I sure am glad to see the researchers at Manchester University are tackling some pretty important problems plaguing all of civilization. I mean coming up with a mathematical proof to explain beer goggles really advances our culture. Wonder how much Bausch & Lomb PureVision bequest in grant dollars to have this uncovered. Still I chuckled.

I own a PSP but I would not call myself a gamer. But… The trailer for the new game Gears of War makes me want to run out and get an xBox. The unbelievable imagery for this trailer was directed by David Fincher. Mad World by Gary Jules is the perfect choice of song. Michael at the BB has a full, and I mean full, review of this game.

Well that was quite an exercise. Comments are now working and yes it was something that I had changed that caused the error. The issue resulted from the htaccess mod that force strips the www in the URL. I assume this has something to do with the HTTP_REFERER in comments-post.php. This of course what after I tried different themes, disabling all my plugins and even going to the great length of deleting my entire website (and I mean everything but the db) and painstakingly rebuild it. As I feel that the triple dub is irrelevant today I will work on a little php hack to get comments working in the environment I prefer. So go ahead and leave me some nasty comments now.

Two incredible videos for you this Sunday evening to quench your sports car vid desires; or at least mine. Witness a Bugatti Veyron pull away from a Nissan 350Z like it is standing still. I am still trying to figure out what the tail light dance is all about.

Also on the Porsche site a test driver pushes a bright orange 911 GTR3 RS to the limits. Music choice could have been little better but the imagery is spot on.

The S-rod’s wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Our bird is currently in the oven and the sides are soon to be started. We hope you enjoy your day with family and friends.

Chi-town out.

Ian was in from Bermuda on Monday night so we decided to take him out to dinner and visit. We enjoyed some drafts over nice cuts of cooked meat while chatting the night away; a rarity for a Monday night. Originally hailing from Bristol, England I really took notice of Ian’s politeness. It is so prevalent and consistent it borders on absurdity. A quality I believe that some Americans should inherent; it is refreshing.

I case you were wondering I did not purchase a Zune; although I do fine the social wi-fi aspect of the media player intriguing. Rumor has it that chip architecture can support Linux which opens the door for hackers to actually capture the music shared from others. Also heard the software installation is less than smooth which should not take anyone by surprise. I mean come on people this is a Microsoft device.

It’s a whole other ball game now.

Track your moods on line with this nice visualizing website, MoodJam. You can record your moods and see them displayed with multi-colored stripes. If you submit your mood with any regularity and for a long enough duration you can track the cyclicality of your feelings. Interesting; my mood for the week would be stressed and tired. Ummm either a red or black line – I am not sure.

After putting in long hours to get through a tough week the wife and I played host to a former coworker, Stark and his three friends from Ohio. The weekend started out a little rough with an unbelievable thunderstorm for this time of year (on may way home I witnessed a guy get knocked off his bike by a strong wind burst). Once the guys navigated through the storm, threw down their gear, we headed out to a local watering hole, Kincades for a lengthy Lite session. The next day entailed a limo ride to Evanston to watch the Buckeye’s beat the pants off of the Northwestern Wildcats. It is always fun to walk into a stadium that is overcome with a sea of red chanting O-H-I-O. Game ended (more…)

Yehuda Berlinger outlines a seven step plan for “creating quality” work. Reading this post is timely in application to my own current employment. Working with such large sums of numbers and presenting them in fresh, creative and thought poking ways is both challenging and rewarding. Although not revolutionary in principal I fully support the idea of researching disconnected subjects. My endeavors in the blogosphere and geekdom have helped me a great deal. Now if my math skillz can just make my coding a little smoother.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had covertly funded a project with the U.S. auto makers for the past five years, whereby the auto makers were installing black box voice recorders in four-wheel drive pickup trucks and SUV’s in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash.

They were surprised to find in 41 of the 50 states the recorded last words of drivers in 61.2% of fatal crashes were, “Oh Shit!”

Only the states of Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana,

Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas were different, where 89.3% of the final words were: “Hold my beer, I’m gonna try somethin’.”

Off to Boston for a business trip. Be back in a couple of days.  Like you were going to miss a post or something.

We’re back in the city after a wild, wonderful weekend in nature. Due to some terrible directions from Google we were beginning to think we would never make it out there on Friday night. I was shocked by the overabundance of animals roaming the dark streets including a three-legged raccoon that gave us a dirty look for rushing him across the street.

Saturday we headed to Brewmasters, the lone drinking establishment for miles, for some college football and were delighted with the best service we’ve had in ages. The bartender even made a special trip into “town” to pick up some Jägermeister for our much needed Jäger bombs. She even bought cigarettes for some of the group and sent us home with a 12-pack of Miller Lite. To top it off, our entire bill for the afternoon was less than a round at Moe’s. We tried to convince her to open a bar in Chicago, but to no avail. I guess we’ll just have to go back for another weekend this summer.

Large panoramic photo of the lake.

As the title says this is quite likely the best paper airplane in the world. It has some tricky folds like in step number 18 but the associated Google video (or flash animation) really helps when you get stuck interpreting the static how-to images. I have flown the resulting collection of creases around our condo and am dying to start launching this thing around the office.