Keith Olberman.  Smart, funny, well informed and now kicking some butt in the right places.

Olberman v O’Reilly on Colbert – The current (and very amusing) Keith Olberman v Bill O’Reilly feud spilled over onto the Colbert Report last night during Olberman’s guest stint. (link goes to embedded 7 minute video).

(Via Metafilter)

 Holy mother of pearl Batman!  Damn the savings account full speed ahead!  Yes, it is the equivalent of having a well connected 16 PC cluster sitting right under your desk.  Too good!

Tyan Typhoon Personal Super Computer: 16 Cores Under Your Desk –

Tyan has created a monster supercomputer that harnesses all that power into a box that fits under your desk. Aimed at researchers and scientists, the Typhoon Personal Super Computer (PSC) is available with either Opteron or Pentium processors inside, and consists of four dual-socket blades in a box equipped with cooling fans that are so quiet you could actually live with it in the same room. Each one of its four blades is hooked up to a SATA drive, and all of those are linked together via gigabit Ethernet. The Opteron handles 64GB of memory, while the Pentium settles for “just” 32GB.

With 16 cores at full speed, imagine how well it could play Quake. Sure, it’s for scientists today, but so were PCs not long ago—this just might be the beginning of a new category of personal computers, the PSC.

Tyan brings supercomputing to the desktop [The Inquirer]
Product page

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 Ummm…. Wow.

Quake III played on one screen made from 24 monitors – Cory Doctorow:
Here’s a writeup of a Linux lab where they hacked together a game of Quake III played on 24 monitors connected to a cluster of 12 Linux boxen running two monitors each, in a giant six-by-three grid. Link (Thanks, GabeH!)

(Via Boing Boing)

All hail the thrift store. 

Took the kids out today to get some things and we decided to peruse a couple of the local thrift shops.  What a haul!  I got this old Remmington electric razor for a buck.  Turns out it still works and mowed a week’s growth off my ugly mug in no time.  The boy found a pair of old school headphones with the larger jack (perfect for my guitar amp) and volume controls for each ear.  Three bucks for that.  Couple of pairs of pants for the girl at a buck each.

But the find of the day (of the year really) was an LP.  Yes, a record.  My son walks up and says "I found this Dad, check it out.  Its the album of Fantasia."  Now, Fantasia is ok.  I like pink elephants and dancing brooms as much as the next guy.  But the jewel was on the back side.  Something I’d been looking for for a couple months now.  That’s right, Peter and the Wolf.  The Disney Version. Narrated by the immortal Sterling Holoway.

I am in heaven.  I have listened to it three or four times today and each time it is better than the last.  See, I grew up listening to vinyl and Peter and the Wolf was one of the albums that was mine.  Not the parents’.  It was all mine.  It was the best title in my collection which included some unfortunate renderings of Bible stories, Conan the Barbarian stories and a really weird rendition of the original episode of the 6 Million Dollar Man.  And getting my hands on it this time only cost me a quarter.

Thrift stores, like a big garage sale except they are open everyday and take credit cards.

Spot has a fabulous collection of Top 11 lists that are guaranteed to siphon off entirely too much of your otherwise-productive work time. I am currently snickering at the Top 11 Worst Firefox Extensions, which include the following gems:

 7. DialUp Sim - Slows down page loading to simulate what it would be like to surf using a 300 baud modem

6. SoundOfCher - Embeds an annoying Cher midi file on every page you visit. Up to 60 different tunes!

Retro cool.  Pac-Man never goes out of style.

Do-It-Yourself LED Bike Wheels –

Our first cousins at Kotaku showed us these unique LED Pac Man Spoke Lights, hand-made spoke art constructed by a gal named LadyAda. Now you can animate both of your bicycle wheels, one with Pac Man and the other with that little blue ghost he’s chasing. LadyAda shows you how to make your own in a highly detailed how-to post.

The LED Bike Wheel is constructed of 30 LEDs on each side and runs on two to three AA batteries. Once you get up to 15 mph, you achieve what LadyAda calls "total persistence," that concept that makes video appear seamless. Not only does it look extremely cool, it’ll give you great visibility at night, too.

LED Pac-Man Spoke Lights [Kotaku]

 
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 Where do I sign up?  My dreams of becoming a cyborg grow nearer to reality.

Mental Typewriter? Really? –

No kidding, this brain-to-computer interface will be shown at CeBIT this week, and it uses 128 electrodes placed on the scalp to translate thoughts into cursor movements on a computer screen. The project is being run by the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology in Berlin.

The concept is still in its infancy, as evidenced by the five to 10 minutes it takes just to write a typical sentence. It’s also difficult to place those electrodes on the skull—it reportedly takes an hour to place all 128 in just the right spot. But the scientists are working on that, too, where they’re developing a contactless cap it will take the place of all those cumbersome electrodes.

The software learns along with its user, letting disabled people think their thoughts onto a computer screen, seemingly through telepathy. Sounds like a first step on the way to Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity.”

Brain-controlled device could help the disabled [Mail & Guardian]

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 For those, like me, who find this type of game addictive a video well worth watching.  Imagine Sims but starting at the cellular level and building all the way up to sentience and beyond.

Sometime when I have 6 months of nothing but free time, I will have to give this a try. 

Intelligent Design – Will Wright demonstrates "spore". Almost unquestionably the most ambitious game ever, being demonstrated by designer Will Wright, of SimCity and Sims fame.

(Via Metafilter)

 Things go in cycles and lord knows I’ve been in a blog deficiency cycle lately. What can get me jumpstarted?  Cheap easy posts about drool worthy gadget gear.  So here you go…..  Portable? Check.  Dual processors? Check. Under 2 grand? Check.  Video output so I can hook it to my as-yet-undiscovered screen goggles? Check.

Put it on the Christmas list now folks. 

DualCor Portable PC Packs Pair of Processors, Puny Price –

With all this babble about Origami and ultra-portable PCs, let’s don’t let the DualCor mobile computer slip under the radar. Here’s a processor-packed portable PC that actually has two chips inside, one of them a 400MHz mobile processor and another a 1.5GHz laptop chip that runs Windows. It only uses one chip at a time to save battery power. With an 800×480 touchscreen, a VGA port and a $1500 price, this could make the Origami designers consider a trip back to the old drawing board.

MINI ME GOES PC [The Cool Hunter]

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 Oooooo…. Shiny.  Once I get a new laptop, this is something I will have to consider.  Very nice.

Laptop as Canvas: Smooth Creations Custom Airbrush Art –

We stumbled upon these gorgeous works of airbrush art and couldn’t resist showing them to you. Painted by Smooth Creations, a White City, Oregon company headed up by Jim “Smooth” Saling, it costs between $300 and $500 to have a custom painting like this on the back of your notebook. Sounds like a bargain.

Saling got his start painting exotic sports cars and now expands his horizons to custom notebooks for companies such as Alienware and ATI as well as the general public. Sure, it’s not cheap to have this done, but there’s nothing like having a one-of-a-kind work of art on your laptop. So before you consider having that tattoo indelibly poked into your ass cheek, instead, have some artwork placed on something a little less permanent.

Airbrushed notebook heaven [bit-tech.net via Born Rich]

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