brian boyer

took some pics on the city of new orleans today - left the windy city last night and arrived in the crescent city this morning. forgot the good camera at dinner, doh, but i got a phonecam pic of my excellent mother’s po’ boy. mmmmmm tasty!

for train pics - i highly recommend using the machine gun setting on the cam - with a huge memory card - i took 160 photos today, most were duds, but i got a few winners.

rocky’s boots was a badass apple ii game that i remember playing in the computer lab in grade school.  you connected logic gates to create a specified output.  it’s basically what i had to do the first couple of weeks of my first computer engineering class.  it’s probably been 20 years since i last thougth about it….  then a little while ago, i stumbled across a vague memory that i had to research, and found it!  neat!!

was this blog dead that long ago that i never posted my mac pics?? ugh. i suppose so.

if you hadn’t heard (and if you’re reading this, you’re probably a friend, and therefore probably had…) i started sailing again this past summer.

it was a fantastic experience, culminating with running the chicago-mackinac race! that’s three-plus days on a boat, racing non-stop. totally badass. i’m gonna do this the rest of my life.

the firefly is a replacement lid for your nalgene (or other standard 63mm lidded vessel) that turns your beverage into a reading lamp!

the falkirk wheel is totally sweet. it lifts boats from one waterway to another. from the link:

The wheel, which has an overall diameter of 35 metres, consists of two opposing arms which extend 15 metres beyond the central axle, and which take the shape of a Celtic-inspired, double-headed axe. Two sets of these axe-shaped arms are attached about 25 metres apart to a 3.5 metre diameter axle. Two diametrically opposed water-filled caissons, each with a capacity of 80,000 gallons (302 tons), are fitted between the ends of the arms.

These caissons always weigh the same whether or not they are carrying their combined capacity of 600 tonnes of floating canal barges as, according to Archimedes’ principle, floating objects displace their own weight in water, so when the boat enters, the amount of water leaving the caisson weighs exactly the same as the boat. This keeps the wheel balanced and so, despite its enormous mass, it rotates through 180° in less than four minutes while using very little power. It takes just 22.5 kilowatts (kW) to power the electric motors, which consume just 1.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy in four minutes, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water.

gah! awesome!

three years ago, the evening before i protested the republican convention in nyc, i met him, shook his hand, and thanked him for what he had done.

nowadays, it’s completely obvious that his whole “outsider maverick” thing was bullshit. he’s not just supporting this ridiculous war, he’s pandering to the creationists!

what a jerkass. but, it’s refreshing to know that i won’t feel the least bit conflicted if he gets the nod from the republicans.

UPDATED 02/20: get your mccain hatin’ fix and more at The REAL McCain!

V for Vendetta is about terrorism, fascism, murder, and anarchy in the uk. it’s superb modern utopian lit, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

A Scanner Darkly is the creepiest/coolest film about drugs I’ve seen since Requiem for a Dream, based on the Philip K. Dick novel.

both are incredibly stylish, serious, risky, entertaining, and unsettlingly timely.  grab them both and spend a couple of snowy nights inside. You won’t be disappointed.

steve jobs, patron saint of all things shiny, white, and expensive, posted a very interesting read on apple’s site. he discusses the current and possible future states of electronic music sales, and why drm is a waste of time. i’d have liked it better if he actually addressed why drm is evil. but it’s a step in the right direction.

from the blog to end all blogs, boingboing!

i love ubuntu, the fresh-this-morning operating system on my sturdy little x31, and deepest sender, my new favorite browser plugin.

open source has done me right today. ubuntu was a dream to install, and with just a few tweaks, the old thinkpad feels great. i’m not missing windows one bit.

and firefox’s cross-platform plugins work perfectly! i was able to get google browser sync fired up two minutes after my first boot, and now i’m using deepest sender to post to the blog.

this free / open source thing is awesome. i’m in love. maybe lust. well, i like it a whole freakin lot! yeah. and stuff.

omniglot has pictures of alphabets. lots of alphabets. actually, abjada, alphabets, syllabic alphabets, syllabaries, complex scri…. writing systems!

i’ve loved this site for years. so sad that i’m only sharing it now. burmese is too cool!!