Casiello Family Weblog

(via Gadgetopia)

A professor and a swimmer at the University of Minnesota answer the age-old question: do you swim faster or slower in syrup?.

(via devnull)

Larry Niven’s fourth ‘Ringworld’ novel is out.

How long til Christmas?

It is important to remember there still exist many other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

… and it includes what’s going to be an incredibly popular feature.

(via gadgetopia

Some guys with way too much time on their hands built a pong game out of mechanical parts and telephone relays including two wooden blocks that konk together for the ‘tock’ sound. Check out the video, even if you don’t speak German!

(via slashdot)

it takes five entire lines of code to hack them.

I switched to WordPress – the comment spam on the old blog was getting to be more trouble than it was worth. It also avoids having to rebuild all the pages, they’re served right from the database. The rebuild model probably works better for big blogs, but this one is small, and likely to remain that way. Right now, comments are moderated, so they won’t show up right away, but I’ll approve them as soon as I see them.

(via IP)

FSView – the Florida State University student sewspaper reports:

“In an effort to prevent illegal file sharing on campus, Florida State University is on the verge of finalizing a deal with Apple Computer, Inc. — a deal that would provide free iTunes software to students and allow them to download music for 99 cents per song.”

Wowie! I wonder how they managed to negotiate THAT sweet deal?

Some folks like to write text while constraining themselves on some way. Haiku, limericks, and sonnets are constrained in length, meter, or rhyming pattern.

But what about Poe, E.: Near a Raven or Gadsby? There are constraints, and then there are constraints!

Rock The Vote has an easy web app that lets you fill out and print a voter registration form.

The election is November 2nd, and you have to register at least 20 days before the election. Uh, JP and Ben – hint, hint!

College folks can vote either in their hometown or their college town, whichever one you register for. If you register your hometown address, you might want to vote absentee. If you live someplace with electronic-only ballots, you may want to vote absentee anyway.

(via John Udell)

What’s the difference between what liberals read and what conservatives read?

Almost everything.

Gee, you’re not using up your entire gig of GMail storage yet?

If you run Linux, why not use it as a mountable filesystem?

(via BoingBoing)

Some electronic voting machines have a secret code that lets a second set of votes to be created.

The companies that test electronic voting machines are bound by contracts with the companies that make the machines not to disclose their test results.

If your polling place uses electronic-only voting machines, you may want to vote by absentee ballot.

(via BoingBoing)

…the original Planet of the Apes, as a Twilight Zone episode.

(via BoingBoing)

Intricate origami dragon, with the folding diagram (pdf).

Here’s an even more amazing one. Sorry, no diagram for this one.

(via BoingBoing)

The SANS Institute has measured the average time between probes for a system on the Internet, it’s down to 20 minutes. In other words, the worms can find you before you have time to download all those security patches to make a new install of Windows XP safe(r).

They have a paper on how to get online safely.

If you have a system already, or a savvy friend with a CD burner, you can always slipstream the pathches into the XP install – that is, build new XP installation disks with the patches already in place. Here are some instructions for slipstreaming XP Service Pack 2 into XP.

Of course, if you’re really savvy, you could use Knoppix Linux to patch your XP system.

A team at Cambridge University headed by professor Keith Kendrick has discovered that stressed sheep cheer up when shown pictures of friends and relatives.

Sheep in Yorkshire, England, have learned to roll across barriers they can’t walk across in order to get to peoples’ gardens.

Cassini-Huygens has been sending back some wonderful images from Saturn and vicinity…here’s one of Saturn’s moon Mimas. Look familiar?

Stephen Hawking has re-thought his original position on black holes, and in the process lost a bet with another physicist, John Preskill.

The prize: an encyclopedia on baseball.

(The bet was for an encyclopedia of the winner’s choice. I think S.H. got off easy.)