Listening to: Dicing With Dragons - BBC Radio 4

A lot of these are for my own records:

• Eric
  Idle on the Bush Administration (Kevin Schofield)

• Sales
  101 for Venture Capitalists (& their Investees) (Infectious Greed)

• How to Negotiate
  a Term Sheet with a VC, Part II (OnlyOnce)

• Team Building
  200 Feet Underground (VentureBlog)

• The Hiring
  Challenge (OnlyOnce)

Listening to: Dicing With Dragons - BBC Radio 4

A bunch of Suicide Girls links (usual warning applies):

• TECHNOLOGY:
  Mobile Phone Tracking Saves Tsunami Victims
  
  “There were 10,252 international roaming phones working on Sri Lankan networks
  at the time of the tragedy,” Chris Dharmakirti, who is heading the Tidal Wave Rescue
  Centre said. “We sent everyone an sms and got responses from 2,321.

• CULTURE:
  “The Office” Scribe Joins “The Simpsons”
  
  Having agreed to write the script with executive producer Al Jean, Gervais said
  he had already completed a first draft. “I bang it down, give it to them, they make
  it funny and I claim the credit,” he said. “I feel like I know Homer. It’s a joy.”

• CULTURE:
  Mexican Authorities Outlaw Indoor Nekkidness
  
  Because of a lack of morality in the city of Villahermosa, its city council has
  banned indoor nudity to prevent people from seeing nudity from outside.
  The law calls for a $121 fine and up to 36 hours in jail.

Listening to: Dicing With Dragons - BBC Radio 4

Ok I have got a bunch of Boing Boing links:

• Rudy
  Rucker explains how to get high on cellular automata

• Dicing
  with Dragons: BBC Radio doc on D&D 
  This is amusing for me as I got a load of trouble in intermediate school because I
  played D&D (a particularly puritanical TD teacher sent me home with a leaflet
  that explained that I was on the way to hell)… It also has a lot of stuff about
  Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston.

• How to Be
  Creative

• Dangerous
  Things on your desk

• Replacing
  Peace-Keepers with System Administrators

Listening to: Fall> - Single Gun Theory

Found on ThinkSecret.
Apple might be releasing a headless machine in 2005… sub USD500 - 600.
This a big move down into the lower price zone and has the potential to be very exciting.
Having a bare bones Mac is one of the top 3 wish list entries for Macheads.

UPDATE: AppleInsider has a bit more info.

UPDATE 2: The Register also has a report…
thou they speculate that it might be an initial entry into the Media PC arena.

UPDATE 3: Arstechnica has a less breathless write
up.

This is why watching Apple is so fun… it really is a techno-soap opera.

Listening to: I Don’t Believe You - Talk Talk

Found on BuzzMachine.
This number just gets bigger and bigger:

: The number keeps growing bigger and more incomprehensible. They always do. The latest says
59,000 died in the tsunami.

For perspective,
this is rising almost to the number of all people killed in natural disasters last
year, which itself was multiples over the totals in years before:

According
to an annual survey by the German reinsurance giant Munich Re, 75,000 people were
killed in natural disasters last year - up from 11,000 in 2002 and 25,000 in 2001.
Most devastating were the Bam earthquake (40,000 dead, 30,000 injured) and heatwaves
in Europe that claimed more than 20,000 lives. Economic losses were put at $US65 billion,
up $10 billion on the previous year.

Listening to: Happiness is Easy - Talk Talk

Found this on /. .
It is the trailer to
Sin City. It looks magnificently stylish.

Listening to: Pictures of Bernadette - Talk Talk

This is more for my own records. Ultra-capacitors.
Found on Robots.net.

Listening to: Strike Up the Band - Talk Talk

Last summer I did a tandem sky dive. While it was cool it’s not the life changing
exercise a number of canopy heads I know make it out to be (i.e. I wouldn’t take it
up as a hobby and I have done other no-chemical things that have given me a bigger
buzz for longer). One of the guys jumping out of my plane was a wing-suit flier.
These guys are a special sort of nutter. I came across this article yesterday:

Pioneer B.A.S.E. jumper Jeb Corliss and Go Fast! - sponsored test pilot Luigi
Cani, have paved the way for a world record landing attempt of a wing-suit—minus
a parachute. Jeb and Luigi teamed up to gauge speeds and gather data to safely land
Jeb’s wing-suit.

That’s right… they want to land a wing-suit without a parachute.

Listening to: Talk Talk - Talk Talk

Walking home yesterday I found a tribute to Dime Bag by Mephisto
Jones:

Listening to: Aotearosa> - Del Rey System

A thought that always amused me was that one of the biggest rap acts in the world
was three, white, jewish boys from Brooklyn. Last nite I went to see Tenacious D live
… and had a similar observation. The most rocking act in the world at this moment
is two, rotund, short guys with acoustic guitars.

Tenacious D set the St James Theatre afire
last nite and then spent 90 mins pouring gasoline on the flames and laughing.

I was utterly awe struck with how talented JB and KG are… all the songs were note
and word perfect from their recordings and in many ways I think far, far better live.
These guys are so amazingly talented they literally plastered a grin on my face for
the rest of the nite.

The “only in New Zealand” highlight was Andy Serkis reprising his role as Golem and
singing “You’re the One I Want (Precious)” as a duet with Jack Black. The crowd went
absolutely balistic!

I have to mention Crumb. While they were very
good they had the uncommonly good sense to only hang ’round for 30 mins and then bugger
off to leave the stage to JB and KG.