Common every day phrases often don’t make sense when you step back and consider their literal meaning. For instance, why does the phrase “on the ball” mean to be on top of things? I enjoy learning the etymology of common words or phrases but in some cases it’s taken me years to think about the […]

“Heading home for the weekend!!!” “C1 Build Failed.” “Is this thing on? Blustery day in Albuquerque. Making some progress on a few loose ends at work.” “Why oh why do I keep watching Smallville?” “I wonder if anybody interesting was born” The above quotes are from Twitter, a site where people write whatever pops into […]

FileHippo has a large collection of useful software. I often check there when looking for software to perform a certain task. However, as we use more software it’s harder to keep everything up to date. Some applications, like Firefox, keep themselves up to date by letting you know there’s an upgrade available. But others don’t, […]

The rules are simple. Reward the behavior you want, ignore the behavior you don’t want. It’s not novel or revolutionary, but its application is a bit unorthodox. This article (you have to pay to read it now, unfortunately) talks about how Amy Sutherland applied the techniques used to train Shamu the killer whale on her […]

As much as I love The Princess Bride, it perpetuates the myth that quicksand will take you under. And as Wesley so aptly stated, “We are men of action, lies do not become us.” You may think it inconceivable, but research shows that quicksand doesn’t suck you in. It’s more dense then water and the […]

I was out of the loop for a while on the beta release of Firefox. I like using the latest browsers but for some reason this release escaped me until Beta 4 was out. My first impression: it’s faster, renders pages better and uses less memory than Firefox 2. I’ve been using it for a […]

You have 15 minutes to name all the elements. That was hard. I’m embarrassed by my poor performance, so I won’t share it. After the 2 minute mark I came up empty. I just saw the United States test where you get 10 minutes to name all 50 states. While I didn’t get all of […]

This game is simple yet curiously fun. My best time was 16.33 seconds, at which point the blocks started moving really fast. Instructions: Click and hold the red square. Keep it from touching walls or the blue blocks If you make it past 18 seconds you are doing brilliantly! Hint: I’ve found the best first […]

Here are a bunch of quizzes that are fun to take, but I wouldn’t put much stock in the results. The “how many X can you name in 5 minutes” seem like they’d be easy, but I quickly slowed down after 45 seconds to a minute. How many HTML elements can you name in 5 […]

We don’t have cable or satellite at our house, setting us apart from the majority of the US population, but that’s fine by me. We barely watch any TV, certainly not enough to warrant paying $50 a month. On the rare occasions we do watch, our powered indoor antenna gets around 5 clear channels. That […]

A guy by the name of Professor Solomon wrote a partially tongue-in-cheek book called How to Find Lost Objects. You can download it for free here (5MB PDF). It’s entertaining in parts, and the instructions to make your own thinking cap are amusing enough. The 67 pages have quite a bit of fluff. I found […]

If you want to spice up some of your images, Photo Notes can help. It can turn your boring images into polaroids, and you can even write notes on them. To create one, pick the style, image, font and color of the note, then type the note. Here’s one I created.

I’ve created a new design for the site. The current one is old and stale and it’s high time for a change. Before it goes live though, I’d like your feedback. Do you like the color scheme? Is it an improvement over the current design? Is it easy on the eyes? Is it easier to […]