Death of the pony car, again.

Wow, long time no blog. Maybe twitter just allows me to get the snarky comments out of my system too fast for them to end up here. Maybe work just keeps me so busy that when I get home I have no urge to spend more time looking at a monitor. Whatever the case, here I am with my new Asus 1005PE (sweet machine by the way, well worth the $450 taxes in) with a few thoughts, and an announcement: I've selected my midlife crisis car.

I'm 28, so my midlife crisis is a ways off, but the 2011 Mustang is looking way to good. Of course, with the current focus on hybrids and EVs I wonder if a straight-up pony car will be available by the time I'm 40. Such cars already died once, after the 1970s oil crisis. They simply used too much fuel, which was too expensive to obtain. Fuel injection came along and solved the efficiency problem, but getting decent performance of of the system took years. Hence the sad Mustangs of the '80s. Now we're definitely in a period of nostalgia for the late 60s to early 70s - we're doing remakes of almost all the movies, for Pete's sake. Witness the Dodge Challenger and Chevy Camaro. But with MPGs now the only spec most people check when looking for a vehicle, will anything in this category exist off the race track by 2022?

Geek Christmas

This week I discovered that the life-cycle of Hallmark keepsake Christmas ornaments is a lot longer than I suspected. For example, this years Star Wars keepsakes are already available as of today, at least in the US. Welcome to (geek) Christmas in July!

Something that took entirely too long is the beta tag coming off Google apps. Gmail had been in beta for over five years, to the extent that I had stopped noticing the tag. It didn't mean anything, the apps certainly worked much more smoothly than anything that would normally be in beta, which after all refers to a rough but fairly stable version put out for limited testing by perhaps a few thousand users. This comes a month after Google basically admitting that they had been abusing the term for years.

Goldman Sachs got a nasty shock last week after a Russian hacker stole the source code for their top-secret trading platform. This is a problem because, as Ars Technica points out, the platform makes thousand of trades per second in an attempt to anticipate the effect of various market news and hopefully make a few cents per trade, which can add up to millions of dollar if the algorithm get it right. As this is all timed down to the millisecond, very powerful computers are used to do this and there is massive competition between brokerages to do it just a little faster. The concern that this information could be used to attack Goldman Sachs or perhaps an entire stock exchange. Or, you know, the very existence of all these very powerful networks all plugged into each other and basically controlling world markets could just become Skynet. One or the other.

On to something a little less threatening, how about a robotic cow? A couple of US military contractors are reportedly working on a battlefield robot that could run off of gasoline or propane but could also process plant biomass to power itself and therefore stay on-mission until someone blows it up or comes to turn it off. The actual name is the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) which still sounds goofy, but perhaps more military as it is, at least, and acronym. Nobody wants to give the order "deploy the robotic cow!"

Well, it sounds good in theory.

Here's a headline that needed to be thought about a little more closely: Brain-Controlled Wheelchair is "95 Percent Accurate". Which would be great for quadriplegics, but what happens that 5% of the time when the controls don't work properly? Run you into a wall? Off a bridge? Might have to hold off on making this widely available, until it's got server-like uptime. I'll take my chances at 99.9%. Incidentally, I've got a great idea for an extreme sport: inaccurate-mind-control wheelchair racing! Can you imagine NASCAR with steering that only works 95% of the time? You can bet George Carlin did (RIP).

One More Thing: One More Monkey

Research based at the University of Portsmouth finds that most apes, including gorillas, chipanzees, and orangutans laugh when tickled. Yet another human behaviour with roots going back much further than we suspected. Check out the video here. I'm mosty curious about how one goes about recruiting grad students to tickle damn dirty apes!

The third generation iPod shuffle caused much dicussion on the interwebs due to all the buttons moving to the headphone cord. Built in convenience or Apple working very hard to stick it to peripheral makers? Well, now the buttons can go back on the darn thing thanks to a wrap-arround add-on from Scosche. Unfortunatly, you would have to cough up and extra 30 clams just to put functionality back into the device, and you might have some awkward moments explaining that it's a "TapStick".

Those of you waiting for Google Chrome to move from being Windows-only to being more platform agnostic will be happy to hear that Google has released a dev build for OS X and Linux. While not ready for primetime, it does show that the zippy browser is not far from a Mac or Linux box near you.

It seems that there are other ways to look for penguins besides tracking the elusive Linux hippie, such as finding their poop... from spaaaaace! The British Antarctic Survey were recently able to identify 10 previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies based on stains on the ice resulting from penguin poop visible from orbit. It's not a glamorous job, but it pays the bills. And it is a step above being the guy who tickles monkeys all day.

Sun stealing our atmosphere, Don't Panic.

