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Okay, I’m still getting over my disappointment that it’s the 21st century and yet we stil don’t have flying cars or moon bases, nor are we wearing jumpsuits with metallic trim or eating food pellets and Tang for breakfast. However, we are making progress in the field of robotics: we now have a robot guinea pig.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Quoting from today’s Macintouch.com coverage of MacWorld: “In a startling acknowledgement of what has become obvious, Jobs announced the change of his company’s name from ‘Apple Computer Inc.’ to ‘Apple Inc.'”

Quite frankly, I’d be far more excited if Steve had announced that they’d finally fixed the cross-platform networking bugs in OS X than I am about Apple making cell phones.

Who’s Bill Mitchell, you say? According to this article on Retro Thing, Bill Mitchell was a food chemist who invented Tang, Kool Whip, Jell-o Instant Pudding, and Pop Rocks, and presumably a number of less memorable General Foods products. This genius deserves national recognition. Mr. Mitchell passed away in 1994, but that doesn’t mean we can’t honor his memory. Maybe a statue in his home town, at least.

As reported at CNN.com, Bush is making it legal for the government to read your mail without a search warrant. I suppose this is the sort of thing people are talkin about when they put those bumper stickers that say IF YOU’RE NOT OUTRAGED YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION on their cars.

Another snow storm arrived here last night. This one isn’t predicted to be another blizzard, but there’s already a good 15cm or so of snow on the ground and it’s still coming down. The interesting thing about this storm is its proximity to the previous one. It’s quite unusual to have two substantial snowfalls this close together. I can’t recall it happening as long as I’ve lived here (since ’83, that is) and someone at the grocery store remarked that she hadn’t seen it happen and she’s lived here since ’76. Two anecdotal accounts aren’t worth much of anything, but it’s certainly unusual to get this much snow in such a short period of time. read more

I’ve started making my own PC boards. I spent a lot of time perusing the archives of the Homebrew PCB Yahoo group and am using the toner-transfer method with a cheap Samsung laser printer. I tried using the Pulsar paper but unfortunately it doesn’t work with my printer. I have obtained very good results with Epson Glossy Photo Paper (yes, the stuff made for inkjet printers) and a GBC Personal Laminator. Here’s a photo of my most recent board (click the little image to see a full-sized one):
read more

We just put up a batch of photos of Blizzard Deux in the photo gallery here.

We received about a foot of snow last night. It’s heavier and stickier than the snow deposited by the first blizzard, presumably because the ambient temperature was/is higher now.

There are some webcams scattered around Boulder that will give you real-time views of the snow. There are several here that provide an overview of the campus area (my alma mater, which is not to say I’m particularly fond of the place) and the nearby mountain range. There’s a whole page of webcam links here; the ones provided by GHWA.com give you the best idea of what it’s like in the downtown area. read more

It started snowing about 45 min ago. Here’s the current forecast:

335 PM MST THU DEC 28 2006

…WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM MST FRIDAY…
…WINTER STORM WATCH NOW IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY MORNING THROUGH
SUNDAY AFTERNOON…

THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY MORNING
THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON. A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT
UNTIL 6 AM MST FRIDAY.

SNOW…HEAVY AT TIMES…WILL CONTINUE THROUGH TONIGHT. TOTAL
ACCUMULATIONS BY DAYBREAK FRIDAY ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE BETWEEN 8
AND 18 INCHES…WITH THE HEAVIEST ACCUMULATIONS NEAR THE FOOTHILLS. read more

My partner Chris found this video on YouTube which pretty much says by itself all that needs to be said about James Brown, and why it’s sad that he’s no longer with us. I’ll just add that he’s one of those people whose influence is so huge that there’s no way to overstate it.