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Rock Star alter egos are growing in numbers
"You're forming a fake band -- that's what you do," says Sadri, calling the game "the best part of karaoke, adding in a drummer and guitars."
The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer.
Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that.
LSU scared of the prospect of some Moreno action?
Photos of Abandoned Swimming Pools
9 Things You Didn't Know About Rockband.
Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith


To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.



Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood.
making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms.
Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.

Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz.
Mystery illness strikes after meteorite hits Peruvian village




 
 
 
 


(Sunday, April 24)

Tour De Georgia 2005

Went to the Tour De Georgia ending today and it was just as fun as last year. My ass hurts though. One of the things we learned last year is that you can get an awesome seat at the finish line if you can accomplish 3 things. #1 Get to the race site a good three hours early. #2 Have semigood dexterity and #3 have an ass of adamantium. We got to the finish line around 1:00 pm or so today with greasy boxes of The Varsity in tow. After finding and pitching a spot on the side of this fairly steep hill next to the line, we had an awesome view of the finish line for 600 mile Tour De Georgia that would be Lance Armstrong�s last race in the United States. This year instead of 4 circuits around Alpharetta to end the Tour they did 6 circuits which was cool because we were able to see more passes. The weather stayed pretty good for most of the day except for strong winds. We heard from a lot of people that had been on the tour the last 2 days that the riders were in snow and golf ball sized hail on Mount �Hypothermia� yesterday (Brass Town Bald). It is really neat that the race ends less than 10 miles from our house and at one point literally goes down the street we live off of. As we drove there today we saw a cardboard box on the side of the road and I told Lindz that it was neat to know that within 4 hours Armstrong and all these other internationally renown riders would be looking at that wet shitty box also. Lindz took some great pics which are up on Flickr now and we also have a small frame movie of the actual end of the race if anyone wants to see here. (Warning it�s loud and fast and takes AWHILE (27 megs) to load). Here are some of my favorites pics you can view the whole photoset here:

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Also this weekend we went to the Aquarium Showcase Anniversary sale and added 4 new friends to the reef tank. A kick ass colored Flame Angel and 3 small damsels. The damsels were meant to be patsy�s. This sounds really bad but we already had a Coral Beauty Angel in the tank that had pretty much controls the tank and adding a new angel to the tank would have caused some territorial pissings. So we added the three damsels into the tank also to a.) confuse the coral beauty (named Friday) and b.) let him pick on the damsels instead of messing with the new Flame Angel (Fuego). Sorry let me repeat b again. b.) let him pick on the damsels instead of messing with the new $60 Flame Angel (Fuego). The plan seems to have worked, all the fish are hazing a little bit, but Friday (Coral Beauty) seems to have accepted everyone and everyone is getting along. Here are some pics of the new crew:
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Brainstorm it:  Your Thoughts?







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Travis - The Boy With No Name
 Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho.
Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross)
 One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake.
Feist - The Reminder
 I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice.
Catan - Xbox Live Arcade
 I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game.
Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare
 No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say.
Beautiful Evidence (Tufte)
 Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting..
Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
 Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better.
Game of Thrones (Martin)
 I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more.

 
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson