Captain’s Log

Check out this article at The Register. Pretty much the most amusing story I’ve ever read about badminton, and the headline is an instant classic.

See which search engine gets you the most relevant results in a blind test. The most relevant for my search criteria came from Google. It would be cooler if they included some of the lesser-known search engines too… like Teoma, Alltheweb, WiseNut, etc.

Google base is quickly becoming a haven for free porn.

I added some google analytics tags to my home page, this blog, and loveandrespect.com. That was 3 days ago. Have I seen any data yet? Any at all? Nope. However, whenever I log in, I’m given the following optimistic message:

“Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now. Your first reports will be ready within twelve hours.”

It’s been 5 consecutive 12 hour periods since that message first appeared and I’ve yet to see a report. Thanks Google!

Slashdot posted a story about ZDNet Asia Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies. They seem to be all excited that Red Hat is on the list, although I’m more impressed at this entry:

Looking at the full list, F5 is (in terms of number of employees) the smallest company on there.

A friend of mine has a Mac, and after upgrading to one of the newest software releases found that the computer reports him having half the memory he had before. He started to dig into it, and found threads like this. Lots of people are having this problem and Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged it. Apparently there were a number of discussions on the apple forums but they were shut down by moderators. This could be a class action lawsuit if it gets out of hand.

Check out Pandora if you haven’t already. Basically you start by telling it a band you like, it plays you a song by them, and then it will walk you through similar songs by them and other artists. If you don’t like the songs it plays, you can tell it you don’t like them and skip them. It learns and suggests based on what you like. It’s free, and very cool.

This experiment has a lot of scientific merit.

The Ring Thing.

Another fine example of our federal government at work.

Two days after Katrina hit, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical” and listed problems including many people near death and food and water running out at the Superdome.

Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

But wait, it gets better…

Melancon said that on August 26, just days before Katrina made landfall, Brown e-mailed his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking: “Tie or not for tonight? Button-down blue shirt?”

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?”

I’m so happy that a substantial part of my paycheck every two weeks goes to these clowns.