Listening to: Miracle Drug - U2

Found this on BoingBoing:

The Banana Guard…go on… I dare you
to say it without smiling.

Listening to: Vertigo - U2 (yes I do like the album)

Got this link from Pants.
It describes the Apple Product Cycle with eerie accuracy:

Steve Jobs spends the first half-hour of his keynote crowing about how many iPods
shipped during the previous six months and how many “native applications”
have been developed for OS X. Attempting to appear as though it’s just an afterthought,
he finally introduces the new Apple product. The product has sleek, clean lines, a
diminutive form factor, and less than half of the useful features that everyone was
expecting. Jobs announces that the product is available “immediately.”

Five minutes later, the new product appears on the online Apple store. Orders
have an estimated ship date that is four weeks away.

The online Apple store takes 50,000 orders in the first 24 hours.

Apple’s stock surges as Wall Street analysts proclaim the new device will
be “Apple’s savior” and the key to turning around the decades-long
decline in Apple’s share of the global PC market.

Listening to: One Step Closer - U2

Day 53 of the
production diary is now available at Kong is
King.

Listening to: Crumbs From Your Table - U2

Today I have sent my Reg
Mombassa print in to get framed and I am now the proud owner of a Mephisto
Jones work. I have always wanted a piece of Mephisto Jones’ work… but in most
cases they are painted on walls around town. So when I saw one for sale
in Good
As Gold I jumped :-). I have a large collection of photos of his work… and so
I am very very pleased to actually own a piece (we’re talking dumb-ass-grin pleased).

Photos when I take delivery. In the mean time here are some examples of his work from
walls around town:

Listening to: Wrong Number - The Cure

Sheesh! I was a bit slow off the mark on this one. Day
51 is now available at Kong Is King.

Listening to: City of Blinding Lights - U2

James Cameron has edited the December edition of Wired…. For the first time in years
Wired hase produced an issue that I want (and I have a first issue of Wired…so I
was an early junkie…and wow! That was 13 years ago). Check out the table
of contents.

Listening to: Crumbs From Your Table - U2

From SuicideGirls (usual
warning…yadda yadda). They [GOP law makers] are going to give banning RU-486 a go…
because it is a risky drug. I kinda figured an unwanted pregnancy was more risky.
I don’t know how accurate these stats are but they make an interesting read:

There have been 10 deaths per 200,000 prescriptions for Viagra, while there are
2 deaths per 200,000 prescriptions for RU-486.

Listening to: All Because of You - U2

From the latest Mars Society Special Bulletin:

Early Saturday morning, a House-Senate conference committee agreed to fully fund
$16.2 billion for NASA’s FY05 budget. This is the full amount that President Bush
had requested to fund shuttle return to flight, ISS resupply, and seed money for the
Crew Exploration Vehicle, Project Prometheus and initial spending for the Moon-Mars
Space Exploration Vision!

Excellent! Can’t help but wonder where the money is going to come from at the end
of the day… From a speech given by Oleg Mozhaiskov the Russian Central Banker to
the London Bullion Market Association (thanks Aakash):

“Given the actual behavior of the dollar on the forex markets,” says Mozhaikov,
“the problem could be more accurately termed the irresponsibility of the U.S. government
in relation to the market valuation of its currency in international circulation.
Today the net debt owed by the United States to the outside world (the so-called ‘international
investment position’) is in the region of $3 trillion. To understand the scale of
this figure, let me remind you that it exceeds the total official currency reserves
in all the world’s countries (including the United States itself). According to the
International Monetary Fund statistics at last year-end, the world pool of foreign
currency reserves totaled…about $2,800 billion. The volume of cash only (’greenback’
banknotes) available outside the United States totals about $400 billion. >

Listening to: Love and Peace or Else - U2

I found this on blink.nu.
It is an interview with Jeff Raikes, charles-in-charge of Office and related product
lines. A really interesting read about some of the key lessons he has learned over
the past 20 years.

Listening to: Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own - U2

I have seen a lot of writing about Firefox eating into the market share of IE. I can’t
help but think that MS might not care. The primary reason is that since ‘95 their
efforts to provide IE has successfully tempered the “Internet as a platform”
meme giving them the breathing space they needed to provide internet connectivity
across their product suite. They have that now, they have a great dev framework and
a kick ass web server (which is starkly different from the situation they were in
when Netscape turned up)…they have all the bases covered. So they can
go and worry about bigger issues.