My fork is, apparently, nutritious and delicious

The cafetaria at my office recently introduced new cutlery. In and of itself, this is exactly the kind of useless, tripe, and pedantic news you'd expect some nobody to post on his blog just to fill up space.

Fuck

No. Wait. There's more. See, this cutlery is different. It's hard to tell why. It's a bit thicker than normal disposable cutlery, and matte - feels a bit rough. So I'm idly examining it while I wait for the clock to hit five when I discover that the words "made from plants" are embossed on the thing. Turns out they are - potato starch, to be exact, mixed with soy oil. Not only are they biodegradable, they're apparently actually compostable and, in theory, at least, even edible. I may have to give actually eating one a miss until they come up with a salt and vinegar version.

There is no such thing as too much Futurama

Oh but this is a pretty pic

I know, on an abstract level, that camera lenses are intricate and delicate things, but to see them meticulously cut in half rather drives the point home, don't you think?

That's a relief

Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.

Thank goodness. The entirely plausible threat postulated by idiots who don't understand science and therefor fear it has been debunked.

Romans Used 20-Sided Dice Two Millennia Before D&D

Many of us geeks take great pride in the ability to recite the history of role-playing games based on the 20-sided die, but what about the history of the die itself? Apparently it predates the original Dungeons and Dragons by almost two millenia.

Danny Boy - Muppet Style

I was too young to appreciate them when they were first popular and too cynical to appreciate them during their revival; only now am I beginning to realize how much the Muppets rocked.

Lomedae, wed

Proof positive of the joyous occasion. They seemed a bit dazed at the time, mostly, I suspect, because everything happened fairly quickly. In spite of that, it was a lovely ceremony. No hurling of rice, unfortunately. I should have brought some.

That's not the way

Walking back from the novelty store we frequent (we're practically regulars!), Mary pointed out this somewhat comcial sign. I present to you "Commerical Way" in Redwood City. Apparently it's a fairly common misspelling, but you'd still expect the outstanding corps of civil servants employed by the county of San Mateo to check the spelling of common words. Having said that, at least they're consistent. The other side of the sign is spelt exactly the same way.

History is Fun!

I recently visited one of these places. It was scary and unnatural.

Things younger than John McCain

Pretty much everything, it turns out.

Define Irony in the context of carbonated beverages

Rising demand for ethanol, combined with insane subsidies means that a third of corn produced in the US is now being used to make fuel. This has caused the price of corn syrup, commonly used as a cheaper and much less healthy replacement for sugar, to skyrocket. Manufacturers of soft drinks and other sweetened products are now considering switching to cane sugar as an "alternative". And to pile irony upon irony, cane sugar is a much more suitable source of fuel than corn.

Thomas Doyle is a bit of a genius

The guy makes somewhat otherworldly maquettes with what appears to be HO modeling material. It's all quite stunning and a bit disturbing.

Make Stuff

Flickr's pics of this year's Maker Faire, always a hotbed of weirdness. I keep promising myself that next year I'll go as an exhibitor. Somehow that continues not to happen. Well, next year I'll definitely be there with my haptic, stirling engine powered, fire spewing, steampunk, ecologically friendly, autonomous, artificially intelligent, l.e.d. lit, rube goldberg knitting machine.

Penis spam haiku

I kid you not. I just received this as part of my daily barrage of penis enlargement spam.

Girls like when it big.
Feel shy of your penis size.
Girls are laugh at you.

I was going to post this yesterday, but it wasn't true back then

It was my stated intention to post this image as proof, PROOF, I tells ya, that Comcast is, on occasion, capable of making me happy. But it was all a lie. Channel 736 taunts me with its blackness. Its cold, dark blackness.

It's not too late though. BSG isn't on for another two hours, twenty-three minutes, and nineteen seconds. Anything could happen between now and then. Anything. An empire might fall. A little-known mathematician may postulate the unifying theory of everything. A theologian may prove definitively that god not only exists, but lives in an abandoned farmstead a mile northwest of Saltdean, where he tends geese and grows beets.

Or Comcast could get around to letting me watch BSG in HD so I don't have to pull it down off alt.binaries.hd.unlike.my.expensive.cable tomorrow. That would be cool too.

Kurt Vonnegut was an interesting man

"There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done."

More Vonnegut quotes

Oooh. Visitors!

Kenny Johnson is remaking "V", and it's going to be in theatres. I'm guessing the original hasn't held up to well - I saw a clip a while back, of one of the Visitors removing his mask. Beyond the fact that the lizard face underneath the human mask was noticeably larger, the whole thing just looked cheap and tawdry. Still, in my memory, it was teh awesomenest TV show EVAR.

Psst, buddy - want free hosting?

So I was looking for a new hosting provider yesterday and got to thinking - I have a bunch of domains and some clients and some friends and all of them need websites (as do trees, cats, and teenagers, apparently, but that's beside the point). Anyway, I decided that I'd get a low-end reseller account. They cost peanuts and allow you to set up fully functional, cpanel based hosting accounts that are independently managed.

So here's the deal: if you want free hosting for your personal thing. . .you know: blog, picture of a cute cat, whatever, with email and ftp and all the cool stuff the kids are using these days, and you're cool with not having 24/7 support, and you don't mind a 2gb transfer limit monthly, and -this is important- you actually know me, drop me a line and I'll get you set up.

Your word of the day

Your word of the day is "Clintanic". Now go forth and propagate it.

Stay Classy, San Francisco

The good people of San Francisco would like to honour the legacy of our president by naming an important piece of public infrastructure after him. Now that's class.