Some time ago, someone sent Tracie a very funny animated cartoon of a cat trying to wake its owner. There was no credit or title attached to the WMV so I had no idea who did it or where it came from. I liked it partly because the cat behaved in a very cat-like manner.

Today someone else sent Tracie a link to a collection of videos on YouTube, one of which is that cartoon. It turns out that the author/animator is Simon Tofield, the cartoon is titled “Cat Man Do”, and the cat’s name is (appropriately enough) Simon’s Cat. Here it is: read more

The snow I mentioned in my previous post didn’t amount to anything–just a few random flakes that didn’t add up to any visible accumulation. As of 8:55AM today, however, it looks like this outside:

As you can see the trees haven’t really started dropping their leaves yet. Tracie just pointed out that usually we’ve cut down the peonies before the first snow also, and they have only just begun to turn color. It was warm enough yesterday that the street stayed warm and melted the snow that fell on it. It’s quite cold now, though: read more

I realize that writing about the weather doesn’t make for the most interesting blog posts, but last year I made a mental note to try to record some notes about the weather for my own reference. Once again it did not snow in September, so I suppose I have to adapt to the changing climate and stop thinking/saying that it usually snows in Boulder before the end of September. It used to do so, but now it doesn’t, it seems. The forecast says it’s going to snow this afternoon; we shall see. read more

My friend Dan did a song for Marvel (yes, as in comic books and movies derived from them). Marvel did a video for it, which you can watch here. (I’m not going to embed it because it’s a bit wider than this blog’s format.)

The subject line and this graph pretty much say it all:

I played with Hot Wheels a lot when I was a kid, and I bet that at least a few of the people who read this blog did also. If you’re one of those people, imagine how cool it would have been to have a working traffic signal for your Hot Wheels.

The next obvious step is to create four syncronized sets of signals so that you could build a complete four-way intersection. Then you can teach your kids about running red lights, failure to yield while making a turn, etc.

[Thanks to Hack a Day for this one.] read more

I added a half-dozen more photos of dahlias to my flickr set here (same place as before).

EDIT: sorry, I thought I added those photos to the same set, but it seems that I uploaded them without actually placing them in the set. I just moved them into the set, so if you looked for them earlier and couldn’t find them they’re there now.

I’ve just posted a set of photos of dahlias currently blooming in our yard on my flickr site. I’ll probably add more photos to the set in a week or so; many of them are still opening.

Here’s one for the paranoiacs in the audience. It’s come to light that the FBI has successfully used cell phones to eavesdrop on their owners, even when their owners thought that the phones were turned off. It’s not even necessary to have physical access to the phone to turn it into a “roving bug”. It’s done by downloading software to the phone with the help of the cellular service provider.

Privacy’s shaping up to be a strange issue in the 21st century. On one hand we have technological invasion like the technique described above. On the other hand we have people loudly carrying on cell phone conversations in public and voluntarily posting vast amounts of personal information online in the form of blogs, Facebook pages, etc. We even have people agreeing to install spyware to collect and report all manner of information about their online habits in exchange for a mere ten bucks. read more

Various blogs on my RSS feed, such as Hack a Day, have brought it to my attention that today marks the 40th anniversary of Nerf–yes, Nerf as in squishy foam footballs, etc. When I was much younger I had a purple Nerf football and a Nerf basketball hoop on my bedroom door. My sister had a set of Nerf rockets with launcher, which I believe must have been the first Nerf projectile product. Apparently ballistic Nerf things are the mainstay of their business these days. Clearly I need to visit toy stores more often. read more