Man, the places I’d be if I had this childs talents…

Hay Jude! Better, better, better!
Hey, a guy can dream.

Submerge your computer in Mineral Oil.

Why not?

NO ONE LIVES FOREVER!

I’ve always been a sucker for Tim Burton & his whimsical style; it comes out this Christmas :-D.

There has been much hype over the coming of Apple’s new iPhone, which is precisely why it will disappoint. Before its presentation the iPhone was shrouded in much secrecy and speculation. Fans, even with a handful of spec’s, continue to speculate more and anticipate further surprises. Distilling down everything reveals the fact that this is the first time Apple has developed a cellular phone. I am confident that this will result in unseen problems and mass disappointment; how much depends on how quickly Apple adapts. We shall see. 2¢.

I wrote a little while back that I think the government should pony up for interest free loans for zero-emission/renewable-resource based power plants (photovoltaic solar was the specific class of plant that I had targeted). My thinking is laid out in the article but I’ll summarize. Investing in energy that doesn’t come from idiot nations means we can free ourselves from their idiocy (somewhat); we get a leg up on the competition because we will have the ability to run our economy at a stable cost as opposed to the wildly fluctuating costs of fossil fuels; we get to enjoy the fruits of greater environmental sensitivity in cleaner streams, skies, etc.

I was trolling YouTube and found this video:

This video makes it clear that photovoltaic solar isn’t the only option. There are options that are relatively low tech, available now, at low cost. The video states that the power plant shown has the ability to generate a stable 30 Kilowatts of energy, peaking at up to 60 Kilowatts. The power plant is a test version and is likely to improve its efficiency through various enhancements. There is little environmental impact and the whole thing cost a staggeringly little $1+ million.

It is conceivable that given a reasonable deployment of units like that shown in the video, the cost of an installation could drop even further. This low initial cost along with the requirement for only eleven acres of land on which to place such a plant, could result in quite a nicely profitable business generating clean, solar energy.

Also, given that the cost per kilowatt hour of electricity in states where this technology could be the most effective is relatively higher than the average (CA, AZ, NM, TX), shown in the middle of this page, it makes absolute business sense to seek alternative energy sources that could feed demand, taking advantage of relatively high energy costs, all the while using a renewable resource to provide protection against cost swings.

I’ve been using OS X pretty steadily now for over two years. I’ve had very few complaints in that time and many, many moments of awesomeness-induced joy.

One of the things that makes Mac so usable is the number of really useful keyboard shortcuts that are available throughout the system. It’s not necessary to know these shortcuts to use a Mac, but as a user develops their Mac skills these shortcuts provide tremendous room for growth. Maybe Windows XP has similar conveniences as Mac but Mac just seems to do it better. Take application switching as an example. Windows has Alt-Tab. Alt-Tab cycles through every window. Hurray. Mac gives you Command-Tab to cycle through applications and Command-` to cycle through open windows of an application. Note the difference – Mac gives you a more fine-grained control over the switching. These shortcuts work in Expose as well. Pressing F9 gives a user a view of all open windows – pressing and holding Command while pressing Tab will switch the view from the F9/All-Windows view to the F10/All-Windows-for-a-Given-Application view. That’s cool but more than that, it’s useful.

If you’re a Mac user you owe it to yourself to check out the list of shortcuts on Apple.com – learn just one shortcut a day and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your experience on Mac will transform from merely great to insanely great.