Using data provided by the ESA's Mars Express and Nasa's Small Explorer (SMEX), researchers at UCLA have worked out that not only does the Earth's magnetic field not protect Earth's atmosphere from being lost into space by the action of the solar wind, but we actually lose it faster than Mars or Venus. Earth's magnetic field makes life as we know it possible by blunting the sun's radiation, but it apparently also funnels some atmospheric gases off into space, although the phyisical mechanism is not understood. Be sure to read down to the section entiled "don't panic" (appreciate the Hitchhiker's Guide reference), as its important to note that the loss of atmosphere is so slow that the sun will die before our atmosphere becomes too thin to sustain life. Hey, I never said that we weren't doomed.

The damn dirty apes beat us to it.

A recent study of chimps in Kenya reveals that even apes need to bring home the bacon. Specifically, male chimps have long been seen to share meat they obtain by hunting monkeys with select females, but the reason was unclear until recently. Basically, they trade meat for improved chances at sex. The National Geographic story goes for the dinner date metaphor... I'm fairly certain there is a pimp joke in there somewhere. But that is also the likely reason why I don't write professionally.

From apes to monkeys in suits, we have another instance of an Intel VP running off at the mouth, saying at a recent developers conference that netbooks are for kids. Okay, the education market was the first area netbooks where pitched too, but why alienate older customers who just want a light, low-octane machine for web surfing and basic computiong on the go. I personally don't do a lot of heavy computing on my 3 1/2 year old laptop, and for my needs and budget its replacement will probably be a netbook. Really, just don't tell your customers what they want; we already have Apple to do that.

And finally, we have a dumb product announcement, the Riiflex Wiimote weights. Yes, slip these two or four pound wieghts to your wiimote and nunchuck and watch your tv cringe and beg for its life. While this does fit the whole Wii Fit 'exercise is fun' model, it pretty much undoes several changes from lanyards to padded rubber jackets intended to prevent your wiimote from becoming a first-class anti-television missile. I mean, there are so many straps my wiimote has turned into something I don't so much pick up as put on, especially when I play a game requiring the nunchuck. The Engadget article barely manages to keep a straight face about these things, and I second the opinion.

The Rules About Names

It seems I've heard a lot of strange names lately. Perhaps it's because my wife is a teacher and has students with all sorts of strange names. Perhaps it's because I've recently finished reading Denis Leary's Why We Suck, which ponders, along with other things, what reasons Angelina Jolie could possibly have for adopting Ethopia one kid at a time and giving them goofy names. In an effort to put my thoughts in order, I present to you the rules about names.

First, let's get rid of some of the unbearibly goofy ones. There shall be no times of day (Dawn), months (June) or days of the week. Hence, my girl will not be named Friday.

Units of measurement (metric or imperial) are right out, Miles.

Some flowers are acceptable, Lily, as long as they do not imply anything else, Pansy, are two long and/or hard to spell (Chrysanthemum). My wife has a hard time saying Rhododendron, so I don't need to worry about that one.

There will be no random nouns, River, and nothing that I can't spell, Neve with an 'Mh' (seriously, there is at least one that I know of).

Some biblical names are fine, Daniel, but may need to be shortened to be useful, Joshua can be Josh, Jeremiah can be Jerry. But let's keep the bible-thumping down to a minimum, Elijah and Ezikiel.

Some names have already been used ad nauseum so I will skip them as well. Mike, John, Sarah, Mary, Emily, and Dave (most especially Dave), you are excused. I knew a Dave in University who went by 'Trout' to allow him to be easily seperated from the seven or eight other Daves kicking around. But I digress.

A few have been forever lost to us by celebrities behaving badly. Britney, Miley, Mariah, and various Jessicas, Tom and (Dr.) Phil.

Some names depend upon the last name as well. Since mine is Richards, Richard, Rick, and Rory are right out.

By similar logic, I do not appreciate the use of last names as first names, McKenzie.

Some names that have been uncommon will probably become overused by reference to famous people, Emma, and should therefore be avoided.

Since I'm English-Cananadian I'll stick to names that reflect that, so no way José. Select regionally appropriate names to suit.

There should be no need for punctuation in personal names. I'll pass on D'Brickashaw (or D' anything for that matter, D'Anna in BSG always bothered me, I would write it Deanna).

Can't choose? Please don't hyphenate. It is a bit sad to see someone saddled with an overly long or goofy name because the parents could not reach a decision. Mary-Lou. Jean-Marc.

Some emotions and virtues make for good names, Joy and Charity. Some do not, Chastity and Temperance.

I've never been crazy about Seth because having your kid share a name with the Egyptian god of chaos seems to be tempting fate a little too much.

I'm sure there are many situations I have not covered but a little common sense does wonders. The best trick I've heard is to put 'King' or 'Queen' in front of the name and saying that combination out loud. If it sounds dumb, then that one can be tossed out.