rich ruminations

From National Geographic:

An entry in a German science-photo competition, this image shows a fly sporting a set of “designer” lenses crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly’s 0.08-inch-wide (2-millimeter-wide) head.

Manufacturing firm Micreon GmbH submitted the insect’s picture for the Bilder der Forschung (Photos of Science) 2005 competition. Selected images were on display last week in a Munich shopping center.

Micreon, based in Hannover, Germany (see map), created the fly’s eyewear using ultrafast laser micro-machining. The firm notes on its Web site that the process can create objects with high precision at scales of less than a thousandth of a millimeter.

Check it out!

Alex is working on his stretching for TaeKwonDo. This photo of the great John Grimek might be inspirational.

Here’s an interesting solution.

Last week I finally gave in and purchased a new pair of casual shoes. Not just a new pair, but a new style. For the past decade (or longer, probably more like 15 years) I’ve been wearing Sperry Topsiders. The most recent pair I’ve had for at least three years… I can’t remember when i got them, but it was well before moving to California in 2003.

So, while browsing our local REI I saw a few shoes that caught my fancy. One of the folks there measured my feet, and informed me that no, my size is not 10.5, but 11.5.

Huh? My feet have grown a full size since the last time I bought shoes? How did that happen?

I should have figured something had changed when the last two times I’d gone backpacking, I got a serious case of black toe on both feet — wearing hiking boots I’d had for over 10 years, and no previous problems.

As best I can figure it is due to my preference of wearing sandals over sneakers or shoes. A few years ago I got a pair of Birkenstocks (the Taupe Suede Arizona) and wear them spring, summer, and fall. The bones in my feet appear to have taken the opportunity to spread out, hence the increase in size.

What did I end up getting for the new casual shoe? A pair of Keen Portsmouth Bison. Extremely comfortable, a much more aggressive tread than Topsiders have, and as Michele says, “Change is good.”

Unfortunately, I can’t make any scientific claims about the impact of the change in the size of my foot.

Chax, the very cool plugin for iChat, has been updated to version 1.4. Several new features, most notable is support for Tabbed windows when you have multiple chat sessions in progress. I’ve been running the beta version for the past few weeks with no problems.

Check it out, and if you use it, be sure to leave a donation.

Uh, sorry, that’s more good news.

Best job market in 5 years for grads

Can I still blame Bush?

Chax is a plugin for iChat that provides some very cool features. I’ve written about it previously here, here and here.

I’ve been beta testing Chax 1.4 the past few days. Lots of nice improvements, but the biggest is probably a new tabbed interface — this really helps when you’ve got multiple chats in progress. A public beta is now available, so check it out. The beta has been very stable, no problems at all.

I’m a heavy iChat user (as are most folks where I work), and Chax is really well-done. And keeps getting better.

This will be of interest to Michele and Lindsay.

The Phantom Professor is at SXSW, and has blogged on a few of her experiences there. Today she got to flirt with Matthew McConaughey’s stunt double, and met the star himself.

Star sighting in Austin

Texas Senator John Cornyn has the status.

Senator Bill Frist has some thoughts:

Yesterday Democrat Senator Russ Feingold called for a censure of President Bush. The censure reads:

“The United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans.”

Senator Feingold is flat wrong and irresponsible.

In fact, when I attempted today to bring this censure resolution to the Senate floor for a vote, the Democrats objected. Proving it is just a shameful political stunt.

The NSA terrorism surveillance of suspected terrorist phone calls is critical in the fight against Al Qaeda and groups that would do America harm.

Somewhere in America today, a radical Islamic terrorist could very well be picking up their phone and receiving a call from their overseas counterpart. They will discuss plots to infiltrate U.S. cities and mount devastating attacks.

Maybe in Nashville, TN. Or, maybe in Madison, WI.

If Russ Feingold had his way, U.S. authorities would do this with the intercepted phone call: hang up.

This policy is about PROTECTING AMERICAN LIVES.

It’s a preventative policy; it’s a pre-emptive policy; and it is a practical policy.

And what a disservice Senator Feingold and his colleagues do by portraying it otherwise. Just another attempt to give purpose to a party with no agenda.

So while the Democrats flock to the TV cameras to grandstand and play politics with national security, we’ll continue to focus on the principle of prevention. And we’ll continue to do whatever it takes to protect American lives.

Well said.

Chinese restaurants sometimes have some interesting translations of their menus. This one has to be the funniest I’ve seen.

Lindsay, our teenager, is typical of many teens — each morning is a struggle for her to wake up and get out of bed. Sometimes it takes her over an hour. She gets that from Michele.

What’s a parent to do? Last night I was browsing Boing Boing, and found a link to the Top Ten Most Annoying Alarm Clocks. Quite a few intriguing products… we’re probably going to get the Sonic Alarm.

Do you find it hard to get your partner or the kids up in the morning? Well the Sonic Alarm is the perfect solution to your problem.

Getting that grumbling snuffling bulk out from under the duvet in the morning is a challenge you really shouldn’t have to bother yourself with. Especially as the thing that emerges is inevitably grumpy and looks like a hung-over swamp monster. Well the Sonic Alarm makes the whole ‘getting them out of bed’ exercise a very simple, and indeed amusing, operation. Looking like an old-fashioned comedy hand grenade, the Sonic Alarm will wake pretty well anything up. Simply pull the pin, yell an emphatic “fire in the hole” and lob the grenade into the sleeper’s room. After twenty seconds a very annoying and piercingly loud noise (there are three volume settings) will blast out from the alarm. That’s not all however, what makes this especially great is that to stop the alarm the sleeper has to find you so you can put the pin back in. It’s stupid, and brilliant, and will be the bane of every over-sleeper on the planet. Parents are going to love this, though the soon to be rudely awoken might not.

Alex really wants us to get this… he has no trouble waking up in the morning (gets that from me), I think he’s wanting to be the first one to toss it into her room. If we do, I promise a video follow-up.

The latest in social network Web sites:

isolatr beta

John forwarded an article to me today from the Economist, about the fight between Apple Computer and the music industry. The article is prompted by the recently announced inquiry by the Department of Justice into possible industry collusion on prices. Not much of note here until the last paragraph (emphasis added):

Mr Jobs says that the majors risk stifling the new market, and also that they are plain greedy. The charge of greed is unfair. Although digital music sales tripled in 2005 to $1.1 billion, the music companies are hardly raking in the cash from music downloads. There are two problems. First, people are downloading more single tracks than albums, which means lower revenues for the majors.

This presumes that faced with a choice of buying an entire album or nothing, that people will buy the entire album. This assumption probably isn’t valid, based on the negative trends in CD sales, which started several years prior to the iTunes music store.

Second, they are mostly filling their new iPods from their CD collections, not from iTunes. For the music giants, it may well be worth risking another run-in with the law, if that means they can make downloading truly profitable.

These CD collections… were purchased. Not from iTunes, but from record stores, Amazon, etc.

So, contrary to what was expressed by the author of this article in sentence two of the last paragraph, the charge of greed may actually be fair, since the two justifications provided are problematic.

This very cool.

You might want to get a shredder.