So there I was, minding my own business, cruising YouTube looking at videos about fat burners, dieting and losing weight when suddenly I notice one of the related videos had the title "Bluetooth Star Trek Communicator". I didn't even pause to wonder just how that was "related" in any way at all to weight loss before I clicked on it.

I'm sure that even most people who aren't Star Trek fans will recognize the communicator from the original series. I've long been of the opinion that it was at least part of the inspiration for modern "flip" style cell phones.

Well, thanks to bluetooth technology things have now finally come full circle and the technology that is at least in part inspired by Star Trek's fictional tech has now made one piece of it a reality.

This video demonstrates the communicator in action, working just like it was portrayed when Kirk and company were using them in the 1960's tv series. The nostalgic DIY'ers among you will be glad to know that you can find complete plans, parts list, and directions with plenty of pictures on the Make! blog

My cellphone doesn't have bluetooth capability or I'd be working on this one myself!

Technorati Tags: star trek, dave clausen, bluetooth, diy, cell phone hack, make magazine, cell phone, diana eng, communicator

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I just saw a post on the University of California Irvine website that shows a possible link between people that have a genetic variant that causes their brains to produce less of a "brain-derived neurotrophic factor". Some 30 percent of Americans have this variant gene.

I guess that means that if you've got this gene variant it might be a good idea to avoid driving, especially in tense situations like high traffic or perhaps on long trips. i.e. if you're going to go on orlando vacations over the holidays, maybe driving isn't the best way to get there.

There is at least a little actual science involved here, they did a study that involved 22 people without the variant and 7 that did have it and the people with this gene variant did significantly worse in their study.

Of course this is hardly a definitive study and there obviously needs to be more work done on it to confirm the theory and also look for other factors ... such as people that simply don't pay attention to what's going on around them will naturally make poor drivers.

Technorati Tags: genetic cause, bad driving, neurotrophic factor

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I was making a video earlier today and while it was rendering I was reminded once again how much I really need a computer that is at least a *little* bit closer to being state of the art than the four to eight year old (sometimes older) designs that I usually end up with that are build from components that I find on sale because the manufacturers have discontinued them... which is usually the reason the price finally drops to where I can reach it.

If anything will stress a computer it's going to be rendering video or 3D animation and in my case it certainly shows it's age. In a world where it's fast beginning to seem like everybody's got dual or quad core cpu's running at 2.6 to 3+ ghz, I'm sitting here with a single core at 1.6ghz. It's almost funny how when I first got this system put together that it seemed like the fastest computer I'd ever seen. Of course there's good reason for that... it was.

Of course back then I hardly ever did anything with video and then it was only with Windows Movie maker. Nothing took more than about 15 minutes to render, most things were done in less than ten minutes.

Now When I make a four minute video I can expect it to take at LEAST two and as long as three hours or more to render and that is with video quality settings at "low". If I go for a best quality render, I could be waiting up to six hours for that four minute video to complete. That's assuming that I stop all other processes first of course, if I leave anything else running it could easily end up taking all bleeding night to get the job done.

That's why I'm now shopping around for things like this 64bit quad core computer with 8gb ram and a 360gb hard drive to add to the "I need this for Christmas" list. It looks like it's got enough horsepower that if an ATI Radeon (or whatever their very latest and greatest is) graphics card then it ought to be up to rendering a four minute video in something under an hour at the very least.

Then there's other things like some 3D animation tools that I want very much to spend time learning how to use. I have a couple of them (like Blender for instance) but I seldom mess with them because of how incredibly long it takes to render anything. Then there's the software that I really want to get, such as DAZ 3D, Adobe After Effects, Particle Illusion and others that won't even run on my current machine. Heck, I got a demo version of AE once and it refused to even install because the computer wasn't up to the program!

Technorati Tags: wish list, computer, christmas list, christmas

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One of the things that I have come to consider to be a full fledged part of getting ready for winter weather is being prepared to deal with a power failure. For example, last year's ice storm that swept across much of the US left millions of people without power. Some didn't have power for as long as two or three weeks. I personally was without power for no less than a week and a half.

During this time I was fortunate to have already winterized my home by covering windows with plastic, weather-striping the doors and a few other places to stop cold air leaks and such. We also had several hurricane lamps and a supply of lamp oil (Which reminds me, I need to restock that stuff soon while it's still for sale at a decent price!). Even with all this it only took about three days for the temperature inside the house to drop to 35 degrees.

