both the option and shift keys, to see this:



Love, Dad

Talking to SKYNET

Today I sent an IM to SKYNET...and SKYNET IM'ed me back!

Today the BetterExplained.com blog entry was A Simple Introduction To Computer Networking which started off:

Most networking discussions are a jumble of acronyms. Forget the configuration details -- what are the insights?

* Networking is about communication
* Text is the simplest way to communicate
* Protocols are standards for reading and writing text

Beneath the details, networking is an IM conversation.

My IM (Instant Message), human to computer, was a simple text communication using TCP via telnet. All I did was type:

% telnet google.com 80
hello?

and google.com replied "Bad Request"!
Then I tried:

% telnet google.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.0

and google.com replied "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" and sent me the google home page html!
And when I IM'ed "GET /news HTTP/1.0" then google.com sent me the news!

It was kinda cool talking directly to The Google.

Happy Pi Day!

Happy "National Pi Day"!

Whereas the US "House of Representatives supports the designation of a `Pi Day' and its celebration around the world": Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That I will--
(1) throw a party on Pi Day in 2015;
(2) throw another party around Pi Day in 2016; and
(3) invite you if you feel those dates are significant.


Here is the full text of HR 224 from THOMAS (Library of Congress):

H. Res. 224

In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

March 12, 2009.

Whereas the Greek letter (Pi) is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter;

Whereas the ratio Pi is an irrational number, which will continue infinitely without repeating, and has been calculated to over one trillion digits;

Whereas Pi is a recurring constant that has been studied throughout history and is central in mathematics as well as science and engineering;

Whereas mathematics and science are a critical part of our children's education, and children who perform better in math and science have higher graduation and college attendance rates;

Whereas aptitude in mathematics, science, and engineering is essential for a knowledge-based society;

Whereas, according to the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) survey done by the National Center for Education Statistics, American children in the 4th and 8th grade were outperformed by students in other countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, England, South Korea, Latvia, and Japan;

Whereas since 1995 the United States has shown only minimal improvement in math and science test scores;

Whereas by the 8th grade, American males outperform females on the science portion of the TIMSS survey, especially in Biology, Physics, and Earth Science, and the lowest American scores in math and science are found in minority and impoverished school districts;

Whereas America needs to reinforce mathematics and science education for all students in order to better prepare our children for the future and in order to compete in a 21st Century economy;

Whereas the National Science Foundation has been driving innovation in math and science education at all levels from elementary through graduate education since its creation 59 years ago;

Whereas mathematics and science can be a fun and interesting part of a child's education, and learning about Pi can be an engaging way to teach children about geometry and attract them to study science and mathematics; and

Whereas Pi can be approximated as 3.14, and thus March 14, 2009, is an appropriate day for `National Pi Day': Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) supports the designation of a `Pi Day' and its celebration around the world;

(2) recognizes the continuing importance of National Science Foundation's math and science education programs; and

(3) encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.

405 and World Builder

"405" and "World Builder" are two short films by Bruce Branit with amazing special effects.

405 is a 3 min film about a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

World Builder is a 9 min film about a man who uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. The "holographic tools" are like the MIT Sixth Sense technology on steroids!!!

ENJOY! World Builder:




405:





Bruce Branit has done special effects on many movies and TV shows that I enjoy. For example: "Pushing Daisies", "Lost", "Brothers & Sisters", "Ghost Rider (2007)", "King Kong (2005)", "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005)", "Sin City (2005)", "Star Trek: Enterprise", "Star Trek: Voyager", "The Devil's Advocate (1997)", "Spawn (1997)", "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", and more, ... wow ...

Pattie Maes unveiling the "Sixth Sense"

Last month I watched this TED Talk live (from Sun) and then ran down to lunch and tried to describe what I had seen to my lunch crowd. Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry from MIT have created the "Sixth Sense", a really cool wearable computer device that has a camera and projector so it can see what you see and project information to you.

Watch the TED Talk yourself, and/or, read what I found exciting below the video!



The "Sixth Sense" can project images and then watch your hands, so:

* it can show you a keyboard (on a desk), and you can type,
* it can show you a cell phone keypad (on your palm?), and you can dial,
* it can show you some photos (on a wall perhaps) and you can use your hands to move them around on the wall, make them bigger, smaller, trash them, email them,...

The "Sixth Sense" also sees what you see, so:

* it can see WHAT you are looking at in a store, and then project information about the product
* it can see WHO you are looking at, and project information about that person (on that person!?)

