Hello, I’m Martti Roth from Intel Finland. At Intel, we love trying new things. So, when me and my team decided to create the world’s biggest Intel chime, we used five big cannons, five big tubes and five big heroes with helmets on. Yes, I suppose it was a little bit crazy!
The city of Rio Rancho has been putting in roundabouts all over the place and installing “road diets” which I didn’t know what they were called. I learned about them in a Rio Rancho Observer article.
Road diets, according to the United States Department of Transportation, are often conversions of four-lane, undivided roads into three lanes. The fourth lane may be converted to bicycle lanes, sidewalks and/or on-street parking.
The Federal Highway Administration touts roundabouts as being safer than four-way stops.
Roundabouts are touted as being safer because there are less points of conflict than with a four-way stop. Eight with roundabouts, compared to 32. There also are no right angles, meaning less of an impact if a crash were to occur.
According to the Department of Transportation, roundabouts have contributed to a 90 percent reduction in traffic fatalities, a 76 percent reduction in injuries and a 35 percent reduction in crashes. The DOT also says the roundabouts are safer for pedestrians.
Report on DIA jet: "massive gust of wind" – The Denver Post – The captain of a Continental Airlines jet that went off the side of a Denver International Airport runway last December during takeoff said the plane suddenly veered to the left "as if hit by a 'massive gust of wind,' or as if the tires had hit a patch of ice and lost traction," according to a report issued by air safety investigators today. Continental Flight 1404 traveled over fields, an airport taxiway and a raised service road before coming to rest near a DIA fire station.
Pay-as-you-drive insurance, privacy, and government mandates – Ars Technica – The proposal centers on a simple idea: infrequent drivers are less of an insurance risk. By pricing policies according to the mileage driven, insurance companies can offer discounts to lower-risk infrequent drivers, and put an appropriate cost penalty on heavy drivers. The state estimates that 30% adoption of PAYD insurance nationwide would reduce miles driven by at least 10% among subscribers, and save 55 million tons of CO2 over the next ten years. The benefits of such a system could be quite dramatic, as California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is sure to emphasize.
Tornado watch in far SW Colorado – The Denver Post – A tornado watch continues in effect until 9 p.m. for far southeastern Colorado, including Baca, Brent, Crowley, Kiowa, Las Animas and Otero counties. An earlier tornado watch for the metro Denver area expired at 7 p.m.
Consumerist – Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore – Visa buxx – Kids these days! Hawkins writes, "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday [my teenaged daughter] charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store." You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high. What Visa actually did was slap a $20 "negative balance" fee on it, of course.
Scientists Discover Light Force with ‘Push’ Power | Science Blog – A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a “repulsive” light force that can be used to manipulate components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.
Apple rejects bird chirp, search query apps over Internet content | iLounge News – Apple has rejected updates to two more applications—FastFinder from Bananas Design and Chirp! Bird Songs from Spiny Software—due to what the company considers to be an inappropriate rating based on the apps’ ability to connect to the Internet
ABQ will soon have a loan program for solar energy systems aimed as easing up-front costs – New Mexico’s largest city has made quick work of legislation passed earlier this year to boost consumption of renewable energy — such as the installation of solar energy systems on both residential and commercial rooftops. The key component allows municipalities to create special districts through which loans for installation of the systems are made to property owners who then pay off the loan through a property tax assessment rather than through making monthly loan payments.
House cats know what they want and how to get it from you – Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The rather crafty felines motivate people to fill their food dishes by sending something of a mixed signal: an urgent cry or meowing sound embedded within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result is a call that humans generally find annoyingly difficult to ignore.
This Young House Is No More, And Our Entire Blog Is Moving To Young House Love As Of Now! | Young House Love – On July 7th, as many of you know, we were busy celebrating our two year wedding anniversary. But on July 8th we got a nice little present in the form of a cease and desist letter from a prominent home improvement magazine/TV show which bears a few similarities to our old site’s name (you guys can figure it out, right?). Don’t they know the two year anniversary present is cotton, not paper? Anyway, they basically ordered that we immediately surrender the use of our old name and URL because they believed consumers were getting confused and may think that Young House Love was in some way related to their brand. Picture us scratching our heads. In almost two years of blogging under that moniker not one person has ever asked if we were related to that company.
Please, go over and leave a comment to get your one entry, but please to not create a blog post. I would like to keep my 50 entry advantage.
Actually One Project Closer is a great site. Their radiant floor heating installation was a great resource for my own master bathroom radiant floor installation.
I have a love/hate relationship with Quicken. I love it’s features and capabilities, I hate it’s bugs and UI and poor quality from Intuit. Looks like they are addressing these issues. ArsTechnica visited the Intuit booth at Macworld and found a whole new Quicken like application called “Quicken Financial Life for Mac”.
The 1.0 release will focus on core features: cashflow, downloading, taxes, budgeting. It will not work well with investments, being limited to tracking your holdings. As an example, I own 1000 shares of Apple (I wish), and that’s worth $180,000 or whatever it is at the end of the day after downloading security info. Why the feature retrograde? Because QFLM is a whole new application—Cocoa from the ground up. It’s a Universal Binary that takes advantage of Leopard… though I forget to ask if it is Leopard only. I’ll update on on that. Intuit is currently looking for beta testers, so now is a good time to sign up… somewhere. You can do it here. It’s your fault for not being here.
They say it’s not feature comparable to the current version of Quicken, but it seems to have the features I’m interested in. I would sign up to be a beta tester if I could figure out where. I’ve signed up many years before but they have yet to ask me.
My favorite sci-fi series ever is coming to the big screen. The Holywood reporter says Tobey Maguire & Warner Brothers has acquired the rights to the big screen. I first saw Robotech as a kid and instantly fell in love. I bought the entire series of book and own the DVDs. Apparently, the success of the Transformers is bringing all my childhood memories to life.
Updated 02/25/09: It seems very likely this movie is going to be made. The Hollywood Reporter is behind a registration wall but Wikipedia has considerable information about the movie. The movie will be a re-imaging with new mecha and it will take place farther in the future (the original 1985 series had it take place in 2009). It appears it will be written by the people that wrote Smallville, Spider-Man 2, Herbie: Fully Loaded, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I have read elsewhere that the movie could come out in 2010 but seems too soon to me.
I love to grill, but not with the so called briquettes. Only solid hard wood lumps.
The more familiar pillow-shaped briquettes are made from charred granules that typically come from sawdust. These are mixed with anthracite coal, cornstarch, and borax. Nitrate is added to help the charcoal ignite more quickly, and lime to help it assume a white, ashy appearance that lets grillers know the coals are hot enough to begin cooking over.
Borax, by the way, is banned as a food additive in the US and makes a good fire retardant.
I love the Geico Cavemen commercials. Maybe it’s because I can relate to them, they get no respect. In a bizzare twist of events, ABC is going to make a reality TV style show around them.
“Cavemen” will revolve around three pre-historic men who must battle prejudice as they attempt to live as normal thirtysomethings in modern Atlanta.
It could be really good, hopefully they don’t screw it up.
You really can’t beat this deal if you were planning on buying some Insteon gear. I just purchased the remaining switches I needed for my house, 3 Switchlincs and 1 Keypadlinc for about $150, which saved me about $40. They are not only offering a 12% discount, but free shipping over $150. Use coupon code EHSAVE12 between now and Dec 18th, use the link below to go to Smarthome’s site and give me some affiliate love.
I’m still without the super fancy high speed internet via cable. I will finally get them out tomorrow between 12 and 4 to fix it, hopefully. In the meantime check out Thomas Jefferson’s Blog.
Update 07/06/05 8:04PM: Comcast came out today and checked things out. The day my cable went out they came by the apartment complex and “audited” the connections. Disabling the cable for non paying customer… and apparently paying customers. Anyways it’s back on and working good now and they will be giving me a refund.
My favorite sci-fi series ever is coming to the big screen. The
Recent Comments