It also didn't take long for me to run out of foods that could easily be used without having to heat them up on an electric stove that didn't have any juice. I ended up using one of the oil lamps to create a makeshift oil lamp stove that allowed me to heat up foods enough to make them edible. It was far from a perfect solution but at least it worked.

This year however I'm hoping first that there aren't any power failures, especially anything even remotely like that one. However because power failures in bad weather are often a part of life out here in rural America, it's still a good idea to be prepared just in case.

That's why I'm thinking really seriously about options like this 4000 watt Portable Generator. I remember hearing reports of generators like this being sold for as much as $1500.00 and people were forking over for 'em because they needed some way to generate power.

Seems to me that it makes a whole heck of a lot more sense to have something like this bought ahead of time, along with a stock of fuel for it, kept in storage until it's needed. That way when the power fails this thing could crank out enough juice to allow that gas furnace to run and still have enough to spare for some hot plate or microwave cooking, keeping a light on at night and of course, running a computer and blogging about the storm.

Technorati Tags: being prepared, ice storm, fuel supply, generator, power failure, winter weather

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I was surfing around YouTube yesterday and ran into several videos that claimed to reveal some secret, undocumented, way to make YouTube videos load faster and play without skipping or hesitating.

In each case the instructions were pretty much the same. go to the video page, five star rate the video, favorite it, leave a positive comment, and subscribe to the channel it's on. After doing all these things then you're supposed to reload the page and be amazed that the video is loading faster.

Folks, this is nothing less than a full scale load of crap. The only possible effect that doing this *might* have is that while you're doing these things the video is buffering and beginning to load. Then when you reload the page, it's already got a head start.

This is nothing less than a line of bullshit that some people are using to try to improve their YouTube stats and subscriber counts.

Technorati Tags: speed, speed up, trick, doubletalk, ratings trick, subscriber trick, comments trick, bullshit, load of crap, stats building trick, youtube, videos, tip, delay, subscribe, bogus tip

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While it's true that DVD's don't suffer the same kind of wear that the old VHS video tapes did in that they don't actually wear out from repeated or even excessive playback, they are subject to scratches and nicks that eventually render them unplayable on even the most advanced DVD players.

Such is rapidly becoming the case with my copy of John Carpenter's cult classic "Big Trouble in Little China". You see, my wife had this little quirk, she had to have something playing on the tv (at a low volume) in order to sleep. Over the years I became so accustomed to this that I continued the practice after she died and while I still occasionally use any of a couple dozen titles that we had picked out for this, the one that I've run most of the time is "Big Trouble in Little China". Not counting the time that it runs while I'm actually asleep, I think I've seen it probably 300 times or more since last January.

So I've recently been looking for an actual "new" copy of it to replace my current one before it gets so bad that it doesn't play at all. This search has actually been harder than I expected it to be given the film's cult following but finally I've found it on sale for a good price and will soon have that new, never been played before, copy of it.

Those not familiar with the movie might wonder why I like it so much, All I can say is that it's the combination of campy old time action movies and just plain fun. Besides, how can you not like a movie that has quotes like these from the main character, Jack Burton:

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have ya paid your dues, Jack?" "Yessir, the check is in the mail."

all I know is this "Lo Pan" character comes out of thin air in the middle of a goddamn alley while his buddies are flying around on wires cutting everybody to shreds, and he just stands there waiting for me to drive my truck straight through him, with light coming out of his mouth!

Okay. You people sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we're not back by dawn... call the president.

You just listen to the old Pork-Chop Express here and take his advice on a dark and stormy night, when the lightning's crashin', the thunder's rollin' and the rain's comin' down in sheets thick as lead. Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earth quakes and the poison arrows fall from the sky and the pillars of heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right square in the eye and he says, "Gimme your best DVD, pal. I can take it."

Technorati Tags: favorite movie, jack burton quotes, cult classic, campy fun

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Once again it's starting to get close to Christmas shopping season and as usual, that means it's time for me to start browsing to see what's on sale even the "gotta have it" thing I eventually find isn't something I can't afford, I figure it's still worthwhile to add it to my wish list just in case somebody with more cash than I agrees that it would make a good gift for me.

One of the first things I tend to go looking at is computer systems. That's because while the one I have is decent and is up to most tasks I ask of it, there's still things that it either isn't capable of dealing with or that only run at an agonizing snails pace.

