Sounds From The Basement

An Idea For My Old Vinyl

What You Need To Build A Subway

Strange Airports

This is the airport in Gibraltar.  For more strange airports, click here

Wouldn't You Like To Live Here?

You Can't Catch Me

Denny Had To Sell His Yacht and This is All He has Left

I Have To Get One Of These!

Tired of the limited legroom, bad food, and worse movies you have to put up with during a flight? Well, it's time to bust out your company credit card and get yourself a Martin Jetpack, which has just become the first commercially available jetpack. Driven by a pair of washing machine-sized fans strapped to your back, this personal transporter will give you a pretty cool 30 minutes of flight time and comes with a bunch of redundancy systems to ensure any mistakes don't turn fatal. The rotors are built out of a carbon / Kevlar composite and are powered by a two-liter V4 two-stroke engine capable of delivering 200hp (or 150kW). Good old gasoline is the fuel of choice here and private individuals are expected to be offered the chance to fulfill every geek and geekette's dream later this year. Just make sure you have $86,000 lying around to fund it.

Engaget

Those Crazy Japanese Rice Farmers

 

Japanese Crop Circles

Giants of Modern Technology

John W. Backus, inventor of the Fortran programming language is dead.  I didn't really know much about his life until I read the obituary.  I remember many long hours in the high school math lab teaching myself Fortran programming from a book and trying out various programs on the school terminal.  Sure, there was the attraction of the interactive Star Trek game where you could imagine that you were Captain Kirk and decide to fire photon torpedoes, but the most vivid memories were of the paper tape machine used to record your programs.  I think the first real program I coded was to solve some sort of quadratic equation.  It all seems so long ago.  Of course, Fortran, while ubiquitous at the time, was already an old language and being superseded.  This was before the idea of a PC on every desk (thank you Bill Gates).  I remember my shock in college when the only real computer resources available were through a central office and all your programming had to be done on punch cards.  They seem like the dark ages now, but felt very modern at the time.  RIP Jon Backus.

Arrived in San Antonio

I arrived safe and sound in San Antonio yesterday.  The ipod was a godsend on the plane.  I was going to start my listening with something that was a favorite of Greg Wing-it-boy, the Iceberg Lettuce King (he sent me a message that he liked this web site), but I don't have any recordings by Bon Jovi.  Greg is in his mid thirties, but he looks about 15.  When he gets off work, he returns to his cryovac chamber to maintain his youthful looks.  He only goes out at night to play guitar in his band (what kind of a band is named "Screaming Broccoli?").  He claims to have good taste in music, but the one time I went to see him play live, he spent the whole time jamming on Bon Jovi tunes.  You know what they say:  Bad Taste Is Timeless!.  Greg - now you need to let Milton see this site!

Started the new job this morning, but my laptop will not be delivered, so there is little opportunity to post.  I will say the new job presents lots of opportunities, and San Antonio seems nice.

Matthew