Archive for May, 2004

Fun water pump

Friday, May 28th, 2004

(via MetaFilter)

Now this looks really cool! A water pump powered by kids playing on one of those playground spinning rides.

Jane Jacobs on the web

Friday, May 28th, 2004

(via kottke.org)

An interview with Jane Jacobs – she doesn’t think the web will necessarily have a negative impact on communities and neighborhoods.

Spammer goes to jail!

Friday, May 28th, 2004

(via ip)

Spammer Howard Carmack was sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 years in jail for sending 850 million spams, using 343 illegal email accounts under false names. Last May, Earthlink won a $16 million dollar lawsuit against him!

One down, lots more to go!

Congratulations, Damon

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

We’re on a theme, here!

Congratulations to Damon who was selected to the Worcester Inter-High All Stars for soccer. He also got his Burncoat letter and three pins for his soccer season and two track seasons this year. And the Unsung Hero award for track!

He also managed to make it to three proms this month, without even bothering to go to school!

Oh, and he just got his driver’s license, so GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!

Good jaerb, Damon!

Congratulations, Ron

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

Burncoat senior Ron Brace, (I know him as a track guy, he won the Mass. shot put championships with a 56 foot throw), but he’s also a star football player – at least Boston College thinks so, they’re giving him a full scholarship! They’re not the only ones, apparently he’s had three other scholarship offers as well.

Congratulations, Ron!

Terry Jones on Tony Blair

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

Monty Python alum Terry Jones agrees with Tony Blair, we *should* denounce those who threated the freedom and democracy that are synonymous with being American.

Eats Shoots & Leaves

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

(via st)

Josh Abraham takes author Lynne Truss to task over her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. And rightly so!

Congratulations, Mike!

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

Congratulations to Mike Videira, who was selected to the Parade All-America Boys Soccer Team!

Mike and Ben have played together on the FC Greater Boston Eagles (now Bolts), and the Boston Bulldogs Super-Y League team, and Mike is a phenomenal player, and a great guy, too.

Congratulations to Mike and the whole Videira clan!

Incentive

Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

Fellow Worcester blogger apraetor found this on the National Park Service site:

Dark energy confirmed

Friday, May 21st, 2004

(via New Scientist)

Observations of X-rays in galaxy clusters made from NASA’s orbiting Chanrda telescope confirm that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Analysis of supernova explosions and patterns in the cosmic microwave background already pointed to this, and all three give indicate that 75% of the energy in the universe is of the repulsive type needed to make the universe expand.

Repulsive? Expanding? They couldn’t be talking about…naah! I’m on a diet!

Porn link – sorry about that!

Friday, May 21st, 2004

An entry from last January 16 (Don’t Try This At Home) originally linked to a video showing some stunt driving. Sometime in the intervening months that site got redirected to a porn site. This actually happens fairly frequently – if a site that’s at all popular lets their name registration lapse, even by accident, a porn site owner can immediately snatch it up and redirect its traffic to their site.

I apologize to anyone who followed the link and ended up seeing the porn site (especially Ben’s Newman Club friends – yikes!). I never intend for anything on this site to be worse than PG-13; if anyone sees anything like this again, please email brian at casiello dot net, and I’ll fix it right away. I also get notifications of comments, so if you just add a comment to a questionable entry, I can take care of it from there as well.

Just so you know, another problem common to weblogs is spam in comments. Spammers send lots of bogus comments to weblogs, all saying “Great site” or something like that, and fill it with pointers to their own sites; more often than not, these are porn sites as well. I have an automatic system in place to handle comment spam. It catches most of them automatically, and passes the rest on to me. But as yet, there’s no automatic way to handle links moving around. Sorry again!

Cheap gas for the cheap…oh, never mind.

Thursday, May 13th, 2004

(via Reuters)

An article on the Reuters website points to gasbuddy.com, which leads to worcestergasprices.com, a site with updated prices at area gas stations – ordered by price.

Cool!

Interview with Vatican Astronomer

Thursday, May 13th, 2004

(via boingboing)

An interview with (Dr.) Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer and curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection.

Tonight, at 9:30, LOOK UP!

Thursday, May 13th, 2004

(via st)

Tonight, the International Space Station will pass very close to Jupiter in the sky; a lucky few along an 80-meter path will see an eclipse! Hey! We’re pretty darn close to that line!

Check out line eighth line of this page – in Worcester, the sighting will start at 9:33, and last 6 minutes. Since Jupiter is close to overhead, the ISS should pass it around 9:36. Pretty much equivalent for Boston and Springfield, you can check for other cities here.

International Tuba Day

Thursday, May 6th, 2004

(via Dave Barry)

Tomorrow is International Tuba Day, so, umm, do something, uh, tuba-related.

We’re Number Two!

Thursday, May 6th, 2004

A list of states and their residents’ average IQs. The list also includes which states voted for Bush and Gore, I had just never seen the IQ stats before. Good jaerb, Connecticut! And New Jersey – what’s up with that?

Cool photo

Thursday, May 6th, 2004

This is just cool! Check out the frame.

US Gov Filter Censors Own Embassy site in Iran

Monday, May 3rd, 2004

The U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) lets Internet users in Iran and China bypass their governments’ blocking filters, but puts in a few of its own. By blocking all sites with a set of porn-esque words like ‘ass’, and ‘hot’, they’ve inadvertently blocked usembassy.state.gov and hotels.com. More examples are listed here in the study that points out the problem. Interestingly, they have a ‘whitelist’, a list of sites that can get through, even though they’d otherwise be blocked, which includes http://www.breast–enlargement.us/. Can’t let those poor Iranians and Chinese fail to learn the advantages of really huge breasts!

PACMANHATTAN

Monday, May 3rd, 2004

(via kottke.org)

What happens when NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications group plays one too many ’80s video game? PACMANHATTAN