What do you think?! Cool?!

A Lost Generation

A Lost Generation

I hear the voices of my nieces in this video...Emily, Alica, Erica, Nicky, Roana, Raquel, Gina, and Monica...



and someday Katie, Jessica, Arial, and Michelle will add their voices as well.

Plug computer

Plug computer

Last week Marvell announced a Plug Computer "small enough to plug directly into a wall socket and designed to draw so little power that it can be left on all of the time. Unlike other embedded devices in the home, it contains a gigahertz class processor to offer PC class performance. This makes it a viable alternative to a PC for any software service."





From Wikipedia:

A Plug Computer is a small form factor network attached server for use in the home. It is a lower cost and lower power alternative to a PC based home server. In effect, a plug computer is a network appliance that is fully enclosed in an AC power plug or AC adapter.

Suitable for running a media server, back-up services, file sharing and remote access functions such devices can be used as a bridge between in home protocols such as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) & Server Message Block (SMB or Samba) and cloud based services.

I think I would like to buy one!

Rent-A-Person

After watching the short movie Validation my carpool buddy pointed out a related short movie Rent-A-Person (Thanks Seongbae).



After watching the movie I told my wife "I think my carpool buddy wants a raise" and she replied "He deserves it!".

Validation

Validation is a GREAT little film...watch it...you deserve it!!!

Did you know?

Did you know?


A Google search for "Did you know?" found about 21,900 video clips. The original version of this presentation was created for a Colorado (USA) high school staff of 150 in August of 2006 to start a conversation about what our students need to be successful in the 21st century. I saw another version at a local high school event. Today my uncle sent me a more lively and exciting version.

Here is the "latest official" version:



This presentation is also known as "Shift Happens!".

Happy 200th Birthday Charles Darwin

Happy 200th Birthday Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) wrote On the Origin of the Species which introduced the theory that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, providing logical explanation for the diversity of life.

Happy 200th Birthday President Lincoln

Happy 200th Birthday President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) led the United States through the American Civil War and ended slavery (in part with his Emancipation Proclamation).

Some of the most recognizable quotes from US History:

Four score and seven years ago...
...all men are created equal...
...government of the people, by the people, for the people,...

are from Lincon's Gettysburg Address which summarized the Civil War in just 10 sentences and less than 3 minutes.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

TED: Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play

We talked about this a lunch today.

Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play

Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play.

Tim Brown is the CEO of Ideo, a design firm founded by David E. Kelley in 1991. Brown carries forward Ideo's mission of fusing design, business, and social studies to come up with deeply researched, deeply understood designs and ideas. Ideo is the kind of firm that companies turn to when they want a top-down rethink of a business or product -- from fast food conglomerates to high tech startups, hospitals to universities. Ideo has designed and prototyped everything from a life-saving portable defibrillator to the defining details at the groundbreaking Prada shop in Manhattan (IDEO designed those famous see-through dressing rooms).

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

My uncle reminded me of this great TED talk...

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.

TED: Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras

TED: Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras

At the Taste3 conference, chef Dan Barber tells the story of a small farm in Spain that has found a humane way to produce foie gras. Raising his geese in a natural environment, farmer Eduardo Sousa embodies the kind of food production Barber believes in.





What if we raised our children this way?

Steve Tirado won an Emmy

Silicon Image(TM) Wins Emmy Award for HDMI(TM) Technology

"We are honored to receive this prestigious award together with our fellow HDMI technology founders and partners," said Steve Tirado, president and chief executive officer at Silicon Image, Inc.



Way to go Steve and Silicon Image!

Philip Zimbardo: How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes

TED Talk: Philip Zimbardo: How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes

The Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment explore why "normal" people may do "horrible" things. The Milgram experiment put a person in the role of a "teacher" who would shock a "learner" with an electric shock that increased to supposedly lethal amounts. The Stanford prison experiment randomly split volunteers into two groups, guards and prisoners, which degenerated into "dangerous and psychologically damaging situations."

Philip Zimbardo, well-known for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, knows what evil looks like. After serving as an expert witness during the Abu Ghraib trials, he wrote The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. From Nazi comic books to the tactics of used-car salesmen, he explores a wealth of sources in trying to explain the psychology of evil.

MacBook Wheel

The MacBook Wheel was announced today at MacWorld in San Francisco!


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I am saving my money to replace my MacBook Pro with this unbelievable device.