Cory Doctorow‘s first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, has just been published.
Several online and offline booksellers have the novel available. Cory has also released the book under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone may “download it, share it, email it, post it to your site, drop it in your P2P file-sharing cache.”
My own mirror of the freely-downloadable novel: ASCII text, HTML, and printable PDF.
Hey kids, if you purchased a CD or cassette tape from a retail store from a period between January 1, 1995 through December 22, 2000, you’re probably eligible to receive a check for up to $20, as a settlement agains the Music Recording Industry.
Poke here to get money!
Also note that the site requests the last 4 digits of your SSN. However, others have investigated and seem to think that the site is legit. It’s up to you to enter your information.
I switched from my work-provided Toshiba to a self-provided iBook in February. I bought it from a nice place [Microcenter] that promised a full refund if I used it for 2 weeks and didn’t like it.
After two days, I was sold. The built-in applications, like iTunes, iPhoto, even Stickies, truly rocked. My existing optical Intellimouse worked. The iBook autodetected the wireless network, both for home and office. My email worked just fine. My MS Office documents imported cleanly. Everything “just worked.”
Time-travelling scientists must have gone to the future and read Laura’s latest post, then taken the technology and created the Turd Twister.
Come on, if you could time-travel, wouldn’t you steal technology from the future that enabled you to create devices that turned your butt into a Play-Doh Fun Factory?
I really want one of these, just for work. Imagine the expression on the cleaning lady’s face as she finds little heart-shaped turds floating in the bowl, special, just for her.
The term “Xeriscape” was coined by the Denver Water Department in 1981. The word is a combination of “landscape” and the Greek word “xeros,” which means “dry.” The primary goal of Xeriscaping is to create sustainable landscapes that require a minimum of water, while still remaining attractive.
More Xeriscaping info can be found here.
For those of you in the Atlanta area, the City of Atlanta provides free consultation by Summer Xeriscape Interns.
XP is the emoticon for how I feel about the newest polished turd from Microsoft, which is the OS du jour for my work-provided laptop.
To me, XP feels like someone harvested a million spam emails and built an entire operating system out of them.
I poke the start bu–HELLO WE’RE MICROSOFT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SODA?!!!–Click cancel. Click the start b-COME ON AND BUY MSN ALONG WITH OUR SODA!!!!!!!-Click cancel again. Ass hats. Click sta-YOU’D REALLY LOVE A WHOLE MSN-BRANDED LIVING ROOM SUITE WITH SOME MS SODA RIGHT NOW!!!—No, you bastards!! Move mouse slightly–YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!! AND BUY OUR SODA!!!
Woohoo! Laura got me good Christmas loot, including some pirate wall-plate covers (yar!), a vintage Hawaiian shirt, and a Tiki mug. She also got me the Griffin Powermate, which is a very neat user-customizeable USB knob that currently acts as a scroll wheel, volume control, left-hand delete and/or enter key, and lots more, depending upon the application.
Mmmm, stats for you car: Davis manufactures the CarChip, which is a small device that plugs into your car’s diagnostic connector and gathers all sorts of fun data as you drive. When you’re finished driving, disconnect the CarChip from your car, and connect it to your PC to download the collected data.
From the site:
While I was on vacation last week, rather than go to the beach, or skiing, or even doing something fun like eating Japanese candy [wait, I did do that], I bought a house.
In the strictest sense of the term, I didn’t really buy it. The bank bought it, and I just leased my shrivelled, blackened little soul to them for thirty years in order to stay there. And it’s still not officially mine yet, as I have to wait until the end of January for closing.
If you’re running OS X, replace Terminal.app with iTerm.
iTerm is a free, open-source terminal client whose most attractive feature, for me, is tabbed terminal sessions, like Mozilla‘s tabbed browser windows. Each tab can be configured with its own name, transparency, and color scheme, and if the session changes [example: new mail in mutt], the session name text changes to red.