Well, I think that this HP Pavilion Elite E9120Y is definitely something that wouldn't be having any of those problems.

To start with the CPU is a quad core AMD Phenom II X4 running at 2.6ghz. It comes with *Eight Gigabytes* of RAM and can support up to sixteen gigabytes, making it a sure winner in the most memory capacity I've ever seen in a desktop.

The hard drive is another monstrous winning factor at 1 Terabyte capacity! Even *I* would have a hard time filling that in less than a year. Yeah, I know, "famous last words" and all that but it'd sure be fun finding out. Other storage features include a Blu-ray drive and a dual-layer DVD burner.

Add to that an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card and it's enough to make me overlook the fact that it comes with Vista home premium as it's OS. Besides, I could easily arrange for it to have multiple boot options so that I could switch between XP Pro, Kubuntu and Vista as needed.

Now all I need to do is convince somebody with some money that I deserve this break today 'cause I want this thing so bad YOU can taste it!

Technorati Tags: terabyte hard drive, quad core cpu, wish list, i want it, desktop computer, christmass shopping

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I noticed something interesting today. I was looking at my latest batch of updates from people I follow on Twitter and I noticed several tweets from names that I did not recognize and have no memory of deciding to follow them. As a general rule, I'm very picky about who I decide to follow and I don't want to follow very many because it takes time to look at all those tweets and get caught up even after being away from it for a mere half a day or so.

While I'm interested in these people's tweets (or I wouldn't have followed them in the first place) I do not have any desire to spend two or three hours catching up on hundreds of tweets from dozens of people. Therefore I keep the number that I follow low. As of this morning I was following 26 "tweeters".

Then I got looking at those people in the list of people I'm following and ended up following six of them because I have no idea who they are or why I would follow them. This is like the third time in the last couple of months that I've had to remove people that I don't remember following.

If twitter had an inbound call center I'd be on the phone right now trying to find out what's up with this. It's more than just annoying, It's clear evidence to me that something sneaky is going on. Perhaps it's part of one of those plans that people come up with to get thousands of followers quickly, I don't know. But it's going to have to stop or I will have to consider junking twitter entirely.

Technorati Tags: followers, unwanted follow, following, twitter

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Once again the seasons are marching toward winter. To make things extra special it's looking like it's going to be a colder than usual winter this year. Little signs like squirrels getting really active roughly a month or so earlier than last year, leaves turning color and even starting to fall around the same time. Already Northeast Arkansas has had it's first frost and overnight temps in the low 30's.

This means that I've got to get busy this weekend doing all the "get ready for serious cold weather" stuff at least a month earlier than usual. Everything from hunting up the right size HAVC filters to putting up double layers of plastic on the windows and weatherstripping the doors and looking for any place with air leaking from outside that needs caulking.

On the upside, that means that I'll soon be able to put the cover back on the side of my computer tower. In the summer months I have to remove that cover in order to make sure there's enough air circulation to keep things cool. The problem with that is it means a lot more dust collection goes on and I need to go through it with one of those cans of compressed air sold as "dust remover" every couple of weeks to keep it from piling up.

Kinda makes me wonder if somebody will ever come up with a computer cooling system that uses liquid nitrogen so that the system could be left totally closed and sealed all the time, thus avoiding the dust issue entirely.

Technorati Tags: cooling, computer, winterize, liquid nitrogen, colder than usual, winter

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Sometimes I think I'm destined to be one of the last people to know about new movies & tv series that I want to see. Such is the case here. A few years ago I got the boxed set of all three Blade movies. Foolish me, I thought that was the end of those movies.

Of course, probably every Blade fan this side of Marvel HQ already knows this but believe it or not, I *just* found out that there's a fourth movie in the series, Blade-House of Chthon.

As if that wasn't enough, this movie turns out to be not only the first in the series that does NOT star Wesley Snipes, it's the pilot for a Blade tv series that aired back in 2006!! It seems that the series was short lived and only lasted one season because in looking around I've seen the first season on sale as a boxed set but I haven't seen any mention of a second season at all.

So now I've just got to get this to complete what I thought was a complete set. Then I need to start looking around for a copy of the series, since digital tv signals don't have enough power in them to reach my antenna I know I'm never going to see it on the tube one the one broadcast station I'd get if digital signals were stronger even if it's in reruns now.

Technorati Tags: vampire movie, blade 4, blade tv series, blade

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