The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

Grocery Star Wars . Starts a bit slow but well worth the three and a half minutes to watch. The audio is hilarious- click on the "meet the puppets" link if you miss any of the characters names (like Obi Wan Cannoli or Tofu-D2). Very well done!

Renewable Energy Resources NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory Home Power Magazize - Guide to Photovoltaics Systems Premier Power Solar Electricity Specialists Mr Solar.Com Grid Connected System Kits Altair Energy Turn Key Systems National Geographic Article Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough

April Quotes Roundup "Never confuse movement with action." (Ernest Hemingway) "A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance." (Benjamin Disraeli) "The things that we love tell us what we are." (St. Thomas Aquinas) “For every complex problem there is a simple solution- And it is wrong.” (Anon) "No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days." (Max Planck) "I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire." (Winston Churchill) “In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time -- literally -- substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprep...

D&D Blackmoor Resources Dave Arnesons Blackmoor Page Classic D&D Adventures for Download Including: DA1 - Adventures in Blackmoor DA2 - The Temple of the Frog DA3 - City of the Gods DA4 - The Duchy of Ten

RPGs In Perspective: A History of Role-Playing AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROLE-PLAYING GAMES A Preliminary Taxonomy for Role Playing Games TSR Archive TSR Product List

Conan RPG Resources Check out Krakows "Lost and Found" resource on Conan RPGs . "Black-haired and sullen-eyed was Conan, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth. Cycles of legend revolve around his name, glimpses of a world before history, where evil wizards performed dark sorcery, and where the fate of an empire turned on the strength and skill of a single sword..."

The Museum of (future) Media History (1984-2014) Summary Of The World: Googlezon And The Newsmasters EPIC: Watch Robin Sloan's vision of future media in the short film EPIC 2014 which documents the history of media from 1984-2014. From the EPIC 2014 Transcript : In the year 2014 people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age.Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape. However, the Press, as you know it, has ceased to exist. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned. 20th Century news organizations are an after-thought, a lonely remnant of a not too distant past...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Finally! The movie adaptation for the Douglas Adam's classic is set for release April 29, 2005. The World Premiere Trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now playing on Amazon.com Looks like its going to be awesome!

Fedora Core 2 FC2 nVidia 3D Driver Support Howto Download the latest graphics driver for Linux straight from nVidia Linux Driver Portal Page and save the package in a convenient location. Login as root and shut down your xserver to install from the command line: $/sbin/init 3 Change to the download directory and make sure the package is executable: $chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1.run Install the package (accepting the license agreement and ignoring the warnings): $ sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1.run Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. In the Device Section change: Driver "nv" to Driver "nvidia" In the Modules Section add: Load "glx" Comment out or delete the following lines if present: Load "dri" Load "GLcore" Save your changes and restart your x-session: $init 5 Login as with your normal user and test with the commands glxgears or tuxracer. Have a ...

SLR Photography My mother recently gave me her old Canon A-1 SLR that I remember so well from the 1970s. Of great interest are the assortment FD lenses (Canon, Vivatar and Tamron aftermarket brands), multipliers and other goodies that were at the bottom of the camera bag. They are probably not compatible with todays hi-res Digital SLRs, like the Canon Digital Rebel I've had my eyes on. If there are not, there's a huge market for a digital SLR body or some type of adatper that would bring new life to these lenses.

Howto Create DVD Home Movies Using Linux: Here is a guide I put together to help you capture video from a miniDV camera and create homemade DVDs using linux. I have a Sony DCR TVR-18 MiniDV and run Fedora Core 2 (FC2) on a Shuttle XPC (detailed system specs ). I use the DAG YUM/APT repository to manage package installation dependencies when possible. Read this for more information about mixing repositories. I've been extremely happy with DAG. Most of my installation headaches were resolved after I dropped Livna and Fedora Extras from my YUM configuration. 1. Introduction - Kino Installation Tips from Linux Journal . This article from December 2004 provides a nice overview of the tools required to get your camcorder working with Kino via the Firewire/IEEE 1394 interface. If you're using the DAG YUM repository you might want simply try to install kino first and let YUM indentify and resolve the package dependencies for you. From the command line type (as root...

Neal Stephenson Resources I just finished Stepehson's The Diamond Age (Hugo Winner and Nebula Nominee). I n my opinion The Diamond Age is his best novel written todate, although I haven't read Cryptonomicon and I have yet finish The System of The World, which concludes his Baroque Cycle master piece. Check out these links if you interested in some of his other work: Neal Stephenson Bibliography Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast In The Beginning Was the Command Line The Great Simoleon Caper Crunch (Disco 2000 Anthology) As Stephen Bury Interface Cobweb

[adult swim] Last week I discovered [adult swim] just in time for my fall vacation. Featured nightly from 11pm - 5am ET on cartoon network, [adult swim] brings the best anime directly into your home. Combined with the "TiVO Season Pass" and you get anime "on demand" without the hassle of renting DVDs. Seach a9.com or animeNfo Top100 for more information on boxed sets and movie editions that are worth collecting on DVD. There are over two dozen programs available from[adult swim], and each espisode is usually 20 minutes excluding commercials. Check out the clips and daily schedule fom [adult swim] for more information on each series. Personal favorites include: Cowboy Bebop Full Metal Alchemist Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Sealab 2021 Witch Hunter Robin

Newsweek Special Election - Read their special 50,000 word report- behind the scenes campaign coverage . Newsweek had reported embedded in each campaign for the past 14 months. They had signed non-disclosure agreeements not to leak anything till the elections were over November third. This makes for some very interesting (but lenghty) reading.

2004 Election Coverage Check out USA Today's County by County Voting Results Counties voting Republican are noted in Red, Democratic in Blue. Bush won the popular vote and the electoral vote, but its interesting that he carried the majority of the counties in states that went to Kerry. Kerry had strong support in the densely populated metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and but Bush carried most (if not all) of the smaller cities and rural areas in these states.

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 Cool website that shows the electoral vote breakdown by state for Bush and Kerry campaigns. Updated daily. Interesting visual contrasts between the American heartland and the East/West coasts.

The Popular Vote Anyone who argues that the Electoral College should be scrapped in favor of the popular vote should first understand how the electoral college works and why it was established in the first place. The Electoral College provides a system of checks and balances between the federal and state governments. It maintains the balance of power between the large and the small states. It facilitates the stable transition of power across regular elections. There's also a conservative notion that the primary purpose of government is to secure and protect the liberty and property of its citizens. Stability is a prerequisite for security. The popular vote can be as fickle and dangerous as a tyrannical mob. It was used in Ancient Greece to condemn Socrates to death. It was manipulated by the demagogues of the 20th century to elect the likes of Adolf Hitler to public office. Links: How the Electoral College Works Brief History and Evaluation of the Electoral ...

Fun with the 2004 Vote Visit these websites to help celebrate the Vote on November 4: Best in Drag Bush Brain Game New! Voting Machines

The Laws of Software Development "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." --Murphy's Law The speed of software halves every 18 months. --Gates Law "Software bloat tends to counter the every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar, as predicted by Moore's Law." --The Harrow Technology Report (12/22/03)

Continuous Partial Attention "Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, has coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe life in the era of e-mail, instant messaging, cellphones, and other distractions. This curious feature of modern life poses a problem for a someone like me. Every productive thing that I do requires ALL my attention." Neal Stephenson "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration." Don Knuth "I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages." --- Umberto Eco, quoted in the New Yorker