Jefflog

Some noteworthy health related stories released in the last few days:

• Urban sprawl makes Americans fat. I can definitely feel this living out in the Indianapolis suburbs. Everything is just too far away to walk to or even to bike to in some cases.
• Lining up for Krispy Kremes: woman waits record-breaking time for pastries. As much as I love Krispy Kreme donuts, this is wrong in so many ways. The last thing this woman needs to do is sit around for two weeks waiting for donuts.
• New book on Scottish eating shows they like to deep-fry everything. Deep-fried Mars bars, OK…deep-fried haggis??? Ewww….

Ever wanted to browse the pictures in the news without having to read the actual articles? Try BigFrog Visual News, which pulls only the pictures from a number of news sources. You can still see the headlines by moving your mouse over the images (if JavaScript is enabled), and clicking on the photo will take you to the news story or at least a larger version of the photo.

I finally took the “A Personal Photojournal” out of this website’s moniker. I rarely posted any photos, and to be honest, it’s not all that personal. The name “Jefflog” will stay.

Company moves from Microsoft to Linux three years ago, saves a bundle. From the article:

But there’s a real argument now about total cost of ownership, once you start adding up service, support, etc.
What support? I’m not making calls to Red Hat; I don’t need to. I think that’s propaganda…What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don’t have ‘em. How about when we do have a problem, you don’t have to send some guy to a corner of the building to find out what’s going on–he never leaves his desk, because everything’s server-based. There’s no doubt that what I’m doing is cheaper to operate. The analyst guys can say whatever they want.

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…is like having Pat Paulsen times 135.

Since California chooses the order of the candidates on the ballot by lottery, can you imagine going in to vote and having to wade through all 135 names to find the candidate you want? Heck, that alone may so overwhelm the system that people will just give up and vote to not recall Gov. Davis instead.

Personally, I’m with Bill Maher on this issue, when he says:

Now, I’m not saying that I like Davis. Being enthusiastic about Davis would be like saying your favorite food is straw. But he fought for his country in Vietnam and won a fair election, and he’s entitled to his term. Maybe he’s a lousy governor, but he was the one elected by voters who bothered to show up at the polls. Their efforts shouldn’t be undone by disgruntled shoppers signing a petition on their way out of Target.

After all, the greatest part about democracy in this country is that if the guys a stinker, you can let him or her go in four years or fewer (six for Senators, alas). Sheesh.

DHTML Lemmings is, by far, the most impressive use of DHTML I’ve seen thus far. No Flash plugin required to play this game — it’s all JavaScript!

You really can get anything from Amazon.com.

Customers who bought this item also bought these items…sheesh!

Now that we’ve had an overnight blackout over much of the Northeast, we should expect to see hospital delivery rooms overwhelmed in about nine months.

Here’s a shell tool I wish I had known about a long time ago: tee

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Excellent article in Wired magazine about diamond manufacturing entitled The New Diamond Age. Why buy “real” when synthetics are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing and cost half as much? The DeBeers diamond cartel is shaking in their boots.

Webpage for Gemesis “cultured” diamonds.