Hipster PDA

PDA for $3.00

From 43 Folders.com:

Introducing the Hipster PDA

" The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and “beaming,” and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain."

1. get a bunch of 3"x5" file cards
   
2. clip them together with a binder clip
   
3. there is no step 3

More expensive, but part of the new-old cool: Moleskine Pocket Notebooks Jeremy Wagstaff: The Moleskine Report

"There is an immense amount of satisfaction in writing on paper - we tend to forget that in this digital-toy-crazed world we live in. The Moleskine has lovely paper - crisp, creamy, and smooth - that is a pleasure to write on. I use a four-nib Rotring pen that has a mechanical pencil (great for sketching), a roller ball pen, a bright orange dry-lighter, and a PDA stylus tip - all contained in a very precision-machined metal barrel. I also enjoy flipping through my journal pages, reviewing sketches, diagrams, and ad hoc notes. With the Tablet PC, I get a near-paper experience but the best thing about paper is that it requires no batteries!"

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Ground Shaking?

Doorway or PC?

If you feel a quake, where do you go?

U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program Website

"Earthquakes pose significant risk to 75 million Americans in 39 States. The USGS is the only Federal agency with responsibility for recording and reporting earthquake activity nationwide. Citizens, emergency responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information on where an earthquake occurred, how much the ground shook in different locations, and what the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur in the world each year, but many go undetected because they occur in remote areas or have very small magnitudes. The USGS now locates about 50 earthquakes each day; 20,000 a year."

• Current Earthquakes
  • USA
    
  • World
• NEIC Current Earthquake Information
  
• ShakeMaps
  
• Seismogram Displays
  
• Past & HistoricalEarthquakes
  
• Earthquake Notification E-mail

Also: Ask USGS Earth Science Information Center
Tsunamis research at USGS


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Freeware

More than affordable software

Here is a collection of free software including a desktop utility called:

RUNit:

"RUNit is a simple but yet powerful launchpad. RUNit gives you quick access to applications, documents, folders and shortcuts. Unlike many other launchpads RUNit doesn't occupy any space on your screen - you only see it when you actually use it.

RUNit defines a "hot area" on your screen where a click of the right mouse button makes the RUNit launch-menu appear .The "hot area" can be any border of the screen or even the whole screen."

PricelessWare.org

"The Pricelessware list is a compilation of software collected through a yearly vote by the participants of the "alt.comp.freeware" newsgroup. It is a list of what people have voted as "the best of the best in Freeware".

• Business-Home
  
• Desktop
  
• File Utilities
  
• Graphics
  
• Organizers
  
• Multimedia
  
• Security
  
• Web Design
  
• Internet
  
• Programming
  
• Text
  
• System Utilities

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Census Maps and Graphs

Statistical treasure trove

The charts and maps can be set for specific areas. The underlying database figures are also provided.

Tacoma, Washington:


CHARTS & TRENDS

"Census 2000 and Trend Data going back to 1990, 1980, and sometimes even further, on a growing list of topics, including population growth, population by race, age structure, family structure, and income."

MAPS

"Many of the most important social trends affecting America have a strongly regional flavor. Figure out where you fit in with demographic maps showing where the elderly predominate (think: the Great Plains), where the nuclear family is (and isn't) the norm, and how "diversity" breaks down regionally."

RANKINGS

"State and county-level rankings by population growth, race, educational attainment, language, gender, and more."

SEGREGATION

"Segregation Exposure and Dissimilarity Measures for 1246 individual US cities with population exceeding 25,000 and for all metropolitan areas, based on single and multiple race populations as identified in Census 2000."

CensusScope

University of Michigan:
Social Science Data Analysis Network

The site was suggested by the eclectic J-WalkBlog of John Walkenbach.


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Build a Trebuchet in your backyard

Pumpkin chunkin

The Trebuchet at NF/ Observatory

"The NF/ Ranch is a small cattle ranch in the Mimbres Valley (New Mexico). The earliest signs of human occupation are from 1000AD, when the Mimbres Indians occupied sites along the Gallinas River, just down the hill. A Spanish fort was built over some of these ruins arround 1600, for protection against the local Warm Springs Apaches. Now the residents include Bill, Ty, Nick, Cindy, Amber, and Kaelin along with the animals at the ranch. Ty and Nick are currently perfecting a Trebuchet, a high tech siege weapon from the 10th century."

Also:
Trebuchet MS Font


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Jean Shepherd

"You filthy pragmatists, I'm going to get you!"

A Salute to Jean Shepherd:

FlickLives.com

"Those who have seen the 1983 movie "A Christmas Story" know Jean Shepherd as the voice of Ralph Parker as an adult. Others who grew up in the New York Metropolitan area during the 50's, 60's and 70's may recall the nightly radio show he did on WOR 710AM five nights a week for forty-five minutes and the two-hour Saturday night "Live at the Limelight" shows.

... a stunt he liked to pull, was the hurling of invectives. He would instruct his listeners to place their radios in the open window of their house and turn the volume way up. He would then yell over the radio things like, "You filthy pragmatists, I'm going to get you!"

Shep often said that there was 5 to 10 hours of preparation for each of his nightly shows, and yet fellow WOR personality Barry Farber, and one of his engineers, Herb Squire say that it all came from the top of his head. Herb claims that Shep would come into the studio with only a scrap of paper with a few notes, or perhaps an article someone had sent him. He would sit down behind the mike, and as the theme song would play Shep would ease into 45 minutes of non-stop chatter. He would start out talking about a particular subject, and through the course of the show, would side track to other related topics. But as his theme music at the end of the show came to a close he managed to tie it all together and bring the show to an end."

Jean Shepherd: Radio's Noble Savage
by Edward Grossman

"10:15 P.M. The WOR news and weather are out of the way. A bugle sounds, and a sprightly theme song comes trotting on the air. The theme has a double meaning: it is the one that calls the horses to the gate at Aqueduct, and it is the Bahnfrei Overture, composed for an operetta by Eduard Strauss, the only member of the Strauss family who did not make good. Presently, Shepherd's clear, rowdy voice intrudes. 'Okay, gang are you ready to play radio? Are you ready to shuffle off the mortal coil of mediocrity? I am if you are.' There is a noise like a mechanized Bronx cheer (BRRAPP!)- it is Shepherd blowing his kazoo. At other times he twangs his Jew's-harp (BRROING!). 'Yes, you fatheads out there in the darkness, you losers in the Sargasso Sea of existence, take heart, because WOR, in its never ending crusade of public service, is once again proud to bring you--(EROICA SYMPHONY UP)-- The Jean Shepherd Program!'"

Bob Kaye:
Shep In Concert! Video Clip

JeanShepardPodcast


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Population:485

By Michael Perry

ISBN 0-06-095807-3
Perennial 2002


About the Author
Michael Perry was raised on a small dairy farm near New Auburn, Wisconsin, and put himself through nursing school working as a cowboy in Wyoming. As of this writing, he is the only member of the New Auburn (nee Cartwright Mills) Area Fire Department to have missed the monthly meeting because of a poetry reading.
See:
SneezingCow.com



Book Description
A collection of stories about life in a small Wisconsin town. What it's like to be in the volunteer fire department with your brothers and your mother.
Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Mike figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, he tells a frequently comic tale leavened with moments of heartbreaking delicacy and searing tragedy.

Quote

"... The village board sent someone around to recite nuisance ordinances chapter and verse, but beyond rearranging the bikes and aligning the camper with the speedboat - feng shui primitif - nothing has changed. You take what you can get in this life. Someone calls you white trash, you go with it, and fight like hell to keep your trash. You understand it is a matter of distinctions: yuppies with their shiny trash, church ladies with their hand-stitched trash, solid citizens with their secret trash. In a yard just outside town, a spray-painted piece of frayed plywood leans against a tree. It reads Trans Ams: 2 for $2000. It has been there for two years."

New Auburn, Wisconsin, 54757


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Time Counts

Thoughts and Tick Tocks

Brad McCormick has the kind of web site that is built to be thumbed through. There are some serious linkage pages:

What Time Does Your Computer Think It Is?



And also a collection of his thoughts and others. I found it worthwhile to just surf from spot to spot.

There is good stuff at almost every click.

"Happy the person who can find genuine interest and satisfaction in something nobody else wants -- for then (s)he has a better chance of being allowed to have it. "

"Big problem: How to avoid wasting one's life to earn one's living. "

"When will we advance to a level where not just owning persons (slavery) but also renting them (wage labor) is outlawed and abolished? "

"Some persons can judge [many] books by their covers. Other persons can't judge a book even by its contents. "

"Why not speak, conciliatorily, of the complementary sex (gender), rather than, oppositionally: 'the opposite sex'?"

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Flying Pigs

and other cool stuff

I was lucky enough to find an outlet for Flying Pig material in my home town. If you are interested in very clever paper machines, make Flying-Pig.co.uk a must click location.




Also:
Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

Timber Kits



And:
the Paper Airplane Museum


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Hot Knots

Tied Up?

The KnotPlot Site
By Rob Scharein

"Knot theory is a branch of algebraic topology where one studies what is known as the placement problem, or the embedding of one topological space into another."

The site includes a collection of knots.



You can, also, download a program called KnotPlot to develop your own knots


Click to see more moiré knots.

Animated Knots

Other nots:

Ripley's Believe it or not!


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PC Tick Tock

How a computer tells time

"Computers running Windows 95 or later can take advantage of a third circuit to measure time even more accurately. The frequency of this high- speed oscillator varies from one computer to another. But it usually produces a few million pulses each second.

Because this timer ticks so furiously, Windows allocates more space to store its current value. This counter can continue to increase until it's recorded a total of 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 ticks! This should take at least 21,350,398 seconds (assuming a fast 10 MHz oscillator), or a little over 58,454 years, before the counter reaches its limit. They tell me at that point the count is reset to zero and begins again."

The late Karen Kenworthy

BTW:
If you're a real geek, you may want this:
Excel Function Wall Clock

Some of the functions used to indicate the time are:
=INT(PI)

=FACT(3)

=GCD(77,49)

and

=ROMAN(2)


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