Similar to the constable in charge of the Watch of Messina, I try to be sincere and try take writing seriously but fear I will use the wrong words to convey my thoughts and that my desire to speak eloquently will become an occasion for parody.
According to Investor’s Business Daily, many ‘real world’ companies are acquiring property and generating a presence in the Second Life virtual world. Second Life claims to have 3.3 million registered users and is adding 230,000 users per week. The companies include some biggies like IBM, General Motors, Toyota Motor, Dell, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Reuters Group. Most are buying 16 acre “islands” which cost $1,675 plus a monthly maintenance fee of $295. The companies not only build virtual structures, but also have their real world employees staff the virtual world. These companies are attempting to build brand awareness as well as direct and indirect sales opportunities. Circuit City, for example, allows customers to arrange furniture in a virtual living room in order to help decide the best placements for televisions and surround sound speakers.
“Generally, real-world businesses are not looking at Second Life as a direct revenue generator, but rather as a means of brand extension,” said Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs. “Firms that commit to a long-term, creative presence in Second Life have an opportunity to interact with their community in new and innovative ways.”
Unitrin Direct, the direct marketing arm of Unitrin, Inc., has become the first auto insurance company to ‘build’ in Second Life. Their virtual skyscraper is modelled on the Unitrin Direct’s Chicago-based headquarter building. Rather than locate their building on an island, Unitrin chose to build in an ‘busy’ part of Second Life (probably because who would choose to visit an insurance company). Once inside the lobby, you can get a real-world auto insurance quote.
Eventually real Unitrin employees will staff the lobby to talk to you about your insurance and answer your questions.
“We’re excited to offer a new way to introduce customers to our direct business model, which allows us to reduce overhead and pass on the savings to customers while still providing first-class service,” Tom Mercer, vice president of marketing at Unitrin, said in a press release.
This video puts you in the passengers seat going down the road, until they make a sudden stop.
Caution: Some graphic language at the end.
My previous post about Bolivia's Highway of Death continues to be one of the most popular pages on the blog. In doing some more searching I just ran across this story of the discovery of the body of a tourist who had been missing for a couple of weeks last month. It was found at the bottom of a 490-foot cliff along this treacherous road linking La Paz with the Yungas Valley.
Despite the risks, every year thousands of thrill-seeking tourists cycle down the dirt road, world-famous for the breathtaking views of snow-topped mountains and verdant valleys.
Car and bus accidents used to kill dozens of people on the highway every year until an alternative route was opened in late 2006.
I took this photo last month but forgot to put it up. As the storm rolled in I knew it would make a great picture but could not find a place to get a photo without phone lines through the middle of it. By the time I got over to the edge of the Columbia Center Mall parking lot the lighting had changed but I still like the photo.
As Kennewick puts in more and more traffic circles I always wonder how well they will handle traffic. Personally, I think they move traffic much better than regular traffic lights because you do not have to sit and wait for the light to change while there is no traffic coming from the other direction. Sure, some people sit and wait till there is no traffic at all in the circle and some speed through like there was no tomorrow, but overall I think they work.
We are soon to get our first 2-lane circle and it will be interesting to watch people navigate their way around it. The picture shown is a traffic circle in Xiamen, China that has hundreds of cars queued – but I understand it takes about 5 minutes to get negotiate your way through it, but that is much better than waiting 15 minutes waiting for successive red lights.
Although at first glance it may appear that Von and I are visiting New York, we are not. This is actually a photo of the New York, New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas! We are attending a convention and had fun traveling up and down the strip visiting the different casinos. My biggest bets were to put a dollar into the penny slot machines. Some of the casinos, though, spend a fortune to decorate.
The Venetian has the interior completely set up as a part of Venice. There is a canal through the entire area, with gondoliers who occasionally sing. Besides Venetian facades to the stores that go up over 3 stories and is covered by what looks like a gorgeous morning sky, complete with clouds.
The Bellagio has a flowergarden inside that not only is gorgeous with a fragrance that is almost overpowering and includes a small (live) butterfly collection. What caught the gals attention though was an incredible chocolate fountain. The store had a video playing showing their cooks making the different chocolate treats. I think it was more like a chocolate porn shop! We had a hard time pulling the ladies away.
All in all it has been an interesting couple of days. Not really my idea of a vacation, but interesting none the less
Well, I just ran across what I think is an amazing book shelf system! DirtyGreek has a photo of these shelves he built. The books appear to be suspended on the wall.
I need to find a cheap source of large hardback books (probably the library) and make some of these for my office and I think they could also make great gifts. I found some instructions for making them at Instructables.
HatTip: LibraryThing‘s Ten million books and contest extravaganza
LibraryThing.com recently added a new feature, Wikipedia Citations, to each books main page. So now there is a link on each book’s main page that will list of all the Wikipedia articles that cite the book.
Now for the interesting part.
The most cited book on Wikipedia is… The Official Pokemon Handbook. Surprised? Don’t be. In fact, eighteen of the top twenty most-cited works are Pokemon books. It boggles the mind. Somebody, or a bunch of somebodies went ISBN-happy on all the Pokemon entries.
Fortunately, the existence of so many citations to Pokemon does not impair the quality of the rest. It’s just… Wikipedia. There’s a decidedly quirky character to many of the other winners, testimony to some serious passions. Number 28, with 177 citations, is Richard Grimmett’s Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. I think this effect would be diminished a lot if non-ISBN books were added.
I am guessing that the complete rules for Pokemon are on Wikipedia along with a page for each ‘card’. Each card then references the ‘official’ manual. Reminds me that although ‘data’ can be fun, it also can be biased.
The photo is from July 2000 when I took Geoff, Melanie, and Brendan to the Pokemon Super Trainer Showdown that was held on the Queen Mary in Los Angeles.
I have begun using my gmail as my primary email address in anticipation of dropping the email provider I have used for the last 8 years. GMail defaults to displaying a Google Talk window on the GMail interface. This might not be a problem for some, but I am using Miranda as my instant messaging client, and don’t need GMail to run a competing client on my machine.
Turning off the GTalk client was simpler than I thought it would be. I found the instructions over at Tech-Recipes:
Scroll down to the very bottom of gmail after you log in. You should see the standard view without chat link. Click it and you are set.
I’ve included a quick screenshot that shows where it is:
Well, If you ever need to write something and need a little bit different font — You might want to look at this Cookie Cutter Image Generator. Here are a couple I created:
This is a great photo of the cable bridge taken by earthdog while he was in the area.
I may have to ‘cheat’ and go looking for that same location to take some photos of my own!
I just finished watching the 80 minute documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. This show examines the claims made by the international left’s newest article of blind faith, Global Warming, or rather the Human Cause of Global Warming. The documentary does not deny that the climate is getting warmer, but they contend it’s not your fault and you can’t do much about it anyway.
The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that carbon dioxide released by human industrial activity is the cause of rising global temperatures today.
The film argues that rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide have nothing to do with climate change. Further, the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions may have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease.
Recent research, presented in this film, apparently shows that the effect of cosmic radiation, and solar activity may explain fluctuations in global temperatures more precisely than the carbon dioxide theory.
The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biogeography and paleoclimatology, from such reputable institutions as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.
The film’s theory is that:
The climate is controlled by presence or absence of clouds.
The presence of clouds is controlled by the amount of cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere.
The amount of cosmic radiation is reduced by the cosmic winds caused by increased solar flare activity.
Made a pretty good argument if you ask me. Of course, no one does.
HatTip: Little Green Footballs
I received an email today, March 10th, from Palm because my Palm Tungsten|T3 is registered with them.
Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins March 11, 2007 — three weeks
earlier than last year. DST will also last one week longer in the
fall as well, changing back to standard time on November 11, 2007.
To help your calendar events and email reflect these new DST changes,
please visit the link below to download the DST update for all Palm(R)
devices. Remember, your device will NOT update automatically, so
please download this update from Palm.com before March 11:
http://News.palmnewsletters.com/cgi-bin13/DM/y/ekJl0WAcHK0HXH0Zlu0G6
So, nice of them to send me this. But why am I receiving it just one day before the time change? Seems that they could have had this update out weeks ago.
Why not just manually adjust the time on your palm like you do your VCR? Well, the Palm depends on the correct DST rule on the device to keep track of different time zone associated calendar events.
If I travel to Boise, or Phoenix, rather than changing the time on my palm, I am supposed to change the time zone. This keeps calendar items correct (I think).
But, other things depend on the correct time zone too. I use a planetarium program on my palm. Without the correct time zone settings, it will not be ‘synced’ with the night’s sky.
Another thing I noticed in the instructions:
All users: In the event of a hard reset, this update will need to be installed and run again on your device.
So this is not a bios update, just a temporary fix. Luckily the daily backup program I use, BackupMan, will restore this file if I have to do a restore.
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable pi can be given that value with a DATA statement
and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also
simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
I hate to post another video since my last post was also a video, but I have not had time to post anything lately but heard something about this on the news this morning and when I saw the video I knew I had to post this.
Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, “What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???”
To some people this is more than just an idle desire. John Cornwell, a Duke University engineering graduate has solved the problem. He created a robotic fridge that will load and catapult up to 10 cans across the room.
Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months and several hundred dollars later I have a fully automated, remote controlled, catapulting, man-pit approved, beer launching mini-fridge. It holds 10 beers in its magazine with 14 more in reserve to store a full case. It is controlled by a keyless entry system. Pressing unlock will start the catapult rotating and when it is aiming at your target, pressing unlock again will stop it. Then the lock button can be pressed to launch a beer in the selected